So I know it's been a while since my last blog entry and a lot have happened since so here are the cliffs:

- Went and played a bunch of live tournaments in Dublin, Manchester, London, San Remo, Bratislava and Vienna and had some great trips but managed to brick all of the tournaments.
Instead of boring you with the usual bustout hands I will just say that if you ever find yourself in Bratislava order this dish (i'm not really sure what it is and dont remember it's name, and even if I did I wouldn't be able to pronounce it):




Obviously the biggest news since my last update is Black Friday but a lot of people who are smarter and more well-spoken than me have already given their excellent thoughts on it so I will just say that my thoughts are with all the american grinders who got robbed of their job overnight.
It's hard to imagine that something like that could have happened in any other job sector in America without a huge uproar and massive mainstream media coverage but unfortunately it once again shows how villanized and misunderstood our profession is by both politicians and the general public.

Anyways enough of my ramblings, the last two weeks I have grinded SCOOP (only missed one day) and the one good thing to come from Black Friday is that all the tournaments started three hours earlier so unlike last year I could actually get to bed before sunrise. SCOOP was pretty weird for me in the sense that I ran extremely well to get to a lot of final tables and then ran pretty mediocre once I got there. That also meant that I barely missed out on the 35k package you get for winning the leaderboard, a win in any of those events would had been enough:

2100 NL 6-max: 8th
22 PLO heads-up: 9th-16th
162 NL Ante up: 12th
1575 2x NL Turbo: 3rd
215 Triple Stud Turbo: 9th
2100 Triple Stud Turbo: 2nd
1050 rebuy Big Antes. 6th
5200 plo 6-max: 4th

So even though I didn't manage to win any events this year either and didn't do to well at the final table it was still a great series where I ended up about 130k and got a lot of practice in the mixed games for vegas this summer.

The next stop for me is Vegas next week where I have rented an apartment with a couple of friends for the entire series. This is my first trip to Vegas so I am pretty excited about seeing all my friends, experiencing the culture and of course winning my first bracelet. Il try to update the blog weekly while I am over there but if that fails I will be updating on http://twitter.com/#!/mickeydp.

Mickey

ps. I have gotten some requests for more live videos so I will make sure to make a couple of videos before I leave for Vegas.
pps. Congrats to Will Ma on joining Cardrunners. I remember someone asked me a couple of months ago who I thought the most underrated high-stakes mtt player was and I instantly told him Will Ma.
He has been under the radar for a long time but he has been crushing it for a long time and is one of the most consistent winners, a great addition to the team for sure.