Spoonitlateraments

I prefer this to the typical blog format because people can talk about what you're talking about and stuff.

The plan for this year was to take off from school and start back this fall semester (which obviously hasn't happened) because I've fallen into a bit of a pickle this year. So much has happened I don't even really want to get into it all, but the short version (believe it or not, despite the length) is basically like this: My girlfriend has been having a lot of health problems that require a lot of time and attention, and this has been going on for months and months now. She's not able to drive or work, and my earlier poker winnings are sort of holding all of this together since my game has went all to shit since all of this started happening. I seriously went almost straight from 3-3.5 ptbb/100 at 100nl over 500k+ hands and 2.5-3 ptbb/100 at 200nl over 200k+ hands to like 2 ptbb/100 at 50nl over the past 150k. To make matters worse, I have comparably little time to figure things out since she requires my full attention at multiple random intervals during the day. Random note that I'm throwing in here after I've typed most of this out: my parents are also going to probably be getting a divorce within the next 6 months because my mom's health has declined in the past 2-3 years and all this other shit; this situation also takes up a lot of time for me since I help my mom with a lot of stuff that my dad and two dumbass brothers (age 14 and 18) are too sorry to help with. When I do have time for poker, I have to basically drag myself to my desk to play or study because I don't want to because I feel like total shit all the time.

Brag or beat?: I've lost like 12 pounds in the past 4 months even though I've been eating worse and worse and getting less exercise.

So far I've been dealing with things the best I can, sort of breaking even from one month to the next after taxes and bills and such, waiting for a time when things would be sorted out a bit and I could get back to beating the shit out of full ring NLHE. The problem is that things have taken longer than I expected to make any sort of turnaround, and it will likely be months from now before we see any real progress with my girlfriend's situation, so I've got to get back on the ball.

What's so weird is that I feel like I have a much, much better understanding of poker than I did 9 months ago but I keep playing like shit when I'm at the tables, soooo we're going to work on that. Now that I've rambled on for a bit, I'm going to get some food and figure out what the hell I'm going to do.

good luck. even though you love the people you're helping, it still sucks to have so many people depending on you for stuff. it's just really draining.

do you have a plan for when you might start school again? where are you at in school (what year, what degree, etc)?

Originally Posted by courtiebee

good luck. even though you love the people you're helping, it still sucks to have so many people depending on you for stuff. it's just really draining.

do you have a plan for when you might start school again? where are you at in school (what year, what degree, etc)?

I really just have to wait and see at this point. I had planned to start back this fall but that's had to be changed. I'm like 3 credit hours from senior standing, and I'm an Applied Mathematics major at UNC Greensboro.

I think my goal for the rest of the month is to just get up to study and play when I have the chance to instead of worrying about else everything so much. So I'm going to go for 6 ptbb/100 at 50nl FR over 85,000 hands.

Gl with everything spoon. Crushing the tables for 6ptbb+ shouldn't be too hard for someone as good as you.

Originally Posted by JinxT4

Gl with everything spoon. Crushing the tables for 6ptbb+ shouldn't be too hard for someone as good as you.

Spoon is a god amongst poker players online.

Play well and often spoon, I wish you the best.

BTW, how do I get women to post in my blog?

Yeah good luck Spoon, you'll be rewarded eventually, you deserve to be, just make sure you make some time for yourself somehow to give yourself and mind a break.

Hope everything sorts it self out soon and you're back to owning the tables in no time flat mate.

All the best man. You contribute a lot to this community & personally helped me out a lot as a micro grinder so I wish you many a'heater -- both in poker and life.

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

Spoon is a god amongst poker players online.

Play well and often spoon, I wish you the best.

BTW, how do I get women to post in my blog?

Oh wtfever. I'm seriously, seriously, seriously not that good. Like not even close.

Thanks everyone.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

Spoon is a god amongst poker players online.

Play well and often spoon, I wish you the best.

BTW, how do I get women to post in my blog?

Oh wtfever. I'm seriously, seriously, seriously not that good. Like not even close.

Thanks everyone.

nothing better than a humble scholar.

i tip my hat to you good sir

wish you all the best.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

Spoon is a god amongst poker players online.

Play well and often spoon, I wish you the best.

BTW, how do I get women to post in my blog?

Oh wtfever. I'm seriously, seriously, seriously not that good. Like not even close.

Thanks everyone.

You're goooood. I can't really think of any other 50NL regs that I try to avoid having sit on my left (although I'm assuming there must be like 3-5 tops that I'm just forgetting right now).

