As I continue this ridiculous Fun Step ordeal, I am constantly blown away by the amazing amount of just plain luck that can catch against my hands. Time and time again its 2-4 out rivers, with a majority of those coming as runner runner catches.

But its whatever and I will continue to push them. I do have a sizable bank of Step 2 and 3 tickets built that I just keep adding to even through all the shit. So far I have picked up a single win, with another 14 2nd places which really kind of stings but its cool.

As for the ACR $50k deal, I havent been playing in as many of those this past week and half or so as I seem to be getting into nap time when they are running so I may need to adjust some of my schedule.

In other randomness, I am pretty sure my wife is trying to kill me! I got a new coffee maker, some goofy ass brew station that as it turns out is 'making' me drink about 4x as much coffee a day now than before. At any rate, the filling of said new machine is a bit different than the old one. And there is at times a fair bit of water that just doesnt make it into the machine and instead ends up all over the counter. Wifes 'solution' to my daily mess making, plug the toaster in and sit it literally right next to the coffee maker!

So last night my wife is getting our son, who is 15months old now, ready for bed. As she takes off his diaper, he starts grabbing himself of course. Well she looks over at me and says, 'here we go again, he is playing with himself.' Well, he in turn yells out, 'BAWLS!!!!!'

I start laughing so hard I am nearly crying, and she goes, 'WTF did he just say? Did he just say what I think he did??' Before I can even catch a breathe there he goes again, just yelling 'BAWLS!!!!! BAWLS!!!!!! BAWLS!!!!!!!' and laughing hysterically himself.

Good times for sure.

After a little over a week now, and a day off, I am working Step 1, 2 and 3 games with a good bank of tickets for each level as a couple days I did have to cut my day short on playing Step 2's.

I will say honestly that on Step 1's I have a stupid low conversion rate, like 5 or less per day most days. However, on Step 2's I seem to be able to run at about 7 for 10 for whatever reason. And I played my first Step 3 today which I did pick up the win so I am a cool 1 for 1 there haha.

Yep, thats about all I have for now, still working the $50K tournaments on ACR as well, typically qualifying for the 8pm each day on the first or 2nd go which truthfully isnt saying too much.

So I wake up yesterday to discover my coffee maker is toast. Then I go over to the Keurig and after one small cup, it decides it wants to take the day off too. So after cleaning up that mess I look by the back door and find that our son has brought the outside in to start his own ant farm. And we arent talking just a few, we are talking like hundreds! 'Why yes, Mason, ants LOVE bananas too!'

So after a long morning of clean up, I get cracking on some playing. First, I bubble a $1500G on Bovada. Then I bubble the 50 seats on Lock after 4 hours of my time due to a misclick. And if those werent enough loving for one day, I find myself at the final table for the 3 seats to the $50K at ACR only to get out drawn over and over and over and over again and yet another wonderful bubblicious finish.

On a good note LOL I did manage to go 7 for 10 on Step 1 games hahahahahahaha.

And if not for good runs in ring play I probably would be taking a few days off just to cool down. Good times though and luckily I have a pretty warped sense of humor so I could laugh at just how ridiculous my day was.

Clearly in a past life I had to have been a cutter or some other type of self mutilating personality!

Now working day 4 of my patience, I have started converting Step 2 tickets to Step 3's and while I am only two tickets in on that, I am actually 2 for 2. I have also picked up 4 more Step 2's so far today but I think I may be finished on the daily Step 1's. I did have to take a break from those to get qualified for the 8pm $50k satty on ACR since I took a nice long nap earlier this afternoon.

On the ACR hunt, I have qualified 3 days straight for the 8pm but only converted one so far to the Saturday entry. Hopefully this evening I can avoid enough idiots to pick up a second one and a nice 5 tournament bucks boost.

Meanwhile, I am also in my daily $1K guarantee on Bovada after picking up some triple up wins this morning and some ring goodness.

So maybe I am looking to punish myself for some odd reason but I decided to put in a massive push on two extra fronts for the next month or so.

First, after seeing the Fun Step challenge threads I decided that I am going to do one of my own with a little different overall process. I am playing the daily 10 limit of round 1 and every time I reach 10 Step 2 tickets, I will play all of those the day after I reach the 10th one. Then once I have 10 Step 3 tickets, I will play all of those in the same fashion. Once I have won $10, then I will add in $1 DUON tournaments and continue to play through all Step 1, 2, and 3 as well until I reach $100. From there I will move up to $2 DUON and be done with the Fun Steps.

