CardRunners

Fun things first: I have been doing a crazy amount of traveling - I think that I have slept less than 10 days in my bed at home since my last blog entry. I flew up to New Jersey to visit family for thanksgiving which was a breath of fresh air, to say the least. Amongst many other things, boy did I miss eating 3 Mom-cooked meals a day. I only got to spend a few days in Jersey though, because Steve, a college buddy of mine drove down from NYC, picked me up, and we kicked it in the city for a few days (it was my first trip; I’m not a big-city type but I had a great time) before jetting off for Budapest. We spent 4 days in a hostel in Budapest then took a train over to Prague for EPT Prague. As far as the tournament goes, it was pretty damn uneventful - 5 hours of crazy, ridiculous Euro-spew play with me eventually busting getting top pair in vs. a flush draw and an over. It was a super soft field though so I’ll probably be back next year. Prague was, in a short word - nuts. Although it was pretty saturated with tourists, the nightlife was great (it was pretty great that every club just reeked like herbs) and the city itself is gorgeous and very easy to walk around, even in the dead of the rainy winter season. I was considering posting pics but I’m having trouble picking out favorites so for those of you that are facebook friends with me, just check them out there, and for those that aren’t, meh, tough luck.

After getting back from Europe, I spent a week or so in Orange and then my roommates and I headed off to San Francisco for New Years. We met up with a couple of their really good friends from high school and just had a crazy, blackout New Years at some random 80’s party downtown. The morning after, I decided to torture myself by waking up at 8 to get picked up by my college-friend Eliza to go on a family/friends New Year’s day 5-mile hike that her and the fam do every year. Obviously I show up looking like hell wearing shorts, a pullover, and loafers (its freezing out at this point) and everyone just kinda stares at me like some weirdo that hobbled out of the bushes to join this intimate gathering of friends for their annual hike. It turned out great though; one of the guys lent me some extra hiking shoes, I had some great talks with Liza’s family friends (one of the parents commented on my tattoo being a tribute to the Camino de Santiago that I did a few years back, and seeing as how the tattoo is ridiculously ambiguous and nobody has ever made the connection before, I was super stoked about it) and it basically just wound up being one of the most gorgeous, satisfying hikes I’ve ever been on.

As for now, I just got back from the 7-hour drive back from San Fran and am writing up this quick blog, and unpacking/packing for the PCA in the Bahamas, for which I am leaving tomorrow. So hooray, I get one more day in my bed before launching off for another 11 days! A bunch of my friends that I have made through poker are going to be there, and I am going to make a much better effort to get out there, meet more 2p2ers and just party this year, as I was a bit lazy about it last year. Plus, this is likely the last time I will be at the PCA (more on this) so I am going to try and make the most of it.

So that’s the summary of my travel, now for the exciting revelations in my personal life. Realistically, there is only one. I am done with poker. Not for now, but come Fall of 2009, I will likely be playing my last hands of poker. There are numerous reasons for this, and it would be a bit tedious to go through them all on the blog, but basically, I went on a sicko downswing over the summer, broke even for a few months afterwards, went on another much smaller, though equally irritating downswing, and just throughout my recent travel realized that all the stress that I feel as a result of poker, is frankly not worth any amount of money to me. I have never been someone that needs a large amount of wealth to feel happy, and as I delve further and further into the poker scene, I find myself feeling less and less fulfilled/happy in other aspects of my life. As has been said countless times in the blogs of poker players, playing poker for a living is an inherently selfish act; it in no way contributes to society and is ultimately just a regurgitation of wealth. I don’t say this as a shot to other poker players, not by any means. For the most part, a job, as poker certainly is, is something that people do strictly for money, and really, props to us for having found something that requires short hours, the ability to spend time at home, in your underwear, in front of the computer, and can be pretty damn fun at the same time. However, it just really isn’t for me. I find myself somewhat disgusted by the poker community at large, and have found that I am either simply not good enough, focused enough, or emotionally stable enough, for consistently playing high stakes. Well luckily, I can still crush small/mid stakes games. So, that is what I have been doing for the last month or so, making reasonable (great, but not in comparison to previous numbers) income, and finding myself spending way less time at the computer, staying in touch with friends more, getting outside more, and just finding myself with a smile on my face a much larger percentage of the time. And man, it is hard for me to really elucidate just how good that makes me feel!

So then the big question is: why not quit now? Why fall of 09? Well, when I get back from the Bahamas I will be applying to graduate schools to get my masters in Education, and then its off to become a teacher. Teaching is what I have wanted to do since I was about 16 or so, and it feels great to finally be making steps in the direction of my desired future. So, the goals for the near future are simply to make enough to cover living expenses and the cost of graduate school in the months to come, pray daily that the stock market quickly makes a rebound and I get my hard-earned poker monies back, and just makes a conscious effort to enjoy every single day before I head back to school!

