I purchased a debit card with $25 to make sure that I would have an easy option to deposit on Poker Stars. The request went through, and I had a small $24 bankroll to begin with. In February I’ll deposit the $275 to complete my starting bankroll for this challenge.

I decided that I would play a few tournaments to see if the advice and mindset from the Harrington on Hold’em series had stuck with me. I joined a 45 seat $1.20 NL Hold’em tournament, played very conservative for the first 30-45 minutes then opened up my game a little bit to try and build a stack for a run to the final table. When we were down to 21 players, I picked up a monster in the SB. A guy in Middle Position raises 5x the big blind. I’m looking at AA with no callers behind me so I push all in for $1635. Middle Position calls, showing KK. On the flop he strikes out a K and I go out in 21st place.

Kind of made me a little sick to be seeing that on my first day in, but as in life shit happens.

Before going to bed, I played a few more tournaments with the same result. I was down to around $15. Later in the evening I decided to give it another go, I played in another $1.20 45 seat tournament. I played the same game until we had gotten down to 3 tables and opening my game again. Soon enough we were down to 12 people on two tables and I was in the top 5 with around $8000. At this point I just stayed kind of stayed out of the way as I had a very loose aggressive player to my right trying to knock people out of the way.

When the final table started I was down to $7200 in chips, with the big stack to my left. I just played very tight aggressive until we were at the bubble and started opening pots. By the time we were in the money I was looking at $16000 after winning a few pots off the big stack. I slowly grew this to $22000 after realizing there were three nits to my right who played very scared. By the time it had gotten 3 handed I was looking at $35000 with the same two nits in the game. I had the pleasure of taking them both down, taking down the $14 first prize.

Here was the final hand of the tournament.

Poker Stars $1.00+$0.20 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t1000/t2000 Blinds + t100 – 2 players

AcesHigh300 (BTN/SB): t16294 M = 5.09
Hero (BB): t51206 M = 16.00

Pre Flop: (t3200) Hero is BB with Qc Tc
“AcesHigh300 raises to t6000, Hero calls t4000

Flop: (t12200) Th Qs 9h (2 players)
Hero checks, “AcesHigh300 bets t10194 all in, Hero calls t10194

Turn: (t32588) 6c (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: (t32588) 9d (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t32588
“AcesHigh300 shows 3h As (a pair of Nines)
Hero shows Qc Tc (two pair, Queens and Tens)
Hero wins t32588

With that win it put me back in the green for the day, with my cash bankroll sitting at $26.43.

After that win, I decided to play in a 1FPP+Rebuy satellite for the Sunday 1/4th million. I only ended up spending 3 FPPs, 1 for the seat, 1 rebuy and 1 add-on. Did very well in the tournament and mostly just stuck to getting my money in there as if I was constantly playing in the Yellow Zone. Going into the final table I was sitting at $230,000 in chips. When it got down to 4 handed a big play came up which ended up knocking out the 4th place player.

So I ended up $2.43 for the day and a $11 tournament ticket. I unregistered for the Sunday 1/4th a million, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to play in it.

I  have not really been able to post much since thanksgiving. I’ve had a lot going on in life, still doing a lot of research online. In December, I started reading my old copy of Harrington on Holdem. I have decided on what I want to do in 2010, and I am going to be preparing myself over to next few months to begin on that process.

I finished the first Harrington on Holdem a few days before Christmas and started on the second book soon after. I’m still working on that. I put it on hold this past week in anticipation of the BCS national championship where my alumi mater played, and ended up winning. Roll Tide Roll.

This year, I’ve decided that I have saved up enough cash to start trying to build a bankroll to get into the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, or at least win a seat. The last week of January I am going to be doing a practice run in Poker Stars World Blogger Championship. I will most likely take this as just some real life practice before I begin hitting the tables in February. It has been four years since I’ve really sat down and played a cash game. I’ve always had the dream of taking a shot at the $10,000 buyin at the summer’s WSOP, so maybe, just maybe I will do it this year.

