I really enjoy being with my baby but I miss the excitement of the poker world a little bit. It is going to be hard though as Norah is exclusively breastfed so I will need to get some bottles ready for her while I play. Luckily her daddy will be with us so hopefully it will all go smoothly.

I am not getting much sleep lately, Norah decided that she likes to feed every hour during the night. I hope this growth spurt will not last long otherwise I will collapse from exhaustion.

I managed to play a little bit of online poker here and there, but only cash games as I can get out of those anytime.

Well, I am excited that I will be back in a month or so and I think I will even try to play some satellite tournaments on Everest Poker for the Montesino tournament in Vienna.

So far I am surprised how well it is going and how much we can sleep and go out with her. I think this is the fundamental difference between having one baby or having twins. None of this would be possible with twins.

I didn’t plan to have her in our bed during the night, my plan was that she would sleep in the bassinet by our bed but that didn’t work out for two reasons: one – she wakes up usually within 15 mins if I put her down in the bassinet instead of sleeping with her; two – if I try to swaddle her, she wakes up, but if I don’t swaddle her, she wakes herself up because of her wild hand and leg movements, plus she is cold without a blanket and a loose blanket is not safe in the bassinet.

So for the first 5 nights after coming home from the hospital (2 days after birth) I slept with my rocker/recliner chair with her, because I could hardly get up from the bed to sit up to feed her – my incision just hurt too much. After several days and being fed up with sleeping in the rocking chair, when I was well enough to sleep on my side (which I couldn’t do with the fresh wound for days) I started to sleep with her in our bed and feed her in the side-lying position.  So I am actually getting more sleep than I expected although I am still awake for a good portion of the night, but at least it is comfy and I can sleep while feeding and between feedings.

Our social life is much better than I expected too. We went to our first BBQ party when she was 5 days old – we had a lot of fun and she was asleep the whole time. We visited my in-laws 3-4 times already and went out to have dinner with them the other day. On Saturday we went to have lunch with friends – Norah was asleep the whole time, then visited her twin cousins – she spent most of the time asleep again and we went out for dinner with other friends. So it has been really easy so far and I think we are lucky that she doesn’t cry much and when she does, she usually has a good reason – 90% of the time she is hungry (after all she is a big baby) and most of the other times she is dirty.

I haven’t played any poker lately, but I plan to make my online come back when I play the heads-up against a lucky player who will be chosen on the Everest Poker Hungarian Cup final on 7th August. I hope to play some more poker online after that, maybe an hour or two every couple of days – that is the good side of cash games that I can sit down and stand up at any point. We’ll see, but that is the plan.

Here are some pictures of our precious baby:

I don’t think it is surprising but I haven’t played any poker lately, I am too big and too uncomfortable to do anything. I just sleep, eat and swim in the pool – which is good for the baby and me. Plus, I cook sometimes. I have less and less energy to do that too. It is a blessing to have a pool in the back garden, however small it is, just to be able to cool down on the hot summer days.

I have been following the WSOP and the other Live The Dream team members’ performances. Congrats to Sigurd for winning a bracelet in the $2500 8-mix event! Amazing job!!!

As for the baby, I am glad we decided to have her here in Canada instead of Hungary. The preparation and the whole birth experience is quite good here (I hope to confirm this after…). We did tons of classes, like baby CPR, baby massage, lamaze, hospital tour, etc. So we feel quite prepared. Now we only need the baby herself ))

We also finalized the name, both our mothers’ names are going to be middle names. She will be called Norah Jane Ilona Brown. I like it

My husband says this little unborn baby has more clothes already than the two of us together. True LOL

So, for the last couple of days I haven’t been playing poker, I am just too big and too tired to sit down at the computer. Not sure I will play at all before the baby comes. I just can’t concentrate and I am very uncomfortable having such a big belly.

Anyway, no poker for a while. I’ll be back with either baby-stuff or maybe with poker, but then it will be later.

This is the reason why this might be my last post for a while, at least about poker . I am not sure if anyone would be interested in reading about diaper changes and breastfeeding in this blog Plus, as I hear, I will be to tired to write anyway.

So, about May. It was a strange month, partly very successful but also with failures. The biggest disappointment is the online tournament result, which was a big negative (-9k). However, I won over double that last month, so I will keep trying. The biggest reason for the negative result is that I played several WSOP satellites (on which you can get the cash credited or tournament dollars) and I haven’t cashed in any of them. These are much more expensive tournaments ($700) thank the other ones I played ($55-$350), so they influence the results greatly. If I just cashed one of them, that would have offset the whole negative balance.

Anyway, the good part of the month was my 2-7 game. First of all, the tournament result included my 2-7 win, which was close to 3k. On top of that, I won over $11k in 2-7 cash games which means that my month had a positive balance. I  haven’t had a negative month in 2 years now. I played 16 sessions and won in 12 this month. I probably ran above EV, but I don’t mind at all ))) I played a little as high as $50/$100, but usually only up to $30/$60 where I am getting quite comfortable. I only play higher if the table is really good and there is no good game at lower limits.

The player, who helped me with some advice at the beginning of my 2-7 learning curve, is in 2nd place at the WSOP 2-7 tournament with 8 players left (Peter Gelencser). I hope he wins it

My 7 card stud game didn’t go well either. I played on $1/$2 stakes and had no success. It continuously seemed to happen that I bet all the way with the best hand and someone with a complete nonsense calls me down all the way and makes the best hand on the 7th street. But because this kept happening again and again, I start to suspect there is something wrong with my play, too. It can’t just all be bad luck. So I will drop to $0.50/$1 for a little bit to investigate what I am doing wrong. I will definitely not give up

My short handed NLHE didn’t go well either. My biggest problem is that I just don’t like short-handed play. However I will keep playing and practicing, learning from videos, etc. , because this game is much weaker on Everest Poker than full ring (at least at the stakes I like to play full ring – $2/$4 and up). I didn’t lose money on my cash games, but I hardly won anything which is disappointing.

So, this was probably my last month of playing serious poker for a while. I will still post if anything remarkable happens, but I can’t promise anything.

There were 42 players in the 2-7 triple draw tournament and I got $2700 for the win, but that is ok. I just want to practice 2-7 tournaments to prepare for the WSOP next year. And as long as I don’t lose money while practicing, I am fine I also came around 100th out of 3600 in the 750k and cashed quite a few other tourneys today.

I am unable to cash on Everest Poker. I played 5 tournaments there today, no cash. Well, I guess it is only short term. But long term in tournaments is usually very-very long…

My life nowadays is much more about highchairs, strollers, rocking chairs and baby clothes. Got a ton of stuff yesterday. These tiny pink clothes are just sooooo cuuuuute She is gonna be a very well dressed baby

I am also getting more and more uncomfortable in the heat and with the extra weight. Well, I will just have to cope, there is nothing I can do.

I made a stupid lay-down which I still don’t understand. I went into the hand with a plan exactly to get into the situation in which I got and then through it away… arrrrrghhhhh… no idea why, I had no reason to do so except that I would have had to put another 100 big blinds in the pot. But that is what I wanted to begin with…

Anyway, I was really angry about that, but luckily it was the last hand before the dinner break so I had no time to tilt. I had a tough table on the second day. Some of my moves worked out well except a light cold 4bet, where the 3bettor went all-in so I had to fold. One more hand I could have played differently, but I think even if I did, the end result would have been the same or close to it because I couldn’t have avoided the last two hands.

Then I played my first 2-7 triple draw session on the $30/$60 tables, two-tabling and it went really well. I had a lot of good starting hands and I hit a decent amount of time, so I made over $2200. I guess now I can say I am a $30/$60 player in 2-7 TD. It is a milestone, I think this is where it starts to become serious money (at least for me). I don’t think I will play at this stake against the regulars, but this time there were several weaker players at the tables and that is why I decided to play. I will keep avoiding the tough tables for a while until I feel more confident at this stake.

Yesterday we had a touristy day with Everest Poker’s Jerome, a nice kid from the London office. It was funny walking around with my huge belly – I guess most of the people thought the 23-year-old kid was the father, LOL. We were laughing about this a lot ))

Today I will play the Ladies Event.  I would like a nice finish for the season. Then no poker for 7 months… OMG – at least not live. I guess I will need to convert this to a baby-blog for a while It will only be about feeding and pooping and burping and no poker DD

I used to have serious problems with tilting, but I usually noticed it and stood up from the tables. I only tilted away serious money once and it wasn’t that much money ($4500). I think somehow I also managed to avoid big downswings. I think the main reason for this is that I panic much earlier than a serious downswing could hit and I start to analyze my game, my mistakes well on time. I also drop down a level very easily if I feel I need to recoup my confidence when things aren’t going well.

I am proud of the fact that since the summer of 2008 I haven’t had a losing month.

I still found the book very useful, just to summarize whatever is important in this subject, but also got some good advice. I know that making good decisions is more important than winning or losing, but I wouldn’t say I am indifferent to money in poker – although that is what you should aim for.

I also noticed looking at the Amazon poker books, that I basically read all the educational books (not story-telling) on the first 4-5 pages. It took me 4 years of only reading poker books, nothing else.

So now I will turn more to the videos on the internet, some of which are very useful. Last summer I met Annette at the Everest Poker party during the WSOP and she said she watches 2-3 videos every day. So I signed up on some sites on her advice and she was right

Oh, and of course, I started to read baby-books instead of the poker books