Upswing into Spring? Please?

Hey all! Thanks for the warm welcome into the blogging world. I was pretty nervous submitting my first blog. I was a little concerned the reaction would be similar to the classic scene from a movie where the character has all their dreams tied up into their goal of being a professional comedian. They work for weeks on their material only to get on stage, be blinded by the light, forget all their lines, and be booed off the stage, tripping over the power cord on their way out. Only in my vision, I wrote and submitted a blog, only to wake up the next morning to 72 nasty comments and an email from CardRunners saying I'm no longer welcome on their site. They are letting me submit blog # 2 and so far nobody has told me to die in a grease fire, so I guess that's good?

Poker has been a bit crazy for me lately. I started the year with the most brutal downswing I've ever had in my career. It's done some serious damage to my bankroll and has shaken my confidence a bit. I decided it would be best for me to take a break from the high-stake games to get my confidence and bankroll back in order. I am hoping this downswing will someday be a blessing in disguise because it has given me some added incentive to work on my tournament game, as thus far in my career I have focused almost all of my energy on cash games. I really think I'm well-suited to play tournaments, especially live events. As a female, players tend to react differently to me and it's usually fairly easy for me to identify that and react accordingly. Of course there are exceptions, but in my experience, men have a tendency to severely underestimate my abilities at the poker table. They generally either believe I'm completely incapable of bluffing and they fold everything to me, or they vow to themselves they'll never be bluffed off a hand by a woman, and they call me down crazy light. It's always nice to be underestimated. I think this gives me a pretty big edge in live games and I hope I have lots of future opportunities to exploit it. Since November of 2010 I've played three big buy-in live tournaments and cashed in one. I'd be pretty happy if I could keep that pace! One very well respected tournament player who I've been seated with twice at big tournaments told me he was so impressed with my game he was bragging to his friends that he found the next "female superstar." I really hope he's right! Hopefully the bankroll will allow me to play lots of WSOP events this summer and I can make it happen. J

In the meantime I've been playing lots of 2/4 RUSH on FTP. You'd think playing 2/4 would be less stressful than 25/50, but four tabling rush leads to some crazy swings. I'm still learning what does and doesn't work in that game but so far I'm enjoying it, and it's a good cure for my short attention span since there's so much action. I'm sure at some point I'll get sick of RUSH and return to my regular six max games, but the break has been nice and at this point I'm not really in any hurry to change gears again.

The current downswing I'm on probably shouldn't come as a surprise. It seems that pretty much every single year I go on a downswing from Jan-March, then get hot in early summer and dig my way out of it. I have no idea if this is just pure coincidence or if my pissy mood during the late stages of winter alters my play in a negative way. It's so hard to stay upbeat while living in Minnesota during this time. When that first snowfall comes in October or November I'm usually like "okay, I'm not a huge fan, but this isn't so bad and it's kind of pretty." Then, in December I tell myself I can tolerate the snow because it makes for a festive Christmas. Once the holidays are over, I really can't think of a single good thing about the fluffy stuff. I spend my winter hibernating in my house with the heat cranked up. I laugh at the idea of using the snow for entertainment purposes. Ice-fishing? Skiing? Snowmobiling? HA! "I'll take no chance in hell for $500, Alex.' I know it seems a simple solution would be to pick up and move somewhere sunny and warm but it's not quite that easy. This year my husband and I actually seriously considered moving to Vegas, but we opted to stick around here for the time being for various reasons. My three year old son is the only grandchild on both my side, and my husband's side of the family. For his grandparents, the sun rises, and sets with him. I hate the thought of taking him away from the family who adores him so much. Plus, my husband is finishing up his schooling right now and it would be a very inconvenient time for him to move anywhere. I won't rule out a move somewhere in the future, but for now, I'm just going to curse my ancestors for settling down here and count the days until the snow melts and I have the privilege of seeing green grass again!

Thanks for reading! I'm going to quite procrastinating and get back to the grind....hope you all are running well in life and in cards!!!!

Danielle

Look! It's a chick! With a poker blog!

Hello, and welcome to the first ever "Dmoongirl" blog!!!! I'm going to preface this whole thing by admitting I really have no idea what I'm going to write about on a semi-regular basis. I suppose I'll mostly talk about poker and the sometimes fun, sometimes torturous, adventures this game leads me to. However, you probably shouldn't be surprised if I randomly vent about how wrong Steven Tyler was while critiquing my favorite American Idol contestant or how irritated I am by the non English speaking customer agent on the phone. I guess we'll see what kind of mood I'm in when I sit down to write. Don't say I didn't warn you...

