Just picked it(Black 2008 Lexus IS 250) up this afternoon, its really nice and surprisingly convenient. Today while thinking about what to eat for dinner I had the realization that a car is a really efficient way of getting places(this is pretty much the opposite of insightful but I guess I had never really noticed this since I'd never really driven much). I've recently been thinking a lot about how little time it takes to run to various places and how much faster that is than walking but I guess I probably won't be doing too much of either now.

This last week I played 2 MTT sessions, both which went reasonably well, I played Friday afternoon and all of Sunday, both days went well early -> terrible -> binked my last tourney against all odds to save the day. Friday I took 3rd in the 216 turbo and Sunday I took 5th in the Mulligan. A bunch of people on the rail requested I start videotaping the mulligan with like 30 left which I did, but at one of the breaks I forgot to hit resume so I lost like 1/2 the footage. I guess I'll just try to play some more sessions and hope to run good enough to have one worth recording.

Last week d I ran about 60k including a 28k run on Saturday. This week I plan on running closer to 70k as my highest volume running week before the marathon including a 32-35k run on Thursday or Friday. The marathon is getting pretty close and I've been fortunate enough to still retain pretty good health. Both people I've been running with have been having some knee problems, one enough that its been affecting his running and another just some discomfort. Hopefully all works out and we can all finish the race.

Alright, thats it for now, think I'm going to look into flights for the fall and register for the race.

Alright, so I basically was able to spend as much time in London as possible without the trip being a financial success.

As stated in my previous entry, I got 2nd in my heat in the Poker Million which put me through to a turbo consolation round against other 2nd place finishers where the winner went on with the winners of other heats.

I changed my flights and played the Unibet Poker Open. I was expecting the field to be a lot like WPT Venice since the vast majority of the players would be online qualifiers. Unfortunately, Unibet isn't on Ongame(not sure why I thought that) but is actually on Prima, so the field was filled with crazy-euro-swedes. The structure was to my knowledge the exact same as the old EPT structure but played more levels per day and had a field of only 270 so they could run it in 3 days rather than 4. My starting table was definitely the toughest in the room, I had cardrunners members on my left and right(both of whom have watched my videos so they probably have a good idea about how straightforward I am), Albert Iversen 2 to my left(definitely one of the best players in the field) and Mikael Norrinder across the table. Some of the randoms at the table sucked pretty bad but it was still nowhere near what I was hoping for.

I honestly had a very uninteresting day, as I try to remember hands I realize there were very few interesting spots.

In the first like 30 minutes I managed to lose like 500 chips a hand like 3-4 times in an orbit and got down to like 8k from my 10k starting stack, then decided to hit the nuts when a player in mid position raised, 2 people called, I called T9o out of the SB(not sure whether this is good/bad, I basically make up my mind here based on how pissed off I am and after losing every pot I played I was sufficiently pissed off to make the call).

Anyways, the flop came 998cc, its checked to the button(CR member who plays mostly like 2/4 -5/10 on Prima) who bet like 500 at 650, I checkraised to 1400, he called
Turn: T I bet like 1800 at 3450(my sizing for the hand might be slightly off, this was like 5-6 days ago), he calls
River: Tc, this card seems to really hurt my chances of making money, I jam my last like 5.5k(think I had won one pot recently), villain thinks and folds

I then don't do much until like 75/150 when there is a raised pot, about 3 callers, I call red 7's in the BB

Flop: AJ7cc, checked to button who says like "hold on" or something after villain thinks its checked through, he bets 1200 at 2k, I make it 3k, he jams, I have about 13.5k and call and hold against AJ to get up to like 29k good for 2nd place at the moment.

