Hey everyone. I looked at the date and realized it's time for my monthly blog. Just kidding, just been busy with various things. Going to write a bit about all of them, in whatever order I feel like.

-I went to Miami for a few days last week for Camp Cardrunners. It was great getting out of the wintry northeast weather for a few days, despite a little bit of rain in Miami the weather was mostly great, it was in the 70s and sunny for our golf outing and nice enough for me to wear a polo to the rooftop lounge we went to that night. There are a couple videos of me from the trip, you can find them on Alex's blog . Aside from the weather, the trip was just a lot of fun. It was nice both seeing a bunch of the CR Pros whom I hadn't seen in a while and meeting the members who won the trips. My flight was a bit late arriving on Monday so I was a bit late meeting up with everyone for dinner, but it was no big deal. Afterwards we just got drinks at the restaurant bar. Tuesday I woke up and read by the pool for an hour and a half before golf, since I had an exam to take on Thursday, the day after my return. Golf itself was fun, despite the fact that I outplayed Taylor quite soundly but got beat in prop bets. Lucky fish. The most notable prop was that after shooting 61 on the front 9 but playing fairly well by the turn, I bogeyed 10 and then offered a bet where I would get laid 3-1 odds if I scored under 50 on the back 9. After 8 holes I was at 43 with just the par-5 18th remaining, I needed a bogey. Unfortunately my next 2 drives were launched about 50 yards in the the woods, and I lost. I felt good about how I played overall though considering I hadn't touched a club for several months. That night we got dinner and drinks again. The highlight of the night was getting Alex drunk, since according to him despite being 24 years old this had never happened before (!). I helped make it happen by telling our waitress, who was very pretty and fun, to get some shots for her and for him and to flirt with him and do them. Within an hour or 2 the mission was accomplished :) Love you Alex! Wednesday we woke up and had brunch, then I did a leakfinder video with Greg (shipitducy) and Taylor. Greg played 4 tables of midstakes (2/4 and 3/6) PLO, he's normally mostly a cap PLO player. I leakfinded and Taylor generated some good discussion as well. I think it should make a pretty good video, look for it in the coming weeks/months/whenever CR puts it up.

-Unfortunately the trip back from Miami wasn't so easy. My flight from Miami to Newark was delayed almost 2 hours for no apparent reason, and as a result I missed my connection back to Ithaca. To compound the matter, all flights to Ithaca for the following 2 days were cancelled due to the impending snowstorm (which had yet to start), and I had an exam at 1:25 the following afternoon. I ended up getting a private car to drive me back to Ithaca, unfortunately without my luggage, which I did not receive until Sunday. I actually bought underwear and socks so I didn't run out of clothes because I didn't want to do laundry. I slept through most of the car ride, but woke up with an hour left and the snow was coming down hard at this point. Fortunately, despite some sliding we made it back to my house safely. I wished the driver a safe trip back and got to bed at 4:30am. Fortunately, I had spent the whole day in airports and airplanes studying for the exam, and I actually did pretty well I think. I also want to mention that I was kind of impressed by Continental Airlines even through all this hassle. Prior to this trip I had them in the USAir/Delta group of very unimpressive albeit large airlines. However, I was impressed by two things. First, the planes had an in-flight entertainment system, and although I was studying so I didn't really get to use it, the selection of movies/TV/music seemed pretty damn good (Dark Side of the Moon!). Second, I thought they handled the luggage situation pretty well overall. I did wait around in Newark for an hour thinking they could retrieve my bags in about that long, but I guess there were lots of similar requests and the wait time was much longer as a result, can't blame the counter lady too much for that. After getting back to Ithaca they called me several times with status updates and offered to deliver the bags to my house, although it ended up being more convienient me to pick them up. Although I'm not a big fan of the Newark Airport, I think I'll be flying Continental over US and Delta from now on, at least (yes the airline selection flying out of Ithaca sucks).

