Well, I haven't updated for a while so I figure I should let u guys know what's going on.

Poker has been great so far this year. I have played a lot of HU matches at NL and PLO, and done very well. The last week or so hasn't been that great, but February was my best month ever making over 7 figs, so poker is definitely going well.

I am also trying to learn mixed games. I want to play the 50k player's championship as well as some of the 10k championship events, specifically stud and stud8. O8 seems to be kicking my ass a little bit, but maybe I will play that one too. Sometimes the 1.5-3k games online are pretty soft, but I don't think I will be in those any time soon.

I cashed out most of my online roll, leaving about 60k to play with to learn mixed games. I am probably going to be taking it easy on the poker side of things until this summer. I am super pumped about getting out to LV and seeing a bunch of my friends. It is the one month out of the year all of my poker friends are congregated in the same place. Lisa is going to be coming out and staying the whole summer too, so I think it is going to be a lot of fun. Look forward to lots of pool parties and bbqs. I love summer.

I finish up here at school in about a month. The year has been great, have been enjoying the program a lot. I have read a lot of books I would have never touched on my own, and think my reading comprehension as well as writing abilities have improved dramatically. I am currently writing my final paper on Aristotle's perspective of happiness in Nicomachean Ethics. It is due tomorrow, and I think it came together quite nicely.

Hope everything is going well for everyone. Sorry about the lack of updates, most of my hours are filled in some way or another and the blog sometimes gets pushed to the back of my mind. I won't make any promises about constant updates, but I will make an effort. Hope all is well with everyone.

-David

Last night I laid down to sleep at like 9pm. I ended up reading for a couple hours, but still passed out easily before midnight. The last few nights before that I hadn't gotten much sleep, so it felt really good. I woke up and went to class feeling refreshed and full of energy for the first time in a week.

After class I came back to 6 fresh inches of snow. My walk to school from my house takes about 15 minutes, and it is one of the better parts of my day. It always has me feeling slightly more awake and refreshed early in the morning. I get to walk along a trail, get some fresh air, and romp around in the snow a little bit. Anyways, there was a bunch of new snow so the going was a little bit slower, and I realized there was no chance my car would get down the driveway.

I normally box twice a week, Wednesday being one of the days, but had to forego that today. I went in the garage to swing some kettlebells around, then came back in to test out my new C2 Rower. I did 3 5 minute rounds for a total of 3800m. It was really hard. Rowing is no joke. I will try to do that 3 times a week and improve my form and hopefully see some results there. I enjoyed it to be sure. I have always been big on variety of workouts, and this just gives me one more option.

Anyways, after workout, PostflopAction was sitting at 1-2 plo, so I asked if he wanted to play some HA. We ended up playing 200-400 HA for about 2 hours, and I had my best day ever, making a little over 440k. I am no Hastings or anything, I can't pull out 4m in a night like its nothing. I felt I ran pretty well (obv), but I also felt like my game was top notch. I haven't played NL much in a long time, but I felt very comfortable there. My bluffs were working, my sizing was good, and I was getting max value from hands.

PLO I felt I did well in also. I don't generally play deep stacked PLO unless the game is extremely good, and even more rarely HU. I played fairly nitty and tried to keep pots small oop and didn't mind getting a little bit in pf if I was in position. He was playing super aggressive so I just min raised every button and was happy calling off 6x pf to play with 300x stacks in position every time. Occasionally I would 4 bet to random sizes when I had hands that could stomach a 5 bet.

After an hour he asked if I would stop min raising (he wanted me to 3x in PLO instead of min raise, in NL I was 3xing every time), and I said I was just going to play my game. He asked twice more, and finally quit after I said no the third time. I dno, but I think it is strange for a regular to start making demands like that. Next someone will ask me not to check raise (ok maybe not but still). How I play preflop is up to me. I will limp and min raise to my hearts content, as it is part of how I play the game. If I got stuck making it 3x and calling off 9x for reraises every hand, I would be out of my comfort zone doing something I am not used to doing. This is unacceptable to me.

