Life

I had a frustrating day of Sunday poker. There was so much bad spew by regs everywhere but my hands couldn’t hold. I went deep in the $55 300k but busted ~100th after losing a flip. I also bubbled the final table of the $55 500 cap thanks to AK<84 for a 45bb pot. I got pretty tilted that I bubbled like that.

I still broke even for the day despite playing the Sunday Million and a $215 Ladies PCA satellite, so I guess I can’t complain.

During the week I purchased a flight to Scotland for March. My friend and I are going to visit another friend of ours who is going to school in Dundee. We’re planning on spending a weekend in England while we’re there. I’ve never been overseas and I’m really excited to go!

I meant to make this post earlier in the week but I was too lazy. I went to the Canucks home opener on Saturday and even though we lost, it was super fun. They always do a nice job of opening the season. My friend got us awesome seats in lower bowl row 10. Our view:

During the opening ceremony, they did some really cool stuff. They had their usual light show, but then they also had screens where they projected images on the ice. I’m bad at explaining it, so here’s a couple iphone photos:

It’s the 40th anniversary for the Canucks, so they brought a bunch of the 1970 team to the arena in celebration. Pat Quinn came out and the cheering he got was absolutely amazing. It sent shivers down my spine. The standing ovation and cheering for him was so incredible, I wish I could go back and experience it again.

Other highlights: Kopitar getting hit on our end of the ice and watching the trainer pick up a bunch of lost teeth off the ice; finally seeing the C on a jersey for the first time in two years; the loudest cheering I’ve ever heard for a penalty kill (after the Canucks killed a 4 on 3 in overtime). It’s a shame that Luongo can’t save anything and the forwards can’t score anything in shoot outs. Once we failed to score in OT, it was pretty much a lock for the Kings.

In other news, poker is still going horribly. Down a bunch for the month after a few days of playing. Down almost 250 buy-ins since the start of August including RB and bonuses. I’m still losing key all-in hands when deep, whether I’m flipping or massively ahead. It’s interesting to note that my ITM % is almost 20% over the last few months. I just can’t win anything once I get deep. It’s so sick. I really hope it turns around. I don’t think I can keep going if I lose another 200 buy-ins.

I took Saturday through Tuesday off and finally played again today. It was a gorgeous day out and Dave and I didn’t want to miss it, so we didn’t start at 11 am like planned. Instead we went to Metrotown and shopped a bit, and then we had sushi for lunch. Because of this, Dave made a turbo schedule so that we could play 4-8 and it actually wasn’t so bad. I 5 to 7 tabled for the most part and played 19 donkaments in total.

I’m playing Thursday through Sunday. Hopefully things go better…

I’m in a discouraged mood today. This usually happens when I get up late by accident. I always feel like doing nothing all day when I get up late for some reason. I forgot to set an alarm last night so I woke up at 11 am, and my meh mood caused me to stay in bed until 1 pm.

I’m pretty discouraged regarding poker, not gonna lie. It’s frustrating for me because I understand variance in poker and I don’t want to get discouraged. I want to be able to just get over it when I whiff everything, I want to be fine with being down a bunch of buy-ins because that’s how it is.

It’s just that I feel like I’ve been trying to force myself to “get over it” all year. I did this the entire time I was playing cash, I did it when I pretty much bubbled the final table in the ladies event in February, and I did it the few times I decided to play online tournaments. I just feel like it’s never going to end… and then I hate myself for feeling this way because I know I’m being ridiculous.

At the start of the year I quit my full time job with enough money to pay my bills for a year. I decided to work part time for FTR and play poker. I thought that this year I would try to become better at poker, hopefully win some money, and also hopefully figure out what I want to do with my life along the way.

I probably have become a better poker player (results would not indicate it so it’s kind of hard to tell), but I definitely haven’t won money and I definitely have no idea what I want to do with my life. Obviously my savings are dwindling, so I also feel like I am running out of time. If I don’t start winning money playing poker, I will have to get a full time job, and at this point I am desperate to not do that. It’s been 9 months since I quit my other job and I have to say that I dread working full time for someone. Maybe it’s because I need to find the right job. Maybe it’s because I am somewhat unemployable.

By unemployable I don’t mean that I am a bad employee. In fact, I think I am pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to being an employee because I understand what it’s like to employ someone. I ran a Student Works Painting business for 3 years, and I employed around 20 people over those years. It was a lot of work but it was a great experience. I made $50k profit during my last year doing it… so it didn’t make me rich, but I made more money than most people do when they’re 22 years old.

I’m unemployable because I’ve been my own boss for too long. It’s difficult for me to be somewhere every day when someone else wants me to be there. It’s difficult for me to hear that I can’t have a day off unless I book it 2 months in advance, and even then I still am not guaranteed that day off. I hate having to desperately look forward to long weekends because I want that extra day off so badly. It seems to me that working 9 to 5 for someone else causes people to do one thing: look forward to their days off. Because that’s all I felt when I was working full time the year after I graduated from university.

What I really want is freedom. I have learned that I value freedom more than anything else. When I was younger, I used to think that I valued money more than anything else. I wanted to get the best job possible or I wanted to start a business. I wanted to work like a dog for the next 30 years building up my wealth as much as possible.

There is definitely part of me that still wants the security of a lot of money, a healthy retirement savings, good health benefits, and a sweet pension. But then the other part of me asks myself what the point of having money is if you can’t use it. Who cares if I can afford that vacation to Scotland if I’m not even allowed to book the time off?