I have already made a post about this on 2p2 several weeks ago, and here is the link for anyone that wants to read a more coherent summary of what I have written in this blog and see some pretty fun/ridiculous graphs from my high-stakes days:

After busting that tournament (last night) my roommate Matt informed me we were going to San Diego to party for the night with a mutual friend of ours, and more than happy to get away from the computer after playing tournaments all day, we drove off into the night. I had never been to San Diego and I was thoroughly impressed; I don’t remember the specific areas where John took us out, but everything oceanside was gorgeous and the bar crowds were friendly, rowdy and for the most part really fun. We wound up trying to go some bar at around 1:00, being told that it was last call already, and decided instead to head down to the beach to see if we could spot any seals that we had heard at dinner. Well, we didn’t spot any seals but I did manage to try and climb some rocks, obviously slip off of the rocks like the drunk idiot that I am, and land chin-first on what has to be the sharpest rock in the world. Instead of a little scracth or bump like I’d normally expect from taking a 3ft fall, I instead found myself with a pretty nice-sized gash on my chin leaking blood into the ocean. Ehh, oops. Also, as it turns out, I may or may not have broken my left thumb. Long story short, it wasn’t a particularly painful event, but I did spend 5 hours of last night in the ER chatting it up with Matt and Johnny and being a nuisance at the hospital before I got stitched up and sent on my way. I only got 6 stitches; I considered putting up the picture of it, but it’s actually kinda gruesome, and I wouldn’t want to offend the 2 or 3 stray female readers that somehow lose their way on the internet and find their way to this blog.

But ya, I left San Diego with possible aspirations of moving there after my lease is up in August of ’09, some stitches on my face, and that unique feeling where your body’s in pain, but the story behind it is just so embarrassing that you can’t help but smile.

To fill the void of the picture of the stitches that I decided to leave off, here are a few shots of the new 4ft x 6ft background that I have up on my wall behind my computer (to remind me why I grind out poker) and the sky out here in SoCal due to the spreading fires:

 
Just think of that vacation and tilt-be-gone..


This was taken at like 2 in the afternoon.. pretty nutty


The ash clouds blocking out the sun; it was a very apocalypse-esqe scene

Cheers,
Mike

So I just got in last night after spending 10 days in San Jose, Costa Rica, playing the LAPT tournament down there and just otherwise enjoying a much-needed vacation. Although it was the end of the rainy season while we were in Costa Rica, it seemed like we got some pretty decent weather and were able to take full advantage of all the standard touristy stuff. I took my friend Eliza down to Costa Rica and that was a great choice; she didn’t complain at all about all the poker talk that she had to sit through and was able to keep herself content and busy while I was playing the tournament. The first full day that we were there, Liza and I booked a trip to nearby Isla Tortuga and enjoyed a really scenic boat-ride out to an isolated sector of islands, took a hike out at a dry tropical forest, swam in the beautiful water and enjoyed a standard Costa Rican lunch of a lot of fruit, rice and beans, and a few bottles of Imperial beer. Pura vida.

The next day was the first day that the rest of the qualifiers for the tournament got into San Jose and we headed over to the Pokerstars Welcome party. I didn’t really see too many people that I knew and was a bit bummed but was instantly psyched after a very drunk Ryan (fees) yelled ’gordooooo’ and assaulted me with a hug. Clearly, this trip was gonna be great. We all got pretty drunk, then Liza and I went down with fees to register him, and in standard fees fashion, he just threw a wad of 10k or so at Liza and told her to register him for the tournament. I think she was probably a bit overwhelmed by the whole scene, as I’m not a very flashy person, and there’s definitely no way that she had ever held more than a few hundred dollars at a time. Anyways, after successfully registering fees, we went back to the Hilton, fees put on some of Liza’s booty shorts and we hit the hot tub, only to get kicked out like 10 minutes later by security for being too noisy.