There are certainly arguments to be made about doing it to keep the game going etc, but again, I am comfortable playing my style of poker that allows for various raise sizings before the flop, small bets on occasion, min raising, all sorts of fun stuff. If I start obliging requests like that, I won't be playing my game anymore and could be put in spots I am not used to seeing, which could result in a big loss for me.

Anyways, I wasn't too sad that he quit, being the nit that I am I was happy to lock in my biggest win ever. After finishing, I studied Euclid propositions, filled out an hour or so worth of paperwork while skyping with Lisa (we want to get a puppy, and the best breeders want to make sure their animals go to the right place I guess. This is a good thing imo, so I didn't mind), and am about to go finish Phaedrus. It is an interesting life I am leading right now, but it seems to be working out fairly well.

-David Benefield

Well I played some more poker today. Woke up pretty late, around 1, and called up my boy Mario who I haven't seen in forever. He came over and watched me play for a little bit. It was pretty much straight down at first, but I started fighting back. I was mostly playing 3-6, 5-10, and 10-20 cap, but then some good 25-50 games broke out and I couldn't resist.

Somehow, I managed to run 11k under EV playing mostly small stakes. I killed it once again at 3-6 cap HU, but didn't do so well at higher stakes. I guess at higher stakes they play better.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5084424 This was the biggest pot I played. It sucks losing the 7500 ones when I have that much online. Perhaps I should wait to play 25-50 until I have a little bit more to work with. Nahhhhhh, the only way to run up a roll is to take shots! I am going to keep updating with my account balances and maybe I will do a super run good and be back in the bigger games without having to deposit.

On stars I have like 3700, ftp 6500 for a total working BR of 10.2k. I think this is sufficient for the monkeys at 3-6 and 5-10 cap HU assuming I play mostly fish. I also don't have a problem sitting for 1/3 my bankroll in a game primarily because I don't have a problem quitting after I lose a buyin, and the upside is huge if I run good or just slightly not awful. Anyways, here is today's graph.

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6357/cantevenbeatlowstakes.jpg

I am grindmoding pretty hard, but my volume will go down a bunch once school starts back up on Monday. I have to read the first half of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, as well as do a good 6-8 hours of Greek translations before Monday, so that will probably eat up a decent chunk of my time. I also need to start getting back in shape, as I have been super lazy over the break doing a lot of travelling and fine dining.

I better get going, I have to pack still, then leave for the airport in 6 hours. Later.

-David Benefield

So in an effort to torture myself, I decided to try to run up the 2k that was left in my account. I started off at 2-4 buying in for 80, and ran my account up to 8k moving up in stakes. I took a shot at 10-20 and 5-10, but lost money there. Absolutely crushed some HU cap plo, so that helped a lot. I find that I do rather well there, maybe I will just sit HU cap plo all day and you guys can come challenge me.

It felt good winning, but I find that when I do this I automatically run like god. By do this I mean, have a crappy day at higher stakes, then try to refocus much smaller. It is kinda neat how it happens, but I guess it makes me feel a lot better that I am not a complete scrub at this game. Well, maybe I am, who knows.

In other news, I went to the doctor today to get an MRI for my shoulder. I ripped it out of socket senior year of high school causing me to quit playing baseball, but never got surgery. Why I didn't get that surgery is beyond me, as it will be a much bigger hassle at this point in my life. I think I was just depressed I couldn't finish off the season and was just pushing all ideas away, even good ones. Over the last couple years I have been more active, and it has been giving me problems, sublexing easily if my arm gets in certain positions. Quite problematic if I want to throw a baseball, do some jiu jitsu, or even try to do a pullup.

Anyways, I am paying for that now. I went in expecting to just go through the tube for 20 minutes or whatever, but I got in and had to fill out 45 minutes worth of paperwork. Then I went back and the nurse started talking to me about injecting fluid in my arm blah blah and I'm like whoah, I thought this was a glorified photo shoot. Turns out it wasn't. 2 hours later I am told I have to rest my arm for 3 days and can't pick up groceries. It doesn't feel pleasant.

