Hey, my friend convinced me to play the 100k in PCA coming up in a few days. I'll be flying down for a few days, then flying back to Canada and playing the 5k in Niagara and then returning back to school resuming life as a first year college student. Just wanted to say that I'm selling off action if anyone is interesting in the 2+2 marketplace in case anyone is interested(selling at a 1.074-1 markup). http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/184/staking-selling-shares-live/100k-pca-super-high-roller-946062/

Also, part 2 of mine and mement's videos come out in a few days. Hopefully its as well recieved as the first few videos. I'll be posting a report if either of these tournaments go well/have anything exciting happen

Report of Playground Poker

First of all I'll say I'm probably the worst person for someone to sponsor to attend an event since I have pretty absurd values in a lot of ways. I always feel kind of torn when I am sponsored for anything since I feel like when I am being compensated for attending I should do my best to compliment the person who has been kind enough to sponsor me, but on the other hand I feel like when representing the experience to the public I should give them the most honest picture, and most importantly since I am self-concerned I feel that the main thing that I care about is maintaining my own integrity in situations like this and since my values are so absurd, lots of things that certain people may find perfectly normal I find compromising.

Anyways, that opening paragraph probably makes you guys think it was a negative experience, but all-in-all I've had a blast and there is just one little thing that irked me more than it should have.

I'll write this report in 2 sections, 1) what the club is like, 2) what my individual experience was like

The club:

The club itself seems really nice on the inside. On the way there 2 girls in our limo bus had to go to the washroom really badly and since it was rush hour going over the Mercier Bridge it took like 45 minutes for a ride that should take 10-15 minutes. When we got off the bridge Roy Winston joked that we should just pull over to this corner store type thing so they could go to the washroom but apparently that was the club. Inside its VERY nice and spacious and we were definitely judging the book by its cover. The chairs are the most comfortable I've seen in a poker room, and the room is so spacious that I feel like most poker clubs would have tried to fit ~20% more tables into the room. The restaurant had very good food and it may have just been since we had a big group and it was their opening night but it took probably ~2 hours to get our food. Everything is free when you are playing poker and I didn't hear any complaints about the food itself. If attractive waitresses are what bring you out to a poker club, then playground poker is 2,000,000% the place for you. I talked to someone who worked for the owner's other company and she mentioned that when they were holding interviews for the waitressing jobs people who worked in that building and saw the girls coming in and out of their office thought they were shooting porn. The one tournament I played seemed quite well run despite being the first one they've run at the club. The dealers were very good overall and the only real complaint I had about the tournament was that with 5k starting stacks, they gave people who rebought 1 5k chip which really was a nuisance for making change when average stack was maybe 6k.

Rake in the games seemed quite high to me(5% capped at $14 in 5/10, $25 in 10/25, and $100 in 25/50 PLO which is considered a private game) but at the same time I haven't played any live cash in Quebec so I have no idea what the norm is. Overall I think the club is definitely worthwhile to check out and the other pros who were there(Marc Karam, Erik Cajelais, Roy Winston and Nenad Medic) who have actually been to a wide variety of poker rooms in Canada feel that this is by far the nicest.

My individual experience:

My friend Justin Kelly contacted me about a month ago asking if I wanted to come up to Montreal the 17th-19th and just show face, play some poker and just have a good time while having all my expenses paid for. I hadn't played live poker in 4 months and had my last exam on the 16th and most of my friends are in school until the 21st or so and thought this was pretty much perfect timing. Before leaving I sent him a text asking where the hotel is relative to the airport and wondering whether I should cab or train or whatnot. He said there will be a limo bus driver waiting to pick me up and I realized this was going to be a sweet trip.

I had no idea what a limo bus is but knew it sounded cool. In the end it was just a nice shuttle van but I'll take it. They do a fantastic job of giving us all the red carpet treatment and events like this make me realize how prone I am to being wine and dined. I'm at the point where I really don't care that much about earning money but at the same time I still care enough about money that I don't unnecessarily spend it. That means at an event like this even if they gave me twice as much money to show up but didn't pay for rides, meals, bottles etc I could have easily just paid for all of the perks and left the trip in a better position financially but enjoyed the trip much less. I realize that doesn't make a ton of rational sense but I am just very much a huge fan of getting free stuff. Anyways, both nights I went there they had a 25/50 PLO game running, the first night I played 10/25NL after losing the tournament and the game was EXTREMELY good. I eventually got a seat at 25/50PLO and it wasn't a great lineup(Erik, Marc, Nenad and Sam Chartier were all in the game) but there were a few spots.

