So a pretty mediocre to crappy month this go around...I was up huge in the first two weeks and loving life, then all of a sudden it's crash and burn. At my peak this month I was at a cool $14,179 in online profit.

From there the slope down was nearly as steep as it was going up. This has been the worst run I've had in my poker "career." Basically it's been a whirlwind of beats, setups, and cold decks. I won't get into the gruesome details but suffice to say since my last update nothing got better.

Here's my end of month graph:(click to enlarge)

Seat 1: sb ( $749.21 )
Seat 2: Hero ( $779.55 )
Seat 3: Villain ( $1053.30 )

SB posts small blind [ $2 ].
Hero posts big blind [ $4 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]

RAISE Villain, $14

FOLDS TO SB,
CALL SB, $12
RAISE Hero , $54
CALL Villain, $44
FOLD SB

Today was my first day at my new job at the Federal Reserve Bank here in KC. Six month contract to work on a new billing system they need done by end of year. I'm told this will be a huge undertaking and there's a no-slip deadline for the end of year. Should be interesting. I'm thankful that so far everyone seems very nice at the Fed. I feel like I'm a pretty good judge of character and so far I'm happy to say there appears to be no developer attitudes, which is nice and somewhat rare. The people remind me of my days back in Bloomington, which is a good sign (any of you still reading?) I'm sitting on the 14th floor of this building, which also happens to be the same floor as a lot of CSRs, which means they are constantly on the phone with clients...On a completely unrelated note (haha): What's the deal with people feeling the need to TALK REALLY LOUD into their phones? Oh well the Ipod will remedy some of those issues tomorrow ;-)

This past week I hit a stroke of luck in my final days with LRS. The other consulting firm at my client in STL changed a ton of public APIs that my code depended on. Because of that, a lot of my code was broken, and therefore they had to go in and change it. Since they were constantly changing their own public code that I was consuming, it was on them to take ownership of my code... which means, nothing for me to do! Thankfully my client was on the cheap and didn't want me to stick around doing nothing, which meant a couple easy days back in KC for my final tour of duty at LRS.

Despite my luck in the working world, poker has gone terribly in the past week and a half. I'm currently in my biggest downswing to date...Down -$8,000 in my past 17,000 hands. This run was much worse than my run back in March when I first moved to NL400. So far this run breaks down for about -$4800 at NL400, -$1300 at NL600, and -$1900 at NL1000. Some of you might be surprised of that last figure. I found a fish on my buddy list sitting with a $2000 stack at NL1000 and a seat opened directly to his left. I thought it would be a crime not to jump on this clearly +EV spot for a potential big payoff. Unfortunately the poker gods weren't on my side as the fish spikes a gutshot on the turn and I pay him off w/ TPTK. On another hand against a different player, I flop top set and get it all in vs a nekkid Q high flush draw. Yep, it hits. A few other small pots won and lost which ended up at a lovely -$1900 in a few hundred hands. Ugh.

I've made some mistakes in big pots in the NL400 and NL600 games, but I've also hit some very poor setups. Set over set is a favorite, KK vs AA twice in a half hour was also fun, top two vs bottom two vs bottom set was also a hoot, etc. I could go on but I'll spare you the gruesome details and leave you with the following observation: Just when you think it cannot get any worse, it can and does. There are a lot of golden boys who are very good and accomplished players on 2+2, but they will have a rude awakening once they encounter a run like this. From a high level, I'm somewhat thankful for bad runs though. If you can manage to stay away from the "why me?" attitude, it can really be an opportunity to scrutinize everything you do. Certainly I won't pretend that I don't cop the "why me?" attitude every once in a while (or, even a significant portion of the time) but when your mind clears and allows you to really analyze each play, it helps to take solace in the fact that a) I really did get unlucky or b) I found a bad play that might not have received a second look had I not lost my stack. Something to think about. Of course, while it's idealistic to look for that silver lining on the cloud, it doesn't ease the pain of losing 8 grand :-)

Below is my current graph for the month as of July 23rd. Thank goodness I ran real hot at the beginning of the month. Around the 11th of July I had visions of a 20 grand month. At this point I'm just hoping to get back into 5 figures. I did have some extra income from my vegas trip and I won $600 in a donkament on Sunday (not reflected in graph). Other than that I'll have to really focus this week and run at above average to have a chance at another 10k month.

