My wife and oldest daughter were out of town for the weekend so I was home alone with my two boys. They had both fallen asleep watching a movie on the couch and I was playing in three different MTT's around 9:30 in the evening. My work phone rang and it was my boss telling me that we had just had an officer-involved shooting at work. As the Commander of the Internal Affairs Unit, I have to respond to every OIS. But here I was.....stuck at home with my two boys and no one to watch them. I abandoned the three MTT's (so much for those buy-in's) and quickly called a good friend of mine who allowed me to drop my two boys off at his house for the night. I knew it was going to be a long night as any call-out is usually a 5-hour minimum.
When I got to work, I found out that our SWAT officers had attempted to stop a murder suspect (the guy had shot and killed an innocent man outside a bank) and the suspect jumped out of his vehicle and opened fire on the officers. A fairly hellacious gunbattle ensued with no one getting injured before the suspect was actually able to escape. The investigation took most of the night and I ended up getting home around 6:00 in the morning. As I was driving home (and weaving from one side of the road to the other), I was thinking to myself that I'm pretty sure most of the online pros that I seem to "envy" don't have these sorts of things happen to them when they're in the middle of MTT's. It was a real splash to the face....again realizing that I probably have too many things going on in my life to really make an impact in the poker world. I can't really expect myself to be analyzing hands and thinking poker strategy 24 hours a day when I have friends and co-workers being shot at and I'm in charge of the investigations. (sigh)
Since I had to skip an entire night of sleep, I've been pretty much of a basket case ever since which has again reduced my ability to play late night MTT's. I've shown some very uncharacteristic restraint in NOT playing poker the last few nights when I've been tired. In the past, I've played anyways and gotten so tired that I've found myself hoping I would bust so I could go to bed. Yesterday was the first day of school and my youngest boy started kindergarten so it was a pretty big day in our house. With school starting, my weekly schedule looks something like this:
- Coaching soccer 6:30-7:30 on Mon-Wed.
- Getting home from work every other night at 7:00.
- Attend, coach, or referee 5 soccer games every Saturday.
- Make lunches for 3 kids every night.
- Workout with a personal trainer 3 times a week.
Where exactly am I supposed to fit in the volume necessary to either make a steady flow of income from poker or actually win some of the prop bets I have with RUBBA? I still hold out hopes of making big scores in the poker arena but it is becoming harder and harder with my schedule. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like If I was 15 years younger and in college during the boom of online poker. I would probably be very well-known or broke without a degree. Take your pick!!
For the record, I came the closest yet to picking up one of the prop bets with RUBBA. I ran a $.50/$1.00 NL cash game on Full Tilt up to $419 before falling short. One of the bets is to have 5 buy-in's at a table and I almost made it. The forecast is not too good over the next couple of weeks for a lot of online play but I will do my best. I hope that it will make me focus just a little more knowing that I don't have the luxury of playing ten tournaments a day.
I'll keep you updated...Thanks for reading.
W2D