Tomorrow I have a nice lazy day. I am going to get some stuff in order, run some errands, and get ready to head back to school and Santa Fe Friday morning. I am still moving into my house there, and currently have fold up table and chairs for furniture, but will have that stuff in order within the next couple weeks. Turns out it isn't so easy to buy and move into a house while going to school. Who woulda thought?

Some of you may know that I took up boxing when I started school. I have really been enjoying it, and am going to start taking it a little more seriously. During the fall I would have boxing club practice twice a week, and I would swing kettlebells around or play random intramural sports the rest of the time. I am planning on signing up at a boxing gym and adding in a few workouts there per week. It is a great workout and I love the competition.

At the end of the semester we had an exhibition. In total the club has around 25 or 30 members, and 16 people turned out for 8 fights, including 2 girls. It was a lot of fun, and I had a reason for once to focus on my training. I get lazy sometimes when there is little goal in sight other than just staying in shape. This time I was trying to prevent getting my ass kicked in front of a bunch of people. Luckily, we got it on video. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZIzBdQTG6s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSJAmzMHTzA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEmedyVE8ig&feature=related

-David Benefield

So. I haven't done a blog in a really long time. For those that don't know, I went back to school. I am at St. John'sCollege in Santa Fe, NM. I spend my days reading Plato, translating ancient Greek, boxing, and hanging out in the coffee shop. I have been really enjoying my experience thus far, and don't see any reason why I wouldn't continue on for the next 3.5 years. Past that.. who knows what I will do.

Since most of you probably want to know about poker, I suppose I can move on to that. I didn't play for about 3 months or so, which, since 2004, has been my longest poker break. It felt really good, but I started itching to get back in it.

Over the last few days, I have been running up a bankroll from 10k. I managed to get it to 63k at peak, playing mostly PLO. Today, I blew it up, and another 60k that I borrowed, playing 25-50 and 50-1 PLO. Games seemed really good, and I figured I would take a shot. It didn't go so well.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3731/welcomebackfml.jpg

I feel like I am playing some awesome poker, but just didn't get the results today. While grinding up my roll this year (lol 2 weeks) I was winning pretty consistently at smaller stakes, and was moving up steadily until running into a brick wall today. More accurately I ran into the brick wall, causing it to collapse, covering me in bricks. It hurt.

What surprises me the most is that, immediately after quitting the games, I was really unhappy, but not in the way I remember being unhappy when I would have a losing day pre-school transition. I am not sure how to explain it, but I just sort of felt sad. I knew I played well, so I wasn't upset at myself, but still, there was some form of unhappiness present that was different from what I have experienced in the past. Perhaps it was the same feeling I used to experience, only coupled with a new disappointment feeling that I used to not associate with a poker loss.

Why I felt that, I am not sure. Was it disappointment in myself? Was it disappointment in the poker gods? Was I upset with myself for jumping into bigger stakes games too soon before I built back up an adequate online bankroll? Perhaps it was a combination of these things, and others. Perhaps it was because I had Del Friscos tonight and was having a good evening, and let poker interfere with that. I am over poker interfering with my life, so something will need to change. What that is yet, I am not sure.

Money wise, I am doing fine, but I have never really had to deposit money onto a poker site before, aside from the initial 50 bucks way back in the day, so it is sort of depressing. Mentally, I have generally separated my 'poker' money and my 'real life' money, and now that I have to wire some on, it feels a little strange. I don't really want to keep a ton of money online though, and sort of like the challenge of running up a bankroll, so maybe I will play really small Townsend style and set some move up limitations on myself. Maybe I will put in 10k and start at 2-4 or something and move up only if I get a certain number of buyins. Who knows, that could be fun. There is time to get into that later.

