"I grind for real and that’s no days off. You work hard for it and its gon pay off" October Review

Well, this was a rough one to say the least! The stretch over the last two months has been a period of time where I have easily ran worse than I ever have thus far in my poker career. Rather than complain about it and dwell on it, I'll simply post a hand from my session yesterday that sums everything up and move on.

Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players

BB: $38.50
UTG: $51.05
UTG+1: $138.85
UTG+2: $130.80
MP1: $100.00
MP2: $100.00
CO: $80.00
BTN: $111.30
Hero (SB): $206.90

CO posts a big blind ($1.00)

Pre Flop: ($2.50) Hero is SB with 5 5
UTG calls $1, UTG+1 calls $1, 3 folds, CO checks, BTN calls $1, Hero calls $0.50, BB checks

Flop: ($6.00) 5 8 3 (6 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, UTG bets $4.00, UTG+1 calls $4, CO folds, BTN folds, Hero raises to $14, BB folds, UTG calls $10, UTG+1 calls $10

Turn: ($48.00) 5 (3 players)
Hero bets $18.00, UTG raises to $36.05, UTG+1 calls $36.05, Hero raises to $160, UTG+1 calls $87.80 all in

River: ($331.75) 8 (3 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $331.75
UTG mucks K K
UTG+1 shows 8 8
Hero shows 5 5
UTG+1 wins $153.15
(Rake: $-33.15)

I could have raised slightly larger on the flop but I wanted to keep UTG in if they limped with a medium strength hand or connectors (ie. mid pocket pair, 89s, etc.) and if he had AA/KK they're almost never folding by the river anyways. My sizing on the turn is pretty much perfect, as I give myself the opportunity to re-open the action if UTG shoves, which he does. At this point, I know UTG+1 (reg) has 88 99% of the time after his stupid "turn my hand face-up" cold call so I shoved it back and got snapped. 8 on river, GG. I got one outed twice that session, the second time coming after I flopped top set vs. middle set and once again got rivered. Anyways, enough b*tching, time to move on.

October

*Unfortunately I don't have anywhere near an accurate HEM graph to post since I lost a lot of hands after I had to re-install Windows Vista*

$532 Table winnings (AFTER road to 100 bill milestone bonuses)
$4,000 Cash Bonus
$3,000 400K VPP Milestone Bonus
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$7,532 USD

I'm not unhappy with the bottom line, I just hate to lose. I'm still pretty confident that I'm playing well enough to win and after reviewing the big pots that I'm losing I still feel that they're almost all coolers or bad beats. I'm not naive and I'm sure that I'm losing money in other places and have minor leaks all over the place but for now I'm going to believe that most of my misfortune can be blamed on variance. Obviously, if my bad results persist over the next two months I'll have to re-evaluate everything.

Alllllllright, enough poker talk for now, I want to talk about my Halloween. I always really enjoy blogging about my nights out but if you feel as though there hasn't been very much personal content over the last several months, you'd be correct. There have been a couple reasons for this...the first being that it's often been the case where I'll have a night out, followed immediately by another, then another, and soon I will get so backdated that I'll just say "screw it" and not write up anything. The second, and much bigger reason, is that for most of the summer I was seeing a girl and then up until about a week ago I was seeing a different one. I've learned that google is not in fact everyone's friend and figured that rather than risk typing something up that could potentially ruin the relationship, it would be much smarter if I did not write anything at all. Not that either relationship was very serious but it's more of a matter of respect...if I were in their shoes, I would not want to stumble upon my blog one day and read about how I've been hitting on other various girls or probably even worse, read about myself without knowing it. Well then, why doesn't frosty just tell them about the blog and be careful about what he writes? Funny you should ask, Mr. 3rd person voice, but the problem there is that leading any potential wife to the dusty old 2010 archives is also known as relationship suicide.

Alas, frosty is now single once again and looks forward to sharing his 2011 experiences with his friends, older British married folk, and random internet people. He will also stop referring to himself in the 3rd person from here on out.

I actually went out quite a bit this month...after I got settled into my new place my roommate Mark and I quickly became familiar with some of the local drinking establishments, although we still have a lot of exploring left to do. One place that needs no further exploring by me was the venue for my Halloween party (well, the first party of two)...the old UBC campus bar. At 24 years of age and an alumni of UBC, I am well aware that I am way too old to be attending such events. I am also aware that I could potentially face jail time should I be so lucky to hook up with some 18 year old felion that snuck in with a fake ID. I am also aware that I do not care about any of the above. A couple of me mates are in their last semester at the university so I figure I'll ride it out while I still can. Why not.

The plan for the night was to meet at my friend Ben and Miles's place, meet up with some other people, sort out our costumes and have some beers. Ben and Miles were dressing up as poker players in an attempt to mock the pictures that I posted from my photo shoot a while back (http://frosty012.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html), although it's quite obvious that they're both just obsessed with me and idolise me in every way. They went to the thrift store and somehow stumbled upon official NAPT PokerStars shirts lol...I can't believe someone would donate those to the thrift store!!! Equipped with douchey shades and backwards hats, they looked like every whale that you hope to see at your table.



