Busy days...Friendly home games...Learning to trade

It has been a busy month for me, not in terms of online poker but in terms of training at work and some late night outs playing live poker and Nintendo Wii. I feel like I'm slacking at poker just about good variance seem to catch up with me. Fulltilt has surprisingly been very generous to me in my last 30 games.

Just about a week ago, I was playing with 5 friends in a home game. Friendly buyin was at 200 pesos. Blinds were, hmmmm, only God knows what the blind structure were. So as what you would expect in a home game, there were chip splashing, chip stealing (literally stealing as in "look, its a bird!", then off goes one of your chips). There was also tipping to a fellow player, like giving a $25 chip to a shorty with $100 with blinds at 200/400 (just to add insult to injury). Of course, there were booze and food all over the table. Ok, so Friend A (SB) was facing an all-in against Friend B who was a shorty but enough to cripple the SBs stack. He was in deep thought literally for about 2 mins or so (quite long for a friendly game). He showed it to the player on his right. "Call but ask the bigfish first" replied the player. He showed it to me, I was expecting like a QT or lower type of hand. Guess what he showed, AKd. I almost pushed the whole poker table towards him "CALL!!!!". Like I wasn't convincing enough, it took him another 3 minutes or so before deciding to call. The BB had AJs, flop and turn did not help either; river was a Jd. The SB turned to me and said in jest with a little disappointment: "Sabi mo allin". I just smiled and said "We did the right move, we had him dominated. As long as you put the money in while you were ahead, you did good."

As for my stocks and forex trading skills, it's still in its infancy.. I'm learning new things everyday. Slowly trying to make it up the ladder. In trading, just like in poker, it takes a lifetime to master. No one is ever good enough. Trading=poker=life, 3 different things but similar some ways, you need balls patience, and discipline to succeed.