I then don't do much but hover from until about 25-30k for a while then play a weird hand at 150/300/25
I raise the CO or HJ(think CO) and Mikael Norrinder calls the BB

Flop: KK6dd, check check
Turn: 3, check, I bet like 1100 at 1950, he calls
River: K, check I bet like 2200 or something, he thinks and calls, I expect to be good here virtually always and flip my cards over, he waits a little bit before showing TT and my head asplodes(he had like 8-9k at the start of the hand and for anyone whose played with him they'll understand why my head asploded, hes super loose/agro/tries to own people usually by erring on the side of putting as many chips in the pot as possible)

Anyways, I do very little for a while before getting moved to a new table with Skier_5(also definitely one of the best players on the field) 2 to my left, but the guy between us soon busts and hes on my direct left.

Shortly after getting to the table he raises UTG to 1600 at 300/600/75(hes told me how tight everyone at his table was at breaks so I won't give this much credability, would probably 3bet call AQo here)

1 guys calls, I call 66 in the BB

Flop: J76r
Check, Skier bets 3600 at like 5600, fold, I make it 8600 with like 21k back. I'm undecided between whether this is better or whether check-calling 3 streets is better, but I figured skier could decide he wants to own me/would certainly realize how narrow of a range I'm repping/spaz out since we've played and talked a bunch together. He thought for quite some time before folding and when I asked what he had it went something like this
"you fold something legitimate?"
"I had at least a couple outs"
"T8 with a bdfd or something?"
"way way worse"

I'm still not sure whether I like my checkraise, I feel like sometimes he'll fold overpairs, but other times he'll jam the 53 no bdfd that he actually had.

I then win another decent pot where I raise ATss UTG to 1600 and get called by Willie Tann(who I used to play against at Tribeca 20/40 a while back, he was a nit but likely beat the game since no one folded) in the SB. He just doubled through Skier I believe and has maybe 17k

Flop: J72ss or something similar(I really suck at remembering hands exactly today, sorry about that), he checks I bet like 2600 at 4500, he calls
Turn: 6 putting out 2 clubs, he bets 5k at 9700 leaving like ~10k back, I raise to 13.5k, he folds and I'm up to my high point of about 46k.

I then get moved again but my new table has some crazies, in my like hour at the table, I got 3bet 3 times and cold 4bet once, and I wasn't playing *that* agressively.

I had one hand with about 30 minutes left in the day, it folds around to me in the SB, I raise to 2100 with ATo(like I would have with any 2 against the villain in the BB) he shoves like 17k, I fold and get told he had KT. After the day ended he revealed he actually had KK

Other than that I didn't do much during the day, I ended with 39k which was slightly below average of day 1a finishers but above average for all people entering day 2.

That night me, Tufat and Skier went to China town to get some wicked food. I got super tired part way through(it was like 3 and I hadn't slept much the previous night) and had to leave before our last course got there.

I cabbed back to my hotel and slept for like 10 or 11 hours.

The next day I had to play my turbo qualifying heat, I read through the live updates on all the other heats to get an idea about who could play short stacked poker and who couldn't.

The table draw was

1 Gavin Smith
2 Joao Barbosa
3 Mike McDonald
4 John Duthie
5 Peter Vasiliou
6 Adam Carey

Gavin plays pretty well, but this structure is probably less suited to him than just about anyone else, he plays way too passively/soulready for turbo SNGs, Duthie didn't last long but has probably played this format more than the rest of the table combined and Joao despite being from Portugal seemed like probably the player who would play the best in this Ultra-Turbo structure. Adam was too tight, and Peter was wayyyy too tight.

Play begins with 100k starting stacks, 7 hand levels, 20 seconds to act, and a blind structure of 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 5/10, 7/15, 10/20, 15/30, 42 hands until there are 20 bets in play.

I felt like Duthie would want to own me so I said I'd open a little tighter than usual and basically just not fold to his 3bets in the first 2 levels(assuming stack/bet sizes are such that there is any fold equity)

On like the 5th hand, I am too much of a lag to fold 86s in the CO so I raise to 5k, Duthie 3bets me to 16k, I jam and Duthie folds the worst hand.

Duthie busts to Gavin (they both called raises ~25BB deep with 87o and 65s) and Gavin holds on a 765 flop and Joao runs AQ into Peter's AK to get down to 36k at 5k/10k

I shove UTG the next hand with AJo, Joao calls from the BB with K3s, I hold and we're 4 handed where I have about ~160k.

