Hey guys! A few things happened in the last week and one thing I really want to blog about. Classes all are going the same. Haven't really played much poker lately, and haven't been putting in many hours on my NFL research. So basically there is only one thing I would like to blog about...

On Thursday night I found out that one of my good friends' dad passed away on Wednesday night, unexpectedly and suddenly. I won't get into what exactly happened, but from what I know he went in for routine surgery Tuesday night and passed away Wednesday morning. It was very tragic and very sad.

He was a great man and at the funeral a bunch of people told stories about him confirming it, which no one really doubted. He was 60 years old, and was taken far too soon. I've known him for about 8 or 9 years. I met his youngest son in a math competition when I was in 6th grade. He was a school teacher, as is his wife. There is a ton of good things I could say about the man, but to really see how great he was I think it is easier to see by looking at his family.

Their family is so close, all three kids were brilliant students. He had 1 daughter and 2 sons. The sons were both athletes and his youngest son (my friend) is very smart, very nice and very genuine. This tragedy could not have happened to a nicer family. Especially since his youngest son is due to graduate from college in May. I'm sure it will be very difficult for my friend to get through the rest of this semester, but I've never met a more determined individual. I know he will be fine, and the family will band together because that is what their father would have wanted.

After going to the viewing and funeral it put things into perspective. I realized this coming so close to Easter (the holiest day on the Christian calendar), really made me be thankful for my faith. I do not want to preach, as I don't like when people push their views on me, but I am a Christian and I am very thankful that I am. My friend's dad was also very religious and was an active member of his church, and their is no doubt that God has another great man sitting with him now.

Basically what I learned over this Easter weekend is that what we think is important really isn't the be-all end-all. Getting 1-outed in the big Sunday tourneys really isn't that big of a deal. Failing a test isn't that big of a deal. Getting that promotion or that new job really isn't that big of a deal, although at times it is hard for us to realize it.

It is often tragedies or special occassions that make us realize this, but from now on I'm going to try to realize what is really important at all times. Hopefully, my actions will reflect these sentiments. Hopefully, I can not only remember that the most important things in my life are: faith, family and friends, but also live my life the way that all of the above would want me to.

Hopefully, some of you got something out of this, but if this blog strikes a chord with even one member of tworags I feel like it has done some good.

That's all for now,
Foulky

Well, St. Patrick's Day is over, and let's just say my liver could use a rest. Saturday I woke up at 9 am and immediately did a car bomb with my two of my housemates, took a shower, got dressed and went over to our buddies' house. There we started drinking a few beers, and decided to line up car bombs on the front porch. By noon we had used all of the Jameson and Bailey's and that was it for the car bombs. Then in the afternoon we went to a party down the street, which was ok but nothing spectacular. Funny story about that party is it was held at three houses actually and one of them was the house that Rod lived in last year. Although, I hate to say it, their parties were much better. After that there was another party to go to, which I hung out at until 10:30 pm when I stumbled my drunken-self down to the bar. Hung out there til almost 1 and then came home.

Sunday I did not leave my house, and probably spent a total of 15 minutes outside of my bedroom, and that was when I was throwing up from the massive hangover.

Monday was St. Patty's and it was probably the lamest one since I've been going to school here. Of course, it was a Monday and people had classes and stuff but who goes to classes on St. Pat's? At noon we started drinking by playing a drinking game while watching Boondock Saints where you drink some of your beer everytime the F-bomb is dropped. If you haven't seen the movie you should, it's F-in sweet, and they say the F word A LOT. So we got pretty drunk doing that, and then we just sat on the porch and drank and offered a beer to every single person who walked by. Most of them politefully declined. Then we bought a keg, and threw a little houseparty at my buddies, and capped the night off with another trip to the bar. I made it home at 2:30 am, and didn't wake up in time for my classes the next morning. All told St. Patty's this year wasn't the best, but it was still a lot of fun.

Now onto what I'm really excited about. Yesterday I was listening to this past Sunday's episode of Big Poker Sundays on Pokerroad.com, and the week before they had a contest for who could pick the best song to be Phil Hellmuth's intro music if he was a WWE wrestler. When I heard the show the week before I immediately e-mailed them, and said it should be The Best Around off of the Karate Kid soundtrack. Needless to say at the end of the episode they got around to the contest, and they played my song last and Bob and Huff agreed that it was definetly the best one and I won the contest. I was so stoked you have no idea. I was playing a sesh and was a little steamed because I had played two Queens just awful in this one pot to dust off a buy-in, and that immediately got me off tilt. I suggest you guys listen to the show its pretty funny what Bob says. If you do listen its about minute 55. I think they start the contest at minute 52 or 53.

