With a season full of major live tournaments including the World Series fast approaching there are quite a few satellites running on the various poker sites at the moment. The fields are often small with a winner take all format, or occasionally the next few places get a small profit. I’ve come close a number of times recently but bombed out just short.

Today there was a $500 UB satellite to the WSOP, a $500 UB satellite with 25 Aruba packages guaranteed, and a $200 Full Tilt winner’s choice satellite worth $12,000. I got a nice start on both the UB tables but lost quite a few chips early. A couple hours later I’d bombed out of both UB tables and was left with a very short stack on Tilt. I got up to run to the bathroom and asked Bondgirl to cover for just a moment. When I got back a few minutes later she’d somehow doubled me. An hour later I was sitting with the chip lead on the final table. Thirty minutes after that I’d won the whole thing. Additionally I managed to make a deep run in the UB $30 rebuys, where I finished second for a little over $3000, the same $30 rebuys which I happened to have won last night for a bit over $5000. I can’t seem to do anything wrong late in tournaments anymore, but the real cause for a streak like this is winning my big flips deep and just about never getting three or two outed in major pots.

People have been asking what tournament I intend to use the package towards. I fired up my Tilt cashier after the win to find that the $12,000 had been credited directly in my account in the form of $T dollars, which when you play as many tournaments as
I do is just as good as real money. It doesn’t really matter what tournament I would have used it towards anyway, Timex would have bought the action and I’d be pocketing the cash.

I went over to pokernetwork today and bumped my post asking about when APPT Macau will be. According to newly sponsored pro Grant Levy he believes it’ll kick off on May 6th. If that means the main event starts on May 6th then my intention of going to the Party Poker Million is completely screwed and I’ll be looking for a new route for my trip. If that’s the case I’ve got two options:

A. Go from Melbourne to Macau in early May. Then go from Macau to Hawaii and kill a few days before the LAPT event in Costa Rica since it cuts down my flight and who doesn’t want to go to Hawaii? Depart Hawaii late May for LAPT Costa Rica. Go from LAPT Costa Rica straight north to Las Vegas for the WSOP.

B. Go from Melbourne to Macau in early May. Then, depending on when Macau gets done, go to the Grand Prix de Paris which runs through the 18th of May (this may be impossible.) From there fly home to Wisconsin for a few days and attempt to do my best at not waving my newly found money around my friends and family. Give up on being modest, go to a store I know in downtown Milwaukee, buy the dollar $ suit they have sitting in the front window, as well as a very pimp top hat and cane. Walk up and down the streets slapping people with a wad of $100’s and tell them “Just try and stop me bitch. Hahahahaha!” Then go down to LAPT in Costa Rica where I stay before flying up to the WSOP.

At this point the first option looks considerably more probable considering the Macau event will likely run around eight days like it did last year, making it impossible to get to Paris in time. I’m also not sure I want to bother flying all the way to Europe for a single event. However, not doing this turns my trip into a ‘Around half the world in 90 days’ situation, which turns everything I was intending to do into false advertising. Thoughts on this situation people?

Tomorrow is Monday here, meaning the big Sunday in the states. I’ve planned this one out perfectly though. It’s currently 10:18pm and the first tournament I want to play, the Full Tilt $500 1 million guarantee, starts at 9am. I’m going to finish this writing and a little more I need to do, then smoke a small joint so I have no troubles going straight to sleep, but before I do kill a bit of time playing Call of Duty 4 before I settle myself into bed around midnight. Who knows, I may even get up in time tomorrow to have a run before a big Monday, which would be a first.

The Grand Prix has ended here in Melbourne and the World War 3 like noises exploding outside my window have ceased. Things would appear to be very quiet up until my intended trip which is approximately seven weeks away. Considering I have little to do, am a highly motivated and greedy person, and have a shot of winning the monthly PLB leader board on pocketfives this month I think I may just go all out and see how much I can win before the trip comes up. My friends are getting increasingly occupied, one moving to Malaysia for a time tomorrow, another in school, so I have little to do with myself outside grind and work out. I think if I can collect a couple truly big scores and keep up the volume this just might be possible. We’ll see.