Part way through the night they called me over to do one an interview for the site. If I were to guess I'd say I've probably done 1-200 interviews but I've never had one anything like this. Before every interview with an interviewer I haven't worked with before they always tell me to reiterate the question in my answer.

In this one he elaborated to tell me how I should elaborate on my success and tie that into my answer about being at the poker club for people who don't know me. I did that and then he stopped the interview and mentioned I need to be more upfront, say numbers of how much money I won in my various EPT finishes etc. I did this and then he stopped the interview again and told me I need to put more emphasis on how much I'm enjoying the club and why my opinion should matter a lot to the viewers.

This went on probably 6 or 7 times until I correctly mentioned playground poker enough times in my sentence, did enough bragging about myself and did enough incorporating my success into why I'm entitled to make the judgement on what is/isn't a good poker room. All-in-all this left a VERY sour taste in my mouth and this was the one experience of the trip that I was referencing during the first paragraph. I want to be as honest and upfront with everybody as possible and although I was enjoying the club/experience and wanted to be able to tell people about it , I don't want to be some puppet who is just used for them to encourage their brand.

The next day I got lunch with Roy, checked out the gym and then met up with Marc to head to the club. Once we got there we had the option of playing the $100 tournament or just playing cash. We all played $1/$2 and they made a rule that anyone who bluffs one of the pros out on the river gets $500. I thought this was a super cool promotion and got everyone at the tables talking, got more games started and gave people the opportunity to win some money. Trying to think about strategy adjustments was pretty interesting but at the same time way less interesting in practice since most people are pretty scared of losing their money and expect me to read their soul so there was still very limited bluffing going on. Eventually I moved to a 5/10 table and they removed that $500 promo but one player followed me to the game and then bluffraised the river against me. When he went to collect his $500 they informed him and he was kinda disappointed and then told me that he'd never have bluffed me if it weren't for that rule and he apologized for disrespecting me.

After a while I met up with Justin Kelly and his friend Brian and decided to go out to this club called Globe and see what Montreal is like. Playground gave us a ride there in the limo bus, arranged for us to walk past any lineup and bought bottles of grey goose for our party. Originally I assumed this was probably going to be one of the few things playground wasn't paying for but at the end of the night playground's hostess took the bill and said playground was covering it. After that everyone decided to head back to my place and despite everything being closed at 4am she managed to get a bottle of alcohol and mixers delivered to my room(there was no mini-bar or alcohol through room service at the Westin for whatever reason).

All in all I feel like the extent that Playground went to in terms of trying to please the players was very impressive. The weekend was a lot of fun and although I had one pretty poor experience with that one interview I thought it was a great place. I obviously haven't observed the poker room from the eyes of their average player which is obviously the most important thing to anyone reading this, but it seems as if they are very customer oriented in my dealings with them. All in all I had a fantastic weekend and I definitely recommend everyone try out the place.

Haven't updated this in 8 months but I promised a few people that I'd update everyone on what I've been up to. After seeing that my last blog post got 17,000 views I guess over the last 8 months plenty of people have been checking for updates. I definitely find this pretty flattering and I appreciate that people are still curious what I'm up to. As much as I'd like to give an empty promise that I'll be blogging more regularly, I'll probably just stick to fairly infrequent updates.

Last time I updated I was in Monte Carlo and the trip went quite well financially after I got 5th place for 80k in probably the largest tournament of the year with 0 publicity. 1st was over 400k and we were just playing in the corner of the room with maybe the toughest final 5 I've ever played(me, menlo, mement_mori, rubenrtv and Frederik Jensen). The tournament was bigger than like 50% of WSOP events and we were off playing in the corner of the room in the same area as people playing SNGs. It is sort of strange how much the media dictates which tournaments are considered "big"... I've played many major televised events with dozens of reporters and a smaller prize pool than this.

In my last blog post I mentioned I would be applying to Wilfrid Laurier University- a school in Waterloo with a pretty good business program. It was a pretty huge sweat(I was probably the last person to hear back from the university) but in the end I got in.

This Summer I didn't get up to a whole lot... I was probably the least jealous I've ever been of people down at the WSOP but at the same time I probably refreshed pokernews 5,000 times when I had 30% of one person, and 3% of another in the final 50 of the main event. Neither of them final tabled, but that was definitely exciting.

