For A Better Tomorrow

When you are trying to put in as many hours as possible, you sometimes tend to overwork yourself.  I think I got to the point where I was forcing it towards the end of the month.  After an excruciating weekend, I realized that I needed to take the rest of the month off, which is three days.  I played pretty much every single day of the month except for Mondays (for which i have my screenwriting classes).  Currently I am at a school right now writing out this post in between my two classes.  Man, I never realized how great these breaks are when you play so much.  I feel really relaxed these past two days.

I was talking to a friend recently about having the heart for tournaments.  I feel as if I don’t have it as much as I did before.  I think I’ve been heart broken way too many times in tournaments.  A friend of mine recently got really close to winning a tournament but was disappointed by a series of bad beats and losing to race situations.  I wrote in the past about how playing tournament poker is very much like climbing a mountain.  You work so hard for one reward at the very top - a coinflip.  If the coinflip falls on your side, you will be wealthy, if it doesn’t fall on your side, you start all over again.

I’ve probably spent an entire year chasing the 200+16 tournamnets and 500+35 tournaments at Full Tilt poker and have not gotten to the final table.  I’ve cashed 4 out of the 5 times I’ve played the 500+ tournament but nowhere near top 5.  it’s a very depressing feeling working so hard to come so short because of a bad beat.

I will keep chasing this tournament because I feel I am properly rolled for it.  the goal is to not depend on the tournaments you play.  If you go for big shots, you should be prepared to be VERY disappointed.  That’s why I transition to cash games.  I think it’s very important to make a consistent income and spend a small percentage of it on tournaments. 

I only worry if my heart is still there, because it will cause me to make poor plays if I’m not passionate about the game.  I just have to be mentally prepared for every single tournamnet I play.  I find myself more interested in live tournamnets than online tournaments nowadays.  But the prizepool is just not as great and on top of that, the game is soo slow.  But online tournaments is just so tough nowadays. 

I recently got myself the CPAP to use during sleep and I must admit, it works beautifully. I went to the CPAP center and they said that my sleep at night is interrupted 80x per hour! OMG. The specialist who observed me while I was sleeping at the clinic a few weeks ago said that the CPAP worked very well for me. I looked at the results last week and my interruptions per hour went from 80 to 0 with CPAP. So in the end, the doctor says this should change my life.

Honestly, I thought it was just a mind thing, but ever since using this thing, my sleep schedule is balanced and on point! At most, I’d sleep 8 hours and my body naturally wakes up happily.

I’m able to make it to my kickboxing class every morning now. I honestly feel like superman during the day as I don’t get sleepy until night time. As a poker player, I still wanted to have a balanced schedule that way I can cleanly produce 40 hours of playtime a week and still do other things.

Anyway, I’m gettin sleepy right now so I’m going to go to bed.

I have forgotten why I had this blog in the first place.

My Current Mood: *Depressed*

I usually use this blog to vent. Currently I am very depressed with so many things happening. Honestly, I don’t see why I should be depressed. There’s just so many more things happening out there in the world that makes my lifestyle very luxurious. I don’t think I have the right to complain but inside myself, I can’t helped but to feel little depressed. The online poker is very shakey right now, and I have money in Neteller that I may lose. It’s a very sick bad beat as I just happen to deposit the money into Neteller two nights before their shutdown on U.S. players. Immediately I made an EFT transfer into my bank account. Too bad it takes 2-3 days for the EFT to come into effect because on the 2nd day, both of my “accepted” transfered changed status to “Pending”. And it’s been like that ever since. I’m not in a bad position as there are players with their entire bankrolls on the line. I’m fortunate to have a roll to play with. However, I’m just disappointed with the bad timing…

On top of other things, my lawsuit seems to get push farther and farther. Beginning of last year 2006, I was told it’ll end in 6 months. And then I’m told that it’ll end in January of 2007. Now, I’m told that it’ll end in April. What is going on? I have taught myself that patience is one of the most important skills to acquire, yet this situation is very very aggravating. I keep telling myself to just be calm and eventually it’ll be over, but how do I know that the date won’t get pushed back any further.

Recently, I went to the doctors to check up on my sleep problems. I was told that I needed to do a sleep study at a clinic by my doctor. It turns out that I’m diagnose with Sleep Apnea. The good news is that it’s not cancer and that there is a cure for it obviously. However, I am little disappointed to find out that I have such a problem. Long story short, the doctor says that I don’t get a full nights sleep no matter how many hours I sleep. This is without my awareness all these years. It turns out that my body stops breathing for a certain period until I slightly wake up (without remembering) to breathe. The specialist that night told me that if I sleep 8 hours, I’m basically only getting 4 hours of sleep to a normal human being. No wonder I am always tired…

This is possibly the reason why my body desires for so many hours of sleep. I’d sleep 8 hours and will still suffer from tiredness and drowsiness during my day. Imagine playing poker and falling asleep at the tables? How can I deal with that when it comes to school. There is a treatment Thank God, but for the time being I have to sleep with this little mask on my face until I get some sort of surgery.

Failing in making it to my gym. I am very sadden by this by the way. I simply cannot wake up for it, and when I do, I have problems playing poker in the evening because of not getting enough sleep.

