Is America on Tilt?

Let me preface this post by first saying that I am, in no way, attempting to trivialize what happened by comparing 9/11 to a poker game. It was a tragedy by all accounts, and a day no American will ever forget. This being said, the course of this country since then has taken on an ominously similar course to that of a tilted poker player. For those of you unfamiliar with poker vernacular, a poker player on 'tilt' is usually one who has lost a large number of chips during play, and then continues to play angry, often resulting in the player going broke fairly quickly.

Like it or not, in poker terms, the terrorists won a gigantic pot on 9/11. When I lose a large number of chips in a poker game, I usually play conservatively for a few hands to straighten out my thoughts, and more importantly, minimize the likelihood that I will follow up the loss with irrational play. In the case of 9/11, within four weeks of the attacks, we were at war in Afghanistan.

I am not going to claim that I am an expert in world political matters, but common sense tells me that you first would want to build a framework of international support before making any major moves -- especially in mountainous terrain, on the other side of the earth, and for the purpose of locating a single individual who was quite likely no longer in the country anyway.

We won a small pot by ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan, but then came Iraq. Here are a few pots we vied for since then... we have lost some, and we have won some... you decide for yourself how our stack of chips is looking:

- Weapons of mass destruction
- Finding Osama Bin Laden
- 3301 American deaths (as of this post)
- 60,000 civilian deaths
- Anthrax deaths
- Capturing/executing Saddam Hussein
- POW torture scandal
- Bali and UK subway bombings
- Skyrocketing fuel costs
- Shoe bomber
- Credibility of the US in the international community
- Darfur region of Sudan
- Shoe bomber
- Katrina preparedness
- North Korea nuclear testing
- Iran
- Popular opinion of the war at home
- Beheadings and kidnappings
- Roadside bombs
- 700+ deaths in Israel since 2000 due to terrorism

Some of these are big wins/losses, and some are not... and I know that this list of events is by no means comprehensive. As I said, you decide for yourself where you think we stand, but here's what I think... we have spent $400 billion on the war in Iraq, and we have seen no return whatsover on this investment. There isn't even a need for a poker analogy here. That is an awful lot of money. Some will argue that we are safer than we were before 9/11, and they would challenge me by asking me to admit that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. I would respond to this request by saying absolutely not. The world, and America, is in shambles right now as compared to where we were pre-9/11 -- and, no, I don't feel safer.

I am a frequent traveller. Before 2001, I was asked before every single flight if I had been in possession of my bags the entire time before I arrived at the counter, which forced me to think before answering. I had to actually show proof that luggage was mine before leaving the airport. I had to show my ID multiple times before boarding and I could walk right up to the gate and fly on standby if I wanted to. Saddam didn't care about any of that, and besides the fact that he was a vile excuse for a human being, I really didn't care about him all that much either. I did, however, care about the 350,000 lives lost since 2003 in the Darfur region of Sudan -- talk about mass destruction.

The biggest victory for the terrorists was the robbery of our liberties, which have yet to be restored hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of innocent lives later. Rather than taking a systematic, calculated, and responsible path to the restoration of our freedoms, security, and credibility, America has taken the road of unbridled, reactionary, tilt -- and we continue bleeding chips each day.

I will do my best at all times to take a logical and rational approach to my poker game, making a special effort to do this at times when I am mentally vulnerable. If I ever, under any circumstances, adjust my game to be based on such concepts as 'justice' or 'revenge', I may as well stop playing and never walk into a card room again.

Keeping My Trap Shut

Professional card player Howard Lederer recent wrote a really great article here. In it, he discusses the disadvantages of wearing sunglasses and earphones during tournaments. I wholeheartedly agree that headgear which in any way obscures your ability to discern fine visual or auditory detail translates into a big advantage for your opponents. So many poker players say so much more than they should at the poker table. If I have headphones on, I can't hear it!

I do not spend a huge amount of time playing cards online, but I play in occasional online tournaments just for fun. I prefer the little $10 sit-and-gos, and once in a blue moon, I will register for a small buy-in multi-table tournament.

In a recent $10 sit-and-go, I had the pleasure a playing with someone who simply could not stay away from the table's chat box. He continuously berated the play of other people at the table, bragged about how he wins the cash games at the Borgata four times each week (misspelling 'Borgata' in the process), and throwing around chips like peanuts. Judging from the words that this person was using, the tone of his comments, the fashion in which he clearly embellished the truth at every opportunity, and his general demeanor, I quickly created an image of this person in my head. He seemed to me like someone who probably has very few friends, and highly insecure about everything, including his poker game. To make a long story short, I stuck him for a huge pot, and he never recovered. The sad part is that he told everyone his entire life story without even realizing it. If had asked the poker gods to deliver a person to me who could effectively demonstrate the validity of the axiom that 'Silence is Golden' when it comes to poker, this guy fit the bill perfectly.

