April Fools Day

Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 Professional Internet

Ah, April Fools Day, the day where every poker player will at some point make a joke and/or blog post about quitting poker, being broke, or reveal some otherwise shocking revelation. I'll spare you guys, and will just say, I'm not broke, but I'm running fairly bad on FTP lately and not happy about it.

Yesterday was a very hectic day. I flew to NYC at 7am and spent the day getting stuff done with Ezra. We had a few meetings, ran some errands, and got some CR stuff done. Ezra and I got a massage, then went to Tamarind (Indian) for dinner with whitelime (emil). It's always good to have an Indian guy with you at an Indian place, def adds to your street cred.

We went to see the movie "21" afterwords. I'll be honest in that I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but I was at least entertained. The Vegas scenes were pretty cool, and I don't know if this is a brag, but I had gambled within 10 feet of a lot of the blackjack scenes across various casinos in Vegas. Not sure how that makes me feel.

I read Bringing Down the House back at the end of high school, before online poker. I remember thinking, "Wow, these guys are so smart and making so much money at a young age!" It's crazy when the movie was talking about this same aspect,while I'm mentallycomparing it to online poker. The movie talks of the kids living a double life, flying Vegas on the weekends, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, etc., then going back to school and being normal students. Honestly, this is exactly how it was for me in college to some degree.I never really stopped to think about it, but it was pretty wild to be printing money gambling on the internet in between classes, skipping schooltraveling to poker tourneys, then coming back and being a normal college kid drinking dollar drafts at dumpy bars. Sort of a cool feeling, I wish they'd make a movie about internet poker players like this.

I'm participating in a panel discussion at NYU tonight. I honestly have no idea what to expect, as I don't even know the discussion questions yet. It should be about poker, finance, and CardRunners, among other topics. GL me.

tc

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A bit nervous

Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2008 Professional Internet

I gave a speech at U of I this week to some students in an entrepreneurship class. I took the class 2 years ago, and the prof. helped me out so I figured I'd him out by speaking to his class. They bring in "entrepreneurs" once every week or two to lecture about what they have learned being entrepreneurs.I put that in quotes because it seems being an entrepreneur is all the rage these days, and to me it's tossed around a little loosely, as in, "what do you want to be when you grow up Timmy?" " I want to be an entrepreneur!!!! Yay!!" I don't know, I just hear the word too much lately, mildly irritating.

Anyway, classic tangent, but I gave this speech and was a bit nervous beforehand. I made the comment to someone that I sort of liked being nervous, because I can't remember the last time I really felt anxious about something. I think it went pretty well, all things considered (powerpoint presentation not working properly, putting it together the night before, etc.). I had a chance to have a drink with epdog, durk86, and MrAndreson afterwords, 3 CR members that came to listen to me talk.

There are just some basic things I'll hit on here before going home to watch some NCAA bball:

-I've had a real bone to pick with Dairy Queen over the last few years. So at some of their locations, particularly on highways or in places where people are likely to want meals, they have "Brazier" on their logo. As a kid, I never knew what this was, but after asking my mother, brazier is apparently a word for some sort of fancy grill or something. So basically what Dairy Queen was trying to do was to convey to people passing by was that there was not only delicious ice cream at that particular location, but they were also serving various cooked meats as well.

The problem here is simple. One, I'm pretty sure that no one under the age of 30 knows what a brazier is. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. This wouldn't be a problem if this was, say, Red Lobster, or some establishmentwhere most of the decision making customers were at least middle aged and presumably knew whata brazier is. However, I'm pretty sure that the only reason any family would stop at Dairy Queen for meat products is because their kids go "MOM!DAD! I WANT DAIRY QUEEN!!!" Savvy parents would point to the sign and say "But Timmy, we need to eat a meal, Dairy Queen is a desert place." No child would point to the "Brazier" label and go "Wrong again mother, I can get delicious meat products from that Brazier." I hope I've made this clear enough, but what needs to happen here is Dairy Queen needs to haveimages ofmodern looking Burger, Chicken Sandwhich, and Fries as part of their highway signs at locations that serve food. This way, a kid can go "DAIRY QUEEN, let's get food and ice cream!" and there isn't a damn thing parents can do.

I've been complaining for the past 3 years to my parents everytime we go on a road trip when I see these signs. Kudos to Dairy Queen for finally doing something about this, as they now have "Grill Chill" on their highway signs. After thinking for a second, this clearly denoted that they served food at that restaurant, although I don't think it's necessarily clear enough for most kids to comprehend. I'd take it one step further and make it abundantly clear that they served food, but that's just me.

