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

Played Brad Booth tonight at 10/20nl on FTP and won a little bit. It was a very tough and close match and I have a lot of respect for him. He does some things that make it tough to play against him but I managed to catch a couple breaks and end up ahead. I hope to be able to meet him in vegas sometime this summer because I hear everyone say he's a really nice guy and we've played HU at 10/20 now about 4 times or so and it's always an interesting match. Above is Brad playing on the High Stakes Poker TV Show with a cool mill infront of him.

Also if you guys aren't watching this season of Real World on MTV you need to get your DVR going and get on it. It's probably the best season since Real World: Las Vegas and it might even be better than that. They are hour long episodes and full of non-stop drama. Also Missy and I have been watching season 2 of "A shot of love with Teila Tequila" which is good for a watch when nothing else is on. Here's the roid raging alcoholic, Joey, on this season of the Real World:



I didn't run today so I'm giong to have to run friday, saturday and sunday. that's a lotta miles, foo!

Aaron

It's hard for me to understand where the time goes. Every time it occurs to me that i haven't blogged in a while, it's been a week or something. crazy.

So first things first. Missy and I were extremely happy that our very own Kansas Citian David Cook (seen below):



managed to beat out David Archuleta (seen below):



for the this year's American Idol. We were pretty high on Cook ever since the try-outs as we noticed him being from Blue Springs (KC suburb). Then as the show progressed, he proceeded to blow away everyone else in terms of talent, originality, and stage presence so he quickly became our favorite. He ended up winning by a margin of 12million votes out of a total of 97million total votes. I'm happy (embarrassed?) to report that the Wilt household is responsible for about 250 of those votes as we panicked when Simon Cowell, who we typically like, was extremely unfair and bordered on disrespectful to Cook (Cowell even admitted it, shockingly). Because of that we had to kick the voting into high gear and download the auto-dialer application from dialidol.com so we could leave the comp running for hours automatically calling and recalling david cook's voting number. In total the program made over 2000 phone calls from my modem and made it passed the busy signals 250 times for the votes. Pretty crazy.

In other news I'm still trying to run all my miles but I had to take a couple days off. I'm up to 20 miles ran since April 28 or whenever I started this crazy challenge, so I'm pretty happy about that. I've even worked in some weights, mostly doing basic dumbbell stuff and setting up a fast-paced circuit of like 4-5 machines where I try to burn through 3-4 sets of each machine without taking any breaks to keep my heart rate up. I've lost around 5 lbs since I started the working out, so nothing earth shattering but my heart is in better condition which is my main goal anyway.

I've ran baddish the last few days at poker so I'll need to pull out of that a bit to hit my goal. I'm going to wait to post a graph until the challenge is completely over because I swear every time I put a graph up on the blog I get doomswitched. Irrational? Yes. Do I care? No.

Alex, my new DeucesCracked student and winner of my "Real Life: NL Grinder" contest, has received a few hours of my coaching so far. We're going to record one of our sessions soon to work towards my season 4 video series. We'll have to do 8 episodes in total so we need to get on that, hopefully completing most of it by the time I get to vegas on June 15th. He is doing well but I need to get a lot more time in with him to really transform him into a SSNL beast. It'll happen it just takes time.

More later
Aaron

Scrabulous.com - a place online where you can play scrabble. I never knew how much fun this game was until my friend Kyle was talking about playing. So now I've played him in 3 games and he's up 2-1 because i'm a huge scrabble donk. I didn't even know what the colors on the board meant until after my 3rd game today. I also played w/ my wife missy a bit which was a good time as well. The discovery of this game has come at a very poor time as I'm already somewhat struggling to force myself to get hands in each night.

The school year is coming to an end which means my volunteer work at Missy's grade school is also coming to a close in a couple weeks. I will miss going up there to mentor the kids but Vegas is around the corner anyway so I'll be out of town. There was a substitute teacher on Wednesday that asked me "So do you just come up here every Wednesday on your Lunch break?" and I replied "Yea something like that." She asked "What do you do?" and I couldn't really think of anything so I just said "Oh, I just work from home, so my schedule is fairly flexible." She left it at that. All the kids were around so I really didn't want to go into any detailed explanations. The kids have asked me the same question before, but I've just told them I'm a web programmer and work from home, which is partially true.

I did my first 2 mile run for the "Run Well Challenge" I gave myself 3:1 against that I'd make it the entire 2 miles without stopping. I didn't run very fast, but I did make it the whole way without stopping. In that regard it helps to run on the treadmill as it's harder to instantly stop, so it forced my ass to keep moving which is good. It took me over 21 minutes to go the 2 miles, so it's not like I was burning rubber...but I still made it. I couldn't have done that 2 weeks ago, so it's progress.

Heads up poker has been going well lately. Running a bit under expectation but still winning because of good game selection. It would be nice to put up a decent run before heading to vegas this summer.

Alright thats all for now.

Aaron

Wow how did it already get to be May 14th ?

I'm pretty much on pace on the running part of the challenge as well as the $$$ part. I have roughly 4.5 weeks until I leave for Vegas and 50 miles to run. I've ran 10 miles so far in the last 2 weeks, so I'm going to attempt to move into the 2 miles-at-a-time phase of my challenge and bang out 2 miles tomorrow.