Gavin eliminates the Adan by him shoving 4 or 5 BB on the button and Gavin reshoving pretty quickly with what I remembered as being AJ, but the (not so reliable updates) say AK.

Blinds hop to 10k/20k and Peter is playing very tight, blinded down since his AK>AQ double up. He eventually gets to 78k, folds the SB and Gavin shows J9s and says like "I wouldn't have been too happy but I'd have called"
Next hand Adam shoves the button for 68k, Gavin uses most of his 20 seconds(maybe 12-13 seconds) before calling, I have 188k total in the BB with A2s and hate my life. I think that while Gavin could trap big pairs here, hes rarely trapping like TT or AK or something and usually reshoving most playable hands. I really felt like he probably had a similar strength hand to mine the majority of the time and I have 10% of my stack invested. I haven't looked at numbers since I feel like with the 20 second clock and whatnot theres probably no hand he plays/times this way 100% of the time but I do feel like of hands he isn't folding, the way he played it is about as weak as he possibly could have played it. I end up jamming, he thinks his whole time bank and calls A8s, I chop with Gavin and we both lose to Peter's AKo

I keep jamming every SB and at 15k/30k I jam 74o for 120k, Adam uses most of his time bank before calling A9o, holding and going on to win the heat(despite only winning 4 or 5 pots going into HU play)

I then went back to the hotel, had dinner with Juha Helpi whose actually a really nice guy and went to sleep looking forward to binking Unibet.

I wake up after only sleeping like 4 hours and after getting breakfast and whatnot checked out of the hotel(FTP offered to extend it, but I figured I'd be fine crashing on Tufat's couch which was much closer to the Vic Casino). I got to his place, went for a jog with his room mate Damien in Regent's park and then went down to the casino.

I went down to the subway station, realized I left my pass upstairs(they live just above a subway station) then decided I'd pay the extra like $8 to save time since I was running late anyways. I ended up getting there right as play started and would have certainly missed 2-3 hands if I had have gotten it. I'm always happy when I can fight the inner nit to do something that is short-term -EV but long term +EV.

Anyways, day 2 sucked, like 5 hands in I raised ATdd to 2500, got called by this French guy(I believe) who had already made it pretty clear he didn't play that well

Flop: Q76dd, I bet like 4100 at 7300, he jams for just over a PSB, I call and lose to AQ to get down to like 16k.

I blind down for a while and get down to about 11k in the BB at the end of the level, I have a few laggy kids 2 and 3 to my right, and one of them opens the button, I jam QJ expecting to get called but to be ahead of his range, he folds, and after jamming the SB with like T3s I'm back up to like 16BB territory.

3-4 hands later I get KTs HJ-1 which is like my favorite pushbotting hand, I shove, the guy to my left calls QQ and holds and I'm out in the first level.

After that I headed back to Andy/Damiens after only being gone about 2 hours and got some dinner at the Hare & Tortoise(not sure if I mentioned it last entry but its one of my favorite restaurants despite being only a step up from fast food and only located in London), then went out to a bar for a bit before coming back to watch Inbetweeners.

The next day I flew back to Waterloo, I slept pretty well on the flight(was Business class again, thanks FTP) and now that I'm back in Waterloo and had only run like once in ten days am getting back to being serious about running. I ran last night and then today played soccer(our team scored twice as many goals as our other 4 games combined) and then volleyball before running home from volleyball. We have our last playoff games for soccer again tomorrow and the next day and volleyball likely ends in a few weeks so after that I'll be able to just focus all my athletic efforts to finishing my marathon in what is hopefully not to embarressing of a time.

Oh ya, part 2 of 2 of my Video series went up a few days ago. It seems like comments have been mostly positive(lots of people I respect have messaged me saying they really liked watching the series or that people like me really need to stop making videos so thats always pretty flattering) maybe I'll do something similar again in the future.