I supppose that if I worked according to my original plan, I could enjoy the money when I’m 50/60 years old and be happy when I’m older. But it seems like a waste to not have some awesome memories from my 20s because I was too busy working like a maniac. I always wasted my university summers running that painting business. I can honestly say that I have no good memories of 2006 to 2009 because I was too busy trying to graduate or make money.

My dad whole heartedly disagrees with me. He wants me to get a full time job and start working towards 12 weeks of vacation (apparently my aunt gets that working for a hospital, wow). He told me to give up trying to find a job that I “like” because I won’t find it. He said everyone hates their job, so live with it. He said it’s all about the money.

I just don’t see the point in life if all I’m going to do is get up every day and be miserable. I don’t see the point. I don’t want to wake up on Monday and automatically wish it could be Friday. Why shouldn’t I spend time trying to find something I enjoy?

The fact is that if I were to get a full time job tomorrow, I would be spending the next 40 years of my life doing it until I retire (assuming no career change). Spending the next 40 years doing something I despise just so that I can buy a house and have a “good life” seems ridiculous to me. Working for 40 years doing something I hate so that I can have a good retirement when I’m too old to do a lot of things seems equally ridiculous. I should throw away 40 years so that I can enjoy 10-20 years of being old when it’s all said and done?

I didn’t mean to start ranting. If anyone was going to read this entry before, they definitely won’t now because it’s way too long 😛 I know my dad means well and just wants me to be happy. Money alone won’t make me happy, though.

Today is a day off from poker for me. Tomorrow I’m having lunch with my aforementioned dad and then I’m going to play a late session since MiniFTOPS Event 1 is 6 pm.

Haven’t updated for a while so I guess I’ll make a quick one to get myself back up to speed.

Banff was amazing, by far the best part of the trip. We went canoeing in Lake Louise and I was SOOO scared the entire time because I can’t swim (which makes me afraid of small boats). After 30 min when I was finally able to stop gripping the sides of the boat, I was able to get some cool photos.

This glacier is pretty much one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I was absolutely awestruck at how beautiful it was:

The next day we went on a Gondola up Sulphur mountain, and the views up there were incredible too:

My amateur photos could never depict how beautiful it actually was… It’s definitely something you have to see for yourself.

We went to the Calgary Zoo on Friday after Banff and that was really awesome too. Apparently it’s the 2nd largest zoo in Canada. We got to see a Tiger do its thing from close up, which was really cool. It did everything: walk, swim, and even pee for us 😀

In total I saw 3 animals pee that day: tiger, ostrich, and gorilla 😉

They have random peacocks wandering around their zoo too… I found that really weird. Here’s me following one around in the concession area:

Saturday we both played the $550 and we were both busto less than 4 hours later. I pushed into another monster in LP, this time Q8s into AK. I love it when I walk away from the table and everyone is like, “WTF why would she push Q8?!?!” Dave got 2-outered by his nemesis from River Rock. Woohoo!

Since we busted on the first day and we’d seen pretty much all we wanted to see in Calgary (which isn’t much, btw… Calgary is pretty boring), we went home a day early. The next two weeks should be pretty busy with MiniFTOPS. Hopefully I get some decent volume in. I played 15 donkaments the other day which is more than usual for registering for 3 hours, but that’s because I kept busting everything. The only tournament I could cash was one of the $10.20 HU hypers 😛 (but yay that was my first time cashing that ever!)

Gonna play today after I stop wasting time. It’s noon and I haven’t had breakfast yet 🙁

I busted the first $550 donkament around the same time as Dave yesterday. Starting stack was 7.5k chips and I never got past 7.6k. I was very card dead, so it was pretty boring! The only interesting hand I had was when I min raised blind vs blind and then proceeded to forget my hole cards. The flop came 98x and I thought to myself… well I might have a 9… and cbet. Unfortunately the villain called. I double barreled an 8 turn and after thinking a bit the BB folded. I checked before mucking and had QT, lol. At least I had a gutshot 😛

I think I made a bad river call in one of the other few hands where I saw a flop. Early in the tournament I raised in LP with AT over a limp and got called by the limper (a guy that limped a lot). I bet a bit over 1/2 pot on AQJ two-toned board and he called. The turn was low and left the board two-toned, and I bet again. He called. The river brought runner runner clubs and my opponent donk bet half the pot. Bleh. I thought about it for a minute and I guess I was hoping he had something like KQ or KJ, so I called. He showed Q5 clubs for the flush.

In hindsight, I’m pretty sure most players wouldn’t bluff half pot OOP on the river. It was a clear value bet but I couldn’t muster enough discipline to fold. I like the call more if he had bet full pot… (but then I still think I should fold :P)

Nothing else to discuss regarding the tournament. I busted after losing a flip with 10BB.

Seeing as neither of us made Day 2, Dave and I had a day off. We went to Kensington something-or-other to walk around, eat food, and visit shops. We went to a toy store that had a bunch of awesome stuff, and I saw the strangest thing ever. Stuffed germs. I took a picture of Syphilis:

Yes, seriously… furry, cuddly Syphilis!! If you’d rather have the flu or some human cell, you can get that too. LOL that’s so awesome.

Women’s donkament tomorrow. Women play so terribly, I’m pretty excited 🙂 I hope it gets a decent field.