This year I've gotten fairly serious about lifting weights and I think its a pretty awesome hobby for me. One complaint I always had with poker(especially tournament poker) is that any performance related goal is pretty stupid to have since its always completely outside of your control. I find with lifting I constantly have a goal to work towards and as long as I work hard I can pretty accurately deduce exactly what I need to do to accomplish it. I think there are VERY few things where you can get constant numerical feedback, make substantial/consistent improvement for a relatively long period of time, be completely in control of your own success and have the goals be useful beyond just goals for the sake of creating goals.

This summer I went through a couple weeks that were fairly shitty in August. I used to get about one bad migraine every few years, but within the span of a week the following things happened 1) the person who was planning to buy my house bailed a couple weeks before school was starting and I knew I couldn't dedicate a lot of effort to selling the place while I was in school 2) my girlfriend of 1.5 years and I broke up- this was the only serious relationship I've been in and the only substantial breakup I've ever had and I can say it sucks 3) I got 3 bad migraines in a span of 4 days. Anyways that was pretty brutal but at the same time I now haven't had a migraine in a few months, I managed to find another buyer who paid 3.5% more and Molly and I are on better terms now than we were for the last couple months of our relationship.

School started in September and I can still remember the first 2-3 days of class I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount I had going on. It is crazy just how few obligations I had for the last few years, but its amazing how quickly people adjust to their settings and by the end of the first week I was completely used to the routine. This term I played on 5 rec sports teams and joined one other club and overall was just much more involved than I had been in the past. I had 2 pretty interesting classes(economics and business) this term and 2 pretty boring classes(math and sociology).

I originally thought that taking a huge variety of social science type classes might interest me, but even though I had a really good prof in sociology I just found it to involve less critical thinking than I thought was possible. Every single topic we would just graze the surface and then get asked multiple choice questions where we spit out what we've heard. Perhaps upper year classes might be interesting, but from talking to people about other first year electives it sounds like that is pretty much the norm. Next term I plan on trying to get over-rides to take more difficult business/econ/math classes to keep more interested but all-in-all this term was very enjoyable and I am very happy with my decision to return to school.

One kinda cool aside was that our University has a yearly stock market competition which several thousand people compete in, and I may have set an all time record by turning $100,000.00 into $100.85. I find it kind of absurd that a good chunk of our mark is based on performance trading stocks over 6 weeks, but I guess you can't argue with results. Overall this term my marks were extremely good and although I really should have been aware I *could* do well in school if I tried, I honestly do feel quite validated after my performance in University 4 years ago was so poor that I failed some classes and had like a 65 average.

Regarding poker, I played a decent number of Sundays this summer with quite good results but since school started I've played only 1 full day and 2 random tournaments. The one full day I got 30th in the WCOOP(this was a sick sweat, but definitely not as exciting as having %'s of people deep in the WSOP main) main which mement_mori and I are turning into a massive video series, and then I hosted an FTOPS and took 3rd in the CR 5 year anniversary tournament. Although I haven't been playing much, I am actually much more excited about poker than I was 6 months ago. Last Summer I wasn't even excited about the WSOP and thinking I might not go there in 2011, but at this point I'd say theres a bout a 95% chance I show up, and a decent chance I grind most of the series. I'm currently on my way to Montreal for the opening of Playground Poker(a new club in the area where they wanted to get a bunch of Canadian pros to show up for the grand opening tonight) and later during the Christmas Break I plan on attending the fallsview poker classic to play a couple tournaments. I've also been enjoying making the videos with mickey, and recently did an interview with pokerstatic(http://www.pokerstatic.com/hot-seat/interview-with-mike-timex-mcdonald/) that I think was one of the top 2 or 3 most enjoyable interviews I've done.

Anyways, returning to school was overall a good move- I don't think it gave me "all the answers" or anything, but its certainly a step in the right direction. I mentioned in the 2nd most recent blog post that my friend and I were thinking of starting a business, and now we are getting more serious about that. He has his last exam of University today and then is taking a year off to work on it... likely the business will be up and running this Summer if things go according to plan. I still can't say what it is but it has nothing to do with poker but at the same time I think almost every single person who likes poker will think its a pretty sick idea.

All in all I think 2010 has been a really good year, financially I made more money in January than I was expecting to make in the whole year and think I managed to take some good steps in the right direction of finding what it is I want to do with my life which has pretty much been my New Years resolution every single year and this year I feel as if I have progressed much more towards it than I usually do.

One month update

Hey, lots of people asked for an update about a month after my last blog post describing things. I would say right now I'm more set on retiring from poker than I was a month ago but at the same time less than the poker media suggested. I'll still play occasionally, but my focus won't be on poker and its tough for me to really enjoy something if I'm not focussing on it.