Until yesterday the make-up o’ meter was sitting somewhere around $125,000. The tournaments I play for Timex every week include the $1,000 freeze outs on each site and things like the FTOPS, WCOOP, and a few other events that roll around I jump under his financial security again. The largest amount I had won under him previous to yesterday was around $13,000 when I went deep in a WCOOP event.

Yesterday I won the Absolute Poker $1,000 freeze out for a bit over $33,000. After the scandal I boycotted Absolute for a few months but eventually with the soft $1,000 tournament having its great structure I returned. I’m still not sure how to feel about the issue, but at this point I feel less than criminal playing there. Of course, that’s easy to say after you get your second largest online score ever on it. That brings my make up way out of the six figure area and puts it right back in the upper $80,000 region. If I can get a couple more solid scores under Timex before the summer I’d have a chance of seeing a considerable amount of any score I had playing under him in the live poker tour.

Full Tilt called me the other day to talk about the writing content. The conversation was more informal than I expected which I really liked. When the topic of compensation came up I blurted “Uh, well when it comes to compensation I let my agent Kyle do all the asshole negotiating for me.” They awkwardly laughed and I told them I’d get them his information. Kyle sent them an email explaining who he was and what I’d been doing for Tworags. The only drawback to having Kyle as my agent is that it puts him at a pretty considerable conflict of interest if the deal with Full Tilt involves giving them exclusive rights to the content. The content I’ve put up for Tworags has generated a decent amount of traffic to the site, the site which Kyle owns. That doesn’t necessarily mean that if I signed up with Tilt I’d have to totally leave Tworags, but the amount of content I’d end up generating for them would obviously be greatly reduced.

I also called an acquaintance I know who’s the marketing director in Asia (and was in Australia until recently) for Pokerstars. I mentioned my email and asked whether he got it and he said he had and seemed to remember replying to it. I told him I hadn’t got one and was wondering if he was interested at all. He said he’s not looking at sponsoring any players at the moment. I told him I wasn’t actually looking for sponsorship (he gets asked all the time, hence that kind of answer) but just wondering if he wanted the writing content that was going to come from this trip. His interest perked up a bit and he asked me to resend the email so he could have another look.

Otherwise things have been quiet on the writing front. My editor John over at Pokernews recommended a hand for Bondgirl and I to do for our next article, a hand on High Stakes Poker between Sam Farha and Jamie Gold where Gold runs his KK into Farha’s AA. There’s almost no strategy to really consider in the hand but there’s an absolute ton of table talk, so I basically threw away the blueprint for what I normally write for them and did something way more up my own alley. I sent it off to John considering it about 50/50 whether they’d actually be able to use it. Worst case scenario it ends up on here instead.

The Grand Prix is on in Melbourne, which is Australia’s equivalent to the Indianapolis 500. Unfortunately the race track for it is about a mile away from my flat, meaning several hours of the day (including fairly early in the morning) there’s a constant screaming of engines outside the window at a decibel that’d make you think someone threw a nest of steroid juicing hornets into your apartment. My friends asked if I wanted to get tickets for the race and go on Saturday
“Really? Sweet! This is our chance to see cars drive!”
Nobody caught my Simpsons reference. I guess I can see the appeal if you like hanging out in a huge crowd getting drunk all day (and believe me, there are times when that is the best idea ever) but since I’m off alcohol for the moment that idea doesn’t hold much allure seeing as I don’t really get the sport.

I’ve been off alcohol, soda, and the majority of things that are enjoyable in life for about a month now. I’m running every morning and then stopping by a café to get a coffee to start my morning. I feel so refreshed and ready to go after this that I feel like it’s a decent part of the equation of why I’ve been winning lately. It’s hard laying off the booze when I go out with friends at night, and every time is the same process of being offered a drink, declining, then getting made fun of for several hours. God I hate my friends.

