July 16th, 2009

Quick update:

1) I moved to Boulder, Colorado in mid-May. I can't stand to live with my parents more than about a week and so exactly 7 days after moving out of my apartment, I packed up my gear with what meager possions I have and took off for Colorado. It took 23 hours of solid driving with a few breaks to let Sam out.

2) I love Boulder. I tell everybody it is my slice of heaven. I moved into a house with 4 other people. Two are assholes and hate me for no reason that I know of. And they don't clean up after themselves AT ALL. I'm talking just getting food and dishes out and not even making the attempt. I also would like to know whats going through their mind. Obviously I don't like them much. But the house itself is cool, albeit dirty. Sammy has two doggy friends and a huge backyard to play. Trails abound only a 5 minute walk from my house and I consequently take Sammy on a lot of walks.

3) There is also good rock climbing. Really good. Really close. A 5 minute drive and a two minute walk takes you to world class granite, sandstone and volcanic cliffs that tower 500-1000 feet in the air. And I've climbed a lot of them. All I do here is climb. I had a 13 day stretch where I climbed at least 6 hours everyday, without a break. It was super intense and needless to say, I slept well. It's hard to express how amazing the rock climbing is here.

4) I guess this is sort of a poker blog so I should at the veery least mention it. Umm....when I first got here I played a couple days of tournies because I didn't have any friends and finally swept a 1st place for like $5k. And I think I FT'd 5 or 6 in a pretty short period as well and ended up making quite a bit of cash. I logged on for the first time in about a month and swept some dude for $900 in about 15 mins. It was nice cause it paid for my sister's two week stay here where I paid for the 6 days a week we ate out. Coming off two years in a poor country like Moldova, my sister can spend a lot of money.

5) I finally made the trip to Seattle to visit Becky and climb Mt. Baker. We succesful summitted without any big set backs. We did get lost on the way back and ended up hiking about 18 hours in one day, like ~15 miles and about 13,000 vertical feet. But it was really good. Really good. So good I asked her if she could go anywhere in the world, where would she go. She said NZ. So we talked about it a bit more, for maybe 5 minutes, and bought two tickets to New Zealand. We leave Sept 26th and our return date is Feb 28th, 2010 but that very well might get pushed back a couple months if we need more time.

The plan is to rock climb, surf, climb mountains (20 mountains over 10,000 feet; our goal being Mt. Cook at 12,300 and pretty technical), tramping (backpacking), ice climbing and learn to base jump/sky dive. Also caving and kayacking. And other extreme sports like bungee jumping. Snowboarding, cross-country sking and probably snow shoeing. Everything! It's going to be such a sick trip. I'm so excited-- I want to leave right now.

I think that's about it for updates. Sam is doing good. My sister was kicked out of the peace corps for taking a two day trip to the beach. It's pretty shitty but now she is back in the US and was just accepted to University of Colorado, Denver. I'm super excited because it gives me a good excuse to return to CO.

Rocking in a $10r PLO and $50r right now. 52/70 in PLO and 91/119 in the $50. Guess not so rocking, better actually focus and pay attention now.

May 8th, 2009

Another long gap between posts. Been pretty busy in the meantime. I don't really want to write too much so I'll just make a short list.
1) I herniated my disk. It took 3 weeks to get a shot. The person who was in charge of getting it cleared through the insurance was a complete idiot and pretty much lied over and over again saying she was doing shit while she wasn't doing anything. So it took three weeks for it to happen...all the while I was seriously bedridden and in pretty intense pain. It was probably the worst three weeks of my life. I just popped vicadon's and cried because I couldn't do anything. Oh, and I just gotten a dog which made it 100x worse/better. Worse because I had to take him out all the time which was obv hard when I could hardly walk. Better because he could keep me company. But anywho, I finally got the shot/operation and although it took a week, I'm finally starting to recover.
2) I got a dog. It's a mini-Aussi shepred and is, without a doubt, the best dog ever. He is super smart, chill and can deal with anything (long car rides, swimming, hot/cold days, etc). Without further ado, here are some pics...

When I first got him.


Taken about a week ago.


3)I'm finally able to climb again. I just got back from two nights in Tahoe where I did a bit of bouldering. Nothing too hard but it was still awesome.

4) I moved out of my apartment. It turned out to be the worst situation possible. Long story short is that they fucked up and didn't give me the right form or tell me I needed a "pre walk through" so they could tell us what was broken, etc. To be honest, if we had done the pre walk through thing it would have been awesome because they would have said everything is broken and you need new carpets, etc. and then we would have said fuck it and not cleaned anything. But as it was, we spent a whole freaking day cleaning (Ok, like two hours spread over a whole day but it was still hard work) and then the walk through didn't mean anything and its likely I won't see any of my secrity deposit back. Oh well, fuck 'em. I'm pretty glad to be out of there.

I think that's about it. I really haven't done much because of my back. I still haven't found a van but continue to look. I figure if I don't find anything the Honda will suffice.

I'm actually starting to play a bit more poker since moving out as well. I had a pretty sick run of MTT's, hitting 4 or 5 FT's in 2 days for some serious cash. The shitty part is that I keep getting 5th-9th. I used to win tournies every time I got to the FT but I was clearly running pretty hot. It'd still be nice to have a huge score rather than these good but not great 5th-9th.

March 24th, 2009

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve updated this blog and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. I’ve done very little pokering over the last month (as in the last 6 months) but am just starting to get back into it for a big push in April, hopefully making at least $30,000.

But a first a quick life recap: Took a trip down to San Louis Obisbo to meet up with some old high school buddies I haven’t seen for at least 4 or 5 years. The minute I got there they threw me on a mountain bike and off we went. Mountain biking is about 100x harder than I thought it would be. First, you just have to get to the top of the hill/mountain which is hell. You go about ½ mile an hour and it’s just plain not fun. All you can do is slug away at it, going super slow, having to pay close attention to the rocks and pretty much dying. Going down is supposed to be the really fun part but my seat wouldn’t lower so I didn’t have the right center of gravity or something and pretty much sucked it up so a bunch of walkers kept passing me as I would have to get off my bike, carry it, and run down the steep parts...looking quite silly in the process.

That night, I ate some of Luke’s raw meat and ended up puking for about 6 hours the next morning. Mmm…raw meat. So Kiel and I got a late start going to Joshua Tree and didn’t get there until midnight. The campground was full so I ended up “sleeping” in the car while Keil struck it out into the desert where he found a nice little cave to sleep in. But! It was all worth it because when we woke up, the sun was out and the mountains were shining and calling us to climb. To make a long story short, we had a blissful next week. Set off in the morning, find a secluded gorge and climb all day.

So that was all good. I was set on buying a van, getting a dog and living the climbing bum life style. But then my sister’s best friend from college died, she came home and we went up to Seattle for the memorial and so that’s all been putting a stop to getting ready. I’ve still been buying stuff left and right and have most of what I need for rock climbing. Now I just need to work on getting the gear together for Mounteering and ice climbing as I’m climbing Mt. Hood on April 11th. I’ll have to start getting some pictures up.

March 24th, 2009

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve updated this blog and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. I’ve done very little pokering over the last month (as in the last 6 months) but am just starting to get back into it for a big push in April, hopefully making at least $30,000.
But a first a quick life recap: Took a trip down to San Louis Obisbo to meet up with some old high school buddies I haven’t seen for at least 4 or 5 years. The minute I got there they threw me on a mountain bike and off we went. Mountain biking is about 100x harder than I thought it would be. First, you just have to get to the top of the hill/mountain which is hell. You go about ½ mile an hour and it’s just plain not fun. All you can do is slug away at it, going super slow, having to pay close attention to the rocks and pretty much dying. Going down is supposed to be the really fun part but my seat wouldn’t lower so I didn’t have the right center of gravity or something and pretty much sucked it up so a bunch of walkers kept passing me as I would have to get off my bike, carry it, and run down the steep parts...looking quite silly in the process.
That night, I ate some of Luke’s raw meat and ended up puking for about 6 hours the next morning. Mmm…raw meat. So Kiel and I got a late start going to Joshua Tree and didn’t get there until midnight. The campground was full so I ended up “sleeping” in the car while Keil struck it out into the desert where he found a nice little cave to sleep in. But! It was all worth it because when we woke up, the sun was out and the mountains were shining and calling us to climb. To make a long story short, we had a blissful next week. Set off in the morning, find a secluded gorge and climb all day.
So that was all good. I was set on buying a van, getting a dog and living the climbing bum life style. But then my sister’s best friend from college died, she came home and we went up to Seattle for the memorial and so that’s all been putting a stop to getting ready. I’ve still been buying stuff left and right and have most of what I need for rock climbing. Now I just need to work on getting the gear together for Mounteering and ice climbing as I’m climbing Mt. Hood on April 11th. I’ll have to start getting some pictures up.

Sunday, Feb 15th

It's one of those "I wrote a long post but it got #@#)* deleted" so fuck blogs type deal. I actually wrote it like two weeks ago and have been pretty lazy since.

