CARDRUNNERS

Since the last update I haven't played online at all, but my new 2 part video series is up. I haven't rewatched them since making them several weeks(maybe longer?) ago but will probably do that soon. I ended up going on a roadtrip with my girlfriend where we went to Turning Stone for 2 days, visited Stevejpa in Kingston for an afternoon, went to her parents cottage for a few days and then went to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing with my family as an early Birthday present(last 2 years I've been out of the country for my birthday and we've celebrated after so we decided to beforehand just to mix it up.

The drive to Turning Stone was pretty fun since the highways seemed way less jammed and traffic moved way faster than on the major Canadian highways. The casino/hotel itself was nicer than I expected yet there was far less to do there than expected. We had a draft where there were 4 teams of 6, and I was elected to be a captain. At an EPT or something I think I'd fare pretty well since I seem to know pretty much everyone there, but here I had only met maybe 3/20 of the other players and although I recognized most peoples online names when they said them, I forgot names pretty easily and after drafting nutsinho first round I more or less let him decided who we pick since he had already been there for most of the week. Our team seemed pretty solid, but as of the time I busted(like 90th/200) nutsinho was the only one left. Eventually he busted, and jordankickz who was on charder's team took the tournament down(I think he was the only 1 out of 24 of us who cashed, maybe 1 other mincash or something).

I can't imagine spending the whole like 10 days there, and Molly couldn't imagine spending more than the 2 days there. I guess the only real attractions were golf and gambling so if you don't do either there isn't much to do. The hotel tower itself was actually really nice and there were definitely some good restaurants, but unless I'm super bored I probably won't go back too often.

We then drove up to Kingston to visit Steve and his wife Nat who I hadn't seen in a while.  Nat was at her baby shower for most of the time we were there but it was good to see them and apparently 5 days after we left they had their baby and named her Emily, congrats!

After that we drove up to Molly's cottage which seems to be even more isolated than my parents cottage, and despite coming last place in a poker game where the majority of people had a hand rankings chart in front of them it was pretty fun.

After that, we headed to Barrie to do this "tree top trekking" thing which is sort of similar to rock-climbing except that its less physically demanding. Everyone gets a harness which is similar to in rock climbing and 2 caribiners as well as a pulley. The trees all have a metal platform with various wires on it and each tree is connected by a "game" usually involving your carabiner's being attached to 1 or 2 wires around shoulder height and you permforming some sort of activity to get across(could be walking along a rope bridge, walking over barrels, climbing through barrels etc etc) before attaching to the next tree and continuing on. The pulley is used for the ziplines where you basically just put the pulley over a wire, sit back and zoom to the next tree.

Overall this was a really fun way to spend an afternoon, and although I would have liked it to be more demanding(pretty much every course was accessable for people trying it for the first time... I would have liked it more if it were like rock climbing in that no one can succeed at everyone on their first time), after that I finally went back to Waterloo for a few days.

My last few days of Summer in Waterloo were also pretty fun but it started to get quite cool. Fortunately it wasn't long before I was going to Cannes/Barcelona. My friend Tuhin won a package to  EPT Dublin a while ago but has been busy since then so he has kept deferring the package. He was available to play Barcelona so he decided he'd use the package for that. I told him the Partouche Poker Tour event in Cannes is the best tourney of the year and agreed to buy him in for 1/2 his action + 1/2 his action in Barcelona, these are his first live tournaments but I still can't imagine anyone having less than like a 200 ROI in the Partouche event... more on that later.

We got to the airport fairly early and had time to get dinner. We went to just a random cheap diner type place and sort of lost track of time before realizing our flight had already started boarding and was taking off in like 20-25 minutes. We left quickly(had been at the diner maybe 90 minutes) and got to the gate just before they were roping it off. We saw a few customs agents waiting behind the gate so we figured it would take a while to board since I had more than 10k on me.

Right after she checked out passports Tuhin said to me "maybe I'm crazy, but did we pay for dinner?" he was not crazy and we unintentionally dined-and-dashed without paying for our chicken tenders. We were kind of thinking someone from the restaurant might come after us at this point(I've never d&d'ed before so I have no idea what standard protocol is) and were stopped by the customs guys. I told them that I had more than 10k euros and while counting it out/filling out the form in the back of my head I was just praying that the lady from the diner wouldn't come by telling them I stole my dinner since I'd look like the cheapest person in the world when carrying over 30k and not paying for my $12 meal(next time I'm at the airport I'll try to pay for that meal, hopefully it didn't come out of the waitress's salary). Anyways, while the "bad cop" was questioning me, the "good cop" was asking Tuhin about whether we are playing an EPT event, saying he really likes watching the pros play online etc. After I got done with the other cop, the "good cop" asked for my online name and apparently he watches me play all the time. Thought that was pretty random/made me look like a baller.