Sadly, my Halloween costume idea wasn't much better. I googled around for quick ideas and settled upon being a "highway." All that I would need to do would be to go buy some white tape to put up my pants and shirt as road lines, buy some construction paper and felts and cutout some cars and roadsigns and tape them all over me. At the time I thought it had potential. Anyways, after a quick trip to Staples and $30 later, I had the ingredients to put together my costume. I arrived at Ben and Miles's place with my office supplies and a PokerStars jersey that the guys wanted me to bring to potentially use and asked them to help me start making my costume. Miles said "dude, just go as a poker player." I said "no way man, I'm not going as myself." "So you're just going to sit here for 30 minutes doing arts and crafts making a sh*tty highway costume?" "Ah f**k it, I'll just go as my f**king self for Halloween." Just then Ben came out of the bathroom wearing the jersey that I had brought for them, super stoked about how he looked in it. I told him that I wanted to see how it looked on me and that I would give it back...which I was actually intending on doing, until I saw how much better the jersey fit me than the big thrift store shirt and refused to give it back to him. Sorry Ben. From that point on in the night, any time a girl would talk to me or even look in my general direction, Ben would sit there with an angry look on his face and mutter "f*%king jersey, that should have been me!"

The three of us, along with our friend Sarah, arrived at the bar in costume around 9pm and the place was fairly empty. We grabbed some pitchers and waffle fries and amused ourselves with random conversations. Apparently at one point I claimed that I have made 90% of the girls that I've slept with orgasm...a statement that no one believed, especially Sarah. I'm pretty sure all that I claimed was that I could tell when a girl was faking it...although it doesn't really matter because both are obvious lies. I did not admit this at the time, however, and instead insisted that Sarah give me a try before judging me. This also somehow did not work.

As the place filled up and people began to dance, I hit the floor with confidence! I met a pretty cute girl from El Salvador and we hit it off pretty quickly. It's a rare night when you can spend the whole time with the first girl that you meet...usually it's a case of several rejections before finally settling with whatever (well, at least for me!). I do not remember much about what we talked about after we left the dance floor...I know she asked me what I study etc. and I had to lie. On any other night I would have just been honest, told her I graduated and now play poker but that didn't seem like an option considering I was dressed up as a poker player...I did not want my first impression to be one of a douche that dressed up as himself. Instead, I told that I'm a 22 year old Poli Sci student that plays poker occasionally (I figured that would be a nice segway if I need to come clean in the future about the poker...didn't lie 100%! Not sure about the age thing or the student thing though). The only other thing that sticks out from our conversation was her doing impressions of the Latina chick from Modern Family...apparently she's also from El Salvador or somewhere close with the same accent.

As the night was getting late, believe it or not but I actually had no hidden agenda for the evening. I was putting in no real effort to go home with her as I was content either way. However, the place was almost closing and Miles and Ben had already taken off so I really didn't want to walk back to their place and crash on the couch. That said, I offered to walk her home and she agreed. As we left, she told me that she left her jacket at her friend's place nearby and wanted to grab it. I really didn't want to walk out of the way so I was relieved when her friend didn't answer her phone. We started walking home but she received a text from her friend saying that she was awake and to come by. I keep writing "she" and "her" because I can't remember her name because it was super loud when she told me. We walked to to her friends apartment and she came downstairs with the coat. This is where things started to go bad for old frosty. Her friend took one look at me, grabbed the South American's arm and literally dragged her away from me towards the elevator. All the girl did was wave and yell "see you later!" Blocked. We exchanged numbers but I don't want to have to untangle my web of lies...better off to let it rest.

Anyways, now I knew that I was in for a reaaaaaallly sh*tty ending to the night. It was about 2am and I had about a 30 minute walk in the freezing cold back to a hard couch. Unfortunately, the walk was just the beginning of my problems. I knew that dumb and dumber were probably passed out to the point where they wouldn't be able to hear the fire alarm go off and they probably locked the front door. Not only did I have no way to get into their place, I also didn't have my car keys (which I forfeited to Ben at the beginning of the night as to not DnD, also had my house keys on the chain) AND my phone was dead. All of this bad news made that 30 minute walk seem like hours as I awaited my fate at the front door. I finally arrived, turned the door knob and just as I had suspected, it was locked. F**k. I started slamming on the door for about 5 minutes and nobody woke up. I finally just started looking for ways to break into the house...eventually I pulled off the screen to a kitchen window, took a deep breath, and tried to slide the window open. To my amazement and great relief, the window slid open! I put one foot through the window onto the stove, the other on the counter and limboed my way into the house, score! I have no idea what I would have done if the window was locked...probably keep banging on the door until someone called the police.

Alright, looking forward to next month....

Target VPPs: 80K
Target winnings: not negative

Shooting for the stars.

gl at the tables!