I've been looking at all the fall tournaments and there are like 16 good tournament series(that 18 year olds are eligible to play) between mid august and the end of October. I'm trying to figure out how much to play/which ones to play and am beginning to get a pretty good idea. This has to be like the most busy couple months ever for live tournaments outside of the states.

Thats it for now, I feel like this is probably packed with typos, but I'm feeling too tired/lazy to proofread it

Hey, FTP is pretty awesome, the seat they booked for me turned into a full out bed that was super comfy, definitely the best overseas flight I've had. Also before I forget, FTP is planning on breaking the world record for biggest poker tournament by having a giant $5 freezeout at 15:05 on July 19th, I'll be registering and hope everyone else joins too.


Anyways, I got here and then hung out with tufat and some of the pkr people who were pretty cool(tufat is sponsored by pkr now). We went to this awesome restaurant called "The Hare and Tortoise" which we went to almost every day when I stayed with him during WSOPE and EPT London and the food was as good as I remember. I made my way back to my hotel which is apparently in the same area as Ali G's character is from and went to bed. I woke up pretty early to get ready for my heat. I would have Ram Vaswani, Josh Gould, Julian Gardner, Josh Gould and one online qualifier at my table.

I arrived at the Sky Sports studio 90 minutes early, do interview, get my mic/heart rate monitor, get my makeup done(never thought this would be part of playing a poker tournament) etc. One of the guys there reads my blog and saw I hadn't seen my episode from last year so he gave me a DVD with the episodes on it which I thought was pretty sweet.

Anyways, after everyone got ready we finally started the heat 45 minutes late because of technical difficulties. In the first level Ram busted to Josh after getting T9 against AT on a T86 flop but I had a very uneventful level. I had the dream seat, Josh(my age, but a live pro) was seat 1, Annette seat 2, Me seat 3, super tight online qualifier seat 4, Ram seat 5, Julian seat 6.

I get the feeling Julian and Josh were playing a bit too tight for the structure although Julian made 2(good) calls against me that I think a lot of people wouldn't have made. Anyways, I continued having just about all my opens be uncontested, I 3bet folded once to Annette's minraise, but other than that played no significant pots until it became a crapshoot.

At 3k/6k I minraised the CO, Josh shoved the BB for 63k, I called with KQo and lost to TT to get down to 22k.
I shoved T9s UTG the next hand and Julian reshoved the button with KTo and I got there. I then won some more small pots during the 3k/6k level to get up to 80k.

At 5k/10k I shoved UTG again with KJo for 80k, Julian reshoved the button for 88k and I beat his KQo. After that he busted and we were 4 handed at 5k/10k with avg of 150k and all of us between about 130 and 170.

Josh shoved A3s bvb one of the first hands into Annette's 77 and she teld to take the chip lead. 3 handed I kept miraising every small blind against the online qualifier and generally just trying to apply a lot of pressure. Eventually Annette busted him and we were HU 245k against her 355k, we swapped some just since it was such a crapshoot and we both think each other play pretty good.

The second hand of HU the blinds went up to 7k/15k, she limped the button 17BB effective, I checked K4o

Flop: K53r

I check,she bets 17k, I make it 47k, she makes it I think 96k or so, I think a little bit. I really feel like its pretty likely she has a K7 type hand, but then realize its Annette, I have top pair 17BB deep and she likely wants to pwn me on TV, and jam but lose to KQ.

Since I got 2nd I play a consolation turbo qualifier on Friday which has 7 hand levels instead of 21 hand levels so it should be ~the fastest tournament I've ever played. That meant that my flight had to get pushed back, and now I'll also be playing the Unibet Open London 09, a 2.5k pound buyin which works pretty well with my schedule. Play starts in 10 hours and although it will mean rescheduling flights again, I feel like I'm going to do well for some reason.

Hey, last week I played tournies 3 days last week(including Sunday which didnt end up turning around) and just about brokeven between them. For the following 3 days I was pretty sick and spent most of the time in bed watching 30 rock, sleeping or trying to sleep while watching 30 rock.