Seriously, fuck day light savings. Fuck it and the sadist communist bastards who invented it in order to annoy people in Australia who have to work on an American schedule. Oh, you think that’s not why they invented it? According to that Wikipedia entry you just read it’s good for the retail economy and leisure activities you say? We’ll fuck Wikipedia and fuck you too.

Naturally it fell on a Monday, which as I’ve said before is Sunday for those of you across the ocean. I decided not to even bother try waking up for anything too early and stumbled out of bed in time for the Full Tilt $750,000 guarantee. I only signed up for around eight tournaments because I could feel I was nowhere near 100%. By the time Celina woke up several hours later it was wearing on me and I had her cover briefly while I took a nap on the couch. When I woke up I started making a run in the Full Tilt mulligan tournament, but ended up busting out deep losing 99 to AQ all in pre flop.

Despite a pretty dull and pointless Monday, I did have an awesome previous day. I went deep in the Stars 50/50 yet again, finishing 3rd for around $5,800, and also got 3rd in the Full Tilt $50 single rebuy add on for a bit under $2,500 continuing what is becoming a very long hot streak. I haven’t done much since, and I’m actually considering taking tomorrow off, though when I think about it that seems unlikely.

I was glancing over the Pokerstars website today and saw they have announced a Latin American Poker Tour. It just so happens that one of these events would fit perfectly into the schedule for the ‘Around the world in 90 days’ trip in late May, the $2,500 tournament in Costa Rica. Speaking of the trip, a friend of mine received an email from Danny McD today that said APPT Macau will be either the first or second week of May. That’s not exactly the news I was hoping for, but I realized if it does happen to fall on the second week of May I could perhaps rearrange my trip so I go to the Party Poker Million trip first, then Macau, then LA, then Costa Rica, and then Las Vegas. If it turns out that way I may even consider going to the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo in mid April and killing the 12 days between its finish and the cruise’s start. Not really sure what I’d do with that time though. Hopefully we get news very soon as to which week it ends up being.

Meanwhile Kyle (Edmond Dantes) has come up with an idea to create my own specific blog page known as GonzoPoker (or was it PokerGonzo, I think it was the first one) and start trying to create a more specific image and get relationships going with poker sites. Getting a site name like that means I’d have to go out and buy all of Hunter S. Thompson’s books so I can steal everything I possibly can as fast as I can. I’ve also decided I should email the man himself, Dr. Pauly, and ask his advice about all this kind of stuff I have going on right now. As much as I’d like to work with a poker site in regards to my content, are they really willing to let a blog entry be titled ‘The Mathematics of Whoring’? I have my doubts. That’s why I kind of like Kyle’s idea. Creating my own site that can both generate income and instead of restricting my style encourage it would be preferable, even if the money isn’t as good as working directly for someone. As a result I’ve asked Kyle to be my quasi agent. Basically, in the event I have to have some form of negotiation with a site I don’t want to come off as a demanding, money grubbing, gouging bastard. God forbid I show them my true colors at that stage. Having someone represent me allows for the ruthless nature that may be required without actually appearing ruthless. Kings to you Edmond.

I finished up writing ‘Things it took me a while to learn part 16’ tonight which will appear on the front page of P5’s before it appears on the blog. I’m going to write part 17, about table image and how to use it, tomorrow night. I had some help from Shaun fucking Deeb for this entry, and I’m going to continue scouting out new guys to bring on board for future entries. I think for the image portion I might go nag someone more LAG than I am like DJK or Charder30 and get their thoughts, since the image portion of strategy is so different based on playing style. Hopefully it results in something insightful.

For the past week I’ve been playing the Bodog Poker Open series of tournaments. It’s good to see the smaller poker rooms making an effort to increase tournament traffic and do something to increase prize pool sizes. Up until yesterday I’d bombed out of every event despite the deep structure. Yesterday was event #4, $150 limit hold’em, a game I haven’t played since the 2007 WSOP.

Limit and no limit hold’em are to poker as Rosie O’Donnel and Jessica Alba are to sex appeal. For about a year during 2005 and 2006 limit was almost the only thing I played. That I’m still alive and possess the majority of my sanity is a true testament to my mental toughness. Still, I played the event because I’m a grinder and that’s what I do. It got something like 180 entrants with a first prize of $10,800.

Despite my limit game being awful, the games of those around me were considerably worse. I also found AA a ton and it held up every time. I ended up coming into the final table with a short stack after getting runner runnered at the final two tables for a major pot. I got things rolling for a while and it wasn’t long until we were 5 handed and I was tied for second. Unfortunately the blinds became enormous and I got involved in a huge pre flop pot with AK verse a guy who cold called a raise and then a 4 bet with AQo. The flop came A Q X and with over half my stack in the middle I got the rest in. The short stack on the table was also all in, so when we both busted I finished 4th for a little under $3,000. I guess things could be worse considering I never play the game.

Unfortunately for me day light savings is going into affect in the US. That means I have to pull my schedule back another hour to play the same tournament line up (which is the only realistic one available to me) and start my days at around 9:30am. So long late night social life. A month later it’ll be another hour, although at that point I may transfer over to more cash games for some deep stack practice leading up to my live poker tour.

Speaking of which, it would really be great if the APPT would go ahead and announce their schedule already. Or at least tell me when the first event is. It’s looking increasingly likely that Macau will be in May and therefore in conflict with the Party Poker Million cruise. I’m not giving hope that they pull it together in late April though. If there is an unavoidable conflict I guess I’d have to skip the cruise since Bondgirl is sponsored for the APPT. I could still do the Grand Prix de Paris then, depending roughly on when Macau finishes, but it seems probable. It’s a long way for one tournament, but I’d hate to go my whole life without being to give first hand examples of why Parisians are pretentious bastards everyone hates.

Meanwhile I’m still awaiting Full Tilts phone call which they said they were giving me three or four days ago about the writing content. Actually, they didn’t specify when they would call, just that they would, though I’m not sure why the large gap between the email and the call. No other site has so much as even sent a rejection email to what I emailed them, so it would appear that Tilt is the only site interested. Perhaps they went and did more research and decided a raving drunk who screams “I’M BOND18 BITCH!” at interview women was not someone they want to be associated with. Or perhaps they’re just a little busy. We’ll likely find out this upcoming week.

I also want to work on adding a few entries to the ‘Things it took me a while to learn’ series this week. I’ve brought Shaundeeb on as a guest writer for the next segment. It’s either going to take me weeks to edit and translate what he writes or I’m going to have to find Deebspellcheck and pay him to make Shaun’s butchered English legible. Still, I’m happy to have him working with me and I like the idea of bringing more and more guest writers on. It allows for a more diverse and thorough thought process, and affords me the chance to take credit for others work while I do less of it myself. Sweet deal if you ask me. Suckers.

I’ve been talking to a few players I respect lately who, for various reasons; be it playing an enormous volume that wore them out or running bad have started questioning how much they want to keep playing the game. One of them, SCTrojans, (who is one of the top players online and best tournament poker minds anywhere) told me he’s thinking of retiring fully except perhaps a few of the WSOP events. I can see how running bad or playing enormous volume can lead to burn out, but full on retirement? When you’ve got knowledge and talent like his, it almost seems like a waste. More equity for me!

I’ve never really thought about quitting and I hate taking vacations. The last time I took a full on vacation from poker I was 20 years old. I ended up playing 12 year olds on a cruise ship at $5 NL. The kids were thrilled to find out they were playing with a real professional who’d played the guys they’d seen on TV, but I sure as hell couldn’t justify taking 12 years old money. Conversely, I felt if I lost they would perhaps find the experienced cheapened. I decided to win a little then donate just about everything back to the nicest kid. I left up 50 cents and slept fine that night.

Taking a break seems especially distant when you’re running as incredible as I am. Not only that, but I really feel like I’m playing excellent poker. I won the UB $120 bounty today for $5,400 and got 2nd in the Stars nightly 50/50 for a bit under $7,500. I had a few other cashes and close calls, but that was it for final tables on the night. Yesterday I took 3rd in the Absolute $30 rebuys for about $2,000 and made a very deep run in the Stars Wednesday $320 but ended up busting at the final 3 tables for about $1,300. There were some really interesting hands from the day I’d like to put here. Some are only for my egos sake, and others might make good discussion.

The first hand comes from the final table of the UB $120 Bounty. The villain in question is ‘BluffmagCV’ better known as Chris Vaughn, the infamous Bluff editor of the Imper1um scandal. I had a feeling he knew who I was since he played extremely aggressive and stationy towards me, seemingly taking every opportunity to do something out of spite. I’m guessing this is a result of my calling him a ‘douchebag extraordinaire’ in the ‘Imper1um Investigation’ article and saying he ‘100% deserved to get fired from Bluff’ in NVG. Seeing as the ‘Imper1um Investigation’ became so widespread and popular that Imp put it on his own website, I’m guessing he read my comments.

During our play I had only 3 bet him once before, a shove with AK for about 16 BB’s. He had been open raising an absolute ton and I knew he was anticipating a 3 bet from me. I was also fully anticipating his 4 bet. Then the following happened:

Hand #51440597-44 at Thu801pm20KBounty-Final (No Limit tournament Hold'em)
Started at 07/Mar/08 00:38:54

basebaldy is at seat 2 with 51780.
muckthenuts is at seat 3 with 156500.
ateddybear is at seat 5 with 73880.
Dallas3333 is at seat 6 with 33575.
BluffMagCV is at seat 9 with 129265.
The button is at seat 9.

basebaldy posts ante (200).
muckthenuts posts ante (200).
ateddybear posts ante (200).
Dallas3333 posts ante (200).
BluffMagCV posts ante (200).
muckthenuts posts the small blind of 1200.
ateddybear posts the big blind of 2400.

basebaldy: -- --
muckthenuts: 9d As
ateddybear: -- --
Dallas3333: -- --
BluffMagCV: -- --

Pre-flop:

Dallas3333 folds. BluffMagCV raises to 7025.
basebaldy folds. muckthenuts re-raises to 21200.
ateddybear folds. BluffMagCV goes all-in for 129065.
muckthenuts calls.

Tournament all-in showdown -- players show:

muckthenuts shows 9d As.
BluffMagCV shows 8d Jd.


Flop (board: Kc 8s Tc):
(no action in this round)
Turn (board: Kc 8s Tc 6d):
(no action in this round)
River (board: Kc 8s Tc 6d Ah):
(no action in this round)
Showdown:

muckthenuts has 9d As Kc Tc Ah: a pair of aces.
BluffMagCV has 8d Jd Kc 8s Ah: a pair of eights.


Hand #51440597-44 Summary:

No rake is taken for this hand.
muckthenuts wins 261530 with a pair of aces.

It took me less than two seconds to call him. Thank God for that river. For what it’s worth, that pre flop call is incredibly awful 99.99% of the time. This was merely a result of how the game was going and the way he was playing against me the whole final table.

The second hand comes from the Full Tilt 30 rebuys tournament. We were fairly deep and the player on my right, Jcamby, is a top 5 ranked P5’er with a ton of success. He plays a pretty aggressive game and I felt like I’d finally found the perfect spot to make a play I’ve been waiting for months to pull:

Full Tilt Poker $22,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t400/t800 Blinds + t100 - 8 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (SB): t27048
BB: t27955
UTG: t23193
UTG+1: t10544
MP1: t63423
MP2: t35322
CO: t25241
BTN: t33800

Pre Flop: Hero is SB with Q T
4 folds, CO raises to t2400, BTN raises to t6400, Hero raises to t26948 all in, 2 folds.

Unfortunately I later made a 3 bet with AK in late position in that tournament and the guy behind me cold 4 bet jammed. I was getting better than 2 to 1 on the call and despite not being an overly active player given the positions, my image, and the pot odds, I was forced to call. He had me in horrible shape with AA and I lost. I busted the next hand with AJs to 88.

The last hand is nothing but a fun hand from my second place finish in the 50/50. It’s pretty self-explanatory and totally awesome. The villain in the hand had AsQs, since it’s not listed in the HH:

Poker Stars $50+$5 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t600/t1200 Blinds - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (UTG+1): t37065
UTG+2: t11579
MP1: t46566
MP2: t14911
CO: t26896
BTN: t20557
SB: t32527
BB: t63690
UTG: t10525

Pre Flop: Hero is UTG+1 with A K
1 fold, Hero raises to t3600, 2 folds, MP2 calls t3600, 3 folds, BB calls t2400

Flop: (t12525) A J K (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t9000, MP2 raises to t11186 all in, BB folds, Hero calls t2186

Turn: (t34897) T (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: (t34897) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

I can’t even remember the last time I made a royal flush online. Glad I was able to make something of it.

Meanwhile, Full Tilt shot me another email and said a supervisor would like to call me about the potential project. I’m highly anticipating talking with them and hopefully their interested in the whole of the content. Odds I say something really stupid and dealing breaking: 3 to 1.

I was glancing through NVG in 2+2 today, apparently in the mood to destroy my brain cells. For those who don’t know, NVG is mostly a cesspool of morons discussing which pro they think has the worst hair cut or how much it would cost to sleep with Brandi Hawbacker. There was an actual worthwhile thread today though about Shaniac’s latest blog entry and I went and looked over his entry. I’ve glanced over Shane’s blog before but never in great detail. I met Shane during the Aussie Millions and he’s a very nice guy, despite his somewhat controversial image for being an integrity watch dog in an online world mostly run amok by stoned 19 year olds with questionable morals. Not that I have anything against 19 year olds or stoned people. I shot Shaniac a PM on 2+2 and asked him if he would be willing to give me some constructive criticism about my writing, especially considering what I’m going to undertake. Here’s his message back to me:

A few things I noticed in no particular order:

1) Make sure you are always using the right word, and if you're not sure about the meaning or usage of a word, find a simpler word. In fact, going with the simpler will usually make the writing better. Maybe not the best example, but you used "censure" (which means to harshly criticize) when you meant "censor."

2) Less is more. If you can express the same thought in 5 words as opposed to 50 words, it's generally preferable. Concise writing has a better chance of succeeding and keeping your audience's attention than overcomplicated sentences and sentiments do.

My father once showed me an instructional video on writing in which an entire paragraph was displayed on the screen. An invisible hand took an eraser to the paragraph, removing and adding words (editing the statement) until all that was left was one word, which expressed the same thing as the formerly long paragraph.

Almost my entire process consists of editing and revising, and I think that applies to most of the good writers I know. Also, I am fairly discriminating with my choice of details. Usually, there is a lot of stuff that I'd like to include in my entry, but I leave it out in order to help the writing flow better. Learning how to compromise and sacrifice is a big part of my process.

3) Pay attention to your "template" a little bit more, especially the size of your paragraphs, which are often dauntingly long and should be broken down into two or three segments.

Also, it's a minor point, but to avoid making the page look jumbled I think you should make sure to put a space between your writing and the presentation of the stacks:

If this:

"The player in this hand was well known online player ‘yellowsub’. In my analysis I’ll be paraphrasing a post djk123 made in the thread, so he also deserves some credit. The tournament is the Full tilt $500+50 Sunday Million. We are without reads.
MP2: 4908
Hero: 4940
Hero holds Ah Qh on the CO."

Looked like this:

"The player in this hand was well known online player ‘yellowsub’. In my analysis I’ll be paraphrasing a post djk123 made in the thread, so he also deserves some credit. The tournament is the Full tilt $500+50 Sunday Million. We are without reads.

