Macau/ BCPC

Hey everyone

I'm back in beautiful Vancouver, gearing up for my 3rd BCPC. Hopefully I can improve upon my 13th place finish last year. That goes off tommorow and I'm pretty excited about it.

My last post was pre-WSOP, and nothing really noteworthy happened on the trip. I busted day 2 of the main event, and whiffed on the other 3 side events I played. I pretty well broke even at cash games and came back a small loser on the trip.

If nothing else, the trip sort of inspired me to play more live poker. I started to grind at the local casinos in Vancouver with very good results. This actually put me on the lookout for some bigger action. And what better place then the gambling capital of the world... Macau!

I rented an apartment thru 2+2 with 3 other high stakes Swedish poker players, and one American. The place was great and I made a bunch of new friends.

Some pics.

Our apartment building, in between Macau Tower and the MGM

Fountain Show at the Wynn

Our apartmentView from our balcony

View from my room

Had a really great meal there that I'll share as well. We went to Robuchon a Galera. It was my first time at a 3 michelin star restaurant, and we did a crazy 8 course set menu. Just a couple pics.

Half duck breast, half foie gras, with a figgy sauce

Sea trout in a ginger broth with smoked cream

Great meal!

No real plans after BCPC. I'd love to make a trip back east soon and see all my family and friends who I miss alot. Especially my mom! Love you mom! :)

Anyways, be good everyone. Until next time.

vegas 2011

wow has this year ever flown by!

heading back to vegas tomorrow morning to grind out a few of the events.

with all the crazy stuff going on with online poker no one really made the time to organize a house, so I'm just staying with my buddy rick at his place there. and we're driving out from vancouver! woo roadtrip!

should get in tuesday afternoon, just in time for the wednesday $1500 event.

if there is anything worth posting, it will be here.

stay tuned

snow day

well this is the end.

probably only 30 or so minutes left.

i'm typing pretty frantically as to get everything i need to down in time. truthfully, i don't know what happens next.
i have no idea what happened but i hope it fixes itself soon.
i cant even remember the last time i've been in this situation. probably a dark day years ago in toronto? i'm not sure.

i suppose all i can do now is embrace it, in all its madness.


the power is out.


my laptop's battery is the last ounce of juice i have left.

i was actually grinding online and timed out in a few small pots. i was even in a $100 tourny but pretty shortstacked.

i should go to a coffee shop or something to finish it out but I'm probably close to bust now anyways.
thankfully i already brewed some coffee, so it seems like as good a time as any to sit down and update.

so, where am i at?
broad question, with lots of different answers.

physically, i'm in vancouver. i've got a great place i love in the core of downtown.

healthwise, i'm probably at my peak. i've hit the gym 4x a week for the last 18mos or so. probably in the best shape of my life.

pokerwise, i'm stagnant. still grinding, mostly 2/4NL right now. cash games have been pretty consistent.
the last year in tournament was has been pretty disappointing, as I consistently fell just short of big scores.
i finished in the top 20 of at least 8 tourneys with over $100,000 for first place (5 of which were $200,000+).
and after all that I still only probably ended up $20k in tourneys.

but still, all considered;
mentally, i'm in a good place. i'm happy, still very much enjoying what i'm doing.
i'm concentrating now on improving my work ethic, as the games get tougher and I need to work harder.
at the same time i'm working on managing my state control to make that easier.


i guess not much has changed, but i don't think that is a bad thing at all

*beep* *beep*

my computer is fading now, only 10minutes left.
i can see the dark at the end of the tunnel.

i have no idea what to expect, or when my life will return to normalcy.
everything i do seems to revolve around electricity.

maybe this is like the poker equivalent of the snow days i looked so forward to as a kid?

only difference now is that i go to a separate school from all my friends lol :)
well, that and no snow.

anyway ill try to make the most of the day as best i can.



until next time

Post WSOP

So I'm back in Vancouver from the world series.

Actually that was a while ago but whatever. Mid-july I think?

Series ended up being successful despite being down on live tourneys for the trip. Made a bunch online and at live cash games. Even up for the trip on random craps and blackjack actually, thanks to a black-out drunk session I played after XS one night. Woke up with a bunch of extra money and had to be filled in by some friends as to just exactly how lucky I was getting

The main event was a let down, as it is for like 90%+ of people who play I assume. I made it to day 2 with a shortish stack and busted early.

Enjoyed the trip overall but it didn't quite meet my always high expectations :)


NOw that I'm back, I've kind of promised myself that I'd try to better enjoy the beautiful city I'm in. I always brag about the awesome stuff to do in Vancouver, but I never seem to be doing it! So I've been hitting some trails, beaches, did a bit of boating, and of course I try to hit up all the best restaurants.

Oh speaking of restaurants, I just remembered something funny that happened in Vegas.
I actually emailed it today to a podcast I listen to (Two Jacks in the Hole , comedy podcast not at all about poker. check it out!) for a segment they do called 'glitches in the matrix'. SO I shall cut and paste:

After a night of degeneracy, me and a buddy are leaving the casino and see some b-list celeb shooting dice.
The table has a pretty big crowd and it painfully obvious it's because of this one guy.

Me and my buddy really could care less. We keep on and get to talking about how ridiculous it is that people get so starstruck.
We pretty much agree that there are virtually no celebs that we'd actually care that much about seeing. Just normal people, right?
Sure it's cool but nothing to lose your mind over.