Over the 6 weeks I've played online once and since I booked tickets to Monte Carlo were already booked I played San Remo/Monte Carlo. I definitely enjoy playing live tournaments quite a bit and although I'm looking forward to the break, I know if there were 10k's this soft running every day in Waterloo it would be much tougher to take a break. In San Remo I played the main event, a 2200 and a 330 turbo. In the main event I ran KK into AA in level 8 or 9, and in the 2200 out of 490 players got 51st or 52nd when 48 paid after running AK into 77. I got 4th in the 330 turbo for 5k... although these don't have just buyins, I highly recommend the nightly turbos to anyone at EPT events.

After San Remo we went to Cinque Terre for a couple days and I highly recommend going there between San Remo and Monte Carlo in the future. Its 5 seaside villages in an incredibly scenic area. There are tons of paths/hills to climb and whichever direction you look the view is beautiful. The food was amazing too. The highlight of the trip was probably the meal I ate in one of the villages. I'm a pretty picky eater but easily influenced by advertising. The one restaurant everything was 10-15 euros but there was something for multiple people called "very best fish" for 45 euros... I figured with how good italian food is, I'd regret not trying it.

My friend Eric and I ordered it and while everyone else at the table was getting their meals, we each got a huge bowl, and they brought over a side table with 2 other pretty big bowls, various eating instruments and a GIANT bowl. About 15 minutes later they bring over this like concrete urn and put it on the table, and take the lid off as steam pours out. They begin pouring from the urn into the GIANT bowl and I realize I probably should have asked before ordering. There was a whole octopus, lobster, there was squid, mussels, prawns, some strange type of fish and other things in there. I can't really do the meal justice without pictures, but it was quite impressive, and ended up being delicious. I understand there will be people out there who think I'm an awful person for eating meat, but I definitely find it enjoyable to "conquer" a new animal and here I had like 4 new ones.

After that we CCR'ed for the bill and Eric and I CCR'ed for our 1/2, the other 3 CCR'ed for their 1/2, and I lost as did Andrew Chen. Our bills came out to so similar that we decided to flip for that as well. Rather than just flipping a coin, we saw 2 10-11 year olds playing soccer nearby and said we'd flip a coin for who gets which kid and first one to score wins. I got the heavier kid, he got the thinner kid. We walk closer and it turns out that the skinnier kid is just taking shots on the heavier kid and I realize I'm pretty much done for. The heavier kid stopped like 30 shots in a row, and 2 of them ricocheted within 1 foot of going in the other kids net(which was completely unguarded since he didn't care at all about whether the ball went in). No idea who was the favourite(probably Skinnier kid) but it was much more entertaining to sweat than just an ordinary soccer match.

Anyways, after 3-4 days in Cinque Terre we headed to Monte Carlo. I played the main event yesterday and had a really tough table, and ended the day with 18.3k(avg. is like 60k). Hopefully I run better at table draws/poker tomorrow.

Regarding my retirement, I've applied to school for the fall(just Wilfrid Laurier in my hometown which has quite a good business program with lots of room for electives so I can take a wider variety of courses) and if that doesn't work out I'll return to the University of Waterloo. I'm quite excited about trying something new since the more I think about poker the better I feel about my decision(maybe this is circular logic, who knows). I'm currently talking with Eric about booking a bet to minimize our time wasted and see if that helps(I say I'm overly addicted to 2+2, he says the same about video games and we're thinking of something along the lines of having to pay the other one for each amount of time spent doing that activity). After reading a book I always feel much better than I do after surfing 2+2 for a bunch but when presented with the opportunity to do one of the other I choose 2+2 like 90-95% of the time. I'm sure no matter what I'll always spend some time there, but at this point I am reading strategy like 10% of the time and when I am reading strategy its usually not even the good strategy threads. Anyways, hopefully I bink either Monte Carlo or the Monte Carlo high roller and end my poker career with a bang. When I say end it with a bang I don't mean "have my last hand of poker be winning a tournament", I mostly just mean this is probably the end of me playing super seriously. I'm sure I'll still play online some and especially if there are some NAPT's in Canada I'll still play live occasionally too.

Thats it for now, still pretty impressed about getting 10k views for my last blog entry.. not sure I've ever even had 3k before.

I'm sure if I were internet pokers this would come across pretty well but since I'm barely literate this will probably be difficult to read. My plan was to get all my thoughts down, see if they make sense and then publish the entry if they do. I don't really know that they make sense, but I'm publishing it anyways.

All my life I've been pretty competitive, whether it was video games, sports, chess, poker, math competitions, I always wanted to be the best. I was the type of person who was pretty good at a lot of things but never really great at anything. I always thought it would be cool to be able to really excel at something and perhaps one day be regarded as the best.

Poker came along and fairly quickly I was successful at it, and not too long after that I started to get good. I went to university for a year and really put many other aspects of my life to the side. I went from playing sports 4-10 times a week to maybe once or twice, didn't really participate in any extracurricular activities, focussed a lot less on school but in spite of all that I think it was most definitely the right thing to do. I had a fantastic opportunity to do something I enjoy, make lots of money and finally have an opportunity to truly excel at something.

After I turned 18 and could play the live circuit I did that, and I really enjoyed the free time, the opportunity to meet lots of people with the same common interest, the ability to see lots of new places. I started to get really good and fortunately after only ~5 months on the live circuit I won EPT Dortmund. I got to the point where I thought I was better than pretty much everyone and along with the success I had in tournaments I was doing extremely well in HU/shorthanded cash. After the 7 figure score I lost a fair bit of motivation to grind and went through a phase of playing very little poker. I was kind of at the point where I had made enough money that unless a couple really bad things happened, I had set myself up to be in a comfortable position for life. At this point I had more or less realized I would never be the best poker player since there were plenty of people who were smarter than me, had bigger egos than me and just legitimately enjoyed playing and learning poker more than I did. I still was very good but probably ~2 years ago is when I came to terms with the fact I would never be viewed as the #1 poker player in the world.

Around this time I decided to start trying to make my life slightly more well rounded. I got back into exercising(was fairly skinny fat at this point) and started jogging/lifting, started reading more etc. At this point I had definitely lost a fair bit of ambition but in some ways I think that is good; I know plenty of people who are very goal oriented, and constantly exceed these goals but don't end up making themselves happy which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Anyways, it kind of irked me that there was no next logical step but poker was still so absurdly profitable and after going on a bit of a downswing+ the stock market going pretty poorly in late 2008 I decided it would be good to keep grinding so that 20 years from now I'm not kicking myself and although I wasn't as motivated, I still did enjoy playing.

2009 started great and was pretty much just one big upswing. 2010 started fantastically and I was motivated more than I had been since 2007. I was back to grinding smaller tournaments than I had in a while and although I enjoyed almost every day I feel like in some ways poker has become and escape for me; an opportunity to let time pass and just get through to the next day and justify it by saying "this is the most valuable use of my time" and I don't much like the idea of that. I also find that poker is at the point where with my goals/skill set/mindset I won't be earning a significant amount of money in the next few years and beyond that even if I were to say bink the WSOP main, the money itself would probably do almost nothing to change my future. I think my position in a lot of ways is truly unique since I don't know if there is anyone else in my age range who has as drastic of a ratio between their wealth and their earning potential. Most of the 20-23 year olds with my level of success are much better and will continue having high-6-figure or 7 figure years for quite some time, but I think I more or less managed to be in the right place at the right time and made about as much money as I reasonably could have without becoming really good.

In poker although I've met tons of people I really like and had tons of cool experiences I just kind of feel like there is nowhere to go from here in poker. I can't really think of anyone who is more engrossed in the poker world than me who I aspire to be like and poker seems to be a lot more isolating than I initially realized.

I guess what really stemmed all my thinking is that lately despite playing lots of poker and enjoying it plenty, I feel unfulfilled by it and think it can cause me to feel unfulfilled about other things in my life.

The last 2.5 weeks I've taken time off of poker and had so much free time its largely just resulted in me reading the forums more, I guess I managed to read some books, hang out with friends lots, but considering ~every waking hour is free time for me I felt kinda crappy that when people would ask about my day I'd have nothing to say.

I think in all honesty I should be a fairly interesting person given the amount of time, resources, experience and opportunities I have but to someone outside of the poker world I appear quite one-dimensional and although I think I am definitely appreciated once I get to know people, getting to know people is often tough since my world is so different from their world. This leads to tons of people in the poker world having literally 0 non-poker friends, but I don't aspire to one day be completely engrossed in the poker world and after watching the "busto to robusto" movies and looking at the lives of older players it got me thinking about my future. Zeebo and Good2cu are both very accomplished people who have achieved great success in the poker world and whose lives at this point(assuming the video is accurate) are almost completely related to the poker world. I'm sure both of them are very happy with their lives I just think that I am trending towards a combination of the 2 of them and I think the goals I wish to accomplish are very different from what most people wish to accomplish.