Today I played Sundays and am currently pretty deep in the 109r, getting pretty tired so hoping I don't play for another like 90 minutes and come like 10th(25 left). The video series I talked about in my blog a while(think a few months ago?) is finally getting posted, part 1 came out the 11th, part 2 next week I'm assuming.

Curran and I tried something new, he read the updates/my blog about how Dortmund went, he did a 2 hour interview on the tournament and then took all the hands and put them in the replayer with as much information as we could gather to talk largely about my tournament but also about the mindset for live tournaments in general.

I think the video is probably pretty worthwhile to watch(might have been better if it came out just before the main event for all the people playing their first live event) and I liked doing an interview where I could be more honest than diplomatic when opinionated questions came up.


Alright, thats it for now, flying to London tomorrow night, I still don't know whose in my heat but I'm hoping to win some flips(21 hand levels, 100 starting stack, blinds go 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 5/10, 7/15, 10/20, 15/30... so after 126 hands there are 20BB in play)

Hey, again not a whole lot happening here. The last couple days I've been going through season 5 of lost and having mixed feelings.

I decided a little while ago that for most suspense-driven TV shows(Lost, Heroes, 24 etc) I'd never watch them week to week and if I really want to see them to download them and watch them on my own schedule. My own curiosity made me look forward to these shows far too much and always end up disappointed since they were never as good as I built them up to be in my head. I'm definitely preferring the idea of getting a season of a TV show out of the way in a week or two and think I'll stick with this.

In the last week I've played 3 MTT sessions, 2 which went pretty miserably(assuming today doesn't turn around) and one that was marginally profitable. I made 2h of live video out of my session on Thursday night and although it was mostly just me winning a bunch of small races I think the videos should end up being reasonable.

Today was super lame and I managed to be bubble or one off of the bubble in 3 or 4 of the big rebuys(and am 36/42 with 36 paid in the 109 cubed) and didn't really have any super deep runs all day.

Non-pokerwise I've been keeping up with my running and did a 17 mile this week, by far the furthest to date and had people over for a barbeque Canada Day(July 1st). I hadn't gone to see the fireworks in town for like 5+ years but we all went down to see them and they were pretty awesome.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a previous entry or not, but I'm going to London from the 13th to 16th to play in the Poker Million again this year. I played last year and still haven't seen my episode(if anyone knows where I can find it pm me) but thought it was a pretty soft tournament and look forward to it again this year.

Hey, this'll be pretty short since not much has happened since the last update, I just figured I'll keep updating pretty regularly so I don't get into the cycle of thinking "I have nothing to post" then thinking "thats not important enough to post after not posting for so long"

I played a very limitted Sunday schedule in St. Cloud and got deepish in a few of the rebuys but came up short in all of them. I flew home the next day and had a pretty interesting conversation with the guy who sat beside me about poker/gambling. I'm usually reluctant to tell random people that I play poker even after talking to them for long enough to realize they aren't an idiot/won't be anti-poker, but any time I do I seem to get pretty positive reactions, maybe I should become "that guy" and start telling everyone I play.

I managed to get my veneer fixed, they are insured and its pretty common for them to break, so thats a relief. I also managed to buy a car which should arrive in like 2 weeks(its currently in Florida). I'm getting a Black 2008 Lexus IS 250 with just under 12,000 miles on it, looking forward to not having to mooch rides, but not looking forward to owing everyone I know rides for the foreseeable future.

I saw Transformers 2 this week, thought it sucked pretty bad and can't understand why they made that movie 2.5 hours.

I realized I've been really lacking in video content lately, haven't made any videos in a few months(although 2 videos that I was a part of a few months ago should be coming out relatively soon). I tried making a video yesterday when I was down to my last 2 tournaments but busted them both post-haste for a pretty unsuccessful Saturday. Today I played a huge Sunday schedule and despite it starting awfully I managed to finish in the black after a bunch of random cashes and chopping a DSO with Roothlus.

