I copied this post that I made on 2+2 in response to KB24's thread "Question to HS guys: Perspective on life before and after becoming rich?" My blog seems an appropriate place for this reflection.



When I was broke, I just wanted to be rich. I didn't care about much else. I was also not a very happy person.

I did the poker thing for a while, though I stopped really loving it after the first few months or so. I love the friends I have made through poker, and the opportunities it has given me, but I was never a huge fan of playing the game full time. As a hobby or a part time gig I think it is great, and I am looking forward to playing some over my xmas break, but I do not regret in any way doing what I am doing now.

I coached baseball for 1 season in 2009. It was one of the best things I have ever done. I fondly reflect on the memories I created there and the relationships I built with my players and my fellow coaches. I look forward to doing something like that again in the future. I spent the next 2 years at a small liberal arts school studying classics and philosophy. I always sucked at reading and writing so I figured going this route would help. It did, though I am still not particularly great at either. I took part in an economics study group while at St. John's College (that small liberal arts school) and my interest for the topic grew. I decided I got what I needed out of a program dedicated almost entirely to classics and philosophy and it was time for a change. I applied to as a transfer student to 12 programs because I had no idea where I could get in. I ran pretty good here IMO.

I started at Columbia 3 months ago, and am studying Chinese language/culture (Mandarin) and political science for my major/minor. I am taking a few economics and math courses because I am not particularly good at higher level math and feel like having some foundation there will be helpful in some way I can't really explain. Next semester I am taking a classics course because what the hell right, I enjoy it still. After that I will work in some computer science since I know absolutely nothing about that. This summer I am, for the first time since I turned 21 (18 really, though I only played cash games for my pre-21 years), saying fuck the WSOP. I am doing an intensive language program in Beijing. Hopefully I attain some level of language proficiency by the time I graduate. My goal is not to specialize in any particular field, but to study a broad range of topics that I am interested in and that will give me options in the future.

I have no idea what I want to do, who I want to be, or how I want to live. I like language. I am pretty good at ancient Greek and catching on to this Chinese thing pretty quick. I would like to learn Spanish at some point as well so I can cover the top 3 languages spoken in the world. Why? I don't really know, but 'because it is interesting' is good enough for me at the moment. I don't have any aspirations of changing the world, but if I can for the better, I would feel pretty good about it.

I have invested a large portion of what I have won playing poker in a few startups that show some pretty awesome potential. I could be throwing it away, but at worst I learn something about each business and can bring a more well-rounded understanding to my future endeavors. At best, well, I make some money in addition to my learning experience. I still plan to play poker in the future, but never as a full time job. A few years ago I think it was the best thing for me. I no longer think this is the case.

Like many of us, I like spending money on fancy dinners. Dining experiences are some of my best memories, almost always shared with my closest friends. I watch Boardwalk Empire and I think it is awesome, though I don't spend a ton of time watching TV anymore. The Wire remains my favorite TV series, followed closely by the West Wing (at least the first few seasons). I stopped watching Dexter in the middle of season 3. I don't like clubbing, but I enjoy having some drinks with friends while actually being able to communicate intelligibly. I don't play any instruments, but I sang fairly seriously for ~12 years, and I often think about getting back into it. I always enjoyed it quite a bit and the only reasons I create for not doing it are lame excuses.

Do I have some magical perspective on life? No. Do I think I am a much improved person from 5 years ago? Yes. 2 years ago? Yes. My goal is to always be improving in some way. I still don't think I am a super happy person, but my overall attitude towards happiness and life has vastly improved over the last few years. Like SlowHabit, I try to value my happiness very highly. I take the long term approach to this and try to avoid a hedonistic attitude. I still eat cupcakes because they are delicious, but I try to maintain a pretty healthy diet overall because it makes me feel good. I hit the gym a couple times a week and play basketball as often as I can because I love it. The gym feels like work at the time, but after I feel great, and those feelings continue throughout the rest of the day, even if the workout itself is temporary suffering (and it is rarely that bad).

This is what works best for me: I try to project myself into the future, looking back on my life. I try to make decisions that would make that person smile thinking back on life's memories. Will I achieve that? I don't know, but right now I think it is the best thing I can do.

Well, I put a couple leakfinder vids out in the last few weeks, hopefully you guys liked those. The online situation being what it is, I will probably not be able to make any of my own play. If These vids are still enjoyable and you guys are learning enough from them, I will be happy to release a couple leakfinders a month. Feedback is always good in this regard.

On a life side of things, I am finishing my second year at St. John's College next week. I learned so much here, and my ability to dissect a text and converse or write about it has improved dramatically. I have decided to transfer next year though in an effort to pursue something a little more suited to my strengths. I originally chose SJC because I didn't know what I wanted to study, and thought an investigation of the Great Books would be a great place to start for my education.

I was accepted at Columbia in NYC and sent in my deposit last week, so will be moving out there sometime around mid-August to study Economics and Philosophy. I am very excited about this change, and think I will do well there.

I will probably head out to Vegas sometime around the 28th this month in order to play the 25k HU. Not sure what my plan is for this summer, so just going to play it by ear. Hopefully there are some good 100-200 cash games like last year that will help pay for my inability to do well in tournaments!

In other news, I had my second boxing match last night. I have been training pretty hard for the last 4 months to prepare, and think I have come a long way from my first fight. I had a pretty tough shoulder surgery 9 months ago and couldn't be happier with my progress. Throwing a baseball still feels a little tight, but boxing doesn't put my shoulder in compromising positions so those workouts have been great. Enjoy the vid.

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

-David

Hello all, it has been a long time since my last post. I feel like it is time to come out from hiding and start saying things again. The current state of affairs with online poker is hurting us all, and it is time to do something about it. How best to go about making change is anyone's guess, but today I started posting on Bill Frist's Facebook wall:

"I am sure you agree that the student loan system in the united states is pretty messed up. Default means the loan gets sent to EdFund (or something similar), whose goal is to profit as much as possible from the student's inability to pay back the loan. The student is not protected by the truth in lending act, fair debt collection practices act, statute of limitations, or the ability to refinance the loan. This is an argument for another time, but many college students avoid the pitfalls of student loans by earning money in their free time between classes playing online poker.

I have paid around $2,000,000 in taxes to the US government over my 6 year career as a professional poker player. I support our lawmakers, I support our country, and now my living is being taken away from me for no good reason. Poker is without question a game of skill. This is something that needs to be regulated, taxed, and made legal to all consenting adults in the United States. Lives are at stake. Children. Mortgages. These are important things. Regulate online poker."

I am unsure what the best method for fixing our problem is, but I figured it couldn't hurt to start here. Perhaps he reads these comments, perhaps not. If he does, hopefully he will realize that this legislation is ruining lives. I recommend everyone start here, or reply to this blog post with thoughts on what we can do. I suggest everyone be tactful about their posts to Senators, lawmakers, etc. It is not helpful to berate them, call them names, or vent your frustration. This method is counterproductive, as most of your responses will be entirely ignored. Go about this with well thought out arguments based on facts. Mention mortgage payments, the support of families, student loans, etc. Mention that we are tax paying citizens. Mention that we care. Maybe none of this makes a difference, maybe it does. More later.

-David

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