August recap

      Hey everyone, I thought I'd do a blog entry talking about the month of August and how the move in general has gone. Let me start by saying that I am sitting at the beach in Clearwater right now, so I can't complain about that. I am dictating this blog through Siri so forgive me if there are some typographical errors. All in all the move has gone pretty smoothly. It's nice to feel like we actually live here now. Mel is having a couple friends over tonight and I'm going to cook dinner so that should be fun. Also, I went with Jim yesterday to pick up his new A4. It's a sweet car and I'm pumped that I'll get to drive it from time to time. Aside from those highlights there hasn't been a whole lot going on socially. Obviously we do don't know too many people yet. It's nice to be spending time with Mel and Nala in a big house with some land though, so I can't complain too much about the occasional feeling of lonliness. Also, Jim has been around more than I thought he would be  so it's been fun hanging out with him.
        I wanted to take some time to recap my first month of poker. It definitely had its ups and downs but I think Learned a lot about how the games play and the mistakes I've been making. Also, I'm getting 1 on 1 coaching from a pro at bluefire poker.com and that should help a lot. We've already done a session and he's really helping me analyze spots in more sophisticated ways.  He also talked with me some about the mental side of poker and how my main focus needs to be on improving everyday and not worrying about results. This is something I was certainly aware of but it's nice to have a pro reinforce it. We also talked about the downswing I went on of about $800. For the games I play that's a 16 buy I'm downswing. He basically said that will definitely happen to winning players but it's worth some serious analysis to figure out how much of it was due to bad luck and how much was due to poor play. During that stretch I ran about 8 buy ins below expected value. This means I was definitely running bad, but I know poor play had a good amount to do with it and I'm working on plugging leaks. I just started reading a book called "the art of learning." It's basically about a chess master who became a world class martial artist. He discusses how he mastered two seemingly diferent fields and the mental approach to accomplishing anything. It's very interesting thus far. Anyway, my numbers for the month are ok considering this downswing. Also, I only played about 1/2 as much as I would in a normal Month due to making the move and everything. Anyway, hear they are. Hope everyone's well.

Hours played-74.5
Total profit- $1051
Hands played- 35,659
Hourly rate-$14


Ps. Nick, I listen to Don Henley Radio when I play. It's a lot of Phil Collins, The Eagles, obviously Don Henley and such. It's great music and keeps me off tilt. We don't have a pool table yet and we are working on getting out ping pong table working correctly, so no real games yet. That will be something Kurt is in charge of when he finally gets down here.