Switching topics because I do that, I bought a house in Santa Fe up in the mountains near my school. It is about a 12 minute walk through the snow from my front door to the coffee shop on campus, which is smack dab in the middle. I walk most days and really enjoy the process. I get to see beautiful scenery, explore the terrain, and throw rocks at the water tower which makes really cool laser sounds when the rocks bounce off. The house is a smaller place, around 2k square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, but I absolutely love it. The location is perfect, and it would be hard to imagine a better setup.

I spent Christmas with my family in Florida, then went to Houston to visit Lisa's family for a few nights. I really enjoyed the time I got to spend getting to know her family, and I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I felt with them. From there, we headed to NYC for a few days. We managed to get reservations at Per Se for New Years Eve, and had one of the best dinners of my life. It was pricey, but the tasting menu was fantastic. We also did a tasting menu at Aureole, which was great. Apparently there is a location in Vegas that a few of my friends said was good as well.

After NYC we had a 6:50am flight to Turks and Caicos for a little sun. It was awesome getting to transition from a -2 wind-chill in New York to 82 and sunny on the beach. I got through 3 awesome fiction books without getting a sunburn (Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami, and the first 2 books in the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb). It was nice getting to do some leisure reading that wasn't school related. Unfortunately, a few of the days we were there were overcast, and it even rained for 2 days. The trip came to an end yesterday, and Lisa left this morning L

I have a lot more to write about, but am getting pretty tired so I am going to cut it off here. Likely, I will be blogging much more regularly since I am back playing some poker again, but I don't think it will be daily. I do enjoy keeping a blog though, having a place to express my jumbled thoughts is great, and if I can entertain others in the process, all the better.

Anyways, hope everyone had a great holiday season. Talk to you soon.

Love,

-David Benefield

So, for me at least, WSOP 2009 has come to an end. Perhaps more than that has come to an end. It is the end of my brief career as a full time poker professional. It was a wonderful run, and a fantastic experience I wouldn't trade for anything. I took a little bit of a different path that most, but I think it worked out all right in the end.

In less than 6 weeks I start school. Wow. I don't really know what to say about this other than that I am excited/nervous. I really have no idea what to expect, but I think it is going to be a great experience, no matter what happens. What I do know is that I am going to give it a full year before deciding what to do. No matter what happens, no matter how much I love/hate it, I am going to finish the first year. In all likelihood I will love it and continue on, but you never really know for sure.

This summer I played 7 wsop events. I cashed in a 5k for 14th place, and bubbled a couple others. I busted out of the main event with AK to A2 all in on an AAT flop, 2 rolled off on the turn. It was cool though, I really didn't even mind. It didn't bother me in the least. I smiled, packed up my stuff, and headed home, with my mind on returning to school and entering a new lifestyle, something different.

I have been playing online a bit more over the last few weeks with pretty strong success, up around 250 or so. I haven't really played anything big, most of it has been at 25-50 HUNL and 25-50 PLO on the ante tables. I have been getting quite a bit of 25-50 NL action, which is pretty cool, most people seem to think I'm a fish or something (which may be true). It has gone pretty well for the most part though, so maybe I'm not as bad as these guys think. Guess I still got it a little bit.

Yesterday coragyps lost like 100k at 25-50 PLO HU and was tilt sitting at 300-600, so I sat with him for 30k. First hand he raises I reraise AKQJ he calls. Flop A63r, I bet he pots I get it in, and he tables J652 and bangs it off then instaquits. The best part of this though, was I didn't care at ALL. Like, a year ago, even 6 months ago, this would have tilted me to no end. I just sat there, smiled, said nice hand, and waited for him to come back or leave. This is something I have never really been able to do before. I didn't get mad, I didn't get upset, I didn't complain to the world about my terrible luck. I just sat there without anger, without emotion.

Now, I find it funny that for the last 5 years, I have searched for this ability to not feel pain while playing poker. This was the first time I truly experienced painlessness at the tables, and it felt really good. The funny part is that I am no longer going to be playing poker, at least for the first year I am in school. I searched so long, worked so hard to acquire this ability, and now that I seem to have it, I am moving on to something else. Perhaps this is the point where I grow bored with most things, when I feel like I have accomplished what I set out to do. I may not have won a big tourney, or beat Phil Ivey over 100k hands, but I conquered the most fearsome opponent of all, myself.

So what now for me? Well, I am not going to quit poker QUITE yet. I don't start school for 6 weeks, so will probably be playing a bit until then, so don't count me out of the game completely. Once school starts though I am going to not play a single hand until Christmas break, and then re-evaluate. If things have been going well, I will continue it for the rest of the year. Next summer I will come out to Vegas and play some series events, maybe grind a bit online, etc, but it won't be the most important part of my life anymore.

I am leaving Las Vegas to head back to Texas on Sunday. I am staying to go to UFC100, then headed home. I will likely hang out in Fort Worth for a week or so, then I am renting a place in Austin for a month. My gf is doing summer school, and I have a bunch of friends in that area that I want to hang out with. I also have really enjoyed my previous trips to Austin, and want to spend some time getting a feel for the city. I also want to start reading a couple hours a day to work that into a routine so it won't be a huge change once I start school.

I don't know what the future of poker looks like. There is a lot of legislation stuff going on that could potentially be really great for all of us. If online poker becomes regulated in the US, it will open the floodgates for people to start playing, and new life will be given to the games. I don't know what the future holds for me either. What I do know is that poker gave me something truly wonderful, the luxury of choice, and I fully intend to take advantage of it.

-David Benefield

I find that any time at a social gathering religion, politics, or nutrition is brought up, nothing good ever comes of it. I have been in countless arguments at parties with people about religion. This is the big one. The thing is.. everyone is pretty closed minded in their views on this. Most people have it ingrained in their brains from an early age what is 'right' for them to believe in. It is a product of your environment kind of thing. Some people take the initiative to explore the concepts on their own, but the average person doesn't bother, and just follows along with what their parents tell them to believe in. Trying to have a conversation with someone like this seems to be a complete waste of time.

On politics, I certainly don't know enough to have any kind of argument with someone about public policy, economics, whatever. It just isn't something I know enough about to feel a need to comment on. However, there are tons of other people that have a similar level of knowledge and go around spouting off about how conservative they are, or how much they love liberal policy and blah blah. If you say ANYTHING against their beliefs, they get extremely defensive and start to argue with you and the hate seems to build immediately. It is uncanny.

However, the BIGGEST one I find is nutrition. What we know about nutrition is learned from our parents, or from our educators in school. Most of this is rubbish, what we call the 'american diet'. Now, I don't know a ton about nutrition, but I do know that eating fried food, tons of processed shit, and a bunch of added sugar in everything doesn't lead to longevity of life. This isn't an issue ever really, and most people agree with this assessment. Something interesting seems to happen though when you go on a non 'mainstream' diet.

I am now on day 9 of eating a vegan diet, and I am enjoying it very much. Don't get me wrong, I would really like to crush a giant steak, a crabcake soaked in buttery lobster sauce, and a giant piece of chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. I am doing this as a discipline thing to get myself back on eating healthy track before the series. Playing tournaments for 12-14 hours a day can be quite grueling, and if I am bogged down with processed junk in my diet, I tend to lose focus much easier than if I eat super clean.

However.. sometimes people seem to get offended when you say you are eating a vegan diet. It is an inexplicable experience. It is almost as if by consuming said diet, you are personally attacking someone else that consistently eats meat. You are essentially saying they are wrong without ever saying anything. Some people take offense to the mere fact that you don't want to consume animal products, and are greatly put off by it. They even get defensive and try to tell you that it is unhealthy, and that eating animals is much more conducive to long term health.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, I find it amusing that some people can get ridiculously worked up about this. I mean really, why the fuck does it matter what I eat? I am not doing this for other people. I am doing it for my personal health and well being, and am not trying to prove something to anyone other than myself and exercise a little discipline. In the last week or so, there have been probably 10 instances where people try to tell me that I will wither away and die, I won't get enough protein, that eating animals is way healthier than 'sitting around eating grass'.

