JeffreyLipsey.com

I would say Thursdays are the busiest days of the week for me on average. Today I would like to finish up the Promo I’m doing with Poker Office and record the Grinderschool Cash Series Replay from last weekend. I also have a coaching session today and need to clean Mindy’s cage and the rest of the apartment. After all that dinner becomes priority #1 and THEN if I have time I’ll put in some Rush Poker.


Also, expect an email from me regarding the GTS this Saturday on Full Tilt. I’m already registered so be sure to meet me there as its going to be a Razz Event, which is my favorite non-hold’em game by far.


Don’t forget that this month you can purchase a 12-month subscription to Grinderschool for $119.99 and receive an hour of coaching free from me. More importantly, you will receive a free month when you purchase a one month full stakes membership for $19.99. Subscribe today!

Grinderschool Subscribers will know that I’ve been very active in trying to lose some weight before my wedding. I am roughly 50% of the way through the 16 week program I started off in early March and I’m very happy so far with what I’ve been able to accomplish. I keep waiting and waiting to hit the -15 pound mark but I don’t know when or if it will ever happen.


I haven’t been doing too much exercise, since on that line I can never get off the ground. I’ve mainly been cutting back what I eat and just eating a lot less and a lot better. In the past 8 weeks I’ve had several new foods that I’ve enjoyed (Lentils, Leeks, Beets) and several others that I haven’t (Millet, Barley) and I feel like a more rounded person because of it.


I’ve not had one alcoholic beverage in 8 weeks (I don’t count the wine I cook with) as the goal is to not have any more until the wedding day. Also added to the menu was just a ton ton ton of fish and seafood. I used to cook seafood once or twice a month with most of them being shrimp-based dishes; I would probably cook one vegetarian meal a week then too and the rest of the meals would be centered around red meat. The past 8 weeks though I’ve had seafood an average of 3 times a week and only 1 red meat meal a week (including chicken, pork and beef) with the rest being vegetarian.


I’ve been very strict about eating no more than 1800 calories a day and I’m proud to say I’ve managed to meet that goal about 95% of the time. Most of the calories that I eat in a given day today are either grains or fruit. It wouldn’t be odd for me to have 5 fruit (banana, pineapple, mango, apple, orange) all before dinner, or 3 different kinds of grain (oats, wheat bread, lentils/couscous/quinoa) in a day either.


The hardest part for me is when we go out to eat on Saturday mornings as it becomes extremely difficult to judge the amount of unnecessary and unseen calories that go into a random plate. I’ve also learned that sometimes Salads aren’t the best thing to order on a menu.


The only thing I am lacking is in the exercise department but Marlyn and I have been taking dancing lessons for a couple hours on Saturday nights and that surprisingly is a fun way to burn off some decent calories. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the week I try to go out and ride my bike for 20 minutes just to keep the metabolism up; you don’t get too far on only 1800 calories/day.

Seems like forever ago I tried to start-up LameRerun.com which ended up being more work and effort than I really wanted to deal with (it did earn almost $30 in ad revenue in 2 years woot). It also made me realize I never wanted to be a critic.


I thought being a TV critic would be something easy and fun. You get to watch TV, write blog posts, do some post whoring and then rinse/repeat. It didn’t take long to learn that everyone really is a critic. . . even of other critics! The amount of hatred involved when someone disagrees with my opinion because they are too prideful to realize they are the ones that are incorrect (obviously) seemed all too frequent and everyday. Seriously, who is going to argue that Season 6 and 7 of Scrubs was actually good? No, you die you fat retard!


I feel the same way about being a food critic right now too. Imagine going through life and having to critic every little thing you eat. Three times a day you have to make a judgment: Was it good? If you make a bad review who knows how that changes some person’s life in some way or another? All because you got served a bad bowl of soup.


I’m sure I am in no way saying what is actually true about food critics; they probably get drunk like the rest of us and pig out on fried cheese and late-night burritos. Sometimes though I have to stop myself when I overly critique things that really don’t matter. So what if the recent episode of Glee wasn’t as good as others? There will be a new episode next week and what am I supposed to watch instead?


After a while I like variety and story and sometimes I don’t care how I get it.

Hey all!

I’m getting some traffic in here so I might as well talk more about me if you guys really want to know. On Sunday I released a podcast with Colossos159 on Grinderschool and it was a lot of fun, not as much fun IMO as the one we did last year when I was first getting to know him but Steven and I get along very well.