-I now have a girlfriend as of this past weekend, although we've been dating for a little while now. Her name is Julianna (pronounced hu-), she's a junior architecture major at Cornell, and a very pretty, smart, sweet, hardworking, fun-loving girl, and I'm very excited to be starting a relationship with her. I've never been in a serious relationship before, but I have no complaints about how this one is going and I'm very happy with it so far. This past weekend, my parents came up to visit for my dad's 50th birthday weekend and I had a nice dinner with them on Saturday night, then we picked up Julianna and went to the Cornell basketball game. Cornell won to clinch a share of the Ivy league title, and we clinch an NCAA tourney birth by winning either of our 2 games this coming weekend vs Yale and Brown, I'm confident we won't lose both heh. On Sunday the four of us went to brunch and it was awesome, the place we went to was the Carriage House Cafe, if you're ever in Ithaca for some reason, go there. It's that good.

-I've been pretty busy with school lately, with 3 exams in the past week and a half. I had to take on early on the Friday before the Miami trip so I could go, the rest of the class took it on Tuesday while I was on the golf course. I also had exams last Thursday and this Monday. I actually think I did well on all 3 of them. I really enjoy my classes this semester, I'm taking Economic Development, Experiments and Games, Social Psychology, and History of Rock Music. I think Social Psychology in particular is fascinating, I've learned lots of really cool stuff that is very real world applicable regardless of my career choice. I'm more pleased with my decision to stay in school and get a degree now than I ever have been really, and I'm not in any rush to leave.

-As a result of how busy I've been with schoolwork and the Miami trip, I haven't played a ton of poker lately. I got some good sessions in this past Thursday and Friday because I was basically snowed in and didn't feel like braving a foot of snow to go out to the bars. I had a few rough sessions vs Isildur and Ziigmund earlier this month, but since then I've done a good amount of work away from the tables and played some focused poker, and I'm happy with where my PLO game is at right now. I still have a ways to go with the mixed games and haven't really gotten as much work in on those as I'd like, but I think I still play pretty well in them when I focus on one or two tables, but less well when I multitable or play PLO at the same time. We'll see if my beliefs hold.

-One topic that we discussed in my Social Psychology class is situationism. A central belief to situationism is the fundamental attribution error, which basically states that the outcomes in one's life are a result of both personal characteristics and the situations that one is put in, but that most people overestimate how big of a role personal characteristics play and underestimate the role that situations play. This really hit home to me as I've been more successful than I've ever dreamed of and situations have played an instrumental role. Consider that I grew up in a very average middle class suburban neighborhood. I was raised in a good, loving household and my parents were very supportive (a situational advantage in itself), but many of my childhood friends did not have the same positive household experiences that I did. As a result, many of them showed indifference in school and weren't all that motivated, and it would have been easy for me to be sucked into this trap by peer pressure. A mitigating factor is that down the street lived my 3 cousins who were 1, 5, and 7 years older than me. These cousins went to the same schools as me, dealt with the same peer apathy as me, and were nonetheless very motivated and successful. They were really great role models for me while I was growing up, and having them around was a major situational benefit to me. Then, when I was in 11th grade, one of my teachers happened to play and succeed at online poker at a time when hardly anyone was playing, I happened to be very friendly with him, and I started playing because of that. Furthermore, this happened right during the golden age of online poker, when the games were soft and good players were basically printing money. Arguably my timing was perfect. Now, I'm friends with some guys who are some of the best players I know, and are very hard workers and always willing to provide support when needed. I know I got a lot of flack for my "Oscar Speech" blog after my big win, but this kind of stuff is where I was going with this. I have a good amount of innate talent, to be sure, but without great parents who were always there for me, cousins who served as role models, a teacher who happened to play online poker, and great friends in the poker world, things could have turned out quite a bit different for me. So count me as a bigtime believer in the fundamental attribution error.

GL at the tables everyone,

Brian H