For Halloween this year, I've decided to go as The Most Interesting Man in the World:



I've got a nice suit & shirt that will work perfectly, but my problem is with the beard. His is so majestic and perfect, and mine doesn't fill in all the way. It covers all the important areas reasonably well, but it doesn't fill in nearly as fully as his does. This is likely why I don't have the female following that this guy enjoys, so I'm looking to fix that.

Fake beards usually look shitty, and I've been growing mine out for the past few days in preparation, but it isn't up to snuff with this dude's perfect beard.

UPDATE: I made the decision to go with a fake, as my current natural situation only left me looking like the 4th or 5th most interesting person in the world. And we just can't have that.

This honor has to be awarded to PicTranslator:

ACL was this past weekend, and I had a bunch of friends from Chicago in town for the festivities. Greg and I acquired 3-day passes on Friday morning and met with my buddies at Zilker park for a weekend of beer & music.

The only act I even halfway cared about on Friday was Them Crooked Vultures -- a new supergroup with Dave Grohl on drums, John Paul Jones (from Zeppelin) on bass, and the guy from Kyuss & Queens of the Stone Age on guitar + vocals. Overall they sounded a lot like QOTSA, and I was pretty much unimpressed with Grohl's return to drums, but I was utterly FLOORED at John Paul Jones' performance.

I'm a very critical listener and am usually keen to picking up on cool supporting parts (like drums, bass, and rhythm guitar), but Led Zeppelin's bass lines never struck me as anything particularly special. The bass lines for most of TCV's songs were quite beautifully written and performed; also, he played two unique bass-like instruments -- one I'd never seen before. The first looked like a 6- (or maybe even 8-?!) string bass which he jammed with for a few songs. And towards the end of their set, he swapped for a seemingly 6-stringed necked instrument that he wore like a guitar but played with his left hand above the neck. He used his left fingers palm-down to hold notes while plucking with his right hand. It was kind of like a lap steel guitar but worn around his neck guitar-style; whatever it was, the guy's a badass and I've got tons of respect for him. Time to gonna go back and re-listen to those Zeppelin bass lines!

I planned on going earlier on Saturday to hang out with the guys and see some bands I wasn't too familiar with, but the weather was absolute garbage -- it rained all day -- so I stayed home until DMB took the stage. All I have to say about Dave live is that they put on the absolute best show I've ever seen anywhere; if you're a fan of good musicians who love to improvise and are all around geniuses at what they do, you can't beat Dave live. I think that even my sisters and parents, all of whom have strong musical roots, would have loved the show, even though none of them listen to (or particularly care for) most of DMB's music. I'd happily trek through the mud and rain to see these guys jam all day. Oh yeah, and Carter Beauford is my hero.



Sunday brought Pearl Jam, which most of my friends were most excited about. I'm obviously a fan of theirs, but I seem to be in the minority of fans who don't really think that Pearl Jam are at the "epic greatness" level. So many of my friends insisted that they were all phenomenal musicians and had a wide range of talents, and while this might still be true, they didn't do anything notably awesome during their 2hr set on Sunday night. I thought they were good but not great, and their level of musicianship was above average -- but no higher. Still though, you gotta respect them for how long they've been together and the amount of worldwide success they've achieved in that time. But given the choice, I'd choose to hear 30min of music from a band like DMB, Radiohead, Tool, or Porcupine Tree over 2hrs of Pearl Jam.

I've been away from poker for almost a week and am really missing it. Plans are to grind tons between now and my trip to Denver next weekend. That's it for now!

After that depressing start to my month, I've been trying to shift the focus back onto my life and the good things I have going on around me. I'm in a new city with tons of stuff to do, I live in a beautiful apartment with a spectacular view, and I have the support of a fantastic group of friends and family. What happened in previous weeks was sad, but I'm not gonna let it negatively affect my life. Enough about that.

Greg moved in last Monday, and we've been putting in a decent number of hours each day working on stuff in the apartment. It's taking me a lot longer than I expected to get this place up and running -- and it's costing a bunch more too. But that's fine with me; I honestly couldn't be happier with my current living arrangements.