I'm starting this blog because friends and family, mostly from my Southern Minnesota area, have expressed interest in my day-to-day life as a poker player. I guess I find myself pretty boring, but you don't find many professional poker players in rural Southern Minnesota and you don't find many female professional poker players anywhere, so I guess I can see how my life would be intriguing to some. I'll try to gear this blog towards my friends and family who don't know much about poker, which means keeping the poker slang to a minimum. Although I'm hoping my poker illiterate friends will learn a thing or two and someday be able to read my Facebook updates without a translation. Dream big right?

For those of you who aren't familiar with me, my name is Danielle and I play under the sn "Dmoongirl" on FTP and occasionally "ddmoongirl" on AP. I'm 26 years old and am married with a three year old son who is the light of my life. As I mentioned, I'm from Southern MN and am proud to have graduated from a High School where it was not uncommon for tractors to be found in the parking lot. I have been playing poker full-time for six years. I initially dropped out of college to play poker, but with the uncertain future of online poker I went back and graduated last May as a registered nurse. I am hoping I can hold off on using that nursing license for at least a little while yet, but it's nice to know I have a backup plan if needed. The vast majority of my career has been spent online at the 6-max NLHE tables. When I'm playing 6-max I can usually be found at the 25/50 tables on FTP. Lately I have been spending more time playing live and grinding Rush Poker. It can get a little crazy around here juggling the demands of being a mother, wife, and professional poker player. I am fairly certain I'm the only high stakes poker player in the world who has simultaneously: multi-tabled, cooked dinner, and read a book to my three year old. For the record, I have met many people in the poker community and it is confirmed that I am in fact, a female. Sorry poker community, there won't be any "PeachyMer" drama!

I'll start by answering one of the questions I get the most from people interested in my poker career. "How did you get into poker?" I always laugh and say it's certainly not something I intended to do with my life, it just kind of....happened I guess?

It started in 2003 while in my sophomore year of college at Illinois State University. My husband Kory (boyfriend at the time), and his buddies lived on the same floor in a dormitory. They got caught up in the poker "boom" after Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP in 2003. They began playing small poker games very regularly. I had no idea how to play poker so I just watched or found something else to occupy my time while they played. Anyone who knows me knows that I HATE learning new games. I'm so competitive that I cannot stand the inevitable learning process where someone else is better than me. When I say they "played poker" I should really say they were "obsessed" with poker. If they weren't at class or football practice they were playing poker. I realized if I ever wanted to hang out with my boyfriend and our mutual friends again, I better learn how to play this damn game.

At first, I was terrible. I kept forgetting the basic rules. I'm fairly certain I proudly flipped over QKA23 thinking I had a straight more than a few times. Then somehow, I started winning pretty frequently. We were playing freezout SNG's for $1.00 at a time so it's not like I was making major money but as a broke college kid every bit helped! We once played a "big" tournament with a $10.00 entry fee. I won the first place prize of $70.00 and I could not have been more excited. Unlike most poker professionals I never really thought to myself ,"Hey, making money in poker is kind of fun maybe I can do this for a living!" I viewed it as a pastime that would never develop into anything more. Kory had a classmate who was making money playing online poker and he was convinced I could do the same. He encouraged me to deposit some money and try it out. I was vehemently against the idea. It was my perception that all online poker players were degenerate gamblers and I had no interest in risking money we could not afford to lose. Kory kept bugging me about it until I gave in and we reached a compromise. It was decided we would deposit $50.00 and if I lost it, he'd leave me alone and let me continue to crush the $1.00 home game SNGs in peace. If I won, I'd keep playing off that money. I think at one point I was down to $13.00 or so?? Thankfully the poker Gods shone down and handed out some run good in the knick of time. Seven years later, I'm still living the dream off the original $50.00 J Had I lost that money, I truly never would have redeposited. It's nice because when people inevitably ask me, "Aren't you afraid you are going to lose?" I can say "Lose what? $50.00? Naw, I don't typically lose sleep over it."

So there you have it! My first ever blog entry. I welcome feedback and or requests/ideas for blog topics and can be reached at Danielle@Dmoongirl.com Also, I'm not very good at the Twitter stuff yet but I'm learning so follow me! @dmoongirl.

Thanks for reading!

PS- Here's my response to the "pics or it didn't happen" comment ;)