Besides, I think it’s time to start talking about something other than politics for once.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 717713

When President Obama’s Stimulus package went into effect early this year, the Federal Government set up Recovery.gov as an act of transparency. This website has given the ordinary citizen the ability to check where their tax money and future obligations are going.

However, what happens when you find that over a million dollars of stimulus money has been appropriated to districts that do not exist?  $1,257,183 dollars has been appropriated to four districts in Alabama that do not exist.

This list includes $1,257,183 given to the 8th, 9th, 12th, and 19th congressional districts of Alabama saving 52 jobs. Now how is this possible? Is this just another 1.25 million dollars that is going to end up in the abyss that is Montgomery Alabama?

To you, the reader, it may seem that 1.25 million dollars is not a lot. However, lets look at another state. Arizona apparently has an 86th congressional district that is receiving over 34 million dollars!

I am thankful that this administration has been transparent on this issue of where our money is going, but where is the outrage over the mismanagement of it? Why has the media kept quiet on this? Is it an error in the system or has this money just been handed off to someone? This leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and hopefully we will get the answers.

Today’s discussion will be on currency. Typically in the Federal Reserve system there are 2 different forms of currency. Currency in which you see, the dollar bill that is in your pocket, and the currency you keep in the bank, which is only numbers stored on a hard drive.

Whenever you open an account at a bank, you hold yourself at risk of losing your investment to a certain point. Such as not banking with an FDIC establishment and FDIC Bank Reserves are low and can not account for all money inside the bank’s accounts.

However, this issue I want to show you today is a controlled example on what happens to your money once it enters the banking establishment.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have decided that instead of writing an article about the workings of the Federal Reserve, I will link to Chapter 2 of Dr. Ron Paul’s new book.

http://mises.org/story/3687

I will never be equal Dr. Paul’s understanding this subject, even though I am a student of Austrian economics. I will just never match his understanding.

I need to get the book soon, possibly off Amazon.

Tomorrow I shall be back, on the subject of the actual currency and how it works in the marketplace.

I felt that is was necessary to include before I dive into the overview.  Dr. Ron Paul’s sentiments ring true here; inflation is a tax upon the people of which they will never see. That is, until they go to the grocery store and notice that milk is near $5 a gallon when it was normally $2.80.

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Jekyll Island was a prominent island for wealthy businessmen and elites to conjure during the 1800s up until its purchase by the State of Georgia in 1947.

In reality, Jekyll Island was the all exclusive club for the wealthy. In which, peons such as you and I would never been able to visit during that time period. However, something sinister was bore from the island, and it’s wretched tentacles have to to disembark from this country.

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Now that we have covered the previous central banks, lets get into the precursors of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The Panic of 1907 was meticulously designed. Out of a failure to corner the market on the stocks of United Copper, the banks who funded this push and associate banks were subjected to a run on the banks.

Wikipedia states that “The panic may have deepened if not for the intervention of financier J. P. Morgan, who pledged large sums of his own money, and convinced other New York bankers to do the same, to shore up the banking system. At the time, the United States did not have a central bank to inject liquidity back into the market.”

In my own understanding, I read this quite differently, as J. P. Morgan had much to gain out of this ordeal.

Next Comes Jekyll Island

Today, I have drawn my personal line in the sand.

From today until September 30th, I am going to spend every day reporting my research on the Federal Reserve. In response to my disgust, I am going to fast to bring light on this important issue in our country. I  am putting my own body on the line as a response to what I feel is corrupt and needs to be abolished.

For today’s Lesson on the Federal Reserve, I want to set up a timeline of events prior to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Read the rest of this entry »

This is some of my own raw footage from last night when Bachus was doing a meet and greet. The gentleman in front of me did an exceptional job on asking about how 550 billion USD disappear in 2 hours. This shows how clueless Spencer Bachus is, and he’s the RANKING Minority member on the House Financial Services Committee.

At about 2:14 you’ll see my jab about ENDING The Federal Reserve, and getting brushed off when I stated we need to remove the fiat currency and get out of our markets. His only reply was that he was the one that got Ron Paul on a Subcommittee and that they don’t have the votes. You’d think that some of these people who cosponsored the Audit the Fed bill would at least doing something.

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