The Past Week

Last week was pretty different. I had Monday off which ended up being sweet with the relaxation/poker time. Poker truly is what I do to relax. I love just having at least one day each weekend to just sit on the couch and play some poker with football on in the background. Having that day kind of rejuvenates me. Anyway, Tuesday I taught I went to school and taught. I was talked into being a reader at the quiz bowl the next day. So Wednesday, I read questions from 8-2 for like 24 different schools here at the Seward Civic Center. It was actually a blast. My reading skills definitely improved. Some of the schools there were schools that other Concordia student teachers teach and the other student teachers said that the kids really enjoyed when they had their competition in my room where I was the reader. The questions were extremely hard. I would guess that only 15% of the questions were answered correctly by either team. Rarely did one team out-buzz the other team. Only one person would know the answer, if any. The quiz bowl was a good time though. Thursday I taught again. Thursday night and all day Friday I had teacher workshops at Concordia, which were kind of lame but oh well. I learned a little.

This weekend was fun. Saturday I went into Lincoln with some friends and enjoyed the bars. I met up with my buddy from the Nebraska basketball team, Nick Krenk. Lincoln was sure jam packed after the Nebraska/Virginia Tech game. Most of the bars had absurd cover charges because it was game night ☹ But we found a good place called Woody’s were there were a lot of people I knew from Concordia.

I played in some tourneys Sunday night and struck out in all of them. I am really streaky. It seems I either cash in a bunch or I bust out of all of them. I think I make some bad plays out of frustration after I get eliminated in one. I need to stop that.

Last night we were eliminated in the first round of the ultimate Frisbee tournament by one point, which was disappointing. We played well though as we were probably a 6 point underdog. Kickball and flag football are next!

I was observed in my health class just an hour ago by my university supervisor in what was my first health lesson taught. It went okay even though I was a little nervous. We talked about the circulatory system, which I know fairly well, but I was definitely not an expert on the parts of the heart. So I struggled through that part. I wish I wish I would have studied up more about it before I taught it. It would have went a lot more smooth.

I don't know what is going on the rest of the week besides teaching and basketball.

Nice Score

Yesterday, I played in some tourneys and had a nice score in the $32,000 guaranteed, $22 buy in, on stars. I finished 4th for a nice little payday. It is amazing what the thought of money does to a person. Even with the big score, all I think about is that if I outlasted one more guy, I would have made $1K more. If I would have won, I ship 4K more to the bank. Oh well though. I just need to thank God for the skill and luck involved with grinding through 1900 people for a 4th place finish.

I know I have said this before, but I don’t think I have played better poker than I did yesterday. The tournament lasted nearly eight hours and in the final four hours, I literally showed down only three hands. I did not show a hand during the fourth and fifth hours while increasing my stack. In the sixth hour, I had about 15 bbs and I pushed in the sb with Ks7d. The bb with 9 bbs auto calls with Kh9h. The flop comes KJ9 all diamonds. Turn X. River 5d! This put me above average. That would have almost crippled me. In the 7th hour, this crazy hand came up:

PokerStars Game #20615062726: Tournament #109499628, $20+$2 Hold'em No Limit - Level XXIV (8000/16000) - 2008/09/22 18:25:12 ET
Table '109499628 60' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: HotKarlMC (658413 in chips)
Seat 2: 52tigerback (399306 in chips)
Seat 3: CU_bball (165032 in chips)
Seat 6: St@r-K (457406 in chips)
Seat 7: NoKidding (333598 in chips)
Seat 9: moglie81 (278801 in chips)
HotKarlMC: posts the ante 1600
52tigerback: posts the ante 1600
CU_bball: posts the ante 1600
St@r-K: posts the ante 1600
NoKidding: posts the ante 1600
moglie81: posts the ante 1600
52tigerback: posts small blind 8000
CU_bball: posts big blind 16000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to CU_bball [Ac As]
St@r-K: folds
NoKidding: raises 32000 to 48000
moglie81: folds
HotKarlMC: raises 107555 to 155555
52tigerback: raises 242151 to 397706 and is all-in
CU_bball: calls 147432 and is all-in
NoKidding: folds
HotKarlMC: folds
Uncalled bet (234274) returned to 52tigerback
*** FLOP *** [Ts 4s 8d]
moglie81 said, "wow"
*** TURN *** [Ts 4s 8d] [7d]
*** RIVER *** [Ts 4s 8d 7d] [Qh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
52tigerback: shows [Kd Ks] (a pair of Kings)
CU_bball: shows [Ac As] (a pair of Aces)
CU_bball collected 540019 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 540019 Rake 0
Board [Ts 4s 8d 7d Qh]
Seat 1: HotKarlMC (button) folded before Flop
Seat 2: 52tigerback (small blind) showed [Kd Ks] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 3: CU_bball (big blind) showed [Ac As] and won (540019) with a pair of Aces
Seat 6: St@r-K folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: NoKidding folded before Flop
Seat 9: moglie81 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

