WBCOOP 2012 (or, How to Turn 500 Words into $5,000)

PokerStars' World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (#WBCOOP) begins February 23rd, and the deadline for a qualifying blog submission Tuesday, February 21st. Full details can be found here. One of the juiciest shots is the $5,000 prize awarded for "Best WBCOOP Blogger." There will also be $1,000 for the "Best Live Tweeter."

All qualifying bloggers will be credited 10 tickets to play in any of the 30 WBCOOP events running until March 3rd, all of which award tickets for PokerStars' Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) for top finishers.  If you cash in any WBCOOP event, you get your seat in the March 4th main event with a $5,000 prizepool. There is a also a WBCOOP leader board prize that will award a package to a live event worth up to $7,000 and a trophy.

All it takes to qualify for the $5,000 is a 500-word-miniumm blog (or 60-second-maximum video blog) explaining, well, what you'd do with the $5,000. Just paste the URL of your blog on the WBCOOP main page (again, found here) to become part of the festivities.

***

Unlike my counterpart Dale Philip, I can't say I ever aspired to be the "best" poker blogger. If I remember right, I began writing this thing at a Foxwoods tournament in 2005 just hoping to be able to express myself occasionally and to chronicle anything that stood out along the way in what was a new and exciting experience, inside and out poker life.

Since then, it's been a rare privilege to be able to encounter people in the poker world who have reacted positively to my stories and who have journeyed with me down a path that has included at least a few fun highs, as well as some distinctly painful lows. A poker blog can be the perfect outlet for expressing very heartfelt ideas and very banal concepts alike.


***

As for what I'd do with the $5,000--well, realistically, I would consider myself a bigger favorite to hit the $1,000 prize for best live tweeter. I also can't compete with fellow PSTO Tyler Frost's idea to use the $5,000 to stake 23 of his followers in the Sunday Million. Well done, Frosty, that is a great plan! Even better than Dale's idea to stake his pet stuffed monkey in the APPT.

It's not going to sound too exciting to anyone out there, but I got to keep it real: Since I wasn't around for Valentine's Day (I was playing online poker in Mexico, of course), I will be compelled to take any of my WBCOOP winnings and spend them taking my girlfriend out to a nice dinner.

Lost Mexico

I've gotten used to my strange new routine, to the point where it feels sort of like a rhythm, and where I am constantly looking forward to the next step in the journey. When I am in Mexico grinding online, I can't wait to make the trek back up to California to see my girlfriend and spend time in a less desolate coastal area. After a couple of days on the beach in Santa Monica, doing errands, riding my bike, eating burgers, I am anxious to get back down to Mexico to play more online poker.

I'll leave LA on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, stop in San Diego for groceries, and be at my seaside condo south of Rosarito by Friday evening, well rested for the big weekend action on Stars. I'll stay until Tuesday or Wednesday, and I will often drive back to the US after my last session, since the wait at the border becomes relatively tolerable late at night.

I have come a long way from the dread and anxiety that consumed me throughout the middle part of 2011, after Black Friday but before I finally got off my ass to relocate (and even after that, throughout the Canada debacle). I am comfortable with my decisions and the basic pace of my life, but my weird new setup is definitely still a little weird. I sometimes feel like the character from Lost who had to come down to a strange bunker in order to push a button on a computer every day.

Playing online poker tournaments 40+ hours a week is a fairly isolating experience in and of itself, and doing it in a foreign country tends to compound the effect. I do not feel integrated with local life at all. The essential things I need are facilitated by an English-speaking concierge in my building, my helpful realtor and a woman who cooks for me a few times a week. Sometimes, a friend will come down and visit, and I have a part-time roommate. Beyond that, my life is totally self-contained. The scenery where I live in Mexico is great, and having a self-contained existence is exactly why I relocated, so I am not complaining, but it certainly gets a little lonely.

I'd love to learn Spanish, but realistically it's not likely to happen soon. When I am in Mexico, my life is pretty much focused on putting in MTT volume, and after a 10+ hour session, I am apt to cook some pasta, sit on the couch and watch TV. I still struggle with the basics of unplugging and finding a balance in my routine--time for reading, exercise, and socializing, three things I constantly neglect--so I am not sure when I'll find the time to learn Spanish.

Just to reiterate, I am happy with the current setup of my life--surprisingly happy, actually--but there's also a bizarre, compartmentalized aspect of the situation that never quite allows me to relax and just get comfortable where I am.