I finished the tounament in second place, and then I quickly proceeded today to forget everything I learned! On a whim (and since I had the day off from work) I decided to enter a $30 multi-table tournament on Bodog. I was seated immediately with arguably the best no-limit held 'em tournament player on Bodog, known as 'head2782'** (he says he had an unusually big head as a child). We were seated together for the entire tournament, and believe it or not, I think I got the best of him in the pots we both participated in (he finished 9th, and I finished 7th for around $350). One hand in particular between us, I hit a rare 4-of-kind, and took a large number of chips from him. He complained about his bad luck, and I replied that '..the last thing I wanted to do was upset Mr. Bodog'. Even though this is all I said, I think it was a huge mistake to say it. I said it in respect of his game and reputation (which I would see as a weakness if I were him), but my saving grace was that my comment could have be construed as being sarcastic.

Anyway... the moral of these stories is that even the most benign comments can unintentionally reveal a great deal of information. I need to remember to stay away from the chat boxes online and the headphones at the table!

-------

**I registered for a really cool free tool at Bluff Magazine's website this week. It is called 'thepokerdb' and it allows you to view online multi-table tournament results for most of the big online poker sites, including a 'search by screen name' function. Search 'maddgravy' at Bodog, and you can see the history of my two outstanding and gigantic cashes, including today's. Check out the history of head2782 also. Wow. Where does he find the time?!

Buy-in reached!

I was in Las Vegas last weekend, and I am happy to say that I had a very nice couple of days at the poker table, and I am now officially staked for my $1500 buy-in on June 2nd.

For our annual guys' weekend, we decided to try downtown Las Vegas this time instead of the strip. In the past, our trip has been reserved for Super Bowl weekend, but we opted this year to go to during the March Madness college basketball tournament regional finals. The sports part of the trip was pretty much a bust... we arrived too late to watch two of the four games, and we didn't really find anywhere downtown that was very good for watching sports. I foresee moving things back to the strip on Super Bowl weekend next year. One major advantage to staying downtown, though, is that everything is very convenient. If you get tired of one casino, you can be at the next one within a few minutes. In most cases on the strip, you are looking at a nice 15 minute walk.

We did find an interesting card room at the Plaza Hotel and Casino at the end of Fremont Street. The 'room' itself, is really not a room per se, but more like a carved out corner of the casino. While not the nicest poker spot in Vegas, it does have a great option for tournament play. From 10am until midnight every day, they offer $40 sit-and-go 10-seat tournaments, which turned out to be profitable for me (13 tournaments played, four won, second place twice). Coincidentally, my sister and brother-in-law gave me Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book for my birthday, where he suggests that a good way to practice for final tables is to play in sit-and-go tournaments. I found my experience last weekend to support his suggestion.

Although this is true, based on my experiences last weekend, I think that there are some differences between final tables of multi-table tournaments and single-table sit-and-gos. The most significant difference is that with multi-table tournaments it can take a heck of a lot of concentration, energy, and time to get to the final table depending on the size and structure of the event. With sit-and-gos, it is a simple matter of throwing in your money and you are magically at the final table already! The point is that mental and physical fatigue figure into the final table of large multi-table tournaments. It is no secret that anyone playing in the World Series has to be prepared for long hours of intense play, which further supports my intended plan of getting plenty of rest in the days preceding the tournament. In fact, I am considering moving my flight to Thursday instead of Friday so that I can get used to the time difference and get settled in.

On a completely different note, I also finally came to the realization last weekend that 'other' casino games are for suckers. I know that my coming to this conclusion will not seem like much of a groundbreaking achievement to most, and I know that casinos don't offer games just for the fun of it. Even though I half-heartedly came to this conclusion long ago, the non-poker casino games have always nonetheless been a big source of entertainment for me. The fact is, however, that games like blackjack and craps are volatile... you either finish the session up big or down big, there is rarely any in-between. On the other hand, just about anyone can take $100 to a $1-$2 limit hold 'em table, play a super tight game, and sit there for hours listening to people talk, watching the casino, having free cocktails, and if you are in a nice place, enjoying the surroundings of an upscale card room. With blackjack or craps, you can start with the same amount and be up to $300 in ten minutes, or, the more likely outcome, down the same amount in the same time span. Given the choice, I will take poker every time! I like to keep it cheap, and poker is the way to have cheap fun in Vegas.