MP2: 4908
Hero: 4940
Hero holds Ah Qh on the CO."

it would make the whole thing a lot easier to read.

4) Avoid the temptation to capitalize or misspell words (like "VASTLY" or like "pleeeeeaaaaase") when trying to add emphasis. The power of the words should speak for itself. Italics are OK occasionally. An exclamation point used sparingly is OK (not great), but a series of exclamation points (!!!!!) is a mortal sin.

Also, not a huge deal, but I'd brush up on correct comma usage. I spotted a couple mistakes, mostly related to dependent/independent clause. Not a big deal, but I think prefect punctuation is very useful in the process of clarifying your thoughts.

Obviously, it doesn't matter much when you're posting on the internet, or in a variety of written situations these days, but I think that good, old-fashioned punctuation and grammar (not that you can't use slang and be creative, etc.) does a lot to add credibility and longevity to your writing.

5) This sentence sums up some of the problems with your writing:

"Not quite as much as Anton Chigurh would prefer I bet, but losing a $12,000 flip still feels pretty terrible. I didn’t per say ‘lose’ $12,000, which of course would be much worse, but it seems similar."

First of all, "per say" is "per se," from the Latin phrase that translates to "by itself." Getting that wrong reflects badly on you as an author. Secondly, the word "bet" in this sentence sort of confuses your point: What's going on, a bet? A coinflip? I also don't know what you mean when you say "Anton Chigurfh would prefer" in this context, but if you were going to write those words out, you would need to insert a comma between "prefer" and "I." Also, as a blogger, you might want to put Anton Chigurh as a hyperlink, because I'm not sure the reference would be common enough knowledge.

If I were your editor and had to re-write the sentence, it would look something like:

"Probably not as much as you would have lost against Anton Sigurgh, but $12K still seems like a lot. Although I didn't exactly 'lose twelve thousand dollars,' which would be much worse, it feels similar."

I took out "of course" and some other superfluous words, I switched "feels" and "seems," and I tried to convey the same sentiment in a clearer, more straightforward way. (Of course, you might think I failed miserably and that my version sucks.)

In any case, the volume of your output is impressive, as is your willingness and ability to discuss and analyze strategic elements of the game. I could never do what you're doing, so take my criticisms with a grain of salt.

In general, my advice would be to flirt/experiment with the idea of expressing these same deep concepts, but more efficiently and by using fewer examples and less words. Make sure they are as tight as possible--that will give your writing more room to breath and ultimately give you a stronger ability to express yourself.

I hope these comments were helpful, and I'd be happy to offer more (or to **** off) depending on how you liked 'em.

Shane

PS: This is a great resource http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

I really appreciate Shane taking his time to help me improve my work, and I told him if there’s ever anything else to add I’d appreciate his thoughts. I told him the only thing I disagreed with was using example hands, since I think they are perhaps the best way of outlining a concept in a more applicable manner when it comes to strategy talk.

There were a few things though I forgot to ask him about, so I’ll direct him to this entry later. I’d also like the reader’s thoughts so by all means make some comments if you have any ways for me to improve.

1. Shane mentions not using things like ‘VASTLY’ or ‘pleeeeeeease’ for emphasis, but what about for someone’s dialogue? I’ve always liked writing dialogue as close as possible to how I heard it, and that means huge capitol letters and long run on words. Thoughts on keeping those in only during dialogue writing?

2. I’ve always been very bad at going over my work and editing it. The truth is I normally just throw things together on the fly, especially when traveling. Somtiems I’m so excited to get things up on the forums and give people the story of how it all happened that I don’t even reread it once before posting. How much time do quality writers spend revising what they’ve written?

3. Wow, I look fucking stupid when I get per se wrong huh?

4. I’m looking to find a balance between my personal, exaggerated, over the top style and traditionally constructed and quality writing. Any thoughts on finding a balance?

All right that’s all for tonight. I just went back and edited this blog entry. My God does that make a difference in quality.