This is obviously oversimplified and they are both more diverse than this, but more or less Zeebo was a fairly typical 2+2er, reads the forum, watches lots of TV, has tons of spare time and Good2cu is involved in a very materialistic lifestyle living the high life in Las Vegas. I more or less live a life where I am very much like Zeebo at home, spend tons of time on the forums, watch lots of shows/movies, spend tons of time with my girlfriend and although I have lots of close friends I'm not really part of a "group of friends" since I'm gone so much. When I'm travelling, everyone tries to be like Good2cu and although he looks pretty fake/uncomfortable doing so, he does a better job with that lifestyle than the VAST majority of wannabe ballers in the poker world. I guess neither of these are necessarily bad, I just find it lame when most people I meet outside of poker are tough to relate to and that most people in the poker world are very tough to relate to as well.

Before talking about where I plan to go from here, I guess I should point out that I do enjoy playing poker and I doubt I'll ever straight up "quit" playing poker, I just think at this point I sort of feel no ambition towards poker. I no longer really feel the need to improve, and even if I knew 6 months from now I could be twice as good as I am now, I likely wouldn't go for it, and I no longer feel the need to earn any money from poker, if I heard I could have 10times as much money as I do 20 years from now but would have to grind hard during that time, I wouldn't do it either. I also have no real ambition to build upon my celebrity in the poker world. I definitely do find it kinda cool that I have a wikipedia page and can find myself on google, but I feel uncomfortable being recognized and would likely rather be less well known than more well known.

I think within the last year or so I've essentially accomplished the ability to be a really good poker player in terms of mentality to play, but at the same time when I've already accomplished all that I want to in the poker world I don't really see anywhere else to go. It would have been super cool if either of my 3 close sweats turned into winning a 2nd EPT, but even if that happened it would probably have just been more incentive to stop playing.

I suppose the biggest realization I've had is that I need to keep busy. My life goal was to more or less get to the point where I never had to do anything for the rest of my life as early as possible. I'm at that point; I have almost 0 obligations, responsibilities and if I really wanted to I could sit around for the rest of my life watching the world go by and I'm just realizing thats not what I want. I want to be able to have a wider group of interests, and meet more people with similar goals; I want to wake up each day knowing I can fill it with things that I find interesting or challenging rather than simply filling it with things that fill time.

So anyways... at this point I arrive at the "where do I go from here" question that I asked in the title. I honestly don't know but I think at least setting myself up to be in positions to find things I'm passionate about is probably the right approach. I recently began talking with a friend about a business idea that we'd consider starting in the next few years and although I was originally just thinking my involvement would be limited to investment, I'm now realizing that this is the type of thing that could highly interest me. I think returning to school and trying out a super wide variety of courses, learning new things, meeting new people and just beginning to live a life that is more in touch with everyone else seems aligned with my interests. I currently am trying to get in touch with the university of Waterloo about possibly taking some classes this summer, and depending on how that goes may return to Waterloo or another university in the fall.

My goals at university are more similar to a retired person returning to school than a 20 year old entering university since I am mostly interested in this as something to do, an opportunity to learn new things and what degree I end up with matters very very little to me. In all honesty I don't think this will answer all my questions, and for all I know 5 years from now I could be even more involved in the poker world than I am(I'm probably a heavy favourite to return) but at least for now I don't really know whether I'll be considering myself a "pro poker player" anymore. I'll still play, I'm sure it will always be a part of my life I just feel like although I derive enjoyment from it, I derive almost no fulfilment/satisfaction/feeling of accomplishment at this point and I don't really think I will anytime in the near future.

I guess this was fairly long-winded(I'll bet you thought it was gonna be an April Fools Joke!) and I didn't really say very much at all, I just wanted to get my thoughts on paper and say that in some ways I feel that the poker chapter of my life is ending and although I may regret it, I'm looking forward to finding something new.

In the 3 215's on Stars I got 64th in the 2nd chance, 30th in the warmup and 22nd in the million today. I've never made the final 18 of the million but think this is the 5th or 6th time I've made the final 45(and only top ~200 finish since the start of 2009). Today seemed like it wouldn't be a great day since my day started out by hurting my back at the gym to the point where sitting in a chair wasn't that comfortable. I persisted on and ended up booking a profit which is cool.