***

There have been a couple of other blogs I found interesting by online players who relocated and their struggles adapting to their new relocated lives. I may have posted this link before, but this one by fellow tournament grinder Marthy Mathis summed up a lot of what I was feeling at the time (my anxiety has since eased a fair amount). And a recent one from high stakes legend Phil Galfond in which he discusses his logistical and emotional conflicts.

***

One thing that will help punctuate my back and forth Cali-to-Mexico grind this year is a few well-timed poker trips. For the most part, I am going to be focused on putting in days down in Mexico in front of the computer, but I plan to play the LAPC main event later this month. I'm also legitimately stoked that the EPT Grand Final is returning to Monte Carlo, its rightful home, and I plan on being there for a third time in late April.

I also had a really good time at the PCA, which took up most of the first couple weeks in January in the Bahamas, and I'll try to write up a trip report on that for my next blog entry.

Podcasting Call

My friend used to say that Howard Stern was the "perfect background noise" for grinding online poker, and I tend to agree that talk radio really is the best form of entertainment to get through the solitary nature of playing poker all day on the internet.

Of course I need a high volume of music in my life, but listening to a conversation, a rant, or an interview allows the hours to go by more seamlessly. I wind up feeling somewhat engaged with the outside world, and for whatever reasons, it also helps me focus on the game I'm playing.

Luckily for me, we are in the midst of a podcasting boom, with dozens of mostly comedic personalities engaging in DIY broadcasting and the end product showing up on your iTunes folder on a regular basis.

Julie Klausner - How Was Your Week?

What I like: Klausner is the best thing going in podcasting right now. Her broadcasting style manages to be both stream-of-consciousness and intensely focused. It's a rundown of everything that interests her culturally and philosophically, whether it's feminism or Judaism, Broadway productions or reality TV. She's also extremely witty.

She often invites a guest on the show to focus on a single tangent, like the time she had Patton Oswalt on to discuss the themes and mores in the movie Splash. Ultimately, you get the sense that you are eavesdropping on a couple of intelligent New Yorkers having a fully enriched conversation about whatever.

What I don't like: The bed music she uses reminds me of "We Didn't Start the Fire," which then gets stuck in my head.

Marc Maron - WTF With Marc Maron

What I like: Maron's twice-weekly podcast might as well be the blueprint for the current day comedian's podcast. It mostly consists of him having conversations with a variety of comic and show-business personalities, and the results are usually very funny, often poignant, and occasionally enlightening.

Embracing a heart-on-his-sleeve neurosis and not shying away from the ever-present existential crisis that seems to occupy his headspace, he has shared the triumphs and failures of his career with the audience along the way. It's actually been pretty great to see Maron (whose comedy I loved back during the "alternative comedy" boom) reemerge in this format as a serious and successful interviewer who manages to hit upon both the sublime and the mundane aspects of his guests' life with equal clarity.

What I don't like: Sometimes, Maron's interviews feel too agenda-driven, and there are times when I'd like him to let the conversation breath a little bit more.

Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer - You Had to Be There

What I like: Unabashedly raunchy, loosely formatted, this podcast is like listening to two women have a conversation in which they're grappling with their insecurities while simultaneously shedding those insecurities, leaving behind raw, hilarious honesty.

Their guests are often lesser known comedians, some of whom are still working day jobs, and I especially relate to Glaser as a sort of long lost sister, as she reports on the low-lights of her journey through life, like getting arrested for smoking pot outside of a NYC club or having to move back in with her parents as she struggles with life as a road comic.

What I don't like: Inconsistency. Lately, the show has not been popping up in my iTunes according to its regular schedule, and that is a fairly important aspect of podcasting.

The Sklar Brothers - Sklarbro Country

What I like: Comedy meets sports meets referential humor, with a send-up to close out each episode. The twins Randy and Jason Sklar have a really enjoyable flow, and you certainly don't need to be a sports fan to enjoy this show. In reality, sports is just a starting point for the brothers to riff endlessly.

What I don't like: Sometimes, it can be hard to focus on the comedic content as they vigorously run down news items on the absurd behavior of professional athletes, and I'll have to rewind to catch the subtleties.

