Hey, I don't really feel like writing a huge entry but I figured I'd summarize my series into 10 main points detailing how it went for me. I will say that overall I found this to be a SUPER fun experience and enjoyed it much more than I expected.

1) Pokerwise I pretty much brokeven off of my own play. I played 30 tournaments with buyins summing to 111k and cashed 3 summing to 110k. I played 2 2-7SD events, 3 PLO events, 2 mixed game events, 2 LHE events and 21 NLHE/PLHE events. I feel like I ran bad when it comes to getting deep in tournaments(only got top 15% in 5 tournaments, when normally I think I'd probably get that far in 8ish) but I also ran very good that the few tournaments I got deep in were typically big buyins(bubbled a 5k NLHE and 1.5k NLHE, mincashed the 10k at bellagio and 10k PLO and final tabled the 5k 6max PLO).

2) I want to learn the mixed games better- 2-7 SD was a blast, PLO was also interesting as well. I'm very weak many of the limit games and think that getting to the point where I'm a winner in any event with a buyin below 10k would be a good goal to strive for. I understand that bracelets are kind of an arbitrary thing to use as motivation(I actually wore one around all summer but I'll get back to that later) and typically I play poker to make money however I do find 6 weeks of bracelet chasing to be pretty fun and I'd like to put myself in as good of position as possible for next year.

3) Living at Luckychewy's house is a blast. I lived with chewy, bond18, aejones, sirwatts, kingdan and starkey and after living in a condo by myself for the last year it was a very nice change of pace to have people around all the time. I'll admit after being there 6 weeks I'm glad to have some time to myself, but it definitely helped me realize that I think living with the right people is more fun for me than living by myself.

4) Aejones is a surprisingly good human being. I made a comment that alluded to the fact that I was better than him at every aspect of life. This turned into a competition to see who has more random skills and he beat me(9-7 or something like that) and although hes the sorest loser I've ever met(he claims I beat him at a vision test due to variance), I'm going to lose graciously and tell the thousands of readers that Aaron is a better human being than me.

5) Its tough to stay healthy in vegas. I was down there to grind and never really let eating or exercising influence my decision of whether to play a tournament. As a result I missed tons of workout, but on some fat mass, lost some muscle mass and overall just ate like shit. The next month or two I'm going to try to be extra healthy and more than reverse that.

6) I probably let my inter-personal relationships of people who weren't in vegas suffer more than I should have. I forgot to reply to probably 20-30 texts/emails and although I was playing like 70 hours a weeks I don't think thats a good excuse. I've always been somewhat aloof in regards to travelling and just kind of packing my bags, leaving for a few weeks, not telling my friends I'm gone and then returning as if I never left. At one point I forgot to reply to a text my sister sent and she spent the last few days thinking I was upset with her, sorry Emily! Things were also heading in a good direction with a girl I had been seeing but that stopped abruptly after I got back, and I definitely should take some responsibility for that.

7) There aren't that many hours in a day. Usually I have soooo much free time since my only job has ever really been poker and I've never been much of a grinder, schools always been fairly easy to me and I just try to get things done quickly. Realizing how little I could do when I have 100ish free hours a week gives me a newfound respect for people who work full time jobs, have kids, maintain a household etc etc. I am truly amazed by how much better some people are at time management than I am.

8) Other poker investments went pretty well for the most part. I made a bet with jcarver where if either of us won a bracelet the other would have to wear it around all summer and give them 10k. He won a 1k, and I dealt with probably ~300 people congratulating me over the course of the summer. I also made by far the biggest prop bet of my life with Tom Dwan against winning 2 bracelets within 3 years beginning in 2010. After fading 2 years I'm probably about 94-98% to win this bet and it was one of the biggest factors in deciding whether I had a profitable summer or not. I also ran good buying pieces of people which overall lead to it being a decently profitable summer. Conclusion: I'm better at determining who can/can't play well than actually playing poker :P

9) Fuck you FTP- alright maybe thats a bit harsh and I am slightly angry at myself for supporting the site even after black friday. I still really hope they can sort things out and do believe they're trying to have the players best interests at heart but I felt pretty shitty endorsing a site which wasn't paying its players. I hope they can sort things out and I can break this down to 9 comments on the WSOP, but for the time being I'd like to apologize for representing the site after black friday when I honestly didn't do nearly enough research to make a justified conclusion about such an important decision.

10) The WSOP is overall less of a must-play event than people describe it as. The WSOP main is an AMAZING tournament, but anyone who has like a 100k net worth and invests 10k of it in one tournament and refuses to swap/sell is just being ridiculous. It is after all just a poker tournament and while lots of people suck it probably contains like 450 of the 500 best tournament players in the world. That said I will probably play the WSOP main every year I'm available to do so for the rest of my life. Prelims on the other hand are overall not nearly as great as people hyped them up to be. Even the 1k and 1500 buyins I'd typically recognize 2ish people at most tables(and presumably more as you get deeper) and the field sizes are huge so again to the people taking shots(say spending 30k on 1500s with a 150k net worth) its probably a bad shot to take. I would guess my expectation for the series to be under 100k, and probably closer to ~60k and would consider myself to be one of the best players. Lots of people who are worse, spend less on buyins, are more prone to tilt, will often only have 20-50% of their own action etc etc will likely expect to win an amount thats much lower than that figure with an absurd amount of variance. As a comparison if one was to replace 50-80 hours of live play a week with 50-80 hours of online play a week(hint: everyone at all good is at the WSOP and no one good is playing online) . Basically my advice to most people would be that unless you have a networth into the high 6 figures or more you shouldn't play the WSOP on your own money, and if your net worth is lower than that selling pieces is a better alternative but just finding a way to grind online is far superior to either if money is your primary incentive. Obviously the WSOP is a PILE of fun and a nice change of pace from the online grind I'm just saying that despite the fact you "could" win 9 million dollars, more peoples financial situations are hurt than improved as a result of the WSOP.