On a different note, we had a strange encounter with a wild animal today. Greg and I were playing sessions at our desk when we heard a bird-like swooping noise outside our window, followed by a loud *thud*. Much to our surprise, a beautiful falcon had somehow crashed onto the balcony of our 32nd story apartment and got himself trapped out there.



The dumb bird spent a solid 20+ minutes banging its head/wings/claws against the glass enclosure that is our balcony, which allowed me to get some solid photos of it. Our balcony had this thing totally stumped regarding how to escape. We had ordered chinese delivery for dinner a bit earlier and it was running really late, so talk of falcon stew for dinner was certainly entertained but was unfortunately cut short when our buddy finally escaped. Really cool bird, though; check out the video.

This is going to be tough to write. You can stop reading now if you're looking for poker content. I really need an avenue to vent these emotions pent up inside of me, and this is going to be it.

I met Aniuta at PCA in the Bahamas this year. She was a charming, fun-loving, and somewhat quirky poker girl who always just wanted to be "one of the guys". Though never graceful, she was always the first to laugh at herself while encouraging us to join in. She was quite the character, and we shared many commonalities; for these (and a few other) reasons, we started seeing each other casually in the weeks after returning home to Illinois.

I was living in Chicago, and she was a senior at U of I about two hours south of me. Since the relationship was casual, I was up-front about the fact that I was very likely to leave Chicago at the end of the coming summer in hopes of living with another internet poker pro. She was OK with this, so we decided to continue on.

Over the summer, things got more serious. She was living in another poker house (arranged prior to us really getting together) not too far from mine in Vegas for the month of June, so we saw each other a lot. We spent lots of time together and our relationship eventually turned into a boyfriend/girlfriend scenario. All the while, though, I'd been planning on moving into a poker house in another part of the country when my lease expired in Chicago on Sept 1, so we made sure to treasure our time together before that impending date.

Sept 1 has come and gone, I moved back down to Texas to pursue my career in poker with a new poker roommate, and the relationship ended. Aniuta was obviously very saddened and broke down a few times during our final days together, but we both knew it wasn't meant to be. Unfortunately, she had fallen in love with me and although I really liked her, I simply couldn't see myself being with her for the rest of my life; we were just too similar, and I need someone who completes me more than mirrors me. She understood.

Long story short, Aniuta wrote me a very long goodbye letter on Monday night and/or Tuesday morning, then emailed it to me on a time-delay (so I'd receive it around 9pm last night) before taking her own life by oxygen deprivation. I immediately called her cell after reading the first line of the email, and her mom picked up to tell me that Aniuta was gone forever.

I've been devastated ever since; words cannot describe the gut-wrenching emotions I felt speaking to her mother and reading her goodbye letter to me. This girl fell in love with me, I broke her heart, and she killed herself. She was living at home with her parents at the time, so I'm assuming they found her. That is something I cannot imagine experiencing myself.

Aniuta swears multiple times in the letter that it wasn't my fault, blaming other issues more than anything else, but it's really hard for me to dismiss my contributions to her demise. I've been a mess since hearing of her suicide; I couldn't sleep last night and she's been on my mind ever since.

She really didn't seem like the type to do such a thing...she was always smiling and laughing the loudest. To those of you who read this entire thing, thanks for taking the time. Suicide is NEVER the answer to your problems; she and I talked about it once when it was brought up on a TV show we were watching, and we both agreed how stupid it is. She admitted her own hypocrisy but claimed it was better than the alternative, which is absolutely NOT true. TALK to the important people in life about your issues -- that's what they are there for! Sigh...

This is obviously a very difficult time for me, but it is even more so for her family. In memory of Aniuta, I'll end this depressing blog entry with one of her favorite songs: "Fantastic Place" by Marillion. RIP Aniuta, you will be missed.