Jesse Thorn - Bullseye with Jesse Thorn (formerly The Sound of Young America)

What I like: Straightforward, well-structured interviews with the gamut of entertainers. Whether he's talking to Weird Al or Carrie Fisher, Dick Cavett or Daryl Hall, Thorn really knows his interview subject, and results are predictably engaging. He generally doesn't plumb the depths of the human condition like Marc Maron, but the subject matter is so rich in and of itself, he doesn't really need to. His breadth of knowledge is nothing short of impressive.

What I don't like: That breadth of knowledge comes off too polished sometimes, and as a result, his level of engagement can feel a bit stuffy.

Tom Scharpling, Maggie Serota and Daniel Ralston - Low Times Podcast

What I like: A newcomer in the field with only a few episodes on iTunes so far, this biweekly podcast features interviews with a variety of musical personalities by each of the hosts. Tom Scharpling (whose Best Show on WFMU, also a podcast, would make the list if it were not a terrestrial radio show) is something of a renaissance man and a living legend of underground broadcasting.

So far, Scharpling and his co-hosts Maggie Serota and Daniel Ralston have produced some excellent interviews with a variety of musical personalities whose music they clearly know well and love.

What I don't like: I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of new music these days, and I'm often not familiar with the music beforehand, so I am not as immediately interested in the subjects.

***
Honorable mentions: Doug Loves Movies, This American Life (not great for poker but great), Walking the Room, Fitzdog Radio.

What are your favorites?

2012 PCA Scavenger Hunt

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has always occupied a special place in my heart. In 2005, when I was just starting out as a full time poker player, I made a last minute decision to play the event, and the experience really helped broaden my horizons, giving me a taste of the independent lifestyle of a poker player as well as introducing me to a wide cross-section of fellow online players who were also embarking on their poker careers.

I have missed a couple of years since 2005, but I always try to come back to the PCA. It's a truly great way to start the year, a gigantic poker tournament in a beautiful island setting, and it still plays like a fun, communal experience with my peers. I have made dozens, if not hundreds, of friends and acquaintances in January in the Bahamas.

Given my longstanding fondness for this event, I am especially proud to be at my first PCA event as a member of Team: Online. This year, there will be a fun, non-poker related side event to tie in to the relaxed, freewheeling spirit of this poker festival in the Bahamas: The 2012 PCA Scavenger Hunt will start this coming Monday, January 9th, and promises to be a cool way for PokerStars VIPs to interact with member of Team: Online and, more importantly, possibly win some significant prizes.

If you are a PokerStars VIP with a SilverStar status or higher, you will have the chance to win a $10,200 seat to the 6max High Roller event taking place on our last day here, January 14th.

The "hunt" requires VIPs find members of Team Online to stamp their Scavenger Hunt Card; six players who collect 15 unique stamps as part of the scavenger hunt will compete in a freeroll that pays a $10,200 seat and $1,000 bonus to the winner (2nd-6th places also receive bonuses between $250 and $750, and if you don't collect 15 stamps, you can still earn prizes with as few as three stamps).

It should really be a good time, and I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of people who are semi-frantically running around Atlantis, trying to get those 15 unique stamps as quickly as possible to lock up their spot in the freeroll.

Happy hunting!

January 1st, 2012

The coolest feature of relocating to Baja Norte is my ability to maintain a life in Los Angeles. Aside from the sometimes painful wait to cross the border back into the USA through Tijuana, it's amazingly convenient to get into my car after a week of grinding online poker and be back in Santa Monica with my girlfriend a few hours later.

The challenging aspect of the setup is trying to balance my desire to spend time in California with the necessity of being in front of a computer that is not on US soil. The absurdity of not being able to play online poker on this laptop as I write from Santa Monica, but being able to do it 150 miles away, is rarely lost on me.

I like to play poker, and I need to put in hours to make a living, so it becomes frustrating to be separated from my profession on occasions when I want to spend time with family during the holidays, or when I need to find a new apartment with my girlfriend, or when I need to do a variety of errands that require me to be in LA.

Getting back to the advantageous aspect, it was not too difficult to justify a one-day getaway to my enclave in Rosarito Beach in order to play a full Sunday schedule on January 1st, 2012. I had already missed the action the week before on Christmas Day, and I generally can't stand missing Sundays, so I was champing at the bit to play some Sunday tournaments.