The next day was the tournament. Here is a quick summary of my tournament:

I actually felt that I played great in this tournament; I ran pretty card-dead the whole time but was able to sneak into the money. There was only one hand of interest before the money bubble, and it was when I picked a great time to range-merge vs. Victor Ramdin when I smoothed his UTG+1 raise with JJ (I was UTG+2), called his flop cbet on QQ9, called another 2/3 pot barrel on the brick 6 turn, and then merged a 2/3 pot bet on the T river, with the board now reading QQ96T. He thought for a long time then folded, later telling me he folded KK, which I actually believe. This type of river spot where I have significant show-down value but am at least 50% of the time going to be showing down the worst hand, but can maybe 20% of the time take the villain off the best hand (lol gorilla math) is a spot that I feel very comfortable betting in PLO spots, but am usually gun-shy about when playing NL, so I was happy that I was able to put out a bet there. Otherwise, I worked my stack up pretty well during the money bubble and wound up losing 80% of my chips when I got AQ in on a Q6s2 board vs. 37s that raised UTG and c/raised the flop a committing stack. It kinda sucked ‘cause had I won that hand, I would have had the chip-lead with 20 players left and a pretty good table, but oh well, so it goes in tournaments. The tournament wasn’t about me anyways, it was about fees, who wound up running like sun, pulling off a couple of big bluffs in important spots, and taking down the whole thing. Huge props to fees - he played well, only flopped one royal flush (lolll) and wore a ridiculous shirt at the final table and was just fun to root for. I think the rest of the crowd was probably getting a bit pissed that random shouts of ‘fees’ were heard every 30 seconds or so from the cheering section, but oh well, just another day in the life…

We all wound up going out that night at a Bluff-sponsored party, but Liza and I had to wake up at 4:30 the next morning to head to a whitewater rafting and jungle canopy tour 2-day group, so we had to call it an early night. There’s a hell of a story from that night that everyone involved is presumably going to put into a hilarious trip report on 2p2, so be on the lookout for that some time soon!

As for the whitewater rafting, it was completely unreal. As I said, it was the end of the rainy season, so water was raging pretty good, and a lot of the class 3 and 4 rapids were intense. The second day of rafting, we had a really light raft of just me and Liza and a young Asian couple who were pretty nervous about heading out on the river. Apparently it was for good cause seeing as how as soon as we hit a tough class 4, the chick up and popped out of the boat, and it was conveniently at the spot where a photographer was taking action shots. I felt pretty bad about this afterwards because the girl was actually pretty shaken up and crying and all that jazz after she was dragged back into the boat, but when we were looking through the slideshow when we finished up the day, there are 4 really funny shots where you can see everyone in the boat, smiling, then there’s a shot of her up in the air and I have like an intense game face on, then I’m looking back and she’s in the water, and the last one is me looking forward with a huge grin on my face, just loving the rush. I’m not sure if I adequately described the scene, but just picture those facial expression changes happening in a matter of a few seconds and you should get a pretty good idea of how awkward it was to look through the slideshow with her at the end of the trip. Regardless, the rafting was awesome, and the place that we stayed at in the middle of the jungle - the Pacuare Lodge - was unreal. It was this weird mix of luxury and roughing it, and wound up being perfect. I wish I hadn’t been with Liza but rather some girl that I had been looking to get with, because it was a ridiculously romantic atmosphere with the river raging 15 meters away from the lodge, sounds of the jungle surrounding you, and no electricity so the whole scene lit up by candles. I’ll throw up some pics of the place at the end of this ridiculously long blog. While at the lodge, we also did a jungle canopy zip-line tour, and hiked out to a beautiful waterfall for a bit of swim with one of our rafting guides. Pura vida, mae…

The rest of the time in Costa Rica was spend lounging by the pool, sippin’ some drinks and just getting a tan. In the rush to talk about all the relaxing/ridiculously exciting things that I got to get done while in Costa Rica, though, I forgot to mention probably the scariest moment of my life. The first day that we were there, Liza and I decided to go down to San Jose city and walk around a bit. The city wasn’t particularly impressive - pretty standard, reminded me a lot of northern Spain where I walked the Camino de Santiago a few years ago. Anyways, at the end of the day, Liza and I were heading back to the Hilton in a cab, and the guy was playing some American rap music blasting with marijuana references, Liza and I started chatting, and the guy asked if we wanted to buy some product. Well, not being the types who refuse such an offer, Liza and I agreed in the best broken Spanish we could muster, and just asking for a few pellotas to enjoy in the hot tub or whatever, headed off to God knows where. I think I started to figure out that the neighborhood was getting worse and worse when he closed all the windows, locked our doors, and I started to see guys with shotguns standing watch by the ATMs. Ermmm. Then he pulls into a ridiculously shady-looking neighborhood, gets out of the car, locks us inside, and proceeds to walk away. Great. I’m in a third world ghetto with a blonde-haired girl wearing short-shorts with about 500 dollars in my pocket. At that point a policia truck rolls by with two armed guards and a guy with a very big gun in the truck-bed. So my options are looking like: get shanked and robbed, or get raped in jail for trying to buy drugs. No bueno. Anyways, the driver comes back a few minutes later, tells us “hay problemas,” which weren’t really the happy words I was looking for, and tells us something went wrong, which is just fine by me as I’m just happy he’s back and we can get back to our hotel room. Somehow Liza and I had forgotten that Costa Rica is um, a border state to Colombia, and therefore a pretty big drug-smuggling/trafficking area. Not exactly our brightest idea of the trip to take this journey with the taxi driver… I’m not sure if I properly conveyed just how scared I was at this point, but it’s far and away the hardest that my heart has ever been pounding in a non-sports/poker situation. Anyways, just thought I’d share that story in case people next year were looking for a similar adventure at the LAPT.