Oh yea, and after that I came back and booked a nice little win in that session over almost 2k hands. So I hope I will be receiving a PRR t-shirt in the mail soon, and who knows, maybe a "box of money" too. LOL

That's all for now,
Foulky

I am really steamed as I right this because I tried to blog twice earlier today, and every time I would get to the end I would hit tab and then backspace and boom… page back and everything is lost. I think from now on I’m just going to type it into Word first and then copy and paste.

So anyway, I apologize for not blogging in a while. The big 3 have been keeping me real busy since coming back from spring break on Sunday. Brace yourselves this is long. If you don’t want to read all of it I suggest skipping to the Partying section because I love the Salvation Army.

School

School work has been keeping me pretty busy during the daytime. I had my prospectus for my term paper in Computer Ethics due Thursday. I am doing my term paper on Internet Gambling, which I’ve been worried, about which I know seems weird since all of us internet poker players are well aware of all the facts of the UIGEA and all of the pitfalls that have come with it. However, while I am well-versed with knowledge on the topic I am way too biased, which if I write it that way, intentionally or unintentionally, I will be committing the cardinal sin on this paper. Fortunately, Rod (xxrod17xx to all of you) had the same class last semester, and he did his paper on basically the same topic, so he gave me some tips that I think will help me out.

Also, I got two of my three mid-term grades back, a B+ and an A-. I am pleased with these grades; however, I fear that my third mid-term grade will not even be in the same neighborhood as the first two. But, no one in the class seemed too pleased with the test so maybe he will curve it or something… we shall see.

Poker

Over spring break I played a ton of poker, both tournaments and cash games. More than I have in a long time. In the tournaments, I had a few small cashes but it always seemed like I ran poorly at key points of the tourney, never won that big race, got sucked out on etc. However, I really wasn’t that pleased with the way I was playing either. I feel like since I haven’t been playing too many tourneys lately I may not be as aggressive and fearless as I am when I am at my best.

In the cash games, I went on another big downswing, probably close to $1k, which caused my bankroll to go to the lowest point it’s been since Jan. 7th. I play all the games and I jumped into some 50PLO and 3-6 HORSE and really played the games like I was rusty, which I am. So, after losing a big in those games I tried to play in the .40-.80 ds 160 max bi games on FTP. These games have been very weak, and I definitely thought I had a sizeable edge in those games because I play much better post-flop than the players that were playing in that game do. However, I ran really poorly in the game, and lost some more. It seemed like everyday for a week I would go on lose about $200 and quit.

Well, fortunately yesterday my luck turned around. I 4-tabled 50NL and 2-tabled the 160 max game. I ended up winning about $450 in about 1500 hands playing those games last night. Then today, after running errands, which I will get to later, I decided to play some more and won another $300 over 1500 more hands. So after going on a 1k downswing I won about ¾ of it back in two days which is real nice. However, I probably won’t be playing much the next few days.

Partying

Since coming back from spring break I have gone out drinking Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. All of those days were fun, although one of my friends tried to get into a fight the one night, which wasn’t cool at all since it was 100% his fault. However, I don’t remember too much of it, which I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. The only thing I know for sure is the next morning when I woke up I only had $1 less in my wallet than I had the day before (talk about a break).

Wednesday and last night I went over to my buddies and we had a couple beers while watching the college bball games. Afterwards, we just went down to the bar and had a couple beers. I haven’t been at the bar sober in a while and it was really weird being down there the last two nights sober. Let’s just say it’s not as fun. Tonight, I am alone at home and its 10:17 pm. Weird I know, but two of my friends went to a sorority formal and the others have been MIA all day. They probably went to a bar on the other side of town for happy hour and didn’t make it back yet lol. It’s probably not a bad thing that I’ve only had one beer tonight since this weekend is doing to be filled with absolute debauchery.

Tomorrow, many people of campus are throwing St. Patrick’s Day parties because the rumor is the Pope moved St. Pat’s tomorrow because Monday is Holy Monday. Personally, I think its BS but whatever it just gives people like me two opportunities to celebrate! Although, rumors are cops are going to be out in full force looking to bust people for being drunk in public, so I will have to TRY to control myself lol. Fortunately, I am of age and don’t have to worry about underages unless we are at my house, which I doubt we will be.