Anyways, we got to Cannes, realized I brought too many pants and nowhere near enough shorts, and made our way to the hotel that FunkiMunki recommended as the closest one to the casino. He was wrong and on our map we are about as far as possible from the casino, but most people are paying 3-6x what we are so it likely worked out for the best. We registered for the event, and checked out who was playing and wholy fuck it was crazy!

There were like 5 or so name pros(Matusow, Seidel, Tilly, Laak, Esfandiari, maybe a few more I've forgotten) and then NO ONE else. I mean like not even any "oh I've never played with him but I've seen him around" type guys and this is a 8.5k euro buyin with 260 runners yesterday and more today. Its ridiculous. Everyone is a grey-haired frenchman. Day 1b looks like it will be tougher, I've seen maybe 8 online guys around as well as a decent number of other people who play some EPT events and stuff, but I think it should still be the best tournament of the year(likely better than WSOP ME), since it has a very similar structure and well... no one is here.

Alright, thats it for now, play starts in just over 2 hours so hopefully I can hit some sets and other people will hit some pairs.

So the last couple weeks were fairly busy for me. I had the last couple weeks of running before my marathon, my marathon, the FTOPS and I went up to my cottage. The low point of the last few weeks was when I went out for my longest run to date (32km) I started to get light headed after about 20km and had to only do 2 of my 3 loops. This was the "most important" run before the marathon and it really shattered my confidence. I kind of see-sawed between whether I should even do the marathon, what my goal time should be etc etc. I more or less decided that I'd run it if the whether looked reasonable and if it was a scorching day probably either pass, or just run 1/2 or something.

I also went up to my cottage for a couple days and the whether was miserable so I probably did 1 or 2 less short runs than I optimally should have. The last couple weeks I've also had some decent sweats in online tournies for the FTOPS. On the 9th, I had one of my most mediocre Sundays in a while, and on the 11th I had possibly my most promising tourney session ever(not just in the sense of winning tons of money, but just in running good across the big and small tournies). I played 27 tournies and cashed 9 with 2 or 3 bubbles and won a 100 FO, got 3rd in a 50 FO, 11th in a 100 FO, 12th in the triple shootout FTOPS, and 9th in a pretty big 109r. It was pretty disappointing to be HU in round 2 of the TSO with the chiplead and be like 2nd/11 and then finish the day like this. It was obviously a pretty successful day anyways, but it was pretty crazy how many tournaments were going well that day.

I played 2 other days of FTOPS, the Wednesday night with the 300r and despite getting great stacks in the 300r and the 1k on Cereus things came crashing down to be a pretty lame day, I also played this Saturday(stopped regging pretty early since I had to wake up at 7am for the marathon and wanted to sleep at like 930 or something). Sure enough I ended up getting deep in the 1 time consuming tourney of the day and made day 2 of the 2500 FTOPS. It was a pretty good day for the most part before running KK into AA on the bubble and managing to squeak into the money before running up a stack to about 1/2 of average, and putting me in 56th/66. I didn't get to bed until a little after midnight but felt really good when I woke up in the morning.

I drank some water, had a power bar, checked the weather(was supposed to be warm but not ridiciulous) but bandages on my nipples so they didn't bleed this time and I was ready to go. I went to pick up Will and we were both pretty excited for the run. He had run our 32k run in 2:59 and was going for about 4:00, I was more or less just going to finish after my fail at the 32k run but was hoping for about 4:30.

The race started just after 7:30am and the temperature was about 16(61f) and there would be water stations at every 3rd kilometer. There were just over 40 runners, most of whom had run 120k in the last week, and soon enough the race had started. One difficult part about this run was that its very tempting to set your pace based on the pace of the person in front of you(ie. keep a similar distance between you). In most races you can get into a group of people running a similar pace and go by that, but here if one person is speeding up or slowing down, its tough to not mimic them. We started out the race fairly quick and it was pretty clear Will would end up running quicker than me so after about 15 minutes I told him to feel free to run ahead. I kept a really consistent(but fairly quick pace) for a while. The first 3k took 15:34, next 3k took 16:45, then 16:59, then 16:29, 16:49, 16:47, 16:24, and I was 1/2 way in 1:56:01, the course was pretty fairly up and down and had a lot of uphills for a couple kilometers(about 15.5km to 17.5k) and . I have no idea whether I should have gone slower in hindsight but I had felt no cramps(usually I always feel a bit of a cramp after ~12k or so), no soreness and although it was heating up quite a bit(was up to close to 30) I had drank plenty of water and I was feeling good enough that I felt like I would finish this in 4:05 easily, possibly 4:00 if things kept going so well. The next 3k took 16:47, then 25k felt great, 26k and I was feeling spectacular and beginning to realize I'm going to finish this thing and probably in a pretty respectable time.

