What An Amazing Week!

The past week has been like a dream. I couldn't ask for it to go any better. After the birth of my son 8 days ago, our primary hope was that our baby would be chill and our daughter would not become jealous. Our dreams were answered (so far anyway). Our baby literally NEVER cries. He just starts to fuss a little when he is hungry, but he mostly just sleeps and eats. You would hardly even know he is in the house.

Our daughter is not jealous in the least. In fact, her brother is about all she can think about. She asks for him all day long and just gives him about 5 or 10 kisses every time she walks up to him. She has been about the best big sister you can hope for, and as parents, my wife and I are getting a tremendous amount of pride and satisfaction with our family right now. It is so great to see our daughter so happy and our son not having to suffer with colic like our daughter did.

I have also gotten a little bit of an itch to play some poker lately. I have been logging a few hours here and there at the small stakes games on Black Chip poker. I haven't done any good, but that's just how poker goes sometimes. I have been playing well and I have no doubt that the time I have spent coaching has actually done wonders for my game. I have spent a lot of time fiddling with HEM and Flopzilla which is always a good thing. I have done a lot of work with those tools in the past, but often times I am spending so much time playing that I don't get to spend as much time as I would like working on my game. Now that I am doing so much coaching, I have been using HEM a lot with my students and just loving it. What an amazing tool it is, not that that is a new feeling for me.

One bummer lately is that my email address was hacked. It wasn't my primary email address, but rather the one I use for junk mail that I also recently used for prospective students to reach me at. The hacker runs bad because they sent an email to all of my contacts claiming that I was broke and in the UK needing funds sent to me so I could get home. Anyone who knows me well enough to consider sending me money would have a tough time believing that a bankroll nit like me would be broke and I most certainly would not be in the UK at the same time my child was just being born! So whatever scumbag did that (can you imagine how sad your life must be that you resort to stuff like that to make money?), they sure didn't have a whole lot of success which is good.

For anyone that wants to reach me for coaching, please don't use the email address that was hacked. And if you sent me a message on that address and I don't reply, please resend it to Leatherasscoaching@gmail.com. For more information on my coaching, you can go to this page:     <a href="http://dustyschmidt.net/2011/07/taking-on-some-students/">Coaching Page</a>

The coaching has been very exciting for me. I have always loved to coach, but just didn't have the time to do it for so long. So I did coaching for the masses through videos, articles and books. But now that I have some time to do some 1 on 1 coaching, it is really a special thrill for me. When students write me with their success stories, it really makes my day. I am not the type who is just doing to to make money. Granted, the money coming in is nice which is a big reason why I am doing it. But I have coached golf since I was a teenager, and poker as soon as I switched from golf to poker, so I guess you can say it is in my blood. I am not claiming I am great at it, but I do give everything I have during the sessions I have together and take genuine interest in my student's success.

Real briefly, after catching up on the Girah/DIH/Jungleman scandal, I have to say it is really sad to see so much of this stuff going on in poker. For whatever it's worth, for all of the up and comers out there, please play the game right and don't do this type of stuff. Everyone loses when this stuff goes on. And don't forget that life is long and these things don't go away when you are caught. Try googling all of those clowns right now. On the first page is a headline that basically says they are crooks. That stuff will follow them forever no matter what they try and do in their life.

Poker is probably going to be legal here in a matter of months or a few years in the United States. With that will come so many opportunities for so many great things for you if you are currently a great player or are trying to become one. Don't piss it away by trying to make a quick buck. Not only will you get caught a high percentage of the time, but even if you don't, you are heading down a path that will cost you money or your dignity (and when you get older you will realize that is more important than money) in the long run. There is no substitute for good old fashioned hard work.

Take it from someone who has a couple of kids now. Even though I would love to have some more money to be able to take even better care of them than I already do and provide greater security in the long run, most of all I want them to be able to look up to their father as someone they can respect. We are in a new age these days where you can't just do shitty things and sweep it under the rug. Stuff will follow you forever. How do you think Tiger Woods or Brett Favre are going to feel when their kids read their sexts or see picture of their penis? And how will that impact their kids?

Please everyone, think things through. And do things the right way. I know I am probably sounding like a preachy old man here, but I care about the game of poker and human being in general. I hate to see this stuff happen. And even if we are throwing out the moral argument here, it is still -EV to take risks like these folks and many folks before them have taken. Many a great player has pissed away their entire reputation over trying to win some relatively small amount of money. And think how badly that might cost them in the long run? For all we know, poker could be as huge as the NFL someday. What kind of endorsement dollars might be out there for the best players? And do you think Buick or Cadillac, Nike or Microsoft is going to take a gamble on a poker player who when you google them one of the first things you see is that they are a crook? Talk about -EV.