Poker: I got a big staking deal. I didn't cash the first 30 tournies or so then rocked a quick 3rd in the 50/50 for $5k. Now I'm blowing through all my profits playing the Sunday majors. I think I'll even pony up $500 for the FTOPS main event today. Its in 4 hours though so I'll probably have pounded my head 3 feet deep into a wall because of bad beats by then.

Life: I rock climb a lot. Almost everyday I'm either at the gym or going to some place around Sacramento to find some boulders. I'm getting ready to go crazy and buy all the gear so I can start doing some rope climbing.

Video games: been playing wayyyy too many. I just bought GTA4 which it turns out is the best cure for tilt ever. Lose a 95/5? Go blow some fuckers heads off. Just grab that shotgun, walk up to some bitches and really get that muzzle in close and BOOM. I realize I sound mildly crazy but whatever.

Ok, gotta concentrate on my tournies. BIG BIG BIG

Feb 2nd: Superbowl, etc

It’s been another good week, albeit a pretty relaxing one. I mostly chilled at my apartment playing a combination of Dawn of War 2 Beta, CoD4, Magic Online and DoTA thrown in for good measure. But I’ve also been putting in 500-1000 hands AND,more importantly, winning money. I’m up a couple K this week even though I had a stupid thing happen to me during the superbowl.

I was actually watching the game pretty diligently because I had some money on the game. Well, during half time I decide it’d be good to put in some hands. I get two really bad players, both down like 40k in TR, who precede to own me for 6 buy-ins. It was pretty sick; 3 and 4 outters on the river and the whole deal. Then I sat there for the whole second half grinding back, got most of my 6 buy-ins back and then just when the game is over, make some really bad plays and give it all back again. I think I ended down 2.4k or so.

1/26/09

I spent the week down in Palm Springs visiting my Grandparents and rock climbing in Joshua Tree. It was a good trip, overall, but driving 8 hours is never really worth it. At least, for the time being, it has motivated me to play some poker and I even did a sweet session (which quickly turned into a Magic the Gathering Online sweet session once he saw that on my desktop).

One funny thing down there was that I walked into the poker room and low and behold, JERRY FREAKING YANG was playing some $2/5! I got all my money ($120!) and sat down. I sat next to Jerry and talked to him for a bit but quickly got bored with live poker and shoved KJo into AQ PF AI. Def worth it to talk to JERRY FREAKING YANG though.

It’s obviously been quite awhile since I’ve posted anything which is mostly due to the fact that A) I hardly play any poker anymore (which is weird as you’ll find out soon) B) I don’t do all that much in RL C) And the main reason; I thought I was down huge over the last 3 or 4 months.
For the last 3 or 4 months it seemed like I didn’t have a winning session. I would jump on, put in 200 or 300 hands HU or 1k hands in 6max and seemingly get crushed. I’d normally say fuck it after the 3rd or 4th beat/bad play and not log on for another week. But this whole time I never looked at PT3 or OPR and just assumed I was losing my whole BR because while, that’s what it felt like. BUT, it turns out that I’m up like tons of money.
Here is my last 120 days on FTP (+6k)-
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/fulltiltpoker/Ricky_Travel/poker/results/F2CFBF37F37C4EE59BD60459E458ABF1.html?t=2
And here PS (+9k)-
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/pokerstars/rolonrolon/poker/results/916779D9A61645CE9FC07FF0062B36FB.html?t=2
And lastly my graph since 10/19-


(On Stars I’m up like $30 over 30k hands, mostly ½ 6max)

So I’m actually up almost $20k in the last 4 months although I’m probably down $2k live + that Vegas trip which was -$5kish. This makes me all very happy and reinvorgerates me to play more. Other very good news is that the UIGEA looks closer and closer to being repealed and online poker legalized in the US again. Which, naturally, would be sick and probably mean that I’d take a year off life and actually do the grind thing.
Life stuff: I’m heading to Palm Springs tomorrow to see the Grandparents and rock climb at Joshua Tree. I’m moving out of my apartment Feb 28th and take off to China March 1st. I plan on enrolling in BLCU so I actually learn Chinese and then hopefully I can get a job in Microfinance. Other than that, just be chilling and reading a ton. I got really into Magic Online after reading a thread on 2p2 about it and played for about 36 hours straight. It was so sick. But like most things, I had to stop because I can’t seem to do moderation well.
Cheers!
Rolon

Lastly, here is a pic from Thailand. This is at Krabbi beach-- my favorite place in the entire world. My sister and I kyacked around this super calm, bay with these huge sheer cliffs all over the place that were perfect for climbing. So we'd kyack out to one of these little islands and I'd just stand up and start climbing.