Swedish Championship and a fun picture

Stocks have been doing so-so lately but some lights showed up in the end of the tunnels and such. That's was a fun day. Gold/Silver prices seems really weird lately and I feel that they'll turn around soon when all crap about margin increases and such settles down.

Anyway, going to play the HU event in the Swedish online poker championships tonight. It'll be fun. Might play a few cash games at the same time too and then there's the main event on Saturday I think. I'll promise myself to play more during October. This month has been pathetic in volume.

Trying to figure out if I'll play the live version of the Swedish Championships later this fall too. Not sure yet.

Starcraft 2 - Master

So since I havn't felt playing poker due to feeling crappy about some stuff and wanting to concentrate on other things I've played a ton of Starcraft 2. I used to be fairly good in the first game but before this month I never played much of Starcraft 2. Anyway, now me and my friends (who also used to play poker) are ranked first in a masters division in 2on2. That's fairly nice. Enough of a brag for me, even though that's probably only around top600 in Europe or something.

 If anyone wants a few game or something just send me a msg and I'm up for some stuff assuming I'm online and not doing anything fun.

The Swedish championships of online poker starts the 27th. I hope to be able to write a bit on my essay and get fairly comfortable with some other things before that and then start grinding a lot. I want to win a biggish tournament online again. Run good one time?

I think I'm up 4-5 bis over ~1k hands so far this month which is by far my lowest volume month since I started playing.

A rat leaving the ship

So I had about 20k€ in some bank that I don't use for anything really due to some investments my grandparents did for me long before I even knew how to spell "poker". Apparently I'm up about 15% on those over something like a billion years. Considering how average inflation is about 2% per year I'd say it's pretty much a given that I'm down a ton on that as far as buying power goes.

Now, this bank has a rather bad reputation lately since they're overall greedy bastards with no regard for financial stability and such. Moral Hazard at it's best, or worst if you want, so to speak. It feels really great to get my money out of that piece of crap. They did, however, take it very well and the guy who handled the transfer was efficient. He usually handles housing mortgages so I spoke a little bit with him about that since I do believe in a housing bubble and he hinted a little bit more then I thought he would about how that's a bit slower then it used to be.

It's a good thing that it all went well though. If it had been any problems with transferring the money somewhat fast I had half a mind to just ask them how fast I could withdraw it all and put it in a plastic bag and go for a walk. That'd be fun!

Cats and Games

Signed copies.

In other news there is a cat that keeps comming in through our window and beats the crap out of one of our cats. Our cat is very small, very dumb and very kind; ie: Not much of a fighter. How do you communicate to another cat that it should stay the fuck away from my cat if it wants to keep most vital parts of it's body intact? I'm a very protective person when it comes to small animals and good friends and I have a temper, but my girl says I'm not allowed to just straight up kick a cat's ass.

Lights and other things in various tunnels

Dusty's happiness index is up lately.

Gold stocks have started to take off a fair bit and I'm finally breakeven with investments for the year despite a godawful start where I managed to time everything wrong and get hit by random variance including British oil tax raises vs Enquest, a bunch of crap including a collapse in a mine with Endomines and a bunch of margin raises in silver over at comex. Unless Paul "Alien Invaider" Krugman, who actually said he wanted to build up earth's defences for an alien invasion to fix the economy, and has it right and higher random aggregate demand will fix everything or Ron Paul manages to be president (bloody f-ing likely!) I'm fairly sure that I'll be able to make a little money now when I've started to get the hang of how to analyse mining companies and such, at least at a very basic level.

I'm up a couple of bi's playing very few hands (two short sessions) this month, but I'll probably start to take it more seriously next week. Might just make it a slow start with like a short session per day or something but at the very latest by the end of the month I hope that I'll be back in some kind of reasonable grinding mood. Last month did not suck as much as it could have, but ohh god the timing of it. This will be my first "lost" year of poker unless something really weird/heatery happens but on the other hand I think I needed that. Get some perspective, learn other stuff etc.

Just heard that my soonish-to-be-brother in law and his wife/fiancée will come visit in a month or so. I really like them both so that feels really good. Only thing that annoys me is that there's no UFC PPV that I could order and watch with the guy. He's into MMA and such and it'd be cool to watch some nice event with him. Oh well.

Yesterday me and my girl went an visited the Swedish game maker, poker author, authority on everything and general awesomeness that is Dan Glimne. Bought two big boxes of sci/fi books from him and got a few games he designed as a bonus. I'll post a pic of the signed one when I get battery in my android. The guy has a robot lawn mover that moves the lane by itself. It's so damn cool!

Back home

So I spent a week with my parents. Did som "LOL-fail"-fishing with my dad and despite overall failing a lot with what kind of fishes we got and the size of them one or two was pretty nice and I did have a lot of fun. Watched "Cop Out" with him too and he laughted a fair bit. It's probably one of the best "watch with your dad"-movies in recent memory.

Played a short poker session this morning and despite puttng myself down a bi on 2/4 first thing I did I got back to a small profit by the end of the rather short session playing 0.5/1 and 1/2 and while I can't say I played good it still felt nice enough to actually see green numbers. Going to try and win like 7k or so this month and then start grinding 2/4 and higher next month.

I havn't had the "drive" to play while I was gone, and I don't have it now either really, it's so much more fun to follow the action on the PM-markets and thanks those I have swings almost like in the good ole´ 10/20-days fairly often anyway. Net worth is fun, ehh?

Made a really nice move when I bought a small position in Sandstorm Gold just as the gold price spiked down to around 1700US or so a week or two ago and while I havn't sold it off yet it's up around 25% so far. I kind of needed that since I somewhat doubted my timing before that since i managed to buy shares in some Swedish mining juniors at the exact wrong time a few months ago.  Sandstorms idea is really cool, they are basically staking gold mines (Sandstorm metal and energy stakes other thing, and Silver wheaton stakes silver) by paying cash up front in exchange for rights to buy a % of the mines lifetime production of gold at a very discounted price (or for free). I'm really not giving financial advice on this blog in any way shape or form, both since I don't want to and since I'm not qualified, but I found it rather much like how people stakes MTT-players and such so I figured I'd mention it.

The Swedish championships of online poker happens in the end of this month. I'll try to play as many events as possible just because they're fairly cheap and it'd be cool as hell to be the champion.

I also look to play a bunch of live MTT's this winter/next spring so any advice about good ones with a buyin of 1000€+ is greatly appreciated. I'll play Unibet Open Riga almost for sure but other then that I'm not sure. Or I might just save most of my MTT-funds for Vegas next year. Haven't been there which is kind of weird for a poker player and my girl really wants to go and how can I say no to the cutest little thing in the whole wide world?

/Dusty