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Got the keys to my new place on Tuesday and I've been busy getting everything set up ever since. I've lived in nice places before, but never before have I had to fill so much space with stuff that all belongs to me. Granted this will get better when Greg moves in next weekend, but for now there's a lot of empty space that needs filling. This is most evident in the living room, where my 42" DLP gets dwarfed by the overwhelming size of the room:



The love seat on the right is going in my bedroom too, so I'm gonna steal the nice couches my sister has in storage at our lake and bring them out in the coming weeks. I've also convinced my parents to let me have the fooseball table from out there, so that'll add a nice touch to the room as well. But most importantly, Best Buy is delivering my new 65" DLP tomorrow so we won't have to squint at the screen from the couches.

My favorite part about the room, however, is that it's of adequate size + shape to allow for really good acoustics. I've been an audiophile far longer than I've been a poker player, and sadly all of my really good audio gear has been constrained by poor acoustic environments since I bought it. This room should finally allow me to set up a high quality sound system; my only concern in that regard is the shortened left wall. Here's hoping that isn't as acoustically problematic as it has the potential to be.

There's been tons of other small stuff I've had to buy -- I felt very un-manly spending nearly $300 at Bed Bath & Beyond on random crap yesterday. But such is life...

All these expenses helped put a sizeable dent in my AMEX card, so it's time for me to start making money again. Gonna start up a session, but I'll leave you guys with two songs from a band I recently discovered and absolutely love.

The Dear Hunter: "What It Means To Be Alone"

New city, new people. Luckily, I found mine already:

http://www.myspace.com/shutemdowninsa">





I was trying to link each picture to their MySpace page but I forgot that our blog software is garbage. Anyway, Greg and I should fit right in.

I'm taking a few days away from poker during the moving process. It's nice spending time with my parents again and a good thing overall that I'm moving so much closer to home. Plans for the next few days include equally large amounts of time spent with my family at the lake and with my friends playing Xbox. Unfortunately, South Texas as a whole is in the middle of an epic drought; it's even threatening to dry up our lake which would be an utter tragedy. Rain please!

In the meantime, I've started playing this XBLA game called Trials HD. Derric's been downswinging a bit recently (after his huge start to the month) and I got him hooked too. It's basically a 2-D motorcycle obstacle course game with tons of other cool things thrown in. The game gets quite difficult and is a refreshingly unique game overall. And I really love 2-D games -- especially when pretty much every popular console game is either an FPS or another Madden clone.

Check it out:

I flew back home to San Antonio for the week to visit family, hit up my lakehouse, and drive up to Austin in search of an apartment. Thanks to my previous blog entry, I found a poker donk to live with, so Greg (Ship_It_DUCY) and I will be sharing one of the top-floor penthouses on the lake in downtown Austin for the next year.

The place we got is pretty baller...these pics don't do it justice:











Our penthouse has 4 balconies: one in each of the main bedrooms, one outside the dining room, and one outside of the living room. The view is really spectacular! I took the daytime pics; the complex took the night ones:













Can't wait to move in at the end of the month!

My summer in Vegas this year turned out not to be profitable, but I'm happy with the decisions I made and obv still had a great time. I made Day 2 of the Main Event and was generally happy with my play all around. Interestingly enough, I was dealt AK on both the first and last hand of my main event and obv lost them both; the latter allin pre vs AQ for a decent stack. I'd consider both of my ME tables this year to have been very good, which makes my inability to go deeper in the tournament all the more unfortunate.

I've been grinding a bunch online since returning from Vegas and have already recouped the summer losses + a decent amount of profit. PLO is going well, and I think my game is very good right now. I definitely think I'm better at adjusting to my opponents than they are at adjusting to me, and hopefully things don't change on this front anytime soon. :)

In other news, the lease on my apartment in Chicago is up at the end of this month, and I've decided to move back to Texas. I was hoping to do a poker house with my buddy Clay but that deal unfortunately fell through, so I'm flying down to Austin next week to look for a place to live. I'm still very interested in getting a poker house together for a long-term (1yr+) deal, so I'm posting this here in on the off chance that another young, committed, winning poker pro is reading this blog and has a similar interest. If that's you, please PM me or shoot me an email ASAP!

This summer has also been a good few months for me in my wind tunneling hobby; my new tunnel suit fits great and flies really well, and I love the helmet too. Check it out:
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Final session in the tunnel, working on head-down with one of their suits because it has safety grips on it: