Normally my life is pretty sweet but lately I feel like things have been really clicking.
I’m going on $100,000 in cashes for this year so far. I don’t have much of that money because of what a crap year last year was, and the hundreds of thousands I lost on Black Friday, and live makeup, and other fun things…but I got enough money to take care of my responsibilities and also be secure. I was really grinding there for a while. Hard to support different start-up businesses, yourself, your family, and some tour expenses when your best site gets cut out, and you suck on the other major site, but I found a way for the last year and now things are really taken care of, so I feel good about that.
Last week I wasn’t super successful…I made only a few grand in profit, after all the TCOOPs (Main Event and High Roller), and the fact I can’t boot up a session without playing everything, but I was proud of how hard I played. I know a lot of people got destroyed last week, but I played a 17 hour session on Sunday to catch up with all the high-variance TCOOP buy-ins. More than just the hours I put in I was proud of how fresh I stayed throughout the whole process, and how much more positive I was then last year…after losing the fortune, getting into makeup, etc.
My biggest final table yesterday was the $50K Guaranteed High Roller tournament on Lock. It was also one of the last tournaments I played on my session. Going into the final table I had been playing for sixteen hours. I felt good though, and felt I played a great game. Once I finish up the WCOOP videos for P5s Training I think this will be the next HH I review, since it’s a US-facing site.
I loved the payout structure on Lock, how it actually meant something. On Stars I’m always playing for 18.2% of the prize pool for first, and oh noes, $500 less for second. Here first was actually the lion’s share of $16K. Third was $6.8k. Third would get me even on the monster session, first would make it a great Sunday.
Three-handed we were all basically even in chips. The other two guys could play for sure. I still got one of them to fivebet A-8o into my A-10 offsuit for pretty much all the chips three handed…and he rivered a chop. Then I lost a coinflip to him. I went out 3rd. Of course, in any tournament you can think back to a handful of coinflips that you were fortunate enough to win, but still…you want that money. A $10,000+ profit Sunday would have been pretty sweet, and the money always helps. I guess in tournaments you gotta take what you can get.
Playing a lot now I wonder how much of an edge I have on a lot of people. 50+ BBs deep…I’ve done more study than 99% of MTT regs. I get value where other people do not, I know this. But 40 BBs deep, people can play alright now. I feel like I still get people to make mistakes, but I was really impressed with a lot of the play at this Lock final table. Getting there I saw a lot of stuff that made me glad to play there, but…sometimes I wonder if I should be focusing on cash. Tournaments have a lot of dead money in them still, and cash has far more talented players, but its frustrating when a whole Sunday…hell a whole week, comes down to A-10 holding. At the same time I love tournaments and I really wouldn’t know where to start in cash. I think good things are coming for me in the tournament world if I keep my head on straight, keep working out, stay healthy, keep putting in the hours.
This final table made me really want to get my huge monitor and start the grind on every site. Unfortunately…I’ve been going back and forth with four different sites, and nobody seems to understand my situation here. I rent a house I love but it’s in the middle of no where Costa Rica. Changing the name on my utility bill will take some time. The government doesn’t work that fast here. There’s a lot of paperwork, and people don’t really understand. It’s the owner’s house, why should the utility bill be in your name? That’s how they look at it. I can show four different documents that put me as a resident here, hell I was on the cover of the largest Spanish language poker magazine in the world…and the cover feature had all sorts of pics of my house, but no they just won’t do it. Stars only put me back on because I talked to someone personally.
I’m going to look at a house here in about twenty minutes. I’ve been wanting to get another place for a while. I love my house I have right now but one of my goals is to study Spanish this year and I’m a ways away from the schools. Transportation would eat an hour plus of each day, an hour I don’t have. My internet is pretty stable right here, actually ridiculously stable, but the place has gotten a little small for me as I’ve gotten more settled down in Costa Rica. I don’t know if I’m going to move, and that poses another problem. I can’t go switching the names on utility bills with the government here than leave a month later, then I’ll be responsible for the bill till I go through the arduous process of getting my name off it again. So I have to make a decision whether I’m staying here or not.
Other than poker life has also been pretty sweet. Amazing I have another life when I put in 80 hours of work last week. My girlfriend and I got some quality time together, which was good…we both work a lot and it can be hard to just turn off your brain when you finally get an hour off, but we’re doing it. We took her grandmother out to see a movie last week, The Descendants, really good flick. We hung out at my place last night, ate some real Costa Rican food, watched 50/50, good flick. We see a lot of movies.
She might be going out for a huge audition real soon. She’s an opera singer. She was playing me some of her favorite works on Youtube last night. Late at night in the mountains of Costa Rica, some of the stuff was really haunting. I dig checking out music I didn’t really grow up with. I like that vibe. Hearing how powerful her voice is sometimes gives me the chills. She’s had opportunities to perform professionally for a while, she’s just been really focused on growing as a physical therapist. It’s inspiring to have a girlfriend who is working hard too. It makes me want to stay on my game.
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Just went to see the house and the woman didn’t even show up to let us inside. All the best, place looked like crap today. I went and picked up some Aasics for running and checked out some other houses. Time to get my grind on.
