2012 World Series of Poker

It's about time for me to begin blogging again as I've returned to Vegas for the 2012 WSOP.  Expect a decent amount of updates over the next 6 weeks chronicling my massive success (or likely failures) in attemtps to win a bracelet.

I'm playing a lot of poker tournaments.  I find them very boring for the most part, but I wake up every morning feeling like a champion and head to the Rio for 12 hours of torture.  I've also brought many hats with me, which I find are very important to wear during poker so the other players can not get a read on my emotional state.

Here's me looking very stylish recently...

Well, I wrote that intro about 2 weeks ago when the summer was just beginning and some stuff has happened since.  Let me catch you up on this "stuff".

We're making some runs in some tournaments.  When I say we I'm of course talking about team hermoso, the house of guys I'm crashing with this summer.  Here's a quick recap:

- Derek and Sadan kicked things off in the very first no limit event by finishing 26th and 22nd respectively out of about 3000 people.  Both picked up around $15k for their efforts.

- I decided to play the $1500 limit omaha 8/b tournament despite having limited experience in the game.  I found it quite easy however and made a pretty deep run ultimately finishing in 19th place.  Here's me looking very confused while all in on day 3.

what???

- Next up for me was the $1500 no-limit re-entry event that got a whopping  3500 players or so and had what will likely be one of the largest top prizes all summer at over $800,000.  I had a pretty awesome run in this event and with 50 left I played a pot that would have put me in the top 3 in chips had I won.  Unfortunately, I lost the pot and was eliminated in 50th place, but it was a great feeling going that deep in a huge field holdem event.

This seems to be getting a bit long, and the next one will likely be a lengthy post as well as I'm going to write a ton about the 10k pot limit holdem final table that I just made.  

But to close this one out, here's a nice fellow from the television that Sadan spotted at the Rio.  We ended up playing a bunch of 3-card-poker with this fine gentleman, and he assured us that Kenny Powers is a pretty awesome guy.

2011 Recap, 2012 Goals

At the start of 2011, I was on top of the world.  Well, the poker world at least.  My personal life was the complete shit show it still is today, but I had just come off an incredible year.  I wrote this post http://heynotilt.blogspot.com/2011/01/2010-recap-2011-goals.html and figured it'd be fun to look back.

Lets see how I did...

2011 goals:

[ ] Enjoy life.  Great success for the first 6 months of the year.  Tahoe was incredible, met some great people and traveled to some awesome places.  Last 6 months of the year, epic fail.  Grinded live poker and lived an overall miserable life.

[ ] Start working out regularly, put on 25 pounds by the end of the year  Well this was a pretty massive fail.  I probably worked out a good 5-6 times all year, including a 3 day stint of P90x.  I'm still the skinny Jewish kid taking all of your paper.

[ ] Eat healthier  I did pretty well on this and it's only getting better.  Getting into cooking has helped a lot.

[ ] Feel comfortable enough to snowboard on any mountain in the world after 3 months in Tahoe  While I wouldn't say I'm a world class boarder, or even really an expert, there's no mountain I wouldn't hit now.  I'm still a huge clown in the park and managed to mess up my knee pretty bad at the end of the year, but I've definitely got a new hobby.

[ ] Travel to 5 different countries  I'm cheating a bit here, as I only stopped in Copenhagen's airport for a few hours, but.... Bahamas, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark.  Oh, and a night in Monaco so I win.

[ ] Volunteer as often as possible  I'm a shitty human being.

[ ] Break par on the golf course Shot a -2, 70 at Trophy Club in Atlanta sometime in August I believe.  Haven't really been close since but I'm fairly happy with where my golf game is.  Looking forward to going pretty low in 2012.

[ ] Win another ALTA city championship if I come back to Atlanta  Check

Yep that's me Tebowing in the front right.

[ ] Find something I want to learn and potentially go back to school  No effing clue.  But grad/culinary/med school are potentially on the horizon.

[ ] Learn the basics of trading stocks, options, bonds I'm still a pretty big fish in the market.

[ ] $200k profit from poker Was certainly on pace, Black Friday didn't help too much.

[ ] Cash a $10k tourney (planning on playing at least 3) Cash the EPT Grand Final in Madrid for 35k euro I believe.  Busted PCA on day 2 and dusted off a nice stack in the WSOP Main day 2.

All in all it was a moderately successful year. I accomplished a few poker goals, and a few life goals, but there's still a lot to be desired.

So what's in store for this year...

[ ]  Figure out where I'm going in life

[ ]  Watch the start-up I invested in make me billions

[ ]  Cook one new dish per week 

[ ]  See 5 new countries

[ ]  Participate in an improveverywhere-esque mission  Srsly check it out

[ ]  Make some money at poker when I happen to play

New Year, Same Old Life?

Wow, it's been a while since I've last written, and since I'm sure everyone that reads this blog has just been smashing refresh non-stop for the past 6 months, here's something new.  The last I wrote, I was having a pretty terrible summer in Vegas for the World Series.  Well that continued and I managed only 3 cashes in around 30 tournaments.  After a pretty profitable first half of the year, I managed to dump most of it back in 2 months.

After Vegas I went home to Atlanta and tried to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the next few years of my life.  Unfortunately, I still haven't come up with an answer to that question.

I've tossed around countless ideas with a ton of people.  At one point I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with a few poker buddies and going for SNE again in 2012.  That fell apart.  A few weeks later I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with another group.  Nope, no go again.  I think some part of me is dead set against moving abroad to continue playing poker online, as I'm looking to work my way out of poker. Moving to Canada would simply keep me in for much longer then I had ever intended

So, I've decided to stay in Atlanta, and am trying to figure out what it is I want out of this thing called life.  Poker was certainly fun and good to me for the past 3 years, but it's run it's course and I'm ready for a new challenge.

No, this isn't an "I'm Quitting" blog.  I still play a few big juicy live games (nitontilt is now a PLO pro), and have put a bit of money on the Merge network to pass the time.  I don't think I'll every truly quit the game unless I go broke (which at the rate I'm losing this year could happen quite quickly!)  However, I think it's highly unlikely I'll put as much time or effort into the game as I have the past few years.  I've been fortunate enough to make enough money to hold me over for quite some time until I find what's next, so that is the ultimate goal.

Good luck in 2012 everyone,
- Daniel