Missy gets back from NYC on Wednesday after a week and a half away from home. It'll be nice to get her back in town!

Run well,

Aaron

So we're already half way through July and this is shaping up to be a very good month thus far. Even though I'm currently on a -4k downswing, I'm still up significantly more than I have been at this juncture of any previous month. Below you can see my current graph as of July 1:

So Missy and I went to Vegas to meet up with my folks who got quite a sweet deal. A mega rich guy who is a big donator to Southern Miss University decided to take all the football coaches (and wives) on an all expenses paid vacation. He had an airplane fly in to pick everyone up and fly them from Mississippi to Las Vegas for 3 nights at the Venetian.

Being the +EV hound that I am (read: cheapskate), it seemed like a great way to spend some time with my favorite people in my favorite place on earth for a good price :-). Since my folks had a suite, they offered to let us stay in the same room and pay for our breakfast/lunch since they were able to charge their own meals to the room. Pretty awesome! Plus, since I've traveled for work so much, I had a bunch of frequent flier tickets I used to fly Missy and I out there free - even better!

We had a great time spending good quality time with the folks and celebrating our recent engagement. We stuffed our faces with great food at the Venetian during the day, and then Missy and I ate dinner by ourselves at night. We also managed to see our second Cirque de Soleil show, KA, at the MGM Grand. It was a good show and I'd recommend it. The last show we saw was Mystere at Treasure Island. We're torn on which is better... Mystere was definitely more impressive from a human talent point of view (those strongmen and acrobats do amazing stuff) but KA had a storyline and the special effects were pretty crazy. I suppose it just depends on what you're in the mood for.

I only managed to get about 9 hours of poker playing in. All of it was 2-5 NL at the Venetian, which has a marvelous room. Seemed well organized, plenty of space (not cramped like Bellagio) and a generous $3/hr comp. The good comp is a double edged sword though, as it tends to attract a lot of weak/tight local nits which, although exploitable, aren't often as profitable as your typical Vegas tourist. Despite two coolers where I flopped trips good kicker vs flopped boat, I still managed to turn an $1150 profit (and after show tickets and meals, +$700 in my pocket to take home).

Possibly the most fun part of the trip was Friday night when Missy and I went to the Rio to watch some of the WSOP. We had great timing as right when we walked in the media was getting pictures of David Williams and his new found bracelet from a 7 card stud event, and not long after Phil Ivey and Sam Farha were taking their seats at the limit Omaha 8 final table. Missy managed to catch some shots of the action.

We saw roughly 30 named pros at the Rio including Ivey, Farha, Annie Duke, TJ Cloutier, Eric Lindgren, Eric Sidel, Barry Greenstein, Freddy Deeb, Mimi Tran, Minh Ly, Mike Mattasow, Ted Forrest, Mike Mizrachi, and Allen Cunningham just to name a few off the top of my head. It was pretty crazy. We caught some pictures of them from afar, but I didn't have the guts to ask one of them for a personal photo, since I didn't want to be "that guy." Below are some more shots from the Rio poker room.
















So it was a great trip and I can't wait to make it back again soon. Next year I'm definitely going to make a more solid effort to play some qualifiers to make it into the main event and perhaps buy in to some of the small events. I have to admit I was a bit star struck when seeing some of these TV names in person, especially when we get to sit in the stands and watch two of my favorite players actually play a WSOP final table. Pretty cool.

Also, it's worth mentioning that my days of being a traveling consultant are now officially limited. I put my two weeks notice in on Monday and as of July 21st, 2006 I'll be back in KC full time. I start my new contract as an independent java developer on the 24th, so I'm looking forward to the pay increase and the time at home.

