I'm Back!

Not that many of you missed me but I missed writing and after a massive three year hiatus I am back. I have started with the soccer blog, I promised a post a day for 30 days, haven't quite been able to hit that target but I have been consistently posting new articles at least one every two days and I have many more articles in the middle of the research pipeline.

This blog, my own personal often whacky normally mundance commentary on life may not receive a post a day but it really depends on how my jobs go over the next few months. In my day job I have moved to a place where there really is not job. I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing and I am basically getting paid to sit there and think about my blogging articles, which to be fair has come at a good time.

Family life has been stressful the last few weeks, we have three young kids and are in the process of buying a house. House buying is very stressful. My wife and I have developed some better ways of coping with stresses but man there are some things that will just never be easy and I think house buying is one of those things.

So a catch up on life. I have three kids now Aurora (6) Cole Dawson (4) and Saoirse (2) they are all pretty sweet yet a little bit crazy. My wife and I have struggled at times adapting to life with three, there have been ups and downs but the ups outweigh the downs. Relationships in all forms of life are tough and they need to be worked on, ours are no different.

I haven't been able to play poker in a long time. I am slowly getting back to playing a little bit ( as in 3-5 games a week) but very small stakes and I am only dabbling in short sit and go's. Blogging is a good outlet and I am going to start writing more. My next post is already in the pipeline as I compare the C9 of Forever Living to a normal juice diet. I have an idea for another blog that I may start co writing with a Friend of mine. Will keep you all informed.

If your holding Oddqueens you aint doing too bad!

2012 - The resolutions, the revealings , the real deal?

Well hello there world. So I've been away from the blogging world for far too long. In actual fact I see it has been seven months since I last wrote anything. Really thats just crap!

As usual every new year I make an abundance of resolutions that I cant possibly keep and what inevitably happens is they drop off one by one. This year I've made a more condensed list and I plan on sticking to them. In actual fact resolution number one is to stick to things I start until they are completed. I'm notorius for getting really into something and then quitting, not necessarily when it gets hard but often when it starts to bore me.

I'll list the resolutions here from one to five and hope that I can stick to them for the entirety of 2012, or at least until the World Ends, this is the year the Mayans said it would all come to a halt isn't it? Well to update people, or the one person who reads here. I currently have two kids and a wife and they are my entire world I'm building a life based around them. Something I would have never thought possible a couple of years back as I was entirely too selfish.

So the bucket list for 2012:

1. To finish things that I start to their end

2. To get back in shape to play Gaelic football at a highly competitive level, aim is to be in the top team in my new club by June.

3. To get out of financial debt.

4. To help my wife out more with the kids and housework

5. To have an alcohol free life.

The last one to me seems the most daunting, I am Irish after all and its in our nature to drink. I do love a tipple or two, but the problem I have is once I start I get it very difficult to stop. It makes me act out of character and stupidly on occasion and the most recent revelation is that I've become more and more aggressive with Alcohol intake. So I am cutting it out. I know I will be better off for it on a health side and family side but it still sticks me as something that will be difficult to do.

On a side note, I recently learned of the passing away of an Uncle. It appears as if he had a heart attack on New Years eve/day and was discovered on New Years morning. Its a dreadful sad event when losing someone you care for deeply the man was a blood relative a brother of my father and I have to say I didnt really know him. I have spent some time with him and have fond memories of a couple of occasions but I didnt really know him. As a family unit I would say my family are all very close, its a typical Irish country family. But I wonder as to how much any of us actually know each other or the life we live. I'm going to spend more time getting to know what makes my family tick from Father and Mother right down to my third cousins. Irish people like small talk but are not big on emotion or "real" conversations. They scare everyone I guess, revealing what you really want or fear is a very difficult thing. I'm going to be more open to it!

Until later people/readers and potential readers!

Life and Poker

Evening all,
I've realised over the last 4 odd years that Poker is something I've wanted to do as a living. Its a difficult decision to leave a secure well paid job for the ups and downs of a Poker Career and to be perfectly honest my bankroll management skills are not good enough to have a poker career. My OPR and Sharkscope records will attest to this as I've managed to rise and rise and then fall away with shots taken at the Sunday Million (when I bought in) tut tut. I am a good poker player with alot of leaks. I'm aggressive and often too aggressive, when I get to the bubble I dont exploit people's timid play as much as I should but when I play a home game against players I know I really explot their weakness'. When playing live I win alot of money playing cash games, I do this as I can make people call from my table persona and I do play tighter live, alot of the time my value bets are called because people want to beat me. :-) this is a skill i developed playing sports. I knew I could make people make mistakes against me by being brash, arrogant and disrespectful to them in their game and I do likewise in a Poker set up. But I'm nice to dealers and staff, tip very well and everyone likes me. Except my opponents. I need to bring this to the poker table on line.