By the time I was done 27km I was tempted to stop the race. I have no idea what happened, err I know what happened, but I can't believe it was so suddenly. The day was now about 33 and felt like 38 which is about the hottest temperature we've had all summer and handsdown the fastest I had run in. Going 3km without water in this environment was really tough and my body was beginning to feel super drained. I am normally hot in temperatures most people find normal, and in hot temperatures I really don't do well. I finished KM's 24-27 in 17:01 but was pretty sure the fast pace was over. For the next few km I started run/walking(which pretty much everyone else around my pace was doing as well) where I'd walk 2-3 minutes, jog the rest of the kilometer(which I later switched to walking uphills and jogging the flat/downhill sections to save energy) and I was really not excited about having to do this for 15km. The first couple kilometers of this went quite well, I felt as if I was really not wasting much energy and could definitely finish in a respectable time still. The next 3km took 20:12, then there were no energy gels at the 30km station(every station had Water, Gatorade, Sponges, and Energy packets which I intended to take at kilometers 6,12,18,24,30,36). Missing one of these would not be too detrimental since in my training I'd only have them about every 8-9km and here I was taking them every 6.

The next 3km felt pretty similar, and took 21:14, and again the station had no energy gels. I was pretty unexcited at the thought of running the rest of the race without these. At this point when going through a water station instead of getting my usual cup or two of water, I was getting a bottle of water, cup of gatorade and a sponge at every station. The next 3km were a similar pace of 21:20 and left me thinking I'd finish the race in just under 4:15 assuming things didn't get any better or worse. I got a gel here and prepared myself for the few kilometers of uphill that I faced. My plan of walking the uphills really would result in these being slow kilometers since they were almost all uphill with the last couple kilometers being downhills or flat. I walked probably 1.5-2km of the next 3km(for the previous 9km I had probably walked about the same distance) and took 25:28, but was feeling very refreshed and ready to run the majority of the last 3km. I had run about 1/2 a kilometer, was feeling great before I stepped and felt the worst charlie horse of my life in my right leg. The next step the same thing. I then realized I was not going to be smiling as I crossed the finish line. I couldn't run at all and even walking was pretty painful, so I had to walk the last 3km. It was pretty disappointing to have been out there trying my best for 4 hours in the hottest temperature I've run in and then have this affect my run. I ended up taking just under 30 minutes of nearly constant cursing for the last 3.2km and then I was done in 4:27:27. Shortly after finishing I started to feel pretty happy and ignore the pain in my legs and I have no idea what my future running goals will be.

I think if I run a marathon again I'd choose it in the early spring or late fall so that I could put up a more reasonable time. I'd also want to run one of the bigger marathons where you have people everywhere and spectator support(the 1/2 marathon I ran in Duluth had such a ridiculously nice/supportive environment) as well as more water stations. At one point during the marathon Will(who finished in 3:48) went an hour without seeing another runner, and I never could see more than 1-2 people ahead of me. I think I'll probably do more middle distance running and maybe train to run a fastish 5-10k this fall and a quick 1/2 marathon in the spring or something like that. 4.5 hours was a long time to be running and I didn't really put much thought into the music I put on my ipod which proved frustrating.

Alright, enough complaining, it was actually a pretty good result and I have no reason to be ashamed(if my first half took 2:15 and 2nd took 2:12, I would be so happy right now), but I had less than 2 hours to get home, get lunch, get non-disgusting and get 1st place in the 2500 FTOPS to make the day truly awesome. The day started good with me winning the blinds a few times, caling a raise with 77 and having a 3 way pot and stacking AJ after the AJ3 flop was checked around and I turned a 7 to get above average. I then kept cardracking and winning small pots and then eliminated Brandon Adams and at first break I had turned 33k into 151k and was 11/47.

Shorly after break I 3barreled californication- who just called bvb pre with AT, called the K85hh board, A turn and then tank called my 1/3 pot bet on the K river. No idea whether he was legitimately considering folding, but people seem to really believe my small river bets.

A few hands later, I open 88, he calls in position, a loose shortstack shoves 18 or 20BB from the SB, I reshove 50BB with 88, californication- calls AKs, shorty has AQ and I lose a big flip to be out like 40th.

Since then not much has happened, I've been taking it pretty easy in terms of physical activity since I don't really want to injure myself or anything. I'm going to Turning Stone this weekend, then visiting Stevejpa in Kingston then going to my girlfriends cottage, then going to Cannes/Barcelona to get my fall poker started, so I doubt I'll be playing much online but I'll try to keep my blog updated.

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, 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.