One month checkup

March 23rd marks the 1 month mark of my escapades. My first day in Tunica was February 24th and after 1 month I have played 153 hours of poker, made $2,771 for an hourly rate of $18.11. It beats the heck out of McDonalds, but hardly the hourly rate I am used to. I am not to upset though as I made a ton of mistakes, played tired, played stupid, got snobby, etc. The long and short of it is I probably lost close to 1000 dollars just from being dumb, it really hits home when you think of it that way.

Class today I only got 2 downs (15 minute dealing sessions) but I got a lot of experience from just observing. I also didn't realize how freaking hard it is to keep so many things going in your head. If absolutely nothing disturbs me I am fine... I can do all the things I need to with no problem. However ONE distraction and I am done... an average hand of poker goes like this:

- Deal out the cards and take the bets. Keep track of how many people are in the hand and how much they bet so yo uknow the size of the pot.
- Change a dollar or two for quarters, take 5% of the pot size in rake after all the pre-flop bets are done.
- Make sure everyone bet, pull in the cards they folded.
- Burn and flop the cards, let everyone bet again
- pull in those bets, add the total of those bets to the previous round bets and take the rake (this is where I start to lose control. If I forgot how much was there before I am done..and if you make a funny face I forget the total from before)
- Burn and turn the next card, repeat and rake.
- Burn and turn the final card, drop the remaining deck (have issues here as well) or count down the remaining cards to make sure the deck has the right number of cards.
- Take the rake up to $4 total. Figure out which hand is the best hand.
- muck the losing hands, push the pot to the winner, move the button, drop the rake, take the tip, thank the customer.
- Shuffle, Shuffle, box, Shuffle and deal the next hand.

I do pretty well until I forget the total of the pot, and when I forget to drop the deck. Otherwise, I am doing well...

After work and a break I went to dinner at a buffet. I decided that eating vegetables instead of fast food was a good idea... so I tried that.... it was wierd but I think it is good for me or something. I then headed to the MGM to meet some guys from class for poker.

I have got to learn that I do NOT HAVE TO WIN IMMEDIATELY. I just cannot relax when I sit down, 2 hours into my session... I am stone cold awesome. When I sit down or go on tilt (losing control and playing dumb) I suddenly become "That idiot guy we all love". And that idiot guy generally goes broke... I don't want to be him. I sat down tonight and the cards were dead to me... so I dropped over 200 before I decided not to be an idiot. You would think I could decide that around 50 down... but I am stubborn. By some miracle or all miracles I became a good player after that and worked back up to +20 before cashing out and making 55 more at blackjack for a 75 profit in 6 hours... not awesome but not a loss.