So, now that I am staked for the WSOP, where do I go from here? For the next two months, I am planning to focus almost exclusively on multi-table tournaments. Deep-stack events are hard to come by in Atlanta, Georgia, so I am going to have to make do with the local bar games and perhaps a junket to Atlantic City with Pablo and maybe a trip to Tunica. Since funding is no longer a concern, I can experiment a little bit, and see what works best against different styles of play.

Auditors Are No Match For Card Players!

By day, I am an IT Manager for an aluminum company. The company I work for takes technology security and compliance very seriously, and every so often, our head office sends internal auditors to my office in Atlanta to make sure we are on the up and up. Right now, we are in the middle of a two-week marathon audit, and I am so ready for it to be over.

One interesting realization I have come to during their visit, believe it or not, is that as I have begun to play cards more seriously these audits have become easier to endure. For anyone who has been involved in an audit, we know that some auditors use very interesting techniques to extract information. Some of them are your best buddies, some of them are stern and authoritative, and some of them are timid so that you feel sorry for them, oddly enough. The problem is, if you say too much to an auditor, they latch on to information that they find interesting and then they sink in their claws, asking for documentation of every detail about the subject. The bottom line is that they are in your office to find problems with your processes. If there are major problems with the way things are being done, they will find those things very quickly. Once you are 'out of the woods', an audit soon becomes an exercise in nit-picking and time wasting. Of course, anything they find, no matter how insignificant, can rarely be argued effectively enough to result in the finding's dismissal from the final audit report. To add insult to injury, the dirty laundry is then distributed after the audit to every IT executive across the company. What a drag.

Poker has helped me become more economical with my communication in these situations. While I firmly believe that audits are necessary to make sure things are being run the way they should, I believe with equal conviction that any auditor can walk into an office such as mine and determine within a day whether or not an IT environment is generally secure and compliant. So.. if they chose to spend two weeks chasing non-existent problems in my office, I pledge to not give any leads or information unless I am forced to turn over my cards!

My opponents on the felt are auditors of my poker game. They use every tactic under the sun to get information from me -- they talk, they stare, they boast, they stand up, they wave their arms, they ask if I have a king, they ask me if I will show my hand if they fold... you name it. Just like auditors in my office, they can forget it. I will show my cards when I have to, and only when I have to.

I think this will be a challenge at the World Series. It will be difficult not to make friendly conversation at the table, especially if I am seated with top pros. I am convinced, however, that if I can handle a two-week IT audit, I can keep my trap shut during a 3-day poker tournament. As painful as this couple of weeks has been, the bright side is that it has been unbelievably good practice!

A Poker Lesson from Pablo

I am a lot like Steve Dannenmann. Not because I finished in second place in the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event and won $4.2 million, but because I often feel like I am only the third or fourth best player in my home game -- which Steve Dannenmann has been quoted as saying about himself more than once.

Speaking of home games, my wife and I had a chance to play with our regular group of friends a couple of weeks ago at our house, and my buddy Pablo was down in Atlanta from Washington, DC to visit. We played a hold 'em micro buy-in tournament w/rebuys and I was heads up with Pablo at around midnight for all the marbles. I do not often find myself in this position at my home game. For whatever reason, I seem to do quite well in tournaments with strangers, but rarely as well in my home game. I tend to think it is due my loose play, combined with my consumption of an adult beverage or two throughout the evening, finally compounded with the superior skills of my opponents.

Throughout the 20 minutes or so of heads up play, I learned a good poker lesson from Pablo. You may remember from a previous post that, for various reasons, I have sworn off chopping pots. For now, this is primarily due to my need to take advantage of every opportunity I can find to develop my heads-up skills.

The lesson Pablo helped me learn was how fatigue plays a part in late tournament play. Is my opponent excited about winning the whole thing, or will he be just as happy to to go home with more money than he came with and get to sleep as soon as possible? Before heads-up play, when the game was three-handed (I was up against Pablo and my wife), I did something sneaky. I asked them both what their thoughts were on chopping the pot. They both were up for it. (I was a distant second in chips behind Pablo, with a slight edge over Katie). After asking this question, and hearing their reply, I said I was not quite ready yet. They both read this blog, so they knew as well as I did that I would never be ready!

