Hey guys,

Not too much to report other than the Climax bonspiel is over for my team for this year.  We lost our first game which put us in the second event.  However we got on a roll and won the rest of our games and got first in the second.  When the picture comes out next week in the paper maybe I'll post it. 

Last night was the dance and the calcutta.  Which pretty much is when people auction style bid to  buy a team for the grand challenge which is today.  The top four teams get the owner paid out to with certain percentages and the team who gets first wins 5% of the calcutta.  I gave the nice young lady who bought our team a couple of complimentary dances just in case we didn't make her any money.   We came out strong in our first match today but were up a strong team and we couldn't quite pull the win out and lost by 2 but it was really close and it is always enjoyable to have a nice competitive game.  Nothing now to do but get ready for our home spiel that is in a weeks time.

On the poker front nothing really that interesting at all.  Just playing, trying to get in hands and get the money in good.  I have been playing only 2 tables instead of 4 and trying to concentrate more on play and stealing a few more mid size pots with semi bluff type hands.

Farming is still farming.  Took the semi in last week to get it checked out and it is still in the shop.  However I like fixing these things before they cause me a major problem when I need it the most.  Also I think our fertilizer is coming next week so I'll have to be ready for that and shift some things around so our fert bins are empty.  For fertilizer you can't have straight steel bins because the fert is too corrosive and would eat the bin up in a year so you need coated bins that last longer but ours are full of seed so some shuffling will be done. 

I've been keeping up with the olympics as well and will be excited to watch the hockey game tomorrow.  I'll prob write a bigger update later since it seems like there is so much to say.  However I'm very proud of our athletes and the games that my country put on.  It was really nice to see that we could pull through in the clutch, even though the pressure was on big time.  Well hope everyone is keeping their sticks on the ice. 

Well I've been writing all morning so I thought a blog post was deserving.  Oh the excitement that is upon us this week.  Today is my first game in the Climx Curling Bonspiel.  So hopefully we have a good showing tonight and win the all important first game.  For those of you who don't know a bonspiel is like a curling tournament.  Except you usually have a few events depending on the number of teams entered.  So if you win you stay in the A event, and if you lose you get bumped to the B, if you lose again you go to the C.  This is only really important because it determines the prize you get at the end.  So you are designated a certain prize say if you get 2nd in the B event.  Not that I do it for that but just because I like to win.  Someone always has to win and it might as well be me and I've been paying attention to the curling in the olympics so I think my strategy is right on.  So keep looking for updates, and I might even start a thread in the forums on it just for fun.

On the work front I have three articles to do in the coming weeks.  I just finished one on fertilizer prices and evening out the variance in the pricing.  Next I'm working on one to do with herbicide resistant weeds, and then I'll move on to a crop vs weed staging article and the prime time to pick the weeds out of a healthy crop.  So I'll be crushing out some phone calls emails and plain old writing in the coming couple weeks.

On the poker front things have been rather pleasing the last couple days.  I have bounced back to win a few buyins back.  Which sure is nice even though I'm not winning as many 80 20 situations as I'd like but such is life.  The fact I'm not losing them all is making me happy.  I even won a 60 40.  Amazing I know.  On top of that I received a $50 bonus that I am clearing from Full Tilt for being active these last few months.  I'm not sure if the promotion is rake driven or hand driven but a bonus is always nice and $50 is enough to bolster the bankroll enough to inspire a little more confidence in my play since it seems like I'm winning more than I home.  Hope everyone has a great start to the week and keep your chips in your own stack, unless maybe a blonde is involved.

Well the weenkend has come and the weekend has almost gone and what have I really done.  Not much to tell you the truth.  Friday was mainly spent pumping out another article on fertilizer prices and how to deal with price variance.  Thursday was a nice day and we finished hauling what we could haul.  So work wise the week finished well.

Poker has still been pretty blah lately.  Continue to play well however I still seem to be losing too many 80/20 situations to make real progress.  However things are always looking up and you can't do much but get your money in good and hope to hold.  I played without my hud for the last couple days as well but I brought it back just for the instant equities and hand histories that it gives me right after a hand.  It is much easier for actual hands but I still use pro poker tools for range equities.  The stats are really a secondary tool for me.  So nothing much more to report there but just to keep fighting the fight.