Since the last update

Alright, last Sunday went pretty well, won the UB 530 and got 5th in the Party 530 with a pile of other cashes. I more or less decided not to do too much drinking/general bad decision making until after the 1/2 Marathon which was this Saturday. I got kind of sick around ~Tuesday and was concerned that it would continue until the race. By Thursday night I was trying to fix my sleep schedule to wake up for my 8:40am flight the next day(I only booked a flight this early since the race was at 630am)

A friend of mine asked if I was playing Thursday night and I didn't really have anything to do besides laundry so I said I'd play early tournament and try not to play anything thats either semi-major or will end by like 11. I ended up playing a lot of the random like 30r's and whatnot, and ended up playing the FTP 109r and Stars 109r as my latest
tournaments just since the fields are tiny. I ended up bubbling Stars and got 3rd in FTP so I was up until past 1, so that didn't really go according to plan. I then had to finish laundry and had trouble finding my socks and ended up not sleeping until far too late(think like 3:15).

I woke up at 5:15, finished packing, and went to the airport. I flew Toronto to Minneapolis, then made the 30 minute flight to Duluth. On my flight everyone was either a runner or a volunteer, I met up with MPHL(Michael) at the airport and headed down to our hotel.

It was pretty sweet since he's run a bunch of 1/2's and a couple full marathon's before so he was pretty competent with regard to nutrition, water, sleep, gear etc, and more or less was able to answer any obscure questions I had.

Its pretty impressive how big this race was in a down this small. Theres like under 100,000 people here, over 15,000 runners and over 5,000 volunteers. I have no idea how many people came to cheer the race on, but there were people along the whole 13 mile course and there were about 3-5 miles of it being PACKED, I'd guess probably close to half the town came out to watch.

We went and got our race packages, had a big pasta dinner and went to bed at like 7:30 the night before the race planning to wake up at 4am. I woke up at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, eventually Michael got up too, we had energy bars, and headed down to wear the shuttles take off(around 4:50).

I was feeling pretty good and the weather was nice and cool, we stopped drinking around an hour before the race to try to make it such that we wouldn't have to piss, but I failed at that. As we were about 15 minutes from the race starting and the starting area was packed I had to go to the washroom. I decided I'd just stay where I am since there was a pretty good chance I couldn't get back to the porti-potty's and back in 15 minutes.

Eventually the gun went off and the race was started. We were planning to run around 9 minute miles, and the first mile we went about that pace but it felt really slow. It was ridiculous how fast the race went by, the second mile took like 8:20 and it felt as if we had only been running a few minutes. I can't stress enough how awesome it is to have people cheering every step of the way.

We kept having miles that were a little quicker than 9 minutes and it wasn't tiring at all. We were slightly ahead of pace and the weather was starting to heat up quite a bit. I was running in a jersey that was made of a different material than I normally run in and started to feel some irritation about half way in. Shortly after this Michael started having knee pain(he had a knee injury last year and hadn't run this far since). He said it was bad enough that he had to go to one of the medical tents but gave me his watch and told me if he gets fixed up he'll try to catch up.

I had no idea how to use his watch(it has a lot of pacing/GPS related functionality but I wasn't sure what the numbers meant, and I wasn't going to slow down to read the tiny print on the screen) so I basically decided to try kicking up the pace a little bit and just see how things go.

6.9 miles in I had taken 1:00:22 which was a pace of 8:45/mile and about what I was hoping to sustain for the race. A combination of my picking up speed, other people slowing down because of poor planning/heat(I have no idea what temperature it was now, but by 9 am it was 88 fahrenheit) I passed a TON of people. Like as soon as I could see someone ahead of me, within a couple minutes I was ahead of them. About 8 miles in I hit the low point of the trip(but it wasn't that bad).

I have porcelain veneers on my top front teeth since I have really bad enamel and they allow me to at least pretend to have nice teeth. At 8 miles I decided to eat the energy gel that I brought and since my hands were sweaty I couldn't rip it open.