I went from the short stack at the table to chip leader at the table in that hand with 12 or 13 people remaining. I was up to 4th overall because the other table had a ton of huge stacks. Then I just grinded. I picked great stealing spots and made it all the way to four left. I was the short stack with 6 or 7 bbs. One person had just a little more than me (he ended up winning it) and no one had more than 20 bbs if I recall correctly. So it was anybody’s ballgame. It was folded to me in the sb and for the 3rd straight round of it folding to me in the sb, I had an easy push with 10 10. BB, calls with QJc. He flops a Q and I’m out in 4th. It was sweet to have a huge score, but to leave 4K out on the table is disappointing. Anything short of winning is a disappointment in poker…unless you suckout through an entire tournament and donk your way into a decent to big score, which we have all done in the past haha. I am extremely happy though overall and am ready to get on with my week.

I also shallow cashed in 3 out of 6 other tourneys yesterday including a 48th out of 1500 for a $10 win in a $3 tourney.

Edit: I played a $12 turbo and took 4th... I love those 4th's. I need to improve my 4 handed and smaller games.

September 21, 2008

This last week went by really fast which is good because that usually means things are going well. Life is going pretty good as teaching is becoming easier and easier. The kids are starting to get used to me being their teacher and I haven’t really had any problems. My day is pretty nice. Seward High has block scheduling, which is 4-hour and a half periods. I really like this for PE as we can do some sort of fitness activity followed by a game. In high school, I felt like I was spending half the time changing clothes in PE. Anyway, I teach health first which can seem like a long period (I couldn’t imagine having to sit in a math or English class for an hour and a half at a time as a student). That class isn’t that bad though. I’ll probably take over for that fully this next week. After that, I have a prep period. I can easily get everything I need to done during this time. I even leave to get my allergy shots during this time some days. My cooperating teacher says that he never really has to do anything outside of the school day to prepare for class because this prep period is so long. After my prep, I have a PE class followed by lunch and then another PE class to end the day. So my schedule is pretty good.

Leah said something the other day that really hit home. She said that PE and health education are really the only subjects that every student will use the rest of their lives. I already knew that our society really needs good health and PE teachers, but that statement makes me think of them as even more important. Promoting lifetime wellness is extremely important to me and I need to emphasize that in my teaching. I do not want my students to stop being physically active or quit making healthy decisions after they are done with my class. I’ll never forget three summers ago in Vegas when I was at a buffet with Mats Iremark of Sweden and took a picture of a fat person in a motorized scooter. He then put it in his blog with a caption of a “typical American.” That’s sad, but it’s becoming true.

Intramural volleyball ended in a sad note as we lost in the championship game to a team that is unbelievably good. On a good note though, we improved a ton throughout the season as I would guess that we were maybe the 5th best team going in because we had really never played sand volleyball. When you have good guy athletes and some good girls that have played volleyball in the past, the improvement goes up exponentially. By the end, we were right there with the best team. We won the first set, but lost the last two sets devastatingly to keep me from winning my first intramural championship. It was my 3rd second (coed dodgeball and men’s ultimate Frisbee were the others last year).