Well, this is debatable, but I don't really want to get into that right now. I can see great arguments for eating a super clean diet without any processed foods, but adding in high quality fish, hormone free beef, etc. I honestly have no idea what is 'optimal' for long term health and fitness, but that isn't really the point right now. The point is, why do people get super defensive and offended whenever someone disagrees with their eating habits? I try hard not to impress my nutritional views on others, but if someone asks I will gladly talk about why I am doing what I am doing. I have never at any point said 'this is way better than what you are doing and you should do it too, this is the best diet ever you will live forever.'

It seems as though it is even more extreme than religious conversations. God forbid you go to a Christian school in the south and mention the fact that you are atheist (god forbid, get it?). You will likely get maliciously attacked, told you are wrong, stupid, going to hell, etc. Well, with nutrition, a very similar thing occurs. You won't get enough protein, you will die of b12 deficiency, animals are HEALTHY to eat, we were MADE to be hunters, to kill and eat our food, and on and on.

The thing is.. it is all but IMPOSSIBLE to change anyone's mind about these topics. Everyone seems VERY set in their views, and there is nothing wrong with that! I could care less what you believe in. It doesn't affect my life in any way. It seems silly to constantly try to impress your views on others. I think it is great when people can have constructive arguments about these topics, but in my limited experiences it just isn't possible. From now on I will try to avoid talking about politics, religion, and nutrition in any way unless the person is genuinely interested in learning or hearing a different point of view. I certainly have my ideas about what I believe in as far as these things, but I am always open to hearing other sides of the story. Many seem to not share this feeling.

Anyways, sorry for the minirant, just something I wanted to get off my chest. The 40k is in a couple days and I can't wait. Tomorrow I am going shopping to pick up a new suit, some nice dressy clothes, etc. I like to dress up, and haven't gone shopping for that kinda stuff in a while. I will probably stop by the Rio and try to reg during my shopping spree. I wonder how many people there will be.. I am hoping there are around 300, but that seems rather ambitious. In any case, it should be a lot of fun and a good way to start off the series.

-David

So I just got done playing the 25k HU. I lost in the finals to theashman103. He is a great HU player and we had a fun match. I am definitely not unhappy with him winning, but obviously I would have preferred to ship it! I felt I played really well the entire tourney, and it was a great way for me to start off the summer. I am looking forward to going into the 40k NL event at the series and stomping. It also helps to pay for my college tuition with 2 days of work.

For those that are curious, I DID in fact record all of my matches, and will probably do some sort of video series on them. I know watching 1 table is pretty boring, so maybe I can figure out a way to do multiple HU matches at the same time, but I feel like that would sort of detract from the flow, which is super important in HUsng matches. We will see.

I am on day 7 of eating a Vegan and everything I am eating is delicious. I have been working out a bunch, and am feeling great. My normal routine has been wake up, eat a bunch of fruit, work out, drink a shake, float in the pool for an hour, then figure out what to do with myself for the entire day. I wasn't even planning on playing the 25kHU but aejones was like 'omg this is softest field ever u should play', so I regged pretty late. Guess that one worked out for me.

I haven't been playing much poker at all really, and I am ok with that. It was a good break, but if games are good I will probably start playing a bit more. I am not sure how many events I am playing this summer, but definitely doing all the big NL and PLO ones, and I think there is a 10k HU which I will definitely take part in.

I would like to take a cool trip somewhere soon, with the purpose of surfing. I haven't been surfing in quite a while, so definitely want to get some in somewhere. Anyone have any ideas on where really good surfing is right now? I am not really that good, but I want there to be some decent waves and good instruction available.

I don't really have much to report, life is good, I hope everyone is crushing.

-David