The Return to Internetlandia

While I like many things about life in the country, it better be accompanied by a decent high-speed Internet connection, or else I go nuts.

We managed the trek to Tennessee and back with no major explosions. Which is good, as it not only was the first time ScurvyWife set foot in Tennessee, but it was also the first time she met my extended redneck family, in all their glory. To be fair, they're not that bad, especially these days, as the deer hunting crowd has chilled a bit, and people have gotten a wee bit more open minded in general.

It also was nice to back for Christmas as an "adult", as far as being married, and actually being able to afford to buy everyone decent Giftmas presents, and all that jazz. Sort of a dumb thing to be proud of, but hey, there you go.

I did broach the subject of possibly being self-employed soon, and both my mom and dad didn't seem too shocked or surprised. They've always pretty much let me do my own thing with a minimum of hassle, so I didn't expect them to freak out too much as the possibility of their son playing poker full-time. It was also interesting as my dad told me a few stories I didn't know about my grandfather on his side of the family, who I only met a handful of times before he died seven or eight years ago. He was an engineer in the Army during WWII, and basically ran around Europe blowing up and/or building bridges to move troops around. What I didn't know is that he also was apparently a good poker player, and won enough money (and sent it home) to start up a successful business drilling water wells after he returned to the States.

(Of course, he also went on to gamble away a nice, lucrative stable life of profitably grinding away digging water wells by venturing out and trying to find oil, getting divorced because he was never around, living in a trailer and moving from state to state for most of his adult life, never striking it rich.)

But it was cool to hear the poker part of the story, as I never knew that, and just assumed I was the oddball of the family, as I didn't grow up learning to play cards with my family at all, as none of them are into such things or gambling in general at all.

Had a lot of dead driving time to ponder the whole full-time poker thing, and I'm going to give it a whirl. For most of the reasons mentioned previously, but also for the sheer hell of it. I never saw myself as someone who'd stay at a dead-end, unfulfilling job for five years and counting, for no reason other than the size of the paycheck received every two weeks, and lo and behold, that's exactly what I've become. Pardon my French, but fuck that. Absolutely nothing wrong with grinding until something better comes along, as we all have to spend a good chunk of our lives grinding, but if you have other options, well, that's a different story.

It helps that I'm running pretty damn well at the 10/20 shorthanded games this month, which is pretty much all I've played. I sort of backed into the decision to focus on getting better at shorthanded play, but it's one of the better decisions I've backed into, as I'm enjoying playing a good bit more, and thinking more. Doesn't soften the inevitable blows to the junk and variance, but it's making poker more enjoyable and engaging.

One interesting thing is that I've been solely playing on sites that don't support PokerTracker or GameTime+ or PokerAce, so I've been flying completely blind as far as tools go. Which kind of sucks, and I'm obviously choose not to do it that way, if I could, but it's also been nice to get back to the basics of having to pay attention and develop good reads and take good notes. Limit HE doesn't exactly lend itself to creative play for the most part, but getting off auto-pilot has been good for me, as far as slowing down and thinking things through, and not always playing hands the way I might normally default to. There's also some larger value to playing without aids, as far as forcing you to pay closer attention to the action, especially if you ever want to dip your toe into bigger live cash games one day.

I'm going to try to amp up my volume of play over the next few months, so that I get closer to what I'd need to be putting in if I were doing it full-time. Lately I've only been getting in 10-15 hours a week, which won't cut it. With telecommuting two days a week (and not giving a flying fuck about my production at work, for obvious reasons, as well as for it being a new year as far as out goals and what-not), it shouldn't be too hard to get that up to 30 hours a week, without stressing myself out too much. I may try banging out lots of hands Thursday-Monday, as that hits both telecommuting days and the weekend sweetspot, as far as juicy tables.

Congrats to the Puncher of Donkeys for taking down the FFL championship. After dominating the regular season my whole team decided to collectively take a simultaneous nap in the playoffs, bumping me all the way down to 4th in the final standings. Way to finish, you bums.