I am THE James

It has officially been one year since I took a trip for the sole purpose of playing in a tournament.  Last year I played in the United States Poker Championships and then took a hiatis from poker due to financial reasons.  I took my poker bankroll and turned it into rent and expenses money.  From that point, most of you know my journey from business owner to poker writer.  Well, as of next month, I will be back on the road playing tournaments again.

The Fall Poker Classic at the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas will take place starting Nov 24th and I will be there.   Every event except the Women’s event is a non-holdem event.  Right up my alley.  It should be a blast.  I will be staying at the 4 Queens Hotel and Casino due to a great rate I found there.  I plan to go out and do well at the Nugget.  The tourney set looks to be a great one.  I hope the structures match the promise.

After the event, I am not quite sure what I am up to next.  I may stay in California a few days and play out there.  There will be a couple of events at the Bike I might play and I would like to play some west coast stud and stud 8.  That’s not a definite yet.  The Tunica Circuit event is out and the schedule looks ok now that they have posted the right one.  I might go down there for a week in January.  I am not sure yet.  I’m also going to see if the Trump is going to put up a schedule for December for their Trump Classic.

One of my new gigs looks to be able to provide me enough stability financially to allow me to travel again, and if it keeps up, that will be great.  Not much else going on right now with me other than staying busy.  Depending on how I feel, I may drive up to AC this week and play some cash games.  I can’t wait to get back out on the poker trail.  And now that my work is actually centered around poker, my play will support my work.

September 13, 1975 is when it all started.  From that day forth the world has been host to THE James.  Today is the celebration of that day.  And what am I doing for this grand day?  My ass is getting up early, going to a bunkhouse kitchen and entering shooting scores into a computer.  Ya, real exciting eh?  Well, not all 4-H volunteer work is exciting, but it has to be done.  I’ll be going a little early so I can go have a birthday dinner with my friend Summer.

Have you ever had one of your friends go off in such a rage of anger that you end up touched about how much they really care about you?   That happened to me this week.  I won’t go into the why my friend went off like she did, but by the time she was done I was really touched by what she said, even if she was hopping mad when she said it.

Tomorrow, I am going with my friend Erin to see Mamma Mia.  She couldn’t get together with me today because of her working.  Believe it or not, I picked this movie.  For those of you that look at me cockeyed, realize I am a person who saw Sweeney Todd at the theatre 4 times.  Besides, the only other movie I wanted to see I promised another female friend I would go see Wednesday.

Lately, I have been playing a lot of NL Single Draw 2-7 Lowball sit-n-gos on PokerStars.  With the exception of one, I have at least cashed in every one.  In these Sngs you must make it heads-up to make the money.  Today I played 3.  I won two and finished 2nd in the other one.  I have been have somewhat poor results in triple draw limit lowball.  I found out really quick in this game how wide of an array of hands you can consistently win with.  One thing that I do like to still try and stick with is to try and only do 1 card draws while we are still 4 handed or more.  Obviously that doesn’t always become the case, but I try.

My runs in Stud 8 or Better lately have been pretty bad.  Some of it is frankly bad play on my part.  I have been making a few plays and getting too fancy.  In the last day or so, I have went back to playing with a little more sense and have at least finished ahead in every session.  I think I need to go back and focus on playing some tournaments as opposed to the cash games I have been playing.  I enjoy tournaments a lot more and I seem to focus harder on them.

Speaking of which, I have tried to pick up a couple of books to work on my Stud HI tournament game a little bit.  I am a good stud player.  I know this, but my tournament results live when I have played have been outright horrible.  My feeling is my problem comes from playing a certain style that doesn’t work as well as it should in tournaments.  I’m going to take a look at a couple of books and see if I can get some inspiration.  I may just end up getting a friend of mine to sit me down and teach me some finer points like Bill Boston taught me regarding Stud 8.

I intended to go to Atlantic City sometime this coming week for the United States Poker Championships.  That’s not happening now.  I love the schedule, but I am holding onto my money and also focusing some on my writing.  My gigs have really picked up lately, especially from one dude that has me writing a lot on poker.  I talked to the guy at PokerNews about future gigs with them and it isn’t looking real promising.  I got the “we may have work” line.  I probably won’t hear from them until around WSOP time.   That’s fine too.  Actually, if things keep going the way they are with this one client writing, I may not want to take on any other gigs for a while.  That wouldn’t upset me at all.

Anywho, have a great weekend all.  Maybe Ill come back and tell you what Summer got me for my birthday.