GL dude

10/3/2008: 1971 hands, +$109.25, +5.54 ptbb/100
Total since 10/3: 1971 hands, +$109.25, +5.54 ptbb/100

Hands of Interest:

Hand 1: Villain is unknown, opens 15x in EP and I have AA and just call. Raising is obviously lower variance but I think calling is correct. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3276909

Hand 2: Squeeze gone bad but I have odds to call against Aces that have me dominated and pairs 55-KK and I figure he has to have worse than that occasionally. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3276929

Go spoooooon !!! you'll spoonitprettysoon imo

I feel ya spoon. My mom is really going down with MS and my dad is a trooper for hanging in there and dealing with her. I try to help out but there's only so much we can do for her nowadays. I've got other issues as well and I know it's hard to concentrate on school, work, poker, studying, etc when it's damn near impossible to get away for 5 goddamn minutes.

We've got some big paydays coming to us bro!

this shall not sound trite :

may everything turn out to be good for you, your family and for your and their plannings!!!

10/4/2008: 3019 hands, +$153.20, +5.07 ptbb/100
Total since 10/3: 4990 hands, +$262.45, +5.26 ptbb/100

Hands of Interest:
Hand 3: I got super usered (lc) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3279281
Hand 4: What the fuck was I doing on the turn here, this is pretty ugly http://www.pokerhand.org/?3277352
Hand 5: Me being a bit too cautious on the river with trips http://www.pokerhand.org/?3277153


Thanks everyone for their support.

GL to you man, a lot to take on.

Much respect for the advice you give in the BC too...

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Hands of Interest:
Hand 4: What the fuck was I doing on the turn here, this is pretty ugly http://www.pokerhand.org/?3277352

You had outs but it was obvious he was ahead. Good to know that players better than I donk off chips too.

10/5/2008: 1694 hands, -$74.10, -4.37 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 8708 hands, +$246.45, +2.83 ptbb/100

Today was short on hands but with more hours put in. I did a lot of 6-8 tabling today working on my game, which is typically what I've done one day every week or so. Although my results don't reflect it because of how badly my hands performed today (down 2 BIs with sets and 1.5 BIs with flushes+, lol), I think I played really well.

Hands of Interest:
Hand 6: Semi-bluff gone wrong. Villain likes to raise a lot of c-bets and fire on the turn with a lot of his range, even if it doesn't make sense to do so. I've seen him show up with like 54 of clubs in a similar spot against my top set ironically enough. Given his tendencies I think it's fine. I could also just check/call the turn and river but I don't want to play the guessing game to a river bet. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3284169
Hand 7: I decided to include this one just because the turn bet was a result of my bet pot script going apeshit and I thought it was kind of cute. (lc) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3284189

I played less tables for a morning session before jumping back into my more typical 12-16 tabling ~90-minute sessions. There are some hands for review here if anyone is interested in giving commentary: http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...on-t77111.html

10/6/2008: 2381 hands, +$493.55, +20.73 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 11089, +$740.00, +6.67 ptbb/100

Today was a good day. Got up at like 4:30 AM and 4/6-tabled for like an hour and a half against some nitty nits. It's good stuff.

Recently I've started figuring something out. I can't really describe it in detail yet, but it's like everything I know about ranges and different lines and balance and equity all clicked into place and the actual act of playing poker is so much smoother now. It's like I'm trying [obviously] but it's leaning more and more towards being effortless.

Dude, I´m sorry to hear your girl didnt get better and about that divorcement. All the best to your mum, gf and to you that things will turn around.

Originally Posted by XTR1000

Dude, I´m sorry to hear your girl didnt get better and about that divorcement. All the best to your mum, gf and to you that things will turn around.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

10/6/2008: 2381 hands, +$493.55, +20.73 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 11089, +$740.00, +6.67 ptbb/100

Damn spooner, not bad at all. Hopefully you can keep that shit up. I love those 20ptbb+ type of days. I've been on a bit of a heater myself the past few sessions but came crashing down today with set over set/boat over boat.

Keep makin those monies.

10/7/2008: 1344 hands, -$76.85, -5.72 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 12433 hands, +$663.15, +5.33 ptbb/100

Today was a horrible day. My parents are in the process of splitting up right now.

My parents divorced when I was younger. I was only 6 and so it wouldn't have affected me as much as it affects you now, but I still remember how shitty it was back when they were together.

I don't really know anything about you and what kind of relationship you have with your parents, but I'm sure your life must be shitty right now. Hang in there, don't forget to take care of yourself (aside from the other ppl you're taking care of right now). It sucks now but hopefully it's part of the solution to make things way better for the future.

Good luck with poker too!

10/8/2008: 2743 hands, -$80.90, -2.95 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 15176 hands, +$582.25, +3.84 ptbb/100

I'm a little behind pace for 85k hands but considering what all has been going on it's understandable. I'm going to be doing some coaching for guys in micros and low stakes also, only charging like $15/hour or so for my services since it's what I end up doing anyway.