Friday I decided to try that chatroulette site.  What an expirience that was though not many interesting things to report however I may go for some crazy captures this week if I go back on.  Really its like Rush Random video chat.  However it sure does give the not so good looking girls some self esteem as any girl on there is a highly sought after chat partner.  I think ones willing to expose themselves are even higher.  However I did notice a shift to more pairs of girls last night, some in positions I can only imagine were extolling themselves for action.  However I haven't mastered getting those types to chat with me.  The only interesting converstation I had was with this girl off the east coast and we discussed the philisophical obligations of the power of society.  She believes the power is in the elected officials and I say that power is in society but we elect officials to deal with the problems we don't want to.  Anyways interesting none the less.  I suggest you try it out if you don't mind seeing male genitals every third or fourth camera.

The olympics continue as well and we are still looking strong however we have had some disappointing finishes. However some of those like the Hamelin brothers in short track speed skating are maybe from trying too hard and not just racing their race.  However its doesn't really matter as long as the effort is there, some more medals will come.  Today the Canada/US mens hockey game is on and that will be fun to watch.  Obv, the Canadians are the stronger team but if they don't play well can lose.  However this win today would all but lock up the A pool for Canada. 

Been watching the mens and womens curling too and we are dominating in that.  And Ross if your reading this and can pull some strings I'd sure like to meet the womens skip for Great Britain Eve Muirhead from Scotland.  Just throwin that out there, or even the Swiss third, or the entire Danish team.  Anyways thats all for now, so everyone have a good Sunday and keep the chips in your own stack.

Hey PC,

Another week has come and another week is almost gone.  The weekend will be here before we know it.  Once again things are just rolling along pretty much as they should.  One more set of loads to the terminal and then hopefully I am done hauling grain for awhile.  However it gets pretty boring just rocking the big wheel up and down the road.  Can't even check anything on my phone because if you get caught even looking at your phone its a $300 fine since the new year.  So it's just driving and then watchin my portable DVD player in the lineup which can get to be a couple hours long to unload.  However it is worse in some other places.  One year in Brazil people were waiting for days to get unloaded and for some guys they had their soybeans sprout in the trucks due to the humidity and such.

Other than that we are getting our floors redone so that is all tore up right now.  Luckily however the crew is good and are taking care of everything so I don't have to be around to supervise which is nice.

Still working on my poker game as much as possible.  Tried to play so $10 rush  6max last night to give it a try.  Got it in as an 82% fav and lost.  It was a weird hand.  I had tt89 and the flop was 67t.  I pot and guy calls(I was 96% at this point).  Turn is a J and I still have the nuts so I pot he raises I shove he flips JJ45 and the river pairs so gg me.  Other than that I just need to put in the volume.  I have been crushing and have a good read on my opponents so I just need some more run good this weekend.  Nothing to do but keep working and grinding and putting in hands.  Thats all one can do and the results will come.  I realized that when I have been getting it in with the mid-top of my range I am usually a 60% fav against the top of the opponents range.  Therefore if I can get it in against the middle of their range I'll be crushing hard and the buyins will come rolling in.  Well keep the chips in your stacks.

Hey PC Nuts out there,

Well another weekend has come and gone and what an eventful weekend it was.  Of course this weekend was the start of the olympics in Vancouver so I watched as much of that as I could.  Our team looks real strong this go round and I'm proud of them all and my country.  Too bad we didn't hold on to a couple of medal positions that we held especially in the mens moguls.  We had three men in the top 5 and really four as one guy who ski's for Australia was born and raised in BC and learned to ski there.  So I was real happy when AB took him down for the gold.  The guy who got silver looked pissed but what do you expect when you had the same run but did it slower.  The judges were spot on with their marking I thought. 

Also I felt bad for one of our speed skaters.  He is in the top three in the world and the top three in the world ended up all in the same semi final heat and only two make it.  Tough go there so what can you do.  We even medaled in the womens 1500 which isn't one of our best events.  I expect to see Canada to be moving up in the medal standings hopefully into 2nd or even 1st once the boys and girls really hit their stride so Go Canada Go!

Other than that it was a quiet weekend just a little bit of work threw in here and there for fun.  Today is family day here but we still have business to take care of.  So we shall do that then it will be back in the big wheel tomorrow for a couple days.  Such is the life of a ramblin man. 

Poker went well this weekend and I can say that I am out of my downsiwng.  However for bankroll reasons I decided to move down a level.  I have def. been crushing and getting my money in way too good way too many times and getting paid off when I shouldn't be.  So until I bang out some major wins here I might skip a level and go right to $25 which I think I am more comfortable at since I played there for a few months a couple years ago just for something to do.  So now that I'm back to crushing out daily wins though I think I will stay here for awhile.  See were the rest of the month takes me.  However at the same time eventually I'll have to challenge myself again but I'll have to get some BR back and then challenge myself.  Hopefully this move in the long run will gain me a greater edge for the next time I move up.

