I'm up to 28 miles on my Run Well Challenge. I'm about on pace, maybe a little behind. I'm scheduled to run another 2 miles before bumping up my running sessions to 3 miles. I ran 2.5 miles today to try to catch up a bit since I skipped a day and also try to prepare myself for 3 miles at a time. I'm pretty sure there's no way I'm going to make it 3 miles straight without stopping, but there's nothing in my challenge that stated i had to run it straight through (in fact, I was planning to run in segments from the start).

As for the financial part of the challenge, I'm not 100% sure where I'm at but I think I'm in good shape. I've decided that I'm not going to check my progress in Hold'em Manager to see how much I'm up because I just flat out play better when I don't know. My policy for this month has been to only check my end of the night results and not even look at my overall monthly results. I think this has helped me stay focused and play my best regardless if I'm up or down. I have picked a good month to do a challenge though because for the most part I feel like I've been running well and my heads up game is constantly improving. I've had some pretty sick hands lately including the following:

$10/$20 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MADDAMGAZZEL (BB): $1680.82
Hero (BTN/SB): $2119.00
Pre Flop: Hero is BTN/SB with 9 7

Hero raises to $60, MADDAMGAZZEL calls $40

Flop: ($120.00) 4 4 3 (2 players)
MADDAMGAZZEL checks, Hero bets $100, MADDAMGAZZEL raises to $200, Hero calls $100

Turn: ($520.00) Q (2 players)
MADDAMGAZZEL bets $220, Hero calls $220

River: ($960.00) J (2 players)
MADDAMGAZZEL bets $480, Hero raises to $1639 all in, MADDAMGAZZEL folds



Beyond that, nothing too exciting poker related is going on. I'm still working a fair amount with Alex, my DeucesCracked Micro NL Grinder and I've had some new student interest in the last week so I'll still be keeping busy with the coaching. I had a guy play me at 3/6nl on FTP the other day and after the match was over he asked if I would coach him. That was a pretty interesting occurrence as apparently he wanted to play me first before deciding if I was good enough to coach. Fair enough. I'm still being very picky about who I play at 10/20nl+ so I don't have a ton of hands logged there, but for the hands I do have it hasn't been as bad as most months.

The other thing I'm trying to be very diligent about this month is making what Tommy Angelo calls a "good quit". I used to be of the mind that when you start and stop makes very little difference because your EV is your EV etc etc...however I've found that with heads up poker it can be crucial to quit at the correct time because based on how the game is ebbing and flowing I think my EV changes. For instance, if I lose a few big pots on suckouts, it's very unlikely I'm playing my A game after those hands. I could rationalize that my B or C game is good enough to be +EV vs the given opponent (and it might well be) but with a lower edge comes higher variance and I think the last thing needed after losing a couple buyins is increased variance.

Because of this, I've been making some good quits lately. Here are some examples of good quits I've made:

1) I'm playing a semi-competent opponent and I've failed a couple bluffs in a row and I can't seem to pick up any hands to take advantage of my image

2) I'm playing a donkey who has sucked out a few times and is now limping around playing ridiculous small ball. I make this quit because I tend to start trying to build too many big pots out of position.

3) I'm on multiple tables and get stacked on several different tables a few times in a 5 minute span where I know I'll slip from my A game to B- or below game.

4) Similar to #1, I'm playing someone I consider good or competent and I get down 2.5 buyins. If I feel like my edge isnt enormous, I just quit and go looking for greener pastures, again because of a lack of momentum and likely a poor image.

5) I'm up a decent amount for the night and I decide how much better I'd feel if I won a few more buyins and relate that to how much worse I'd feel if I lost a couple buyins. If I value "not losing" a few buyins much more than I value winning a few more buyins, then I go ahead and quit. This is to help my overall mood because I'm still not to the point where losing doesn't adversely effect me away from the computer.

There are probably some others, but I feel like trying to make good quits has helped me stay on my A game as much as possible this month. To read more about making good quits check out The Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo.


Tonight is the long awaited season 4 finale of LOST. Two hours worth of Lost goodness that will hopefully (as we always hope!) tie up some loose ends that we're all wondering about. The show is simply amazing and anyone who isn't watching it is crazy. I got one of my students, Jared, to pick up the DVDs for season 1-3 and he's cruised through through them up to the middle of season 4 in like 2 weeks or something insane. Once he and his girl got hooked they couldn't stop watching. We joked about how we'd always get "one more?" syndrome after watching the shows on DVD. Best. Show. Evarrrr.

In conclusion, I think adding some sweet pictures to subtlety hide uninteresting writing is an expertly covert blog writing tactic, so I'll probably continue to do that in the future since I don't have much insightful insight (one of my favorite phrases) in this entry.

About 2 more weeks 'til I'm off to Vegas! Like last year I'm going to try to make at least like 5 updates a week. Should be fun.

Aaron