SPPON is da man


DA DA DA DA DA DAN

10/9/2008: 1146 hands, +$157.45, +13.74 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 16332 hands, +$739.70, +4.53 ptbb/100

Last night I stayed up really late just fucking off and thinking about everything that's going on so I didn't get up until like noon and my girlfriend had a 3 pm doctor's appointment so I didn't even up playing hardly at all today. I am, however, going to stop auto-importing hands during my session; I'll just manually import afterwards. Now I won't be tempted to see where I'm at stats/winnings-wise during my sessions since it won't be just one click away anymore.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

10/9/2008: 1146 hands, +$157.45, +13.74 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 16332 hands, +$739.70, +4.53 ptbb/100

Last night I stayed up really late just fucking off and thinking about everything that's going on so I didn't get up until like noon and my girlfriend had a 3 pm doctor's appointment so I didn't even up playing hardly at all today. I am, however, going to stop auto-importing hands during my session; I'll just manually import afterwards. Now I won't be tempted to see where I'm at stats/winnings-wise during my sessions since it won't be just one click away anymore.

Dude wtf? Don't you have HEM? If you do why aren't you using it during your sessions?

Originally Posted by DaNutsInYoEye

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

10/9/2008: 1146 hands, +$157.45, +13.74 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 16332 hands, +$739.70, +4.53 ptbb/100

Last night I stayed up really late just fucking off and thinking about everything that's going on so I didn't get up until like noon and my girlfriend had a 3 pm doctor's appointment so I didn't even up playing hardly at all today. I am, however, going to stop auto-importing hands during my session; I'll just manually import afterwards. Now I won't be tempted to see where I'm at stats/winnings-wise during my sessions since it won't be just one click away anymore.

Dude wtf? Don't you have HEM? If you do why aren't you using it during your sessions?

Both PT3's and HEM's HUD slows my computer down pretty badly. I use PT3 to analyze my play.

There's not really a good reason to leave the auto-import on when my average session is only ~1000 hands.

10/10/2008: 1730 hands, +$76.45, +4.42 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 18052 hands, +$816.15, +4.52 ptbb/100

So today my dad got arrested. Weeeeeeee. I've been doing a bit of coaching lately, and I really like it. I'd also like to say that getting charged more than 2 BIs/hour for coaching is a joke. Anyway, I ran bad 2 BIs on AIs today and it was kind of hilarious how it happened. Instead of being one or two big spots where I lose against a 2-outer or something, it was tons and tons of spots where I get a guy AI on the turn drawing to 5, 8 or 9 outs and he would hit. It was great. Michelle's episodes have seemed to have a lower frequency in the past 4-5 days, but that could be a small sample size. We'll see.

10/11/2008: 1104 hands, -$73.55, -6.66 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 19156 hands, +$742.60, +3.88 ptbb/100

This shit with my parents is absolutely killing the amount of time I'm able to play and study right now. I'm about to tell them all to kiss my fucking ass and not answer the phone or the door for a few weeks.

10/11/2008: 1706 hands, +$193.90, +11.37 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 20862 hands, +$936.50, +4.49 ptbb/100

My parents are retarded rah rah rah. I made a really terrible impulse snapcall type thing with AK on a QJx board for like $40 today and lost a huge pot too. Tonight I played some $0.25/0.50 2-7 single draw and kicked ass as usual.

I think you need a vacation!

Damn man this thread is depressing me. Spoon, good luck with everything, I really hope and believe your life will get a lot better sooner than you think.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

10/11/2008: 1104 hands, -$73.55, -6.66 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 19156 hands, +$742.60, +3.88 ptbb/100

This shit with my parents is absolutely killing the amount of time I'm able to play and study right now. I'm about to tell them all to kiss my fucking ass and not answer the phone or the door for a few weeks.

I live in a pretty busy place with a lot of people coming and going. Instead of shutting my door and putting in earplugs, I went to a local internet cafe and paid for a month.
Now, when I play a session, I'm beyond the reach of my friends and there are no distractions... as long as I'm in the shop, I'm playing poker without feeling forced.

Nice ptbb/100 btw

10/12/2008: 1706 hands, +$193.30, +11.37 ptbb/100
10/13/2008: 1499 hands, +$33.90, +2.25 ptbb/100
10/14/2008: 1050 hands, +$106.95, +10.19 ptbb/100
Total since 10/2/2008: 23111 hands, +$1077.25, +4.60 ptbb/100

PokerEV has me running about a BI bad in AIs, which is probably the best I've ran all year, so I'm happy with that. My volume of hands really sucks, though.