-I heard Rihanna's "Please don't stop the music" seven times during my 4 hours and 40 minutes in the car. The crazy thing is that for 30-45 minutes in central IL you can't really get anything besides country music, so this song was effectively played 7 times in about 200 minutes of radio play. Scary. I don't want to hear any "well why didn't you change the channel, smartass?" questions, because I happen to kind of like that song. Actually, I really don't like it or dislike it, it's more that there aren't a whole lot of options when you're going from Chi to Champaign.

- I lost about 40 g's taking a shot at 200-400 last week. I don't really want to talk about it but I run really bad at high stakes poker. It sucks.

-Watch my HU vid with annette that went up yesterday, I thought it was an excellent video.

tc

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Miscellaneous stuffs

Date: Wed, Mar 19, 2008 Professional Internet

Ok, so this post will be abouta variety of topics. I'll get the non poker/CR stuff out of the way first.

-This is the first time since 99 that Illinois hasn't been in the NCAA tourney, and it's pissing me off. This is our worst season I can ever remember, and it was extremely disheartening. To top it off, I didn't even get to watch most of the games this year because of the f'ing Big Ten Network not being picked up by Comcast. I'm getting DirectTV if that is the case next year. I'm really looking forward to March Madness, though, and I'll probably be watching 8-10 hours a day of basketball Thur-Sun this weekend.

-I'm going to U of I next week to give a speech to a group of 100-150 kids in an entrepeurship class. I took the class my last semester at school, and it was one of my favorite classes in college. This weekend I have to figure out what I am going to say, and practice it a little bit. I honestly don't know what I'm going to talk about, I feel like I know a lot about being an entrepreneur, but it's hard to organize information in a logical and interesting manner. It's kind of like, most winning poker players know a lot about poker, but a lot of them can't talk eloquently about it. Hopefully I'm not one of those donks. This should be a good test run of my speaking skills for an NYU speaking gig Ezra got for me in a couple weeks.

-Onto poker. I made a heads up video with annette_15 this week. She was kind enough to send her HH's in so we'll have those added to the video. We played 3-6nl and I was beating her up pretty good for awhile until she nearly came all the way back at the end. I think it will make for a good video.

-You guys are going to be pissed, but cts' video for Friday didn't properly record the sound. He's traveling now, so his next video will be up a week from Friday. I'm going to fill in, which leads me to my next point.

-Until the last day or so, I've been been crushing, hard. I'm up 50k+ on my Red Name in 8 days. I'm down 21k playing above 25/50 (in a very small sample), and up about 70k in 25/50 and below, over about 7500 hands. It's a small sample size obviously, but i'm suremy 6max game has DRASTICALLY improved over the past month or so. I'm doing a much better job mixing up my play, not being so damned robotic, which is easy to do when you are playing 4-6+ tables. Talking poker withStinger, peachy,and cts inSanta Barbara also really helped me think about the gamefrom a new perspective. I'm going to make a 5-10 or 10-20 6max video, playing 4 tables. My last video of 6max got great reviews, and I think it might have been my best video ever.

Good luck at the tables,

tc

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Obligatory "weeks end" type post

Date: Fri, Mar 14, 2008 Professional Internet

So it is the end of the week and I feel like I should post something to my blog. I think I do this all too often and the difficulty I had even coming up with a title is telling me this blog needs work. I might take a little time away from this blog because when I am really enjoying blogging I feel it is a very interesting read.

I'll make a poker update post soon because I have had very good results on my new Red name. I've played well with the exception of one session where due to other life tilt type issues I played aboslutely terribly. I've put in close to 20 hours playing since Monday which is pretty good, all things considered.

I hope everyone has a nice St. Patricks Day weekend, I know I will.

tc

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Feels Good to be Red

Date: Mon, Mar 10, 2008 Professional Internet

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Weekend

Date: Fri, Mar 7, 2008 Professional Internet

It's been a long week, I'll leave it at that. This weekend I havea bit of work, but I'll mostly be hanging out and relaxing, probably going out tomorrow night somewhere in Chi.

This is a boring update but I'm going to recommend watching my video I just posted today. I think it's probably my best 6max video ever, although I think my HU videos are probably my best overall, as I'm a much better at HU than 6max. I think the difference between this video and most was that I played for about an hour before actually recording. I got some great reads on my opponents, and also used a HUD, which I don't usually do. I don't think a HUD is really necessary for high stakes play, because you really get to know your opponents over time, but when there are a bunch of randoms around, it's great to have stats.