The other addition is the $50k Satellites on ACR. I am playing those each day looking to at least qualify for the 8pm daily once per day and qualifying in at least 3 of the 8pm per week. I will continue this until I reach a bank of 55 tournament bucks which I will then use for various $5 MTT buyins.

So thats the additional play I am planning for the next month or so on top of the typical grind. Should prove interesting to say the least, hopefully I dont lose the last bit of sanity I have left!

After deciding to take an extended vacation of a few extra days, like 5 or so, I am finally back in my own chair at my own table. Now its time to get back on the grind in a comfortable setting.

I have managed to play a fair bit more on Carbon and it continues to not be good at all. Not sure what it is about the site or network but wow, there are just some ridiculous players there. I have played ring at various levels, SNG's and MTT's and just cannot have hands hold to save my own life. The simple fact is, there is no rhyme or reason to players actions there. I have seen everything from getting their money all in on nothing but 4 outs from the flop to check raising every street with nothing but longshot draws from the flop.

As for play on other networks, I feel I continue to play stronger, going deep in tournaments and stacking well in ring games. So long as that play and feeling continues, I suppose I will continue to go back to Merge and work on maybe getting a better feel for the flow or lack thereof as the case seems to be.

Taking a bit of time here in the condo as the sun is just too bright for our son to be out for any real length of time and just watching the surfers and beach goers. So far a great trip, got to walk along the beach last night for about 45min all on my own and hit the point of total relaxation, heavenly....

Now for the funniest part of the whole trip, the wife tells me she doesnt even really like the smell of the ocean or the beach! So that of course led to the long discussion of wtf are we doing here anyway and so on. Guess this is NOT a trip to try and persuade me to want to stay in the southeast and actually seemed to reaffirm the idea of moving back to the Chicago area, something I am all about!!

No matter what, I feel like this whole trip is a massively needed chance at relaxing and getting away from the normal grind so that I can come back refreshed and ready to put on a good, solid run.

Gearing up to head to the beach for a few days with the wife and son. No need to ask what we are doing because I have no clue!! This is all the work of the wife as I think she is looking at/for reasons to stay in the southeast for a little while longer. Being 2 1/2 hours from both beach and mountains has its advantages for sure, if only there were more choices for live poker I would be down in an instant.

At any rate though, I have reached the conclusion that I am a retard magnet. It would seem that if there is a 6 out or less reason to call from the flop or turn, I attract every single person. Taking out pot odds and even implied odds by NOT paying them off just doesnt seem to work, they call regardless... I guess thats poker, sort of if you want to call it that, more like idiocracy.

I have been trying to play a bit more on Carbon but still get all the same results as the series games for here, fished out with miracle rivers. I did manage however to pull a ticket to the $100k on Lock which I will use this coming weekend after a nice period of rest and relaxation. And if I am 'lucky' I can finish my run on a ticket to the $70k as well, only need I think two more wins on a short handed SNG for that entry.

My ring play has been going steady and strong though which always makes me happy since thats where my focus typically ends up after getting donked repeatedly in tournaments.

And thats about all I have for the day I think, time to change a diaper.

Well after 4 days of silence around the house due to the wife taking our son on a mini vacation, I have seen now multiple days in a row over 80 degrees. That of course translates to the removal of my Billy Gibbons like beard and shoulder length hair. Not to mention, the winter look is no conducive to beach time for next week so in all, its buh-bye handle bar mustache, crazy long beard and even longer hair.

As for my playing recently, I feel like I have finally re-entered a world of fluidity with the exception of the series events here for whatever reason. I have really hit the point where I think it comes down to a simple fact of NOT playing on Merge at all other than the Sat and Sun events. I suppose if I were to spend as much time on Merge as I do other networks I would begin to regain some feel of normalcy in my play as every site/network seems to play just a touch different.

I am also still in search of that first 'real' tourney win. I have won my fair share of private tournaments and so on but in the grand scheme of things, nothing better than about 3rd in a full, network wide buy-in. Hopefully as I continue my pursuit of learning tourney play that will change and I can start to pick up some wins within my first year of playing in tournaments. For now though, I continue playing ring and keeping afloat with that action while I settle for what are typically min cashes and minor winnings in tournaments.