There is a running joke that only the people who have listened to the previous podcast and this one will get and that is me calling Colossos159 a Carney (sp?). There is some translation error between where he lives (Belgium) and where I’m at (United States); he told me last year he was a Carney and I was mighty confused since I didn’t think he meant ‘carnival folk’ plus who talks about themselves being a Carney?

I still have no idea what he meant by it, but I assure you he doesn’t run the Ferris Wheel at Belgium’s version of Six Flags Great America. I’m also sure the joke has run its course but that probably wont stop me from making it before the next podcast.

Check out the other Podcasts I’ve done on Grinderschool (they’re free) as they are released on a bi-weekly schedule. Send topic ideas to admin@grinderschool.com or see the forum threads for more details.

Buy one month of Grinderschool for $19.99 get a second month free!


If you purchase a 12 month subscription for $119.99 then you get a free 1 hour of coaching free from me (CodeRedRulez).


This promotion only lasts until May 31st and is available to all new members, current members and former members with no limit to the number of purchases you can make. For more details visit the Grinderschool May Promotion Web page.

You’ll notice some slight changes. I’ve removed the ads everywhere as they were nothing more than a false hope of get-rich quick. I’ve also taken down all the free videos I had hosted; partly because some were 3 years old and also I’ve surpassed the 100 video mark over at Grinderschool.

You can also find the short-stacking spreadsheet over at Grinderschool too as I plan on creating a page for it there with an updated sheet + new tutorial. I may or may not sell it individually.

Don’t expect many updates of any kind but I might change the premise and theme of it in the future.

Any new members who visit between 2009-12-25 and 2009-12-31 will get the gift of a one-month subscription to Grinderschool absolutely free. Obviously we want you to become a paying subscriber, but this is no gimmick. We know that you will love what you find enough to stick around once the free subscription is over. There’s no payment to make, no free trial to join and then cancel. Just visit on 2009-12-25 and get a membership for free! If you want to be reminded about our offer, please go to www.grinderschool.com/xmas.php and input your email address; on December 25th you will receive an email reminder.

Starting Monday, December 21, 2009 (today) all current and former members will have the opportunity for a free month membership as well. When you purchase a 3-month membership plan for $34.99 you will get 1 additional month for free. That’s right, FOUR months for the price of three. Go to www.grinderschool.com/sub.php to sign up for your 3-month membership plan right now.

To coincide with our Grinderschool Holiday Promotion, RakeBackNation has graciously offered a special promotion for new RBN members. If you rake only $50 in MGR by January 25th then you will receive a free one-month subscription to Grinderschool. If you already have a subscription to Grinderschool your free month will be added on to your current subscription. If you are already a member at RBN and still would like to qualify for this promotion, all you have to do is rake $50 more between January 1st and January 25th than you did in in the month of December. Both of these deals are in addition to the rakeback you earn and you will still be eligible for our other RBN Free Membership offers for Grinderschool.

All of these promotions end on December 31st so do not delay!

So my third day in a row playing 50 NL Heads-Up concluded with me not wanting to play that game for quite a while. Coupled with Wednesday’s 1 buy in day, I had another 1 buy-in day yesterday through 4 hours and ended up losing 5 today in another 4 hours. For the most part it was my own fault why I lost but after the session is over I realized I hate my life.


OK, so that’s a little over-dramatic but I mean I was loving life November 30 and now 4 days later I’m not having fun? The only thing that changed was starting to play 50nl HU! Honestly, I’ve lost all my confidence playing HU Cash right now; I thought I had a ton of confidence playing this level but that is not the case. The lack of confidence is costing me my time, money and mental state that doesn’t make any sense for me to continue.


I’ve actually willed myself to put time in yesterday and today by putting in 2 separate 2 hour sessions and I feel like this has worked out well. If I can find this motivation for full ring then I should be OK and if I get bored I’ll look for ways to keep myself interested. Maybe I’ll add another table here or there or whatnot but right now me having no feeling about how I play (full ring) is better than being negatively effected (heads up). I’m not giving up HUSNGs but I don’t see myself grinding them for sometime anyway.


Luckily its the beginning of the month and I have time to turn around and avoid wasting anything as we go further. I’ll have to restudy some FR and hopefully by the end of a couple weeks I’ll be back in the groove of things.

