June Update

We're headed to Vegas tomorrow and my first event, $1500 Limit Hold-Em, starts on Friday. I'm really looking forward to playing in the tournaments. They are a grind - twelve and sometimes fifteen hours a day but can also be a lot of fun. Especially once in the money of a major tournament because there's so much prize money to play for. Every all-in and elimination becomes exciting since it moves everyone closer to bigger prize money. I feel really good about my No-Limit tournament game at the moment. I was pretty worried going into last week but I was able to play a bunch of tournaments and watch several of Matt Matros' videos on StoxPoker. He's an excellent multi-table tournament player and instructor. I also started reading Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen which is a very good book. He took a tape recorder with him to a major tournament, the Aussie Millions, which he ended up winning and recorded his thoughts immediately after every hand. I feel good because my thinking is very much in line with his, I almost know what he's going to say before he says it, so that has given me a lot of confidence.

With a little bit of luck, anything is possible. The results, as nice as they are, are secondary though. My goal is to stay completely focused throughout the long days and take my time to think out every decision I make no matter how trivial. I also would like to make sure I'm getting enough sleep each night, and working out at least once every two days while I'm there. And I don't want to get sidetracked by blackjack at all. If I can manage to do all these things, then I'll be happy regardless of the results.

June has been a very good month pokerwise. I've been running pretty well and playing well which is always a great combination. I have fallen behind the SNE chase by about 5 days now. I'm not too worried because I'll be credited a month worth of VPPs once I play the main event and agree to represent PokerStars - this should put me back ahead of pace. I do intend to play online while I'm in Vegas between tournaments and whenever I have free time.



I'm sure most of you reading my blog heard about the DOJs shakedown of online poker this week. I thought it was pretty terrible news and I think it's already had an impact on the games and traffic although I don't have any numbers to substantiate this. It sounds like there will be a fight in court between the PPA and poker sites against the DOJ. It will likely come down to whether playing online poker is legal or not. So far, no one has been prosecuted for playing online poker and no court has ever ruled that it's illegal so I think there's a pretty good chance it remains legal. It would be nice to get online poker out of this grey, murky area it's been in. The worst case scenario is that the poker sites pull out of the US market and if that happens, Jamena and I will unfortunately be quickly moving out of the country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I'll be updating this blog at least daily with my tournament results and hands from them. Off to Vegas...