I've recently had to go cap in hand to my parents to get a refinance loan from them to pay off my Credit Cards. Unbelievably I managed to rack up €18,000 worth of debt. Now while I am paying this off and then on a strict budget it will mean my poker bankroll is really small. I have about $16 in Pokerstars and have roughly $0.48 in Fulltilt. I've read a million poker magazines and heard and read about all these internet kids who never put money in an account and now have millions. Well yeah I think that can be me. Basically I'm setting a goal for myself. May has 13 days left in it and I am looking to have $100 in my Pokerstars account by June 1st. Thats $6 a day roughly without having a losing day. I'll be playing mostly on the 0.01/0.02 tables. Wish me luck and remember when your holding Oddqueens your doing ok!

The Grind Challenge

Morning/Afternoon/Good Evening,

Does anyone even read this damn Blog! Anyway the title of the post represents the content i intend to contribute. I have had some pretty decent swings in the last couple of weeks and I found myself withdrawing almost all the cash i had accumulated on PS and FT to pay for life things. So the bottom line was that i ended up with $30 left in the tilt account and $11 left in the Stars one.

I had given myself till the end of May to get a grinding and build myself a respectable bankroll.(over $100) Of course with such a tiny roll i should have been concentrating on the micro micro games. But i do find it difficult to stay there. After a couple of wins at the $1 18 man games I bumped my roll up to $33 so i started at the $5 games and I've had some major success. The bottom line is as of now the roll stands at an impressive $120. Thats a really decent result. I won two 18 man $5 games and then took down a $5 27 man for $50. Anyway the plan now is to continue to grid until i am at $500 and i will start taking shots at the $10 games but if I fall below $400 its back to the $5 games.

The roll challenge is to see if I can hit the $2,000 mark by the end of August. I would imagine this will be extremely difficult. almost impossible. But for now I'm really delighted with my efforts.

Remember guys when your holding Queens you need to pray that the donk in seat one doestn hit his ace when he shoves on you with A7 off!

BBT5

Thanks have to be enxtended to Full tilt poker and Al cant hang for the great job they did in organising the BBt5 super prizes as well with TOC on tomorrow night i'll probably tune in to Buddydank radio tomorrow night and see which three of the lucky 21 will be going to the main event.

The finale event the Battle Royale is on June 6th for all those bloggers like myself who've taken part in a mookie or poker from the rail and fancy their chances at a 2k stimulus package GL at the tables. Except of course if your against me then I hope you hit no flops and dont see aces EVER!

Remember if your holding OddQueens your not doing too bad and occasionally 7 2 is the nuts!

Battle of the Blogger Tournaments BBT5

i was supposed to get this up earlier but it slipped my mind.

anyway:

basically jump to Al cant hang or the tao of poker to get all the details. i'm up playing in the mookie tonight and getting my ass handed to me so i have the concentration thing to worry about.

Since i've last been on i've had a couple of major swings upwards and downwards. Got to the Paddy Power last satellite with a great stack and only 30 players to eliminate unfortunately my aces couldnt get there gainst K fecking 10! anyway such is the way the cookie crumbles. I'll be back tomorrow to recap some of the mayhem of the last few weeks.

Ps this blog may become a bit of a life blog as well as a poker blog! Be warned .. Remember Queens are not Aces .. and Aces only win 80% of the time.

A nice relaxing Monday .. 2 games 2 cashes!

Yup yup i've been flying tonight. I came home nice and chilled made dinner , cleaned the house let the wife and baby sleep and then after a nice bowl of home made turkey soup I started a couple of games . One on Stars a 27 man and one on Tilt a 45 man. I final tabled both and finished 3rd in the Stars one and 2nd in the Tilt one. Over all a pretty decent nights work. 2 games and over $100 profit. For a micro stakes player like myself this is huge! So I'm delighted. I've run both accounts up to a decent size for the month. Delighted!

I've had the run of the cards again tonight though. Won my races, AK kept hitting for me and had a few calls with marginal hands that hit big flops J10 flopping a straight, Q10 flopping 2 pair and getting a caller with AK. So all in all i know its not just my play although I did work a nice short stack on Tilt back to a large stack. I'm playing well and running well and life is treating me well , so all in all I'm happy out.

I've also been in a dilema, i play gaelic football and i'm trying to decide whether or not to continue to do it. I cant continue to work, play football and play poker. Especially if I want to play poker full time at some point in the future! Sheesh life decisions I hate them! Anywho at the moment the poker is going well tomorrow night is the home game with a few mates on line usually around 30 of us and I usually just donate $5. I've not cashed in a few months now. Maybe tomorrow night I'll take it more serious .. I doubt it though! Remember if your holding Oddqueens your not doing too bad!