So I’ve made a very modest short term goal of 60 hours this month of poker play, as counted by Hold’em Manager. This does not include any coaching and does not include any Grinderschoolwork.


I don’t plan on updating everyday but today I got in a measly 2.3 hours and I wanted to make myself accountable. I started at around 2:30 pm and was planning on going straight through 6:30. I was cruising through my first 2 hours but all of a sudden I lacked focus and care and shut my tables down. I managed to make 1 buy-in so my goal of 40 buy-in’s at 50nl before moving up this month is 1 buy in closer.


So: 2.3/60 hours; 1/40 Buy-Ins.

Well now that November is gone I guess I can update again. What was originally going to be a real busy month only ended slightly so; I had plans to go to Indianapolis for Thanksgiving which fell through (a blessing maybe?). Otherwise I had the chance to see my Mom again as she came out for a long visit for her work and I was able to introduce Marlyn to my Grandparents and other family out in Denver. I guess you can still consider that a crazy month!


Another big change that some of you may have realized is that I am taking over many of the adminstrative duties over at Grinderschool.com to give JGB and his wife a break from their tireless work over the past 2 years. This has added on about 2-3 hours extra work for me a day and so far I like it and combined with some extra coaching I’m enjoying my life right now.


On the poker front I didn’t get to play much this month. Whether it was Denver or my Mom or Grinderschool or just myself, I only managed to get in 30 hours not including any coaching sessions. I know some of you saw me playing some weird games over the month. While in Denver I played a $20 180-man SNG and took first in that for a cool $1,000 in winnings so that felt really nice. After that I played Multi-Table Tournaments for 1 day and remembered why I disliked them so much. I was talking with Reasons14 on Skype (one of the SNG Instructors on Grinderschool) and he was talking to me about guys that would crush the $10 180-man SNG Turbos for like $100 an hour and I couldn’t believe it! So I tried that for a day and after losing 25 straight tournaments in a row without cashing I decided that was a bust to; probably the only thing I did this month which I didn’t have any fun at.


I also started the month grinding out some 100nl Full Ring on Stars again; sometimes its hard to remember just how nitty that game is. My friend Kavin had a killer month there so congrats to him as he started to get back in the groove. He put in over 120 hours on the month and his results show it; if only I can get off my ass I can have a good month too.


And then at the end of the month I played my share of Ultra-Turbo HUSNGs on Absolute, anywhere from $20-$50 buy-in. Those things are so much fun; they have 2 minute levels and you start with 500 chips. If I feel like I’m getting outplayed I’ll just time bank down for 4 hands until the blinds go up then I’ll just play game-theory optimized at 10-bb or less. I can probably grind out a 5-10% ROI in those things before rakeback but I would need to risk like 2-3k/day in order to see any kind of decent profit. The tournaments last 7 minutes or less and I’m only 1 tabling so you can see that I’d have to play 8/hr for 8 hours a day to get that kind of exposure at the $50 level and its not worth it. That doesn’t mean I will stop playing these but I’ll keep working on my skill level and maybe I’ll take shots at the 100s and see how I do.


For those long time readers, the reason I got so few hours in this month is not another one of those ‘unmotivated’ months or anything; I just seriously don’t know where the time goes all day. I was talking with Adil that I’m done at about 11 am every day with Grinderschool stuff, take 30 minutes for lunch and start dinner around 6 pm. That’s a good 6-7 hours of my day that usually just goes away and since my GameFly cancellation I’m not playing any video games (unfortunately). I don’t even feel like I’m watching that much TV during the day right now; although if I do watch its usually PBS Cooking shows (Spain: On the Road Again) in the early morning.


So that’s where I am at right now. I need to make a greater effort to put in more hours in December and Adil wants me to go back playing HU Cash. In order to win you need to have confidence and in order to have confidence you need to win; right now I am confident in my $50nl HU game so that is where I’ll be I guess. I figure I’ll win 40 buy ins there before I take any more shots at the 100nl HU game again; I feel like I can still crush 100NL HU when I’m playing my best. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much for me to go from awesome to break-even playing Heads-Up and the last thing I want to do is break-even.


So until next time I am out. Funny thing is I complain about all those people with poker blogs who don’t have them updated when I go to do link exchanges. And then you come see mine and its like once a month lol.