I'm currently thinking about maybe taking a week or two break from poker sometime in the next little while. I'm not doing this because of the usual "I busted a major on a sunday blahblahblah"... I was thinking I'd want a little time off at the beginning of the day too. The weather is getting nice, I've been inside a lot lately and wouldn't mind a break.

I also feel like my time hasn't been that efficiently when playing which in all honesty bothers me. I more or less play poker now because I enjoy it rather than to grind $(I enjoy that I can make money from it) and a lot of why I enjoy it is is because I enjoy getting good at something. Lately I have been doing very little work on improving my game and probably playing too many tables. I need to really cut back to playing just 16-18 for a while.

I also want to work out a better schedule to play such that I don't feel like I'm missing out on much by cutting back on tables. I kinda want to try playing a sunday or two where I just don't play on Stars. No one has a very high winrate there and I especially don't think I'm a huge winner playing reg filled tournies with a pile of tables going. Other sites have smaller prize pools and less to be spent on buyins, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are worse tournaments. Doubt I'll actually go forth with this, I just think if I wanted to say scale back to 12 tables, I'd probably have trouble getting rid of say the 2nd chance or 109 cubed turbo but in reality a random 100 FO and 33r on a euro site or cake/Cereus is likely better.

Anyways, my sleep schedule has been really off lately, hopefully tomorrow will be back to normal, gonna sleep now

Hey, I was just featured on episode 112 of the 2+2 pokercast yesterday, I figured I'd link anyone who was interested. I think this link should work pokercast.twoplustwo.com/listen_and_browse.php I apologize that I talk like such a like valley girl but I'm sure anyone who watched my videos is familiar with this. In other news, does anyone know how to fix this? Being out of school/work was made me really relax how I write/type and although I don't have a huge problem with talking this way, I know it would make for better videos/interviews if I could find some program/resources to work on it.

I'm back home from Berlin, I still am kinda shocked that it was actually robbed(I talked a little about my cowardly behaviour on the pokercast). I bricked the 2k and high roller events for my first losing trip in a surprisingly long time(considering I should lose money on the vast majority of poker trips)... think it was only like my 2nd losing trip since the EPT season started in August, but maybe I'm forgetting one.

I plan on playing online a fair bit in the next few weeks, and getting back to a consistent routine after eating/sleeping/lifting fairly poorly in Germany. Yesterday I took a 7 hour nap, so I guess I'm still a little jet-lagged. I made a bet last night with KingDan for the next 2.5 months where if either one of us has a day of REALLY poor diet or exercises under 3 times in a week they owe the other one $. Dan turned 21 recently, so I like my chances.

Thats about it for now, gonna go make some breakfast

Well my goals of March being better than February are off to a rough start after bricking 3 live tournaments and being part of a robbery. For anyone who hasn't heard, EPT Berlin got robbed by several armed gunmen right as registration was closing for the high roller(the time when the most cash would be behind the cage), I've heard lots of numbers about how much they got away with, the most common is 800k euros but obviously I have no idea. There are lots of videos floating around 2+2/youtube that should be pretty easy to find if you're curious. There's also a giant thread on 2+2 if you want to argue about whether or not you'd have been a hero and single-handedly fought off all the robbers just like all the other internet tough guys, feel free to do that a well!

Anyways, I started the high roller at noon and the field was a little smaller than expected but not a big deal or anything. I definitely didn't have a soft table, but it wasn't an absurdly tough table by any means either. I had won one or two pots and was up to 23k from 20k when we heard some commotion outside. The tournament area was in a room at a hotel and the registration area was just outside(and the doors were closed so you couldn't see much)... at first there was a rumor that there was a fight, then that people had seen guns. I think the high roller players were more aware of situations like this than a lot of other people and despite being some of the further tables from the only safe exit, most of us were able to get out of our seats and head to the back of the room fairly quickly. I figured if it was a hostage situation I'd be a pretty top candidate in Germany so I snap took off my FTP patches. All of a sudden you heard people yelling that they heard shots fired, and the one robber was shouting he had a bomb(neither of these were true) but this caused a fucking stampede of people to get out the one exit. Some people got trampled on, some people stuck around and hid under tables, table(s?) got flipped, the set of the televised table fell over, it was absolutely nuts. It was also scary since we really had no idea, like I was probably one of the first 20 or so people to get out the back exit, and I had no idea whether we could run into a gunman trying to use the same exit, or even if there was gonna be a safe exit.