After my wife was eliminated, Pablo offered several times to chop the pot. Given the late hour, I knew Pablo was getting tired of playing and wanted to go home -- which is the essence of the lesson I learned: Tired tournament players are often impatient, and will either gamble with coin flips, or call large bets with marginal holdings. I declined each request Pablo made to split the winnings, and inched my way back into the game with what I thought was solid post-flop decisions.

A long story short, I won the tournament and 100% of the money (although it involved a fairly significant bad beat for Pablo) and I was happy with how I played. For the World Series, I plan to use this lesson to my advantage, getting plenty of rest the week before, avoiding alcohol, eating right, and exercising regularly. I think this will help to keep me alert and energized for the tournament.

Measuring My Poker Success

I mentioned in a previous post that I own several books about poker. I also subscribe to CardPlayer magazine. I enjoy consuming just about any media related to poker strategy. A common characteristic among most of these is the assertion that poker success should not be measured by the amount of money one leaves the table with.

I argue that profit is the only way to accurately measure one's stature and effectiveness as a poker player.... and it is completely independent of a poker player's level of experience! Take for example a beginning hold 'em player who barely has any knowledge of the rules, much less what starting hands to play or fold. What expectation would you have for this player among a group of seasoned card players? Over time, until the person had enough knowledge and experience to consistently compete, you would expect him to lose most of the time. In consideration of measuring success, however, if this person has little knowledge of poker basics, walking away with any profit whatsoever for him is a tremendous success!

In the case of an individual who is a well-rounded card player and plays in games with people of similar capabilities, it is possible for a player to make seemingly outlandish calls, bluffs and raises from out of left field, and still walk away with a significant profit -- flying in the face of textbook, ABC poker.

Poker scholars would argue that poker success should be measured by the correct decisions made during play, regardless of profit. I argue that if I walk away from the table broke every time I play, there is no better measure of poor decision making! Sure, it is possible to have a game once in a blue moon, make all the right decisions, and still walk away with a loss. If this remains the case over time, though, I am definitely doing something wrong.

By playing people and not playing cards, it leads me to do things at the card table that earlier in my career I would have never even considered. Sometimes the moves I make would be considered 'wrong' by most of the poker literature out there. Don't confuse this with making 'high risk' plays. I am not one to make a big river call on a 1-outer just because I see a juicy pot. What I will do is act on my reads, and if my reads are right, the moves that follow are no risk. This is what makes them 'right' when the odds say they are wrong.

Besides this, there are certainly the fringe benefits of playing cards that do not involve profit in any way. For some people, it is probably worth losing a few hundred dollars on a Saturday night just for the adrenaline rush of the game. For others, it might be a rare opportunity to gather with friends and family for a nickel-dime-quarter game. Still for others, it might be the charge we get from making quick mathematical calculations on the fly. In the long run, I suppose we should all measure poker success by what is important to us. Come to think of it, 'correct' decisions mean very little if it's no fun making them!

Everything I Know About Poker, I Learned From Bruce Lee and Evander Holyfield

Anyone who makes such a ridiculous claim such as what's suggested by the title of this post should not be allowed to play in the World Series of Poker! I can hear the virtual laughs emanating through cyberspace. I suppose I should attempt to explain.

In my estimation, poker is a game of action and reaction... a bastardized card-driven exercise of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. This universal law that every effect has a traceable cause, transcends all academic, mathematical, and competitive boundaries.

Just Google "Bruce Lee Quotes" and you will find some real gems. He may have been a little bit trippy for my tastes, but one of the quotes attributed to him has had big impact on my poker game. I don't recall the exact wording, but in a nutshell it is, "When my opponent expands, I contract. When my opponent contracts, I expand."

What does it mean for my poker game? It means that I have to always be aware of my opponents strengths and weaknesses. I attack the weaknesses, and I beware of the strengths. If I have an opponent who I know very well, and I know she only plays great hands, and she 'expands' by throwing out a huge bet... what do I do if I am holding trash? I probably 'contract' and fold. The fact is, I can make up that loss by expanding for the next 20 hands while she's waiting for good cards! This is a very simplistic example, but it applies to many situations.

So what does Evander Holyfield have to do with any of this? Evander isn't exactly known the world over as an gifted orator, so if you Google "Evander Holyfied Quotes" you will probably get some quite different results than what you will find for Bruce Lee. Aside from being the only four-time heavyweight boxing champion (besting Muhammad Ali's old record), he is known as arguably the best counterpuncher boxing has ever seen.