I go on to tell him that I actually might be taken aback if I saw Shaq or something. Mostly the fact that he's gigantic, but also because I love basketball and grew up watching him.

So anyways, we leave it at that and call it a night. The next day we head over to Mix restaurant @ Mandalay Bay with a bunch of other poker players and grab dinner.

About half way through dinner, a giant African American gentleman walks into the dining room and the place starts buzzing a bit.

If you couldn't have guessed it already, Shaq is walking right towards us with a fine dime piece on his arm. He walks up and looks over at our table of twelve (who are all staring at him) and says 'Wassup fellas!" as he walks by. He ends up getting seated right next to us.

Pretty weird right?


Anyhow, I also hit up Calgary this past week. They had the canadian open poker championship. I went 0/2 in the events, but my buddy Ricky(rask88) basically chopped the $1000 event for first place money and I had 10% of him! Easiest $4k I ever made. Met a bunch of cool people on the trip too, and the drive up there has amazing scenery.

Next up for live events, I'm looking towards the British Columbia poker classic. This will be my second year doing it and hopefully I can have better success. Oh and hopefully a murderer doesn't win again. :)

Ok this is getting too long I'm off to bed. I'll update tomorrow if I win the sunday million or something :)

starting on a good note

Got out to Vegas about a week ago. The house is great and we're all having a lot of fun.

First thing we did when we got here was flip for rooms. There are 9 of us but only 8 rooms(5 really nice and 3 decent ones). So two of us would have to share. And because I run awesome at flips, I get the pleasure of sharing my room. Thankfully its with one of my good buddies from Vancouver so it hasn't been a problem. Not like I spend much time in the room anyways.

Oh and on top of that we went out for a nice dinner that night and I lost the credit card roulette for that too. Lost two $500+ roulettes thus far actually.

Thankfully my luck has shifted a bit. In my second tournament of the series, the Venetian deep stack extravaganza $2000 event, I managed to final table. My first live final table of a major event. I didn't stick around long though as I busted in tenth place. The crazy thing about it is that my roommate ended up at the final table too! So random. He ended up finished 4th or 5th, and I had 5% of him so I made some more money. The cash itself was about $13,000, so I'm looking good so far.



I've played 2 WSOP events and haven't made day 2 of either sadly. I'll probably just play the $3000 triple chance and the main event and a bunch of cash in between. I've played so much poker this week, I'll probably take it easy this weekend and get going again on Wednesday.

gearing up for wsop

It's almost that time of year again, and I can't wait!
I'm flying into Vegas on the 15th, and hopefully be hitting the felt soon after.

We'll count last year as a warm-up. This year, I'm thinking bracelet!
I'll keep everyone posted on what I decide to play. As of now the only thing set in stone is the main event. I think I'm gonna take all of my action this year and just swap %'s with some great players to help ease the variance of a $10,000 buyin event.

To gear up I've been playing a bunch of tourneys and grinding cash on any site other than Stars. Their cash games have dried up so much with the changes, I think I would struggle to beat mid-stakes there for a good clip.

Thankfully the action is still pretty soft elsewhere, and I get to play anonymously which is a HUGE help. Maybe it's just mental but I think I've just been on stars for so long and have so much history with different regs it gets boring. I like the whole idea of fresh start for my image.

I'll probably play a lot of cash games in Vegas if they're good. Probably start at $5/10 and move up from there when games are good.

I've had mild tourney success since my last post, up a bit of money with only 1 final table since. Saving my run good for Vegas hopefully! I have some horses (players I'm investing in) playing events for me so hopefully they run good too.

Oh and I'm getting ready for the nightlife as well, as I went on a bit of a shopping spree and treated myself to some new clothes. I've been doing well so I splurged a bit, with my favorite piece being a John Varvatos goat suede officers jacket.


I think it might be the second most expensive thing I now own after my car lol :)

Well, that's it until Vegas. I'll make a post before I play anything so people can sweat me if they like. love ya!

any given sunday

Every sunday I wake up and say it.
Today is the day.

Sundays, in all their beauty, are filled with laziness, indulgence, and of course, the biggest poker tournaments on the internet.
Sundays are the only day I can go to sleep with hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I had when I woke.

I rolled out of bed yesterday with the same thoughts.
Today.
It was a beautiful Vancouver afternoon, so breathtakingly perfect that I just couldn't wait to lock myself up in a room for 12hours and click my mouse.

And twelve hours later, wouldn't you know it. It was no longer today, and I was still in a tournament. Probably the biggest tournament on the internet that day, the full tilt $1million guarantee ($500 buyin, 2100 entrants).

$200,000 for first place, and only 8 people in my way.

It seemed like forever before someone busted, but eventually 1 did. And then there were only 8.

I was the short stack at the table and everyone was just sitting, waiting and praying for me to bust out so they could move up a pay grade. And I did not disappoint.

A few hands later I'm in the big blind and it was folded to the smallblind who, given the stack sizes, was going to move all-in with any two cards. Given that, my K6 suited looked awfully good. He pushed, I called, he sucked out, I cursed.
All pretty standard.

$20,000 richer nonetheless, and of course, there is always next sunday!

(click to enlarge)