So, today my buddy and I went shopping and I had an absolute blast, and I HATE shopping. Why did I have so much fun? Well the first stop we made was at the Salvation Army. There I bought two green t-shirts, my favorite one being the one that says I Stepping Stones. The other one has some plot-line from some 80s Cusack movie written on it… you know then one where he holds a boom box over his head outside of the chick’s window. Well at least that’s where I think it’s from. The other two things I bought were a pair of slacks that are brown, green and purple checkered, and are just awesome. Unfortunately, they are huge on me and I will be swimming in them tomorrow. (Figuratively of course) The other thing I purchased was a green and white flannel pullover sweater that I will be wearing out tomorrow as well. All told those 4 things cost me $10.46. God I love the Salvation Army.

After that we went to the beer distributor and got three cases of Keystone Light for $44.50, and two 4-packs of Guinness which cost $17.00! How ridiculous! Then we went to the liquor store and purchased a bottle of Jameson, a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème and a bottle of Sky Vodka. We got the Guinness, Baileys and Jameson whiskey for Irish Car bombs which are probably one of the greatest drinks I’ve ever had.

After that we went to the pet-store to pick up 3 mice. Two for my pet snake and one for my friends pet snake. Well when we got home we looked in the backseat and realized the mice got out of their cardboard boxes! They were running around in his car and it took us almost 15 minutes to corral all three of them. Unfortunately, for those mice we did get them all rounded-up, and they are no longer with us… if you know what I mean.

So, that is pretty much where I’m at right now. I’ll probably hit the sack early tonight, set my alarm for 9 am. Wake up, take a shower, play the Boondock Saints Theme Song and some Dropkick Murphy’s, put on my sweet threads, wake up my housemates, and take an Irish Car Bomb. This weekend is going to be so sweet. God I love college. It sucks that I’m graduating in two months. I guess this is my last chance to REALLY celebrate St. Patty’s which to me is like a college kid’s Christmas, and I’m not even Irish.

Wow, that really was a long blog, which I apologize for. I guess I need to work on this blogging thing… lol I’m such a newb. If you read the whole thing, I appreciate it and honor you. I hope you all enjoyed it. Until next time…

That’s all for now,
Foulky

Ok so its been about 1 week since my last, (first and only) blog entry. I left off just giving a brief explanation of what I had planned on doing with my blog and a little background into who I was. So now a brief update on what the last week has been like.

School
I had two midterms last Thursday which I really had a hard time studying for and it probably cost me on my Advanced Accounting midterm. I just really find that class boring, confusing and hard to study for. Fortunately for me, the professor is a really cool guy who I've had for a few other classes, and I don't forsee him giving me a bad grade in the class, as long as I put a little more effort into doing well in the class. The other midterm (Computer Ethics) went pretty well I thought, but I'm not really sure how hard he grades. We will see. Now I am currently on spring break, yet still at school doing research on the NFL for my economics professor who is writing a textbook on the NFL. This research is so monotonous and boring I have fell behind a bit, and will be working on it well into March. Other than that I have been trying to just relax.

Partying
As you can expect I haven't really partied in a while since everyone is gone from campus. However, I did go home on Monday to have a few drinks with my cousins, and one of my friends from way back stopped by, and it was cool to see him. Hopefully, this weekend will be a little more exciting.

Poker
I have been playing more tourney poker than I have in a long time, since I have a lot of free time at night now. I really wanted to make an effort over this week to play as much tourney poker as I could since after break I won't have a lot of time to dedicate to tournaments at night. I have always been a more successful tournament player than cash game player, so I hoped focusing on tournaments would reap some rewards. Unfortunately, I have been basically treading water. A few cashes but nothing to get excited about. I feel I have been playing pretty well, probably a little too tight for my A game but definetly no worse than my B game, probably my B+ or A- game. Hopefully, I start running a little better in the later stages of the guarantee tourneys since I really havent been having much success in them. Also, I think reading Bond18's blogs will help me be more aware of the mistakes I may have made in the past, and some of the leaks in my game.

Hopefully I will be bringing a brag blog soon about a decent tourney score.

Until then, I hope to blog about twice a week, and keep you all updated on my adventures... couldn't think of a better word there.

That's all for now,
Foulky