Later Gators and don't get felted.

Hey guys,

Oh the pandemonium continues in the life of jpeterson007.  Which is not neccessarily a bad thing because if everything was easy all the time we wouldn't have any experiences to grow from.  Today and yesterday I have been busy with what people would deem real work. 

Thursday was a quick big day in the city.  Running around doing all sorts of farm business types of things.  Most notably I joined the world of high tech cell phones.  I had a nice phone before but with the amount of time I spend outside in the summer it will be a great  asset to me to be able to read emails, and the like from my phone without having to go back to the yard to do it.  I also joined the world of high fashion with some new glasses frames as well for good.  It's the first new pair I've had in about seven years and boy things have sure changed.  Anyways I am now movin up in the world I guess though I usually just find it easier to change everyone elses opinion than go with what I think is cool.  Funny how that works.

Got home expecting some work to do but all the machinery that was plugged in to keep the oil warm, flipped an electrical breaker so it all had to wait until this morning to be done.  This morning we moved some snow and then loaded up our grain hauling trucks.  One hauls about 20 metric tonnes and the other about 30.  We have to take our grain to an inland terminal that is a 120 mile round trip and we make two trips a day.  We got by today with one small snafu and one larger one.  One of our trucks we realized after it was loaded(55000 pounds total) had a flat inside tire on the back.  So we only made three total trips today which means an extra half day spent for that load.  Also since it is so heavy we will have to unload it then get it repaired and load it back up again.  Oh well these things happen and its really not the worst thing I've ever seen. 

Poker wise things are still on the downhill slide.  Played a few sessions over the last couple of nights and still ran terrible.  In a few thousand hands I've been all in about ten times and won two of them.  Oddly enough they came at the start of my session last night and I had hope for awhile that my run bad was over after holding in some big pots.  Then I lost the next 6 straight.  Two of them I was 88% and 85% on the flop and about the same or slightly more on the turn.  One guy binked off runner runner flush, and the other binked off a runner runner straight.  The other four two were regular 75%-80% favs.  and two were flipping to 60% fav situations. 

I'm not sure if I can play much better or not it's really hard to say.  Time to take a look at my game and try to find some equity elsewere or try atleast.  It is hard, and at times I think me and Zimba are having a who can run worse contest as he is in the same boat as I am, getting hish money in as a large favourite, even in holdem standards and getting drawn out on.  Maybe one day we'll both go on life heaters and barely lose again.  One can only hope.  Hopefully everyone has a great weekend and stays safe. 

Hey Poker Curious Nuts

Well the sun keeps rising and the world keeps spinnin round.  Not too too many interesting things to report here.  Been taking things this week a little easy but keeping productive.  Got a photo radar ticket yesterday so yay for me.  Not much I can do about that one.  Its always nice when they seem to place the photo radar just inside or outside of a zone were the speed changes.  Makes it easier to catch people who speed up a little early or slow down late.

Might actually be busy here in the next few days even though I know that must be hard to believe.  Have to make the trek to the city tommorrow for some important farm business type things.  Make sure everything is in order.  It is always nice however because farmers probably have the best loyalty programs around and we get plenty of promotional items to wear and use.

After that it will be time to haul out the big rigs and get them ready for next week since we will have some durum wheat to haul, as long as the rail road gets the cars there on time.  But since they have sat for awhile it'll be important to make sure everything on them is looking good and make sure the air systems are working fine so I don't end up with no brakes halfway down the road.

I continue to struggle with the win rate in poker right now so I am really trying to leak find in my game and help myself instead of just jamming it in and losing as a a favourite.  I think I am really going to have to look at how I'm playing against shortstacks.  It seems I lose too much to them even with my premium hands that flop well.  The thing is they like to get it in in marginal spots and sometimes it is hard to put them on a hand range since they will call with 44106 with no suits.  However I am still well within the bounds of normal variance for PLO so I guess I shouldn't be too worried.  I played well last night and would have posted a huge win if I had won a couple flips and one big 70/30 I had.  I also had to make some folds late in the session on river cards that seemed to get me into bet fold situations.  However I don't like to blame running bad for all of it so I will be trying to get things back under control here and start posting consecutive winning sessions.    