Hmmm, I feel like I left some things out, but this blog is already painfully long, so I’m just gonna throw in some pics and cut it off. I read two books cover-to-cover while traveling that I was going to comment on, but my eyes hurt from all this typing, so my excellent reviews of David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink are just gonna have to wait until next time, even though I will say that people interested in social psychology should definitely have a look at Gladwell’s writing. Without further ado, some pics:


Just a little urban color in downtown San Jose.


shot of giddy Liza on the way to Isla Tortuga.


So we were hiking through the forest and a leaf fell on my head - turns out it was a pretty big leaf...


So the tour bus just kinda dropped us off a couple of miles away from the river, at the start of this lush green jungle scene.. pretty sick views.


A shot showing a small portion of the Pacuare Lodge room... it was so ridiculously beautiful..


The guides setting up the first zip line.. the other ones were longer, scarier, and all progressively more fun and exciting.


A final shot at the waterfall, pretty fitting end of the trip pic.

 
So, in summary, Costa Rica was great. Now, I’m back in grind mode for the rest of November, and on the 26^th I head off to New Jersey to see family for thanksgiving and head off to Prague for the EPT in early Decemberish some time. Heh, tough life I lead. Hope you’re all doin’ well and enjoying life - congrats if you actually read every word of this blog!

Cheers,
Mike

So the pros are pretty clear, but there a few cons with the situation as well:

I’ll post the graphs for the month at the end of this blog, but first I want to just talk about life. Getting acclimated to life here in Orange has been pretty interesting. In a short point, let’s just say that I highly underestimated how hard it is to find a social circle in a new city. This has been my first month playing poker full-time, and I have found that, like a lot of people who share the profession, it is actually surprisingly hard to balance a good social life while putting in a lot of hours. I spend a couple of hours every day staying fit, and aside from that, I basically spent all of October grinding, which is not a precedent that I really want to be setting for myself for the next year. I have always wanted to get into yoga and rock climbing seriously, and I’ll be damned if I don’t start to do that in the coming months.

Getting into the poker grind hasn’t been entirely bad though. At one point in the month, I got a little sick of grinding PLO hands, and decided to play a few satellite qualifiers on Pstars to tournaments around the world. It was actually a great break and reminded me how much SNGs are if you don’t grind them out all day long like I used to do back in the PartyPoker 215 tourney days. I played a measly total of 5 tournaments, but was able to qualify for the LAPT in San Jose, Costa Rica, the PCA in the Bahamas, and the EPT in Prague, which I am thrilled about. In fact, I am heading out to San Jose tomorrow so as to get there for Halloween and have a few days off before the tournament. I’m taking one of my best friends from WashU, Eliza, with me, and we tend to just get rowdy and ridiculous when around each other so I can only imagine it’s gonna be a most excellent trip and great break from the poker grind. She already booked a sweet 2-day white-water rafting, jungle hiking expedition type thing for our last few days in Costa Rica and needless to stay I’m very pumped for it. Qualifying for these tournaments is actually gonna wind up being a great excuse for me to take friends that I want to catch up with on free trips to exotic places - giddy up!

Without further ado, here are my graphs for the month - my first almost-full month at 5/10 and 10/20 (the first graph was originally intended to be my new grind database, but after the first shot went wrong, I got a little OCD about it, didn‘t like to look at the ugly downswing, and just made it my ‘shots‘ database; the second graph is going to be my lifetime, with all hands included as played from the middle of October and onwards:

Can’t say that I’m thrilled with the way that the end of the graph looks, but oh well, my bankroll on Stars got to a point where I could comfortably take some shots at 25/50, I did, they went well for a while, then I played a session where I flopped two overfulls to quads in raised pots, and needless to say, it was a bit of an ugly session. But I’m done with poker for the month, and will resume play at 5/10 and 10/20 when I get back from Costa Rica in November, hopefully with a bit more self-discipline this time around. Also, I’m not going to be updating my blog as much as I used to, but when I do, they will all be fairly lengthy updates like this one. Hope you are all well; thanks for reading.

Cheers,
Mike