Anyway, I'm not going to ramble on anymore, watch the video if you're bored.

later,

tc

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A new addition + reality + bonus

Date: Tue, Mar 4, 2008 Professional Internet

First, I'd like to link up an article to our newest instructor, LJJones/MasterLJ. He is a heads up specialist, that plays the MSNL HU games, and has had phenomenal success. We're really trying to add as much MSNL content as possible, as we've neglected that in the past. No more! Look for more of that to come, but I just wanted to say you should check out the LJ "In the Spotlight" article and his first video.

EDIT: Link doesn't work. Can someone put a link in here to In the Spotlight?

Well, it's back to reality. Chicago is, well, Chicago. Melissa and I got back on Sunday night, hung out with my roommates for a few hours, then went to bed. We've had two days of CR meetings, from 8am - 10pm yesterday, and from 8-5 today. I've got an hour to hang out, then we are going out to dinner. There's not really much to talk about here, there just has been no time to do anything but CR stuff, which sucks.

Bonus: While I'm thinking about it, I want to spend some time talking about Xbox. This will be short for now, but please do flame me. Basically, I've started to play some Xbox Live, which is playing Xbox 360 against randoms across the internet. I've actually found it borderline addicting, and I'm playing Madden 08 which I'm told isn't one of the most addicting games out there. Now, I've only been setup for about 10 days now, but I've played a fair amount online. I'd like to formally state that I think I've lost a few friends over this new hobby, as apparently it's not "cool" to play video games against 16 year old high school sophomores on the internet. Last night I was talking to a kid via my Xbox headset about picking a college. Nice.

Anyway, my point is that I find I am "addicted" (I use that loosely, Mom) to the competitive nature of playing online. When I first started playing online I was getting absolutely crushed. I'm now a .500 player and that's actually pretty good considering some of these guys have played hundreds of games online. It's really cool to compete at something and be learning so much so fast. CardRunners and poker are two great examples of this. I learn so much all the time when working on CR stuff, and poker used to be that way. I realized now there is no point to this whole story, so I'm just going to close this issue by stating that I am aware that all of my real life friends think less of me because of this Xbox addiction debacle. Sorry guys. Internet people, no, I won't tell you my gamer tag, yet.

tc

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Miami part 2

Date: Sat, Mar 1, 2008 Professional Internet

I'm going to have to make this sort of quick because we are leaving for dinner soon.

The last two days have been amazing. The weather is nice again, mid to upper 70s in fact. We ate at two nice seafood places the last two nights, I'll have to ask my gf for the names of them because I wasn't really paying attention. I took some decent pictures which I will also put up here soon.

Today we spent most of the whole day out by the pool and beach. The Shore Club is absolutely nuts during the weekends. I'm not really a car guy at all, but you can't help but look when you walk out and see a lambo, ferrari, and bentley parked outside waiting to valet. Being the brokest guy around kinda sucks, but I've always liked a challenge. It's cool to be around people that are wealthier and smarter than I am, even if they are mostly weird Euros (kidding).

At the pool during the day, the hotel is rocking. There's a bunch of rich middle age to old timer types, and then a bunch of gold digging hot young girls. It's pretty funny to watch the scene. The guys that are young are definitely the "slick" miami types, which I am most certainly not. The young girls are all pretty damn hot and are certainly looking for husbands. I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

I was pretty disappointed today because I got rate limited using the internet. This happens pretty regularly when traveling because I'm downloading and uploading tons of videos, so I just called to the tech center and explained what was happening. They kept telling me "no, you aren't getting rate limited, it's your connection," when I clearly knew that wasn't the case. They had some guy come up and check the connection and he goes "it's because we're on the 8th floor, the signal isn't strong." ????? It had worked fine for 3 days. I told him that I thought I was rate limited and we should call the ISP, and he goes, "what es rate limit????" Sigh.

I realize this is a pretty horrible entry but I've been drinking at the pool too long. I'll make a better summary post at some point.

By the way, I'm announcing my protege winners on Monday.

tc

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Miami!

Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 Professional Internet

Melissa and I arrived in Miami yesterday afternoon. The trip was very uneventful, save for an older gentleman stopping me on the airplane and saying "CardRunners! What is that all about? I've heard a lot about it but I never really knew what it was." I was pretty taken aback, and had to give him a 7 second rundown of the site because we were walking to our seats on a plane. After I told him what it was, he seemed sort of interested, so i told him "it's actually really a great site, you should check it out." He nodded and I finished with "take that for what it's worth, though, I am one of the owners of the site." He and I both laughed and his wife seemd impressed, actually. Go CR.

