Golf.

I love golf. It's superb, challenging and so rewarding. One of the only sports where you go home thinking about the positives, remembering the great shots and not really beating yourself up over the 4-putt. You can always think of shots you could take off your round, and rather than thinking "damn I should be better" you think "I can and will get better."

On holiday, I missed golf so much more than poker, and sports I'm probably more talented at like tennis, football and snooker just can't compare with the enjoyment golf brings. It's nearly been a year since I first bought myself a set of clubs and started playing and just before I went away I hit a personal best of 88. I think I have played around 20 rounds so I'm happy with my progress, and with hopefully ten more rounds to squeeze in before returning to uni I'm hoping to make an improvement on that, though I know it will be tough. I've been warned about hitting the wall, and I can definitely see the bridge in class between the ok players and the "good" players. I may consider getting lessons once I'm earning but until then I'm going to develop my own dodgy style which can hopefully work, a bit similar to my poker!

On a poker front, my last couple of posts were pretty much my monthly update, but just to provide some stats for July, in heads up games my stats were...

619
$1.84
$18
10%
$1,138

And overall...

675
$1.83
$17
13%
$1,232

It was an important month for me because I moved up, stayed there, kept my roll on when I was running bad and found a game which Gamble would describe as my "bread and butter". I took off $400 for spending money on my holiday, but still have a roll online of $2805 so I hope to do well for a few weeks and reach $4600, thus making my $5k target. $1795 to go, with a month in which I can put in a lot of hours, is a tough task but hopefully achieveable.

Whilst on holiday, the $$$ in my account was turning more and more in to £££ in my head, but I played a few today and didn't start too badly which confirmed to me I should keep my money on there. I said to myself, unless the dollar hits a Zimbabwean hyperinflation crisis I have to keep it on there. The fact that I earnt 70cents more per game in July whilst riding out a couple of downswings and moving up in levels has reinforced the fact that I should keep moving up as and when my bankroll permits and only withdraw small amounts if entirely necessary (or to fund golf!!)

August was my most profitable month by far last year earning around $2k due to sng, mtt and satellite wins and I hope this year I can get close to that. I'm going to look out for the sats to the WCOOP and play a few of them as sngs and I have decided if I can sat into the WCOOP heads up event I will play it. So basically, I'm going to try to pummel out the hours this month and try to make some $$$. Standard really.

Golf, tennis, squash and pre-season football should burn off the Devon ice-creams and maybe I can get down from the ELEVEN STONES the scales indicated I weighed yesterday. They say muscle weighs more than fat(?!?) but still it can't be great when I fall in to the overweight category according to my BMI. Bowling tonight for my sisters birthday which should be good and then hopefully a few evenings this month we can have some DUPS 180man tournies and maybe some SNG's for a laugh. And perhaps the sun will shine a little!!

Much love,

Glad to be back,

Paulo,xx