Well another weekend has come and gone and were did the time go.  Well most of it was spent watching the young girls from PEI try and take down a women's national curling championship.  However they came up just short in the final against team Canada.  I'm not sure exactly what happened but they gave up a lead late in the game they never recovered from which shocked me, even though they had a chance to win it.  I feel bad for the young skipper as she had a shot to win but her team psychologically talked her out of it, when they had two choices.  Make your shot to win, or hope the other team makes a mistake in the extra end to lose it.  My choice in these situations has always been to control my own destiny and win the game.  Oh well it was exciting and enjoyable.

This weekend also saw the Saints win the super bowl.  I can't say I'm surprised really, as it came down to a battle of the gunslingers and Peyton made one more mistake than Brees did just like Favre did before.  It seems to me that the Saints defense just leaned on teams in the playoffs until they made a crucial mistake late.  Can't say enough about that young lon legged gazelle kicker for New Orleans either.  Three over 40 field goals on one of the biggest stages in the world which is a new record.    However both teams did play great and it was one of the better games I think I've seen in awhile.

Poker was pretty meh this weeked.  I dropped a few buyins due to some varaince which is a minor setback in my goals for this month.  Just have to come back stronger this week.  Most of it was variance, a little of it was me not playing my best and one of them was me misreading my hand and getting it in terribly vs top set.  However I did finish with a strong session last night.  Played well against the regs, and crushed the dreams of many short stackers.  However it takes way more victories over shortstackers so I probably would have preferred to have took half as many victories of deep stacks.  Oh well thats how the proverbial cookie crumbles.  Hope everyone had a great weekend and crushed some online felt. 

Hey Poker Curious Nuts!

Well another weekend is upon us and that means time to put in some major hands.  That is what is great about the online poker world the weekend is the best time to play because there is hot and heavy action from all the tourists passing through on their days off.  You can even pick the time of day that suits your style most.

Early in the day or to the afternoon you have all the crazy european lags.

As you progress into the afternoon you see lots of north and south american players getting off of work.  They usually play tight to make the action last.

Then by the end of the day there is a large conglomerate of players.  The tight players are callin the loose players fish and the cycle continues.  As of late I personally have been gearing up and starting to play more with the north and south american players not playing so late or so early.  This is more of a variance tool that anything.  So you really can pick your time of day to suit your style.  And Sundays are just great.  Everyone is on in prime time so the bum hunting continues.

Other than that went to the doc yesterday and am trying to get in for and mri and knee surgery.  GG me there but it'll all get done in good time.  However if I want to do any activities of interest I have to wear a big Forrest Gump brace.  "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates, but mama also used to beat me with a rubber hose."  I digress.

Also picked up a new laptop cart so I can roll my laptop with me from the couch to my office to my room.  So I can set up anywhere except it doesn't fit in the bathroom so I am still stuck to old school laptopping it in there. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend and keep the chips in their own stack.

Well January is behind us and it is time to move on to a new month.  As poker players we like to check ourselves in time periods whether they be monthly, weekly, daily, or yearly results.  My January was filled with the end of my biggest plo downswing ever and the recovery from that.  However that downswing made me want to work on my game more to try to keep myself out of some of the more marginal spots one can get in.  Mistakes are still made but at the present moment the equity is adding up in my favor and even a slight heater would really cushion my BR right now. 

I did get in a solid amount of hands at 35k and would like to up that a little in the coming month.  However this might be hard since I have been playing two or three timed sessions from my old method of plowing through hours and hours without breaks.  This has helped I feel my concentration and game on the whole.  Though it seems I may have to spin my wheels at the present moment in time as I can't seem to burst past my current high point.  I'd like to take a shot before the winter is over at the next level but I doubt that will happen just because I want to build this roll up real nice first.

I must be doing something right as before my last weekend break and still I have some issues getting good action.  The regs have started to leave tables when I sit down, and so sometimes it is hard to get between four and six solid tables up.  It seems though that there are plenty of brand new players that have only a few thousand hands under their belt and it has been profitable to play them.  It is very nice to have such a solid player pool to work from and in a way I'm glad there are plenty of fish to work through still before I have to sit with all the sharks.

Other than that things have been pretty quiet on the farm.  Tomorrow I go get my knee looked at in the big city as were the tendon of my quad meets my kneecap things are pretty messed up.  Last night though we conitnued our curling dominance with another win continuing our perfect season.  We should be in top form for the upcoming bonspiels and hopefully win something interesting.  However I did have a slight dislocation of said knee last night and had to "walk it off".  It is sad when I young fella like myself can barely compete in a sport that is recommended for seniors.  Just caught some of the Grammy's as well the other night to watch Taylor Swift win album of the year from Beyonce and this time no one ruined the moment for her.  It was nice to see her win but they are both great artists as were all the nominees however there can only be one winner.