I've done more coaching, rah rah rah. I had court today, and it was pretty lame, but I'll have to go back next week probably.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Total since 10/2/2008: 23111 hands, +$1077.25, +4.60 ptbb/100

nice one.
Hope things cool down, and that you can get some volume done.

10/15/2008:
50nl - 1011 hands, -$1.30, -0.13 ptbb/100
100nl - 2433 hands, -$25.90, -0.53 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 24422 hands, +$1075.95, +4.41 ptbb/100
100nl - 2433 hands, -$25.90, -0.53 ptbb/100

I think the bullshit involving me for my parent's shit will be at a minimum until Monday when I have to go back to court. Until then I'm going to be playing more 100nl and worrying about my own shit. Today was pretty funny though. I bounced between even and -2 BIs back and forth like 8 times.

10/16/2008:
100nl - 2292 hands, +$104.35, +2.28 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 24422 hands, +$1075.95, +4.41 ptbb/100
100nl - 4725 hands, +$78.45, +0.83 ptbb/100

As is typical with my AA hands whenever I change levels, I'm down about 4 BIs with them right now but that's standard. I'm starting to get back in a bit of a rhythm with my sessions so hopefully I can close out some decent volume before November.

Stay positive man (win rates and life!) and you will pull through.

And just remember that even when things seem shitty in the present pretty soon you will be able to look back on it all from a better place.

When I reach 62425 hands of 100nl I will have released the $2000 milestone bonus into my account, which is 57700 hands from now. Counting today, this would take about 3850 hands per day to clear before the end of the month. I know better than to try to push in that much play with everything I have going on, so I'm going to go for the end of the first week of November which puts me at about 2625 hands per day which is much more manageable.

10/17/2008:
100nl - 2770 hands, -$143.25, -2.59 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 24422 hands, +$1075.95, +4.41 ptbb/100
100nl - 7495 hands, -$64.80, -0.43 ptbb/100

I was -$1.50 with sets today, -$30 with boats and ran -$320 in AIEV. That was fun. Here's a sign that I'm playing like I should be:

xPokerZombie: hey spoon -- i will be getting back every dollar (plus some more) I've folded to you real soon
spoonitnow: Yeah when your mom gives you your 50%

Glad to see ur back up at 100nl, just as I'm about to move back up

10/18/2008:
100nl - 1027 hands, -$311.75, -15.18 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 24422 hands, +$1075.95, +4.41 ptbb/100
100nl - 8522 hands, -$376.55, -2.21 ptbb/100

I'm playing well and running bad, not really a big deal. I took my girlfriend up on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a while and let her take pictures and whatnot for most of the day. Both of my parents are retarded, and so on and so forth.

10/19/2008:
100nl - 1489 hands, +$65.20, +2.19 ptbb/100

10/20/2008:
50nl - 1292 hands, +$6.40, +0.50 ptbb/100
100nl - 1778 hands, -$328.00, -9.22 ptbb/100

10/21/2008:
50nl - 2070 hands, +$203.05, +9.81 ptbb/100

10/22/2008:
50nl - 2297 hands, +$336.55, +14.65 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 30081 hands, +$1621.95, +5.39 ptbb/100
100nl - 11789 hands, -$639.35, -2.71 ptbb/100

So I've decided to just wait until November to try 100nl again. I ran about -$550 in AIEV over that small sample, and lost with sets, AA and KK.

Read whole thread for the first time tonight. Said a prayer for you, and wish you all the best.

10/23/2008:
50nl - 2120 hands, +$176.95 +8.35 ptbb/100

Total since 10/2/2008:
50nl - 32201 hands, +$1798.90, +5.59 ptbb/100
100nl - 11789 hands, -$639.35, -2.71 ptbb/100

Not a lot going on today.

Spoon, good luck with all the personal stuff, it is often a pain but in the long run sounds like you are the rock of the family... you are doing the right thing by being there for them as much as possible... but remember you deserve a life too and keep a little time/space for yourself... whether it is to sleep or play poker... you have to be able to maintain your sanity.

That said, Thanks for all of your help over the recent time, including reading some of my stupid ideas and commenting on them as patiently as you can.

I'll hold off on the coaching idea for me until you free up some time, then I'll hit you up

Good Luck...

Thanks to everyone for their support.

I've come to realize that a central theme of my life for the past decade or so is trying to help people who won't help themselves and then having that take away from the few people who actually deserve that help. It's something that has gotten progressively worse over the past 4-5 years especially, but was still present before then. It's gotten to the point that I just really don't care about much at all right now and just sort of grind my way through each day and I'm not talking about poker. So I'm basically finished posting in this thread and maybe at all idk.