For people who are not familiar with boxing terminology, counterpunching is the act of hitting an adversary immediately after he or she has attempted to hit you. To see textbook execution of counterpunching, watch the last minute of Round 10 of the first fight between Holyfield and Riddick Bowe (search "Bowe Holyfield Round 10" on YouTube). Holyfield was all but finished in this fight, and then used counterpunching to turn the tables and nearly knock out Riddick Bowe before the round ended.

Counterpunching is effective in boxing because after a big punch is thrown and does not connect, there is often a period of vulnerability just afterwards when the energy of the big punch has been expended. Evander Hoyfield demonstrates time and time again that, with patience and good timing, it is possible to give your opponents just enough rope to hang themselves in these situations.

For my WSOP run, I must master the poker counterpunch -- letting my opponents swing and miss.... enticing them to thrown in chips when I have the best hand, minimizing my losses when I don't, contracting when they expand, and exercising patience and good judgement to wait for the best time to spring my attack. Just like Bruce and Evander taught me!

Chops vs. Tops

I was recently watching a replay of a televised poker tournament, I don't remember which one it was but I think it was a 2006 WSOP circuit event, and I was reminded of interesting quote made by one of the professional card players in the tournament after raking in a fairly substantial pot. It was something along the lines of, "You play for chops, I play for tops!" to which commentator Norman Chad replied, "I have no idea what that means, but at least it's original."

I am pretty sure that whoever it was who uttered these words meant that he intended to play to win the tournament, as opposed to playing only to 'cash' -- finishing roughly in the top 10%, which is usually the threshold for receiving prize money.

Many poker tournaments end with a 'deal' made, perhaps two or more of the remaining contestants split (i.e. 'chop') the remaining prize money thereby calling it a day. Otherwise, if the tournament is played to the end, the remaining prize money is split between first and second place, with first place receiving in the neighborhood of 65% and second place 35%. Some players resist chopping pots in order to have a shot at the lion's share of the money.

Players chop for all kinds of reason's I'm sure, but I tend to think they do so primarily either because they do not want to go through the trouble of a lengthy 2-handed heads-up match (in cases where two players chop), or they feel like heads-up play is a virtual coin flip anyway, so they may as well split it 50/50 to save the trouble.

As you know by now, I must consider all of these varying viewpoints in the context of my WSOP goals. My primary goal is to win enough money to go to the WSOP at all! Secondly, I want to gain enough experience in live play to prepare myself for a good performance in Las Vegas.

My $600 win from a couple of weeks ago was at the First Turn Poker Club in Monticello, FL. It was a 1st place / 2nd place chop. Had I gone on to win, I would have received $800, and if I had lost, it would have been $400 for second place. Remembering my primary goal, I accepted the offer for a chop in order to be assured of $600 toward my buy-in. I also had to consider that I was outgunned in chips by about a 3-to-2 margin, so I thought I was getting a pretty damn good deal.

Once I reach the buy-in goal of $1500, however, I foresee my strategy changing. In the WSOP, a bracelet does not chop in half that easily, so I will be playing to win. Should I find myself in the fortunate position of making it to the final table, I will want to have had as much short-handed and heads-up experience as possible. No more chops!

Poker Books

I own several books about poker rules, poker strategy, poker tells, and other poker concepts. Without mentioning any specifics, most of them are only moderately useful. All of them do an extremely good job of explaining poker basics. As these works delve further into advanced poker concepts, however, I begin to wonder just how much value there is to the idea that advanced poker is somehow formulaic.

I used to sit in poker games all the time and try to remember what 'the book' said to do in certain situations. Truth be told, in most situations, the correct action to take depends minimally on the cards you hold and more directly on the myriad of circumstances involving you and your opponent. Am I hungry, tired, angry, happy, confident? I sometimes have trouble determining these tells from myself, much less my opponents!

Don't misunderstand, I think there are professional poker players that have a ridiculously accurate sense for the holdings of other players. In most of these cases, I believe that they have gained this ability not through an extraordinary inclination toward mathematics, but rather an innate sense for intuitively and quickly understanding the personalities of others. It is these people who I think are the best poker players.

By a long shot, the best poker book I have read to date is The Tao of Poker by Larry W. Phillips. If you are looking for a book that will give you a formula of how you should respond when an agressive opponent bets into your outside straight draw on the turn, then this book is not for you.