As I opened it with my teeth something didn't feel right and I ended up spitting out half of one of the veneers, my tooth looks/feels super weird now. I didn't really let that affect me and continued going faster expecting to get a cramp at some point and have to slown down. Eventually we moved from the pavement roads beside Lake Superior to cobblestone roads through the city center where the sidewalks were packed with supporters. I kept going pretty quick and about 10.5 miles in I got the closest thing to a cramp I had all race. After like a minute it had gone away.

After 11.9 miles I had taken 1:40:06 so my last 5 miles average 7:57/mile, and although the last mile seemed to drag on forever, I ended up finishing with a total time of 1:50:30.

After the race I got a quick massage, drank 4 bottles of water and had the piss I had been holding in for 2 hours. I was super happy with my time, I think I could have probably gone a little faster, but I also could have gone a lot slower, so it was a pretty good result. This whole event was really motivating for running, I'm pretty excited to up my mileage and start running longer and longer distances. I'm probably running a marathon in Waterloo in mid-August and it should be pretty sweet.

After the run I went back towards the finish line for a bit to watch the Kenyans win the marathon. Shockingly a white American won it for the first time in like a large numbers of years and he killed it. Its pretty sick to see people run 26 miles at a pace that is tough to keep up with for 1 mile.

Alright, this report is getting super long, not gonna write everything that happened, will summarize since the race.

-Got back to the hotel, went to the pool/hot tub, it was sweet
-Took a nap for a couple hours, woke up and felt pretty good
-Had maybe the tastiest ribs I've ever had, got hit on by a 40 year old woman on the way there
-Realized that not being able to drink when you're under 21 is ridiculous
-Drank
-Went to visit a friend of Michael's from highschool before going to a house party that some friends of hers were having
-Was disappointed that American house parties(or at least this American house party) aren't like in the movies
-We ran the streets at beer pong
-Almost got in a fight while trying to find beer pong opposition
-Michael pointed out that the guy was serious, not just taking trash-talking really far
-Got out of there and went back and crashed
-Woke up and we drove to St. Cloud
-Had Chipotle... they really need to open a franchise in Waterloo
-Got to Jeff(JSchnett)'s house to grind Sundays before flying home tomorrow night.
-Currently regretting grinding Sundays

Actually I haven't booked my flights yet so I don't really know for sure whether it will be 8 or 9. Pretty excited about the run and hope everything goes well. Jschnett apparently got a new place so I'll be hanging out at his place for like a week and then seeing Rise Against on the 26th. After that I'm undecided about whether to head to Vegas for a couple days or to head back to Waterloo, I've been enjoying my time at home a lot but at the same time it would be nice to see everyone for a few days. Last year was ridiculous, I remember walking into the Rio planning to try to keep like a "low profile" and just rail my friends without being noticed(had like a hoodie and hat on, kept my head down mostly) and about 2-3 people from each table came by to say hi. I guess the fact it was the day of the 1k rebuy was probably pretty bad timing since everyone I know ended up playing that tournament and not that many randoms play it.

Other than that I've played a couple days since my last update, nothing great, I played like Sunday, and 2-3 wanna-be tourney sessions for a loss of like ~10k. This Sunday was super lame, I got a really bad headache part way through the day and had to stop registering for tournaments and just prayed to bust out of all my tournaments as soon as possible while still trying not to play terribly. I think next session I play(errr next session where something goes well) I'll try making a couple videos out of it. I haven't made a video series in a little while(although there are some videos that I was a part of coming out in the next couple weeks I think) and should probably get on that.

I got my rakeback from Full Tilt this month and for how little I played, it was pretty shocking how quickly it adds up. I guess I played every or almost every Sunday + like 20 hours of midstakes cash but it was about double what I was expecting.

In the last week I've seen the movies "The Hangover" and "Up" and thought both were pretty awesome, I definitely recommend seeing them both. I usually don't find comedies as funny as most people but I was laughing the whole way through the hangover, and Up did a surprisingly good job of making the 3D aspect add to the movie rather than make it gimmicky.