For the first 10 miles I mapped out a path in my neighborhood that makes a 1 mile run. It has some minor inclines/declines which makes the running a bit more difficult (i think) than a treadmill, but at least unlike a treadmill I'm actually moving somewhere and not staring at the wall. Tomorrow I will go to the gym and try running on the treadmill for the 2 miles and also do some weight lifting as I can tell already my leg muscles haven't gained that much strength in just 2 weeks of running. It's pretty depressing to think that 7 years ago when I was a sophomore in college and played football, I could bench and squat over 275lbs. Now I'm an online poker nerd with a gut. argh... But anyway, I suspect I probably wont make it 2 whole miles straight as I'm pretty gassed after just 1 mile of running, but that's why they call it a challenge! We'll see how it goes.

As for the monies/poker, I've been "running" pretty well for the most part (although last night I lost $9,000 playing some huge idiots) but I'm still on pace. I suspect I'll need to get a lot more hands in to actually make my goal for the challenge. I've been really pretty lazy about getting hands in for some reason, it has been hard to focus. Most of my hands get in at the end of the day so I'm fairly tired by then etc. I've said it before but I'll say it again, for being a professional poker player I feel like I have zero free time. Really weird... but then I remember I have several other commitments, such as poker coaching, DeucesCracked.com, Preemas.com and volunteering etc

One piece of good news to report is I won't have to spend my sundays playing WSOP qualifiers anymore, as I finally won my seat this past Sunday on Pokerstars for the Main Event. The funny thing is my wife Missy was pretty excited but for me it was more relief than excitement. I had spent $4830 on qualifiers to win the $12,500 package.

Here's the screen shot of the victory. I had KRANTZ on skype and several friends/students sweating and pooling their luckboxes to help me win it. Thanks to all you guys who were watching and pulling for me. WHAT A RELIEF!



I played pretty well tonight. I played one of the sickest hands I've ever played in my life tonight. Pretty proud of it - bet/calling king high ship it!

Full Tilt Poker $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $1933.50
Zugwat (BB): $1318.50

Pre Flop: Hero is BTN/SB with K 9
Hero raises to $30, Zugwat calls $20

Flop: ($60.00) 6 3 A (2 players)
Zugwat checks, Hero bets $50, Zugwat raises to $145, Hero calls $95

Turn: ($350.00) 2 (2 players)
Zugwat checks, Hero checks

River: ($350.00) 2 (2 players)
Zugwat checks, Hero bets $170, Zugwat raises to $505, Hero calls $335

Final Pot: $1360.00
Hero shows Kh 9s (a pair of Twos)
Zugwat shows Jd 8s (a pair of Twos)
Hero wins $1359.50
(Rake: $0.50)


Hopefully update again soon.

Aaron

That's right, I'm challenging myself to run well... but perhaps not in the way you might think.

June 15th I'm headed to vegas. That is roughly 6 weeks from now, so what better time than to start a good challenge to test how well I can run? Here's the dilly:

6 weeks
60 miles ran
60k dollars

The plan is to ship the exercise and the monies. We'll see what happens of course. It should be known that I've basically done zero exercise in the last year or so. Yes I'm that lazy. I'm getting fat and out of shape (used to be in such good shape during high school and college with sports etc) but I'm slipping into that pastey-white-poker-pro-positioned-perennially- with-a-poking-potbelly-past-puny-puter.

Ya.

So the plan is to get my ass out of my office and run forrest run. The challenge will go like this:

Weeks 1 and 2: 5 miles per week = 10 miles

Weeks 3 and 4: 10 miles per week = 20 miles = 30 total

Weeks 5 and 6: 15 miles per week = 30 miles = 60 total.

I started this challenge a few days ago, and I've got 4 miles in the books so far. The crappy thing is I couldn't even run the entire first mile in one stretch, had to walk some, but by miles 3 and 4 I could do the whole thing. As of right now I traced out a mile in our neighborhood that I'm running, but once I get up to doing 2 miles per day i'll have to go to the gym to use the treadmill. Hopefully I'll run well!

The second part of my challenge is to make 60k in 6 weeks. I think this is doable as long as I shift some priorities around. I'm going to have to coach a bit less and play a bit more to do it, i'll also need to RUN WELL (is the play on words getting annoying yet? dont answer that) at the higher stakes. if you've been keeping up with my blog you'll know that i've been pretty much wrecking 5/10 nl and below but I haven't yet been able to get any traction at 10/20+. Especailly considering that -22k day at 25/50 really hurt.

To help accomplish the goal, I'm continuing to get the best coaching available on the internet from KRANTZ and Flawless_Victory. I'm convinced these are the 2 best poker minds on the internet so I'm in good hands. It's just a matter of putting into practice what they teach me...easier said than done perhaps... but i've never been shy about working hard on my game.

I have no season 3 series on DeucesCracked, as I'm going to spend a huge amount of time doing my season 4 series "Real Life: Micro NL Grinder" where I take a small stakes guy and try to turn him into a baller. I received about 60 apps, haven't chosen anyone yet. It's been extremely difficult figuring out who to choose as there are quite a few good candidates (for various reasons).

Alright that's it for now... run well with me!

Aaron