I’ve never believed in superstitious things but in the Vietnamese tradition, it is bad luck when it’s the year of your animal. I was born in 1982, which is the year of the dog, and 2006 is the year of the dog. According to the Vietnamese tradition, 2006 is considered to be my bad luck year. I must admit that 06 has been a long year for me. That is the reason why I was celebrating 2007 hardcore. I later find out that the year of the dog doesn’t end until February (which is this coming weekend). So supposedly, I am still in my bad luck year. Now I wouldn’t say that bad luck comes through poker, but I would say it’ll come through life. A series of unfortunate events. I would call it very bad timing. To be honest, I’m never one to believe in superstitious stuff, however, this year is probably one of the most dramatic years of my life. The good news is that if I’m able to handle these situations, I am being trained to handle worse situations. The bad news is that I know for certain that there are way tougher things that can happen in life. In the end, I should be fortunate with what’s going on in my life.

*Some good news* Poker is going well for me. I am truly happy with everything that I am doing in poker currently. After a few more personal problems to overcome, I will train myself to be able to play in the high stakes game. I just need to make myself comfortable. Honestly, I’m not one to be that risky. I’d be too crushed if I were to go broke, which is also what makes me worry about this Neteller situation. I’m a very safe player and I don’t take shots at the higher level unless I am very comfortable currently. Therefore, I see myself in NL400 full ring for quite sometime until I am able to build a bankroll to attack the level above.This coming weekend, my family and I will celebrate Chinese New Years. And with everything that has been happening, I can’t wait. A couple of coincidences that I’d like to point out that may seem irrelevant to you all but it’s in the back of my mind. I receive my treatment for my Apnea problems this week which according to my doctor “It’s going to change your life” (getting plentiful rest and being more energetic during the day etc..). And of course, my lawsuit ends in April. And you never know, I might just get my money back from Neteller!

Again, I’m not one to believe in superstitions but to be honest, I’m actually hoping that it’s true and that things will get better.

“I want to make history this year”

If any of you who have been following my blog prior to my resignation at my job, you might have read an entry where I talked about “working after work”. I want to go through my blog and look for that entry but I don’t have the time because as of right now, I am also 8 tabling on Full Tilt Poker. Yes, I know…I have a bad habit of doing other things while playing poker. I’m ok at multi-tasking but I guess I shouldn’t do it when it’s not necessary. However, I find my time to be quite short after my poker sessions. Therefore, it’s hard for me to put in an entry and it may seem like I went on hibernation during my tough streak. But really, it’s because I’ve been forcing myself to put in my hours. After my session I get extremely exhausted and end up not wanting to do anything besides vegging out.

Anyway, back to my point. I mentioned before that if a person wants to get out of their current day job, it is critical for he or she to do what ever it takes after work for it to happen. In my case back then, I played 4-6 hours of poker immediately after I get home from work. Eventually, I was able to leave work to focus on my poker opportunity.Currently, I find myself in the same boat again and it has nothing to do with filmmaking. Although I am doing really well in NL400, I am still trying to make that leap into higher stakes. I can imagine that my ability may be able to take me up to NL1000, but I highly doubt I can go any further than that without proper studying and training. I have been looking into short handed play as of late, and I do find it quite intimidating. The aggression level is much higher which makes the variance bigger too. As of right now, I cannot afford to make those leaps until my lawsuit and problems are over - which to my understanding, sometime in April. I am looking into that game a lot after my poker sessions. I’m trying to understand the game play as much as possible so that I don’t make too many mistakes when jumping into 6 handed ring games. I find the games to be much more intense and that it requires more exploitive play, therefore, I’ll be force to close down a few tables and play around 6 tables at most.

So just like many hard working people out there, I am still “working after work” so that I don’t have to stay in my current position forever. It is very hard and draining playing 8-10 hours of poker a day and then move on to do some more poker research. Now you all can see why it’s hard for me to write an entry every week. On top of that, I’m taking two classes that takes up 1 day a week of my time. I enjoy my classes as they are screen writing courses.

Again, if you want to get out of where you’re at, you really got to put the time into doing other things AFTER work. I don’t know how much more I can express that. I’ve read that in so many success books and have also experienced some of that on on my own. You gotta do what you gotta do, you got to pay for those bills.

I just hope one day, I find myself playing poker part time and writing screen plays full time. Eventually thinking that “Poker” was a job that got me there. A job that gave me the free time to write screen plays or make short films.

My poker journey continues this year! I’ve overcome that tough month in December and came out great in January. I’m looking forward to a bright year for 07. There are however, some hurdles that U.S. Poker players have to go through. The recent neteller pulling out of U.S. has been causing a lot of headaches for the players including myself. Many of us are really worried to as these offshore bank accounts are obviously not FDIC insured. But what can we do? We just have to be patient with these companies.Not to scare people about this but there are some posts on twoplustwo.com by concerned players thinking that Neteller will screw their customers and not payout. This does sound ludicrous, but it is quite scary. Obviously, I highly doubt any of that will happen. If it does, it’ll be all over the internet and honestly, I think it’ll destroy online poker. People will not trust anymore offshore accounts period if something disastrous like that happens. I’m just going to be patient and see how things flow. But I must say, this is a crappy situation.

Some Good News:

I placed 2nd in a smallish tournament on Full Tilt the other night. I forgot to mention this before. I realized that I am very rusty playing heads up and short handed NL tournament style. I took 2nd because of a bad play that I made. But hey, second place is definitely not bad at all for a net of +$4200.