Oh ya, I recently signed up for twitter, I don't know how much I'll use it this Summer, but I'll basically use it any time I'm playing live tournaments, and maybe even for big online tournaments like WCOOP etc. Heres the link:

twitter.com/mikemcdonald89

I played tournaments Friday and Sunday and did reasonably well, Friday I had like 13k in cashes across 3k in buyins(won a WSOP satelite and got 2nd in another), and Sunday I had like 17.5k in cashes across 11.5k in buyins.

On Sunday I had my friend over to play tournaments and when his tournaments were on break he saw my Dortmund trophy(thinly veiled brag) and was asking the inevitable question about whether I've ever drank from it(probably been asked this 2 dozen times since its like a vase). I keep a bunch of random stuff on the same shelf(shoe boxes, unopened mail, a champagne glass, my old Timex watch, and a bunch of other random stuff) and he assumed they were all awards of one sort or another. He asked about this one thing which I got as a gift which basically contains a message from someone and is supposed to be lucky so long as you keep it in plain site and never look at the message. If you get rid of it, look at the message, put it in a drawer etc its supposed to be unlucky. I forgot about this thing and obviously opened the message when I was part way through the 59 Super Turbo on full tilt. Within about 6 hands I 30/70's my way from below average to a top 10 stack. I kept running stupidly hot and eventually cashed it, got aces a ton and eventually went through the 1200 player field(probably one of the biggest field tournaments I've won) for 11k. Not to say that I believe in things that are/aren't lucky, but after looking, I was more or less thinking it would be nice to have an excuse as to why I ran bad on Sunday, but after running good I'm just confused.

The last couple days I've been grinding watching episodes of "Breaking Bad", its a TV show about a chemistry teacher who gets cancer and to pay for his bills/leave money for his family after he dies and decides he wants to live a little, so he starts making and selling meth. Its been pretty good so far but a little more serious than I expected(was expecting an Entourage type show that is all glamour and not that intense, but this is kind of the opposite, but still good)

Also congrats to practically everyone who got deep in the 40k, I was cheering for like 1/2 of the field. Was hoping for the Brian v Dani HU match, but no one could close, and I ended up knowing 6 of the final 7 but not the winner. I hope that the sweats continue this WSOP, good luck everyone

Alright, wasn't an official 1/2 Marathon or anything, but today I went for a run that was just over the length of a 1/2 marathon and it felt pretty good. We ran to a nearby city(err not really a city, looked it up and its officially called a community or village, theres about a dozen small villages like this near Waterloo, so rather running through the city and hitting traffic lights, running to different places for each of my long runs seems like a good idea.

My 1/2 marathon race with MPHL is in 3.5 weeks, so I'll probably do a similar length run next week, and then no overly demanding runs for the 2 weeks leading up to the run. MPHL told me he'll run it with me expecting to finish in 1:40 or 1:50 but our run today took 2:05, I have no idea how things will go on race day, I've heard extremely varying information, but I'd be super happy with 1:50, but think 1:55-2:00 is more reasonable.

Last couple days I haven't been up to a whole lot, I played this Sunday, and managed to cash for 8k across 11k buyins without any decent cashes, so as you can probably expect, there was a little bit of disappointment. I've also been playing some NL cash lately, I figure now with being a part of full tilt I'll get more opportunites especially once I'm 21(high stakes poker, poker after dark type stuff) and relearning NL cash is probably a pretty good idea. Its also pretty nice for when I run into cash game players in tournaments to get a better idea of what they are thinking and what types of things they are/aren't capable of. I got holdem manager and WOW its pretty sweet, I feel like it was absurd for me to wait this long to get it.

Other than that, nothing too out of the ordinary has happened lately, our last soccer game was against a team with no varsity team caliber players, but we still lost 0-1. Todays my first volleyball game of the season and its gonna be rough since my legs feel like they could give in at any time. I also saw Star Trek last night, definitely recommend it(although every Trekkie I've talked to hasn't been a fan, every non-Trekkie has thought its awesome... that said you should go see it, since you probably would have already seen it if you are a Trekkie)