The Shore Club is pretty unbelievable. Melissa and I ate at Nobu last night which is in the hotel, and the beach is a 2 minute walk from your hotel room. There are tons of little outdoor gardens and sitting areas, and the whole hotel sort of turns into a party at night. The interesting thing about that is that it was Wednesday night last night, with fairly chilly <60 weather, and there was quite a bit of partying going on at the place until I fell asleep at 115 AM.

Here is a picture of our view:

Melissa on the beach:

We had lunch at a hookah place that had some cool outdoor seating, then did a little shopping. I realized that I got a little burned so we just came back. I played a little poker, then took a nap, and now we are getting ready to go out and have some dinner at some place melissa found.

It should be a fun night, and I'm starting to feel a little better. I felt pretty horrible last night so we didn't really do anything besides watch a movie (Juno, LOVED it) after dinner. Juno is my kind of movie, the girl reminds me of a female version of my brother, actually, who has a pretty similar sense of humor to me, although he's a lot smarter and moreinsane than i.

I will close with an observation. Let me tell you that it is a good time to be a European. Europeans are (and should be) just pillaging the US on their vacations. It's a freaking 40% discount everywhere you go if you're coming from Europe. I'd estimate 75% of the people I've seen at the Shore Club are European. The couple to our right at dinner were speaking French, and I noticed when the guy pulled out his wallet to pay it was busting open with hundos. He tossed a few down to pay for the meal, and presumably used the rest for toilet paper later that night. Anyway, it's pretty crazy, my recommendation to all Euros out there is to 1) Buy a CR subscription (it's practically free) and 2) come vacation in the US.

tc

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Vacating tomorrow

Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2008 Professional Internet

Melissa and I are going to Miami tomorrow for 4 nights. We are staying at the Shore Club, which I'm told is a great place to vacation. Here are some pictures of the resort.

When I told some of my friends about my trip, they asked "what the hell do you need a vacation for?" Well, my smart ass friends (and likely readers of this blog), I actually haven't had a vacation in quite some time. California was a lot of fun, I go to Vegas at least 2-3 times per year, but it sure isn't nearly as fun doing those things when you are working all day long, and sometimes into the night. I'm certainly not complaining about anything because I've got it pretty damn good, but it will be nice to go to Miami with absolutely no work to do there.

Now, before I get to carried away with this vacation thing, I do have some things I'd like to do while in Miami. First, this trip probably couldn't have come at a worse time, as I have a ton of work to do for a big announcement we are making in a few weeks. We are in the home stretch and this should be a very cool thing for CR an its members. I'm also going to take my laptop down to the beach and play some poker, as well as post on the CR forums some more. I really just want to get back into the "play poker, talk poker, love poker" type mode, because it's really freaking hard to do that when you are also trying to work on business stuff. It's next to impossible to be a high stakes poker player and also be efficient with other things, I've found.

I got some great advice for things to do in Miami last time, if you have any other suggestions please leave them here. Restaurants, clubs, bars, scenic stuff, whatever, Melissa and I have no plans. I'll post some pictures this weekend.

tc

edit: i forgot about aruba in September. That was a vacation, but to my credit there was actually some work done down there, because that was back when the new CR site was launched and everyone hated us for a few days.

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Stinger is smart

Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2008 Professional Internet

I'm not sure if anyone blogged about this, but for some reason I was thinking about this at the gym today so I'll make a quick post. All the CR pros had a great time in Santa Barbara. On Monday morning, Stinger, cts, and Ezra were driving back to LAX so Stinger and cts could catch flights back to the east coast. Now, Stinger is a really smart kid, great guy, etc., but he can be quite helpless sometimes, as you might expect a 19 year old multimillionaire to be. For example, it took him like 30 days to send in a contract, when we even offered to pay one of his frat brothers $50 to mail it for him.