The Tao of Poker walks the reader through 285 high-level real life-inspired concepts that will improve your poker game. I sincerely feel that anyone who puts all of the concepts found in this book into practice will be a successful card player; in tournaments, cash, limit, no-limit, pot-limit, or whatever. The tips are universal. Here are a few that I like:

Rule 228: Don't tie yourself up in knots trying to make something happen when it clearly is not happening!

Rule 240: Never drop "I'm being outplayed" from your list of reasons why you may be losing.

Rule 120: If you look at an opponent too long, you may get misinformation.

The book goes into more detail on these rules and 282 others. I found most of them to be very useful, and I think the book has really helped my game a great deal.

Bars, Casinos, and the Internet

We're always told that in order to become a better card player, one has to play poker more often. I agree with this theory 100%. The regular game at Zucca Bar and Pizzeria here in Smyrna, Georgia is tonight, and as I am thinking about going to play, I find myself hesitating.

As I mentioned in my last post, I cut my teeth playing cards in the local Atlanta-area bars (it is quite a scene -- check out this list of Atlanta bar games, which is about 6-months old at the time of this post). In most cases, these games are free and so are the players. Bar poker has certainly taught me how to play No Limit Hold 'Em tournaments against weak opponents -- although, for the record, players at Zucca are a notch above most bars. I have also played thousands of hands on the internet (PartyPoker in the past, and Bodog since the most recent legislative term). The competition in low stakes online tournament poker is slightly stronger than what you might find in the bars around here. In preparing for my World Series run, however, I am finding that there is no substitute for live tournament play in brick-and-mortar casinos and card rooms.

The biggest reason I have found live tournament play more useful is because it has acclimated me to the casino tournament environment. I played in my first casino tournament at Harrah's in Las Vegas a little over a year ago. I was so enamoured with the nice tables, the champions' pictures on the wall, the raucous table talk, and free drinks that I lost my mind and busted out way early. On the surface, you would expect this to have done more damage to my confidence than anything, but this is not the case. I learned from my mistakes, and over time as I have played in more casino tournaments, I have become increasingly comfortable. I know for certain that this going to help me this summer. My rhetorical question for the day is, what is better for preparing for the World Series? Bar/online poker, or no poker at all?

I know there are weak players in the World Series of Poker, but there are also very strong players as well -- including the world's top pros. The bottom line is that, for me, my biggest adversary will not be any one individual among the field of players, and not a run of cold cards, but rather the onslaught of distractions to overcome in Las Vegas -- airport security, bags, transportation, check-in, the lights, the slot machines, the sounds, the excitement, the cocktails, the 'ESPN' logos -- all things expertly designed to take my mind off my game!

I think the answer to my question is simpler than I thought. Any poker is better than no poker when preparing for the World Series, but you can't beat the experience of a live card room.

Here we are!

I began playing cards seriously during the 2005 Super Bowl. My wife and I invited about 10 people over to watch the game, and break in my new poker tabletop. I had played a few times before, and knew the basics of poker, but I was very green. We played cards for about 7 hours that day, and the Super Bowl became an afterthought. It was a $10 buy-in elimination tournament with rebuys, and I finished in second place for about $100, and poker has been a big part of my life ever since.

I will spare you the boring details of my poker existence between February 6, 2005 and now, but between a few trips to Las Vegas, Atlanta bar tournaments, a home game in Washington DC where I thought I might get killed for playing consrevatively, and loads of other excitement, I decided this year to make a run at a World Series bracelet.

As far as my finances are concerned, I would consider myself comfortable, but not wealthy. Because this is the case, I cannot justify the big buy-ins required for major tournaments (and neither can my wife!). The fact of the matter is, I could play cards for no stakes at all, and have loads of fun. I don't play for a living, and probably never will.

Because this is the case, I am attempting to to pay my way into a World Series event with poker winnings throughout the twelve months leading up to the festivities. In the 2006 World Series, there was a $1000 Hold 'Em event offered, and I set my sights on this same event for 2007.

The 2007 schedule was released last month (you can look at it here), and lo and behold, no $1000 event. So the $1500 event it is! Event #3 on June 2nd, to be exact.

My biggest win in the last eight months was a $600 chop this weekend, which has put me really close to what I need for the buy-in. Right now, I am at $1305. It finally hit me this weekend that this could actually happen, which is why I decided to start writing here.

Between now and June, I will try to consistently update this journal... providing some insight into what is going through my mind, what difficulties I am facing in my game, and what dificulties I am facing outside of my game. If everything goes as planned, I hope to also write about a very successful trip to the Rio in June.

Stay tuned... this should be an interesting ride.