Saturday, however, I finally got my first intramural championship as Leah and I paired up for coed mixed doubles. We played a tournament and we played well. It was the first time we had played doubles together and it was so much fun. We played some good teams with ex-tennis players and the current tennis coach. We won the championship match 8-3. I really want to play in more tennis tournaments with Leah. I need to get a lot better, though, because the male tennis player needs to be sickly good in order to have a good mixed doubles team.

I get tomorrow off from school because it is a teacher meetings and work day. My co-op is the man as he told me I should just stay home. So I will try to get some random errands done. It should be nice.

Update

Well we are two weeks into school and it is going well. My morning classes are tough only because they are early. I just can't get myself to go to bed early. It's past midnight as I write this haha. I seem to remember my old roommate Dave Anderson going to bed around 10 during his student teaching semester...what a party pooper! jk Dave. I am lacking on sleep but I'm surviving. I did my final undergraduate presentation this morning and it went well. Now I just have to sit through three more days of other peoples' presentations. After that, I will be student teaching the full day at Seward High.

I taught my first classes today in PE. We are starting our basketball unit, conveniently. The classes went fairly well. My cooperating teacher gave me some good pointers after the first class period which I used in the second. Unbelievably, the kids seem to like me and we have a good time.

Preseason basketball is under way and it is pretty exciting. Besides the fact that our guys are not in great shape, we have a lot of talent. We, as coaches, are going to have a lot of options and a lot of experimenting to do before our opening game. We have a 6’8” Serbian transfer from Montana Tech. He scored 20 points against Boise State last year. I think he will easily be top five in the conference in scoring, if not first. It is weird to say that we have a lot of depth at our big positions. Not too many teams at any level can say that they have too many big men. Our situation is kind of the other way around. I have no doubts that it is going to be a better season than the two previous ones in which we won 10 games each.

We started our Intramural 4 on 4 sand volleyball last night and crushed our opponents. I think we have a good chance of winning the whole thing. It kind of depends on how our weakest link, me, comes through in the clutch. Our team includes Leah and me, our good friends Ben and Ashley (engaged- Leah is maid of honor), the women’s basketball coach Drew Olson, and Ben’s sister Faith. Our girls have all played a lot of volleyball in the past and our guys are just good athletes. I hope we can come out on top of the other 21 teams.

Intramural mixed doubles tennis is coming up and I am pumped for that. Since Leah is foregoing her senior year of college tennis because of student teaching next semester, we are able to team up for intramurals. I am 99% sure that we are the two best non-collegiate tennis players on campus. So we should roll. This summer I lost to our men’s number one player 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 and I have improved a lot since. I am just loving tennis right now. I bought a nice new racket on ebay after breaking a string and wearing the grip away. I am waiting anxiously.

I have been missing my friends that have moved on from here even though I haven’t had much free time anyway. Between teaching, classes, basketball, Leah, intramurals, playing tennis here and there with Dusan (the Serbian transfer) and homework, I barely have had time to watch the US Open (Federer is the man!), Football, and Prison Break. I don’t know when I am going to fit in The Office, South Park, and Entourage, which all start up in the next few weeks.

Poker news: I play in very few tourneys when I’m watching football and putting off going to sleep. While I was watching football Sunday afternoon, I took 7th in a $12 180 person sng. I was chip leader with 30, 20, and 10 people left. So that was kind of a disappointing finish. Then that night, I saw that Jon Little (along with Moneymaker, Orel Hershiser, and other online pros that I am familiar with) was still in the 10K WCOOP event with 25 left, so I decided to watch and play another one and I took 3rd. I was chip leader once again with 4 left and lost a huge coin flip. I hate not winning, but profit is profit I guess. It seems that I always do well in those after not playing them for a while. Whenever I just decided to grind in a bunch of those $12 sngs, I suck.

Jon took 7th when he made an interesting call against the chip leader (he was still 2nd or 3rd in chips if he folds the river) with A5 on a 245TQ board. The chip leader had 45. Congrats though to Jon for profiting over 90K.

Well, this was going to be short, but I hate going to sleep. So I rambled.