So Greg, if you're reading this, you can leak the info to your sources now ;-) Just tell them you heard it here first! :-)

Aaron

So as the title states, I lost more in this one hand than I ever have before. Thankfully, I've got enough of a poker bankroll to handle this swing :-)

It wasn't actually a hand of poker that did me in though, it was the hand of my now fiancee, Missy. So as promised, here's a condensed (but still long) story about how I can now call this wonderful woman my own!

In early 2004, a mutual friend of ours casually introduced us at a happy hour, but we didn't get to say more than just a hello until a few months later when we saw each other again in another group setting. We chatted a little within our group of friends until finally I got the courage to call her up and ask her out on a date.

On our first alone date, we went mini-golfing, played football in a park, had dinner, and rented a movie. It was a very long first date, but we had a great time! Over the next 2 years or so, we spent most of our quality time on the weekends as I travelled a lot for work. When we did get a chance to get away, we had trips to New Orleans (pre-Katrina), Vegas, and Fort Worth. Throughout this time, it became abundantly clear that this is one girl I need to hold onto for the long haul! Missy is great in so many ways. She's the most caring and compassionate person I know and is excellent with kids. She's intelligent, beautiful, thoughtful and a person who can always be relied on. She's one of the most level headed women I know (HUGE PLUS) and she's very supportive of my poker ambitions (HUGE PLUS #2) Because of these qualities and many more, I decided that it was time to muster up the courage to pop the question!

So because I planned on trying to go "all out" on a ring for her (she deserves it) and also since my poker bankroll was growing, I decided it was a good idea if we both went ring shopping to pick out a ring we liked. I didn't want to gamble that sort of money (ironic eh?) on my ability to pick out a ring she would truely love. (sure she would like anything I got her...but I wanted to make sure it was perfect -- and the only way to do that was have her input). After a few weeks of ring shopping, I pulled out the roll and counted out the benjamins for the jeweler at Balano and away we went with the ring in hand (mine, not hers haha).

Even though she knew I had the ring, I still wanted to surprise her with the actual proposal, plus I wanted to formally ask her parents for their blessing. As time went on I tried to think of how I was going to propose. One late Sunday night when I couldn't sleep prior to a 6:30am flight, I started thinking about how I'd pop the question... finally it came to me, and it was only a matter of time...

Fast forward to June 30th, 2006. Missy, a second grade teacher, had a night of Bunco planned with the teachers from her school and I had two interviews for a new job so I could get out of the traveling consultant gig. After my interviews, I went to various stores to pick up roses, rose petals, a small spot light, candles, and a webcam to go with a website that I had created for her and the proposal. Now I just had to set the stage.

When Missy walked up to my apartment door, there was a note and a rose asking her to follow the rose petal path to the computer to begin an exam. When she opened the door, the lights were down and there were candles, rose petals and roses everywhere with the Bellagio theme song playing in the background. As she followed the rose petal path to the computer, she saw my two monitors. On the left, there was a MAP test (stood for Missy Aaron Proposal) that I had created the week prior -- a fun quiz with funny questions and answers about our relationship as well as a play on words based on the "Missouri Assessment Program" that the teachers always talk about. On the right as this clip of the Bellagio fountains:



And hidden in the middle was a tiny webcam :-) I was back in the bedroom with my laptop setup running VNC and webcam software so I could actually see where Missy was pointing and clicking on the computer screen as well as her facial expressions on the webcam. It was quite a thrill! It was quite a trip being able to see her laugh and smile and choose each answer to the questions (she got them all correct too!).

At the final question, it instructed her to follow the roses and candles back to the bedroom and open the door for the final exam question. When she opened the door I was on my knee in a suit and tie with her ring in hand. I asked if she was ready for her final exam question. She nodded with tears of joy running down her cheeks. From there I asked if she would marry me, and after a resounding yes I slipped the ring on her finger and we hugged and kissed and enjoyed the moment. What a thrill!


So that's how I lost $9k in one hand and at the same time gained the girl of my dreams. I'm a very lucky guy, to say the least!

Aaron