Anyway, Stinger is driving Cole and Ezra into LAX. Apparently they have checkpoints there to make sure you aren't a terrorist or drug mule. So Stinger is driving, music blaring, just kicking it, and runs right through the checkpoint. The Cops are screaming STOP STOP STOP, and it takes him a little bit to realize whats going on. So they ream out the Sting man, and he dirtied his trousers a little bit. Eventually the cops realize he isn't a threat to national security and he goes along his way. Just another day in the life of Stinger885.

tc

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Miscellaneous Realization

Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008 Professional Internet

One of the things I have learned over the past year or two is just how much I really don't knowabout the world. I think it's really easy to have some success in life and then all the sudden think "wow, i'm so smart, i can do anything," but in reality that's just usually not the case. I'm not trying to sound like I'm completely inept, but having some meetings this past week with people who are a lot more experienced than I really showed me just how much I have to learn. The thing they always tellus isthat even though we don't really know that much right now, we are wayahead of everyone else our age. That feels good, although I can't wait for the day whena compliment isn't prefaced by"you don't reallyknow that much,but..."

CardRunners isamazing because I get great hands on experience with a lot of facets of running a business, but it's a really laid back environment and a lot of fun too. I have no idea how long I'll own CR, but the big "payday" should come in whatever I do after this, hopefully. I'm really excited about the next 10 years or so.

Sorry this is really random, it was supposed to go in my last post but I forgot about it.

tc

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Beaumont

Date: Thu, Feb 21, 2008 Professional Internet

This blog entry is dedicated to Matt Beaumont, a real life friend of mine. Matt just texted me a few minutes ago with a text that just said "blog." I was laughing pretty hard, I'm sorry I haven't blogged lately, just been busy with other things. I don't think my real life friends read my blog for any other reason than to kill time at work, because they usually know what's up with my life anyway. Well anyway, this blogs for you, Beaumont.

I just got back last night from a 6 day trip to Santa Barbara/LA. I'll just list off some random stuff, in no order of importance.

-California people are pretty weird. I guess that's not the best way to put it, there are an abnormal amount of interesting people in California, but for the most part, people are really nice and cool.

-I like weird people. I'd love to live in California someday. It's hard for me to justify moving to one of the expensive state tax states like California or New York (particularly City) while I am in what might be the best earning years of my life. Hopefully I'll make a bunch of cash in my 20s, then move somewhere warm for a year or two while not making any money.

-I'm a better player now than I was this time last week. I really learned a lot this weekend about poker. I picked up some good PLO stuff from talking about the game a bit with some of the guys, particularly watching Stinger and Cole. I also did a video series with Cole which I think will be fantastic. I really do expect it to be two of the best HU NLHE videos ever created. Part of me doesn't want to release it, but meh, I like you guys.

-I made about 30k playing over the course of the trip. Not bad, I'll take it. I had a pretty insane match with Rolandthertrault on FTP where I got down 20k but finished even. I'd like to blog about that at some point.

-Andrew, me, brystmar, sixpeppers, verneer, ezra, and peachy_keen went to a wind tunnel in LA yesterday. This thing blows air at 130 MPH straight upwards and you can float on it. It's really freaking cool, I definitely want to go again.

-We saw Turtle from Entourage at Universal Studios yesterday. I took a pic on my camera of him in the distance, but it's only from behind so i won't post that.

-We went to Commerce for like 2 hours. I saw a bunch of live pros, some online guys, and a whole lot of asians. Everytime I go into a poker room I say a small prayer to God for making me an internet poker player. Playing live poker for a living is just very unhealthy. We saw some players that seriously looked like they have aged 15-20 years over the last couple of years, and I saw quite a few pros eating meals at the tables at 11pm. I guess I shouldn't say much because I live somewhat of an unhealthy lifestyle, but I'd probably be 20 lbs heavier if I was a live pro.

-We have some great news to announce in a week or two. I've been working on a project for 6 months that finally has been completed. There's also some other really cool CR news coming in the next 2 or so months, so stay tuned.

tc

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santa barbara update

Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2008 Professional Internet

So myself, andrew, brian, stinger, cts, scheids, peachy_keen, brystmar and six peppers are all staying with Brian for a few days in Santa Barbara. Quite the collection of poker talent under one roof, it's pretty crazy. The most surprising part of this trip is that cts is actually better at Rock Band for Xbox than he is at poker, and he's good at poker. The amazing thing is that he doesn't even own an Xbox, just plays with his friends sometimes....wtf.

We had a great night last night -- went out to sushi at a place that had the most diverse sushi selection i've probably ever seen. Then we went to downtown SB and met up with Spudt and had some drinks. We all crashed by 1 or so, everyone was tired from a really long day of travel. Today we have been doing some CR stuff which I think the members will really like :).

I'll have a better update later this weekend or next week!

Have a fun weekend,

tc

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