It's that time of year again - March Madness time! Honestly I'm much more of an NBA fan than a college basketball fan, but the "Big Dance" still holds a special place in my heart. I'm in 3 bracket pools this year (one with family, one with college friends, one with poker players) and I got off to a hot start yesterday winning all 8 of the early games (including #11 Old Dominion and #13 Murray St.) before going 4-4 in the late games. Nothing wrong with 12-4 though and I'm pretty sure Georgetown was my only loser than I had winning more than one game. I'm very excited for the Cornell game vs Temple today, our team has been getting lots of hype, and it's well deserved as they've won 3 straight Ivy league titles and feature two guys who have been named Ivy League Player of the Year (Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale) and a two-time Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year (Jeff Foote). Wittman is also the conference's career leader in made 3 pointers by more than 80, a pretty stunning stat. We do have a tough matchup with Temple today, as I thought they'd be a 3 or 4 seed rather than a 5, but I still have confidence. Go Red!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for spring break. I am flying to Ft. Lauderdale with my roommate, Justin, and staying overnight there, before heading to Miami Sunday and departing on a cruise! We have a group of 12 guys going on the cruise. I've never been on one so I can't wait to see what it's like. It's a 7 day cruise stopping in Belize, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and maybe somewhere I'm forgetting. Really looking forward to it as well as just being able to relax for a week, although I'm contemplating bringing some for-class reading material to catch up a bit. Judging from past experience I'll probably bring it but never open it, heh.

On the poker front, I had a very nice session vs Isildur1 this week, winning a shade over $1.5m at 500/1k PLO. I had some tough sessions against him in the previous month, so it felt great avenging those losses. Playing against him is always a lot of fun as he gives a lot of action, and hopefully he'll be back in the games soon. Otherwise, I haven't played much at all recently, as I had friends visiting from PA this past weekend, a good chunk of pre-break schoolwork to complete, basketball games to watch, an online fantasy baseball auction on Wednesday (more on that in a future blog), and time spent with the girlfriend. I won't be playing any on the cruise as well, but hopefully when I get back there will be some good games to play and I'll be able to put in some play time. One good thing about playing poker so infrequently is that I'm really motivated and even excited to play when I do play, and as a result I think I play some really focused poker and have a lot of fun doing so. I realize this is a bit of a luxury that I have, but it's something to keep in mind for anyone when trying to grind out a high volume of hands and feeling like poker is getting stale.

That's all for now, good luck at the tables everyone and GO BIG RED!!

Brian