Intro and a little history

This blog is intended to chronicle and track my live poker exploits, give me some feedback on play and hopefully provide an interesting read for someone out there.

I'll start with my background in poker. Like many poker players in their 20's, I started playing poker in college (post Moneymaker) and quickly became hooked. I played small tourneys, dabbled online and eventually began taking trips to Vegas and LA. I loved the challenge and having some extra cash while in school wasn't bad either. I built a small bankroll, but mostly spent my winnings on car parts, booze and skiing. In my junior year one of my roommates (and the poker player I learned the most from) decided to quit school and move to Vegas; I wasn't stoked on school and considered joining him and taking a break for a while. I decided to stay at CU and figured I'd give poker a shot in the future, probably the best decision I made in college.
After I graduated (B.S. Mechanical Engineering) I planned a one month stay in Vegas with another poker buddy. We rented a room from craigslist and had one hell of a time. I have a bunch of crazy stories from this trip, but I'll save them for a future post when I'm low on material. To sum things up we played the night shift at the Wynn the majority of the time, with a few other poker rooms sprinkled in. I ran like fire for the first week then cooled off a bit near the end of the trip. It was all over too fast... I went back to finish up one more class, moved to Seattle to help out some family, competed on the US Freeskiing tour for a season, and moved to San Diego where I landed a sweet job. During that time I played occasionally but mostly for fun and never for very high stakes. My trips to Vegas and Commerce have started to pick up and my interest in poker has been growing.

That leads me to now. I want to define some poker goals (for the short- and long-term) and keep a detailed account of my pursuit of these goals. I have no aspiration to become a full-time poker player; I love engineering and find it much more fulfilling than spending all my time at the casino. That being said I am considering taking an extended "vacation" from work to go to Vegas for the WSOP. I plan to play mostly cash games (2-5NL, 5-10NL and occasionallly 10-20NL if the game looks good), single table sats at the Rio and possibly a WSOP event or two. Whether I get to stay the whole month or not will depend on work schedule and some other factors but so far things are looking good.

My goals for the summer:
1. Sat. in to a WSOP event, (pretty confident I can pull this off)
2. Take a shot at a ME sat. (either a super sat. or a single table)
3. Score a 5-figure day (in tourney or cash)
4. Stay away from table games (don't have a huge problem but ...)
5. Take better care of myself while playing (my last stint in Vegas I forgot to eat and sleep most of the time and ended up pretty strung out)

My next trip to Vegas is April 16-19th, I plan to play one $500 MTT (DSE at Venetian or WSOPC at Caesar's) and the rest of the time grind the 5-10NL at the Wynn. I'll update with a full TR and some pictures on the way home.