I just arrived in Dublin yesterday afternoon after a long and brutal flight. I am a bit of a complainer when it comes to travel. First, I flew from LA to NY on Virgin which had wifi on the flight. I can't wait until international flights have wifi too, it makes such a difference. The 6 hour flight felt like it went by in 5 minutes. Once the international flights have wifi, I will be traveling to Europe every week.

Virgin is a really great airline but the only direct flights to Dublin from the US are on Aer Lingus, which is not nearly as nice. Whenever I travel now, I do lots or research to make sure I am flying a great airline. It makes a world of difference in how you feel when you land.

The day before my departure I received a text message from Aer Iingus saying that my flight was canceled. I had to scramble to get a new flight at the last minute and they were not helpful at all.

Aer Lingus is a really bad airline, as poor as the US ones like Delta and United. The price of a business ticket on Aer Lingus was over 4k round trip extra for only the 6 hour flight from New York to Dublin. I guess this would be reasonable if Aer Lingus actually had a business class but it was just the same as premium economy on Virgin, which would have cost about 1/4 of the price for a little extra leg room but that's about it. So my cheap ways came through and I flew coach. Luckily for me I was able to get a exit row seat as my knees kill me on long flights.

The moral of the story is that it's well worth spending some time doing some research on your flight to get a good airline and seat. It doesn't take too much time and you will be so much more comfortable.

On the flight I began reading Tom Chambers PLO book. I was very impressed with the first few chapters and will finish it up on the flight back and give a review on it then. I think he did an amazing job with the book in what little I have read.

This morning I put in a great session of poker. I won about 100k mainly playing 1k/2k limit OE. It felt really nice to book a win. Now I am heading out to see some of the city before the tournament starts this afternoon. Hopefully I do better than last year (I was the 2nd person out). All I need to do is stay away from Richard Ashby, who has knocked me out of two major tournaments.

I'm looking forward to playing my first live event in a long time. This was a great event last year, really well run and they do a good job of making sure everything runs smoothly. The Paddy Power guys have been taking good care of me and put me up in the biggest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It's massive. Hopefully the tournament goes well but if not, I'll get to see some of Dublin which looks like a cool city.