Even once I got outside I had no idea what to do, there were people running everywhere, and the street I was on was unfamiliar. Obviously the robbers would end up on the same city block as us, so even now I had no idea what to do to be safe. If I were by myself, I'm pretty sure I'd have just kept running , but ended up going with some friends into a restaurant to call the police. After this my adrenaline was going like crazy and if I could have had the opportunity to cashout from the high roller(like they did in the 1k and ladies event) I would have probably done so(maybe not since I had increase my stack 15% and I'm a huge nit, but it'd have been a close decision). Once I got back I was kinda feeling the come-down from the adrenaline while my heart was still pounding and just got really tired all of a sudden. I ended up getting coolered a bunch and then losing a flip to bust and then took a 5 hour nap which I recently woke up from to read more about the happenings online.

Anyways, I am really beginning to doubt that Berlin is as lucky for me as Dortmund. I'm really glad to hear everyone's ok, and am wondering about hearing more details in the future(whether people get caught, exact amount stolen etc etc)

If anyone has any more questions that I may be able to answer(could have forgotten things) feel free to pm or post as comments, I obviously don't have much more info than you can get online, but I'm sure people will be curious about this

My flight to Berlin went well, I ended up arriving here at 8am and was expecting(but not hoping) to play day 1a 4 hours later. Fortunately I was able to get my starting date pushed back to 1b. I had a pretty long nap and then woke up to get food with DJK, Funkii, Mement_mori and JSchnett and Tufat. After that me, Funkii, Mement and JSchnett all decided to grind online. The session went really well for me(best or 2nd best so far this year) and I final tabled the 75 FO on FTP and a 54 on ongame,, got 2nd in the 33r on AP and got 3rd in the 216 turbo on FTP. I had regained all the motivation I had lost Sunday and was pretty excited for the EPT.

I get seated and only recognize 2 players at my table and overall think its quite a good draw. The tournament gets off to a great start and after 35 minutes I have 40k. Immediately after winning an 11k pot, I open HJ-1 to 300 at 50/100 with KdKc and a French player whose been very active(3 or 4 3bets already this tournament) 3bets the button to 850, I make it 2350 and he fairly quickly makes it 7k with 28k behind. I'll say right now that against 80% of people in an EPT I'm ~never stacking off with KK preflop 350BB deep but against this guy I'd have been comfortable stacking off JJ and AK. I thought that as agro as he had been, I doubt he's ever really 7betting much or heroing a 6bet and I think he'll make some mistakes postflop so I elected to call.
Flop: Js7s2d with 14,150 in the pot, check, check
Turn: Ts, I bet 8500, he jams 19k more, I call and he has 9s5s and I'm down to 4k

I hover around there for a few hours and then lose 88 to AKs to bust the last hand of 100/200. Maybe next year they'll move the Germany EPT back to Dortmund!

Anyways, I'm going to be grinding side events quite a bit while I'm over here, gonna go register for the 2k in an hour or so.

Hey, haven't updated in the last few weeks, not too much has been going on, I played online more in February than I have in quite some time. It was a pretty lame month but after adding everything up I lost a lot less than I expected. This month I played at least 30 MTTs on 13 days and over the course of the month I played 623 tournaments with 102 cashes and lost about 18k across 103k in buyins. Off of swapping, backing, rakeback etc I made money but not enough to make it a winning month. Despite having very few wins/big cashes I still enjoyed myself for most of the month... I've been really enjoying poker the last few months. Yesterday was the one exception to that and was just a really really bad Sunday. I played 63 tournaments with 5 cashes(the largest for $306) and just overall I almost never had chips in anything. I was joking with my friend that anyone who could just see my screen and how I did in everything could be nearly certain that I am a significant loser.

Anyways, March is gonna be better(actually in all likelihood it will be more significantly losing just since I'll have some live mixed including a highroller in there and its pretty easy to brick those ) and I really think it'd be cool to make another deep run in Germany. Over the last 2 years I feel like the caliber of German players has improved more than just about any other country(maybe Russia would be a close contender) so I doubt this tournament will have anywhere near the value it did the last 2 years. That said, I really enjoy how the EPT's are each more of a series rather than a single tournament and if I bust the main I should probably end up playing 3-5 other tournaments which is always nice. Having such a brutal Sunday yesterday definitely hindered my motivation a little bit but after waking up I felt a lot better and am now pretty excited.

Alright, the flight is boarding fairly soon, I really hope I can sleep on the flight since I got registered to play day 1a which starts 4 hours after the flight lands and although Deauville went extremely well on sleep deprivation, I'd rather be well rested.