DRAGRUFF: August 2010

     Ive been playing poker seriously for about two weeks now, so far I'm having a fun time. This week I definitely feel I have improved, but I know I have tons of work to do. Personally the first couple of days I was playing absolutely terrible finishing 5th and 6th place in the sit and go tournaments. I was getting pretty frustrated at first, but then realized it's all part of the learning process. This week I actually won my first tournament...kind of..I made it to the final two like I've been doing a lot lately...however, the other player disconnected and I eventually won because he lost all of his/her money from folding. So, I guess technically I won, but I'm wondering if I would actually beat him/her if he/she didn't disconnect.

    These last two weeks have really made me realize I am absolutely terrible at heads up play. One minute I can be the chip leader by 2000 or so, and then lose it all by one terrible play. Luckily through the Harrington on Hold'em book I've definitely learned how to maintain those chips with a more aggressive approach. I've been reading a lot of articles on heads up play, and its clear that heads up play is one of the hardest parts of hold'em. I really look forward to keep practicing heads up play.

    I am about 115 pages into the Harrington on Hold'em book, and I really like this book a lot. Harrington really makes you want to keep reading even when you're tired. Today I learned a lot about reads and how important reading is to win in a tournament. Luckily, he explains you don't have to make reads on all the players, only the first two to your left. Then eventually you can start adding players when you learn the other players playing styles. I've also learned a lot about how important it is to change your playing style during certain points in the game. For example, my tables are mostly comprised of 6 players with a 50 chip buy in. So, I take a Conservative approach at first until maybe 1 or 2 players are knocked out. Personally, I feel that being conservative at first helps you with your reads. So if you fold, you can watch the other players to see if they are aggressive, Conservative or super aggressive. Later in the game its necessary to change your approach to that of a more aggressive approach, since the blinds and antes will go up. Hopefully I read these sections right, and not writing false information.

     With all I've learned, I definitely feel I am extremely far away from my goals. I don't feel confident in my play at all. I also need to get a lot better at heads up play . Ideally I would like to start winning a lot more tournaments, and until then I'm just going to keep playing sit and go's.

I'm going to Turning Stone with Steve and Jake this weekend, I really hope to learn a lot from them. Also, It looks like I will be learning a lot about pot odds in the upcoming chapters of Harrington on Hold'em.

Music:

     This has been a really good week for music. I learned a lot of beats by Benny Greb via YouTube video called Sand Hats. The beats he does on this video sounds awesome, and they were a lot of fun to learn..really hard too. Also this week I started the Life Time Warm Up routine by Tommy Igoe. This is a great DVD that allows you to sit in on a master class with Tommy and like 6 of his students. This warm up is really centred around rudiments, and how rudiments can really be fun to learn and play. Personally, I never really spent tons of time on rudiments, besides singles and doubles. In my opinion these are the most important rudiments, because every other rudiment is comprised of them. What is a double stroke roll comprised of? rr ll rr ll, ETC. What if you took the e's out those (second note of each, because they are played as sixteenth notes)? Those would be single stroke roll's. Now what about a paradiddles? RlrrLrll (uppercase letters are accents). Its obvious to see that the paradiddle is based entirely on singles and doubles. Flam rudiments are no exception. Flam's just have a grace not which hold no rhythmic value in this case.(grace notes can have rhythmic value). So a flam looks like this: lR(single), rL(single). The grace note hits just before the beat.Rudiments are important to develop your hands, as well as making creative beats, solo ideas, etc. The same goes for drags or ruffs, whatever you want to call them. They consist of 2 grace notes before the primary beat. Other rudiments are based off of drags/ruffs(ex.ratamacues), flam's (ex.flamtap)s, but at the end of the day they are still based off of singles and doubles. Sorry for the long rant on rudiments, I just felt it was necessary to explain them a little.

I'm also working out of a book called Future Sounds by David Garibaldi (Tower of Power). This is "the" funk drumming book, and I am having a lot of fun with it. This book really centers around creating a two sound level for drumming. That means that your playing should maintain accented notes and unaccented notes..so that your drumming doesn't sound sloppy. You can really hear this type of stuff in Adam Detich's( Lettuce) playing, Steve Gadd, Steve Jordan, and tons more. Also, back to rudiments..the paradiddle (single,double,triple), and inverted paradiddles are huge in the funk drumming world.

Hopefully I don't sound like a snob, I just get really into talking about drumming.

Song of day:

That's pretty much it... I'll try to update on a daily bases.. this is just a brief summery of this week.

DRAGRUFF

Friday, August 27, 2010

First Post

Monday, August 23, 2010

Inter-oh-duction

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