We had to be back on Monday, but we went down Saturday night anyway, New Year's Eve, and had a low-key night at home. We went to the hot tub on the property, overlooking the ocean on an extremely foggy night. Later, Sheila made delicious salmon and rice and string beans, and we were in bed before midnight.

I overslept slightly and didn't start grinding until 9AM (I usually like to start by 8:30AM, and sometimes as early as 6:30AM on Sundays), but 13-14 hours later I found myself at the final table of the Sunday Million, which has been the biggest Sunday tournament for years.

The screenshot the DOJ doesn't want you to see.

There is absolutely no better way to start a new year than by final tabling the Sunday Million on New Year's Day. (We wound up chopping 7-handed, see below for more detail). If I had to write Shaniac: The Movie, I could not have scripted it better.

More broadly, it felt like a result that came from my dedication to the online grind, to play poker on days when poker pros are hungover and watching too much football, and an overall validation of the strange choices I have been forced to make in the past 7 months since the Dept. of Justice wedged PokerStars, and me, out of the United States.

***

Some notes about the tournament:

- In the spirit of reporting the often sobering reality of my nice-looking tournament results, I'll break this one down for you: I had sold 60% of my action for the month of January, so I was playing for 40% of my cash, and the score made me about a $30K winner on the day after taking into account ~$5k in buyins. Which is still awesome, and nothing to sneeze at. But the other reality is that I had been on a solid 5-figure downswing to finish off 2011 (the reason I decided to sell a large chunk of January action to begin with).

So it's worth remembering that, for many MTT players, amazing results are often a relatively small part of the big picture, in which we are trying to apply a small but consistent edge and accumulate enough money to avoid going broke while playing all the big-buyin tournaments we have that edge in.

- Chopping 7-handed was a new one to me. In fact, in my seven-plus years playing online tournaments, hundreds of final tables and headsup encounters, I think I have chopped at most two times. Truly, I can't even think of one instance of chopping before this past Sunday, but I am leaving room for error in my memory.

It's not even a hard-and-fast rule, like Daniel Negreanu has on the issue. It just rarely comes up and, when it does, I decline to consider it. I can only remember one time recently when I even agreed to look at chop numbers (3-handed in the $8 2x turbo that runs at 10:45AM PST), then got so frustrated with the process and trying to figure out what my edge is vs. what my payout edge in should be in a chop, that I pretty quickly just said, "let's play."

It goes back to something an acquaintance told me in 2004,when he won a big online tournament. He said he didn't want to think about a chop because that would take him out of the zone he had been in up to that point, in which he was focused entirely on winning. I usually just apply that philosophy and it seems to work out well.

In this case though, I was down to 12BBs and the chip leader was on my direct left, playing well. Although I had a lot more experience and better results than my opponents, I am all too familiar with what can happen with 12BBs, no matter how significant your edge is, and I didn't feel I could compromise the utility of being able to lock up (40% of) $84K relative to the chance of busting 7th and getting (40% of) ] $31K.

If we had not have made a deal, there's no doubt the cosmic card distribution and actions of the players would have been different, but I did wind up losing AJ to A6 and then allin KK to QQ, with my opponent spiking a queen on the river, to take 7th place and miss my shot at the $20K that was left on the table for the winner.

- Maybe the most interesting side note to this whole thing is that it is my biggest score by a small margin (about 11 months ago, I won ~76K in the Sunday $109 rebuy) and that it shares a very peculiar similarity with the second-biggest score:

On both occasions, the result came exactly two weeks after I had quit a lengthy smoking habit. It's uncanny really, and corresponds with my belief that it takes two weeks for a serious scumbag smoker like I am to stop craving a cigarette in the morning and start functioning semi-normally day-to-day.

Last time, in Feburuary, I went out that same night and bought a pack of cigarettes to celebrate. This time, I am still trying to tough it out, even though I can feel the surge of craving rising in me now as I complete this blog entry...just like I could feel it surging on Sunday on occasions like when I won the crucial coinflip with less than 50 players left that gave me the chiplead to coast to the final table.

Smokers take note: I think two weeks is all it takes to detox and hit a 75K+ score on a Sunday.

***

Here's wishing you and yours (and me) the best of luck in 2012. Happy New Year!

Au Revoir 2011

I was reminded in 2011 that as soon as you think you have some of your problems solved, a whole new set of problems will come along and take their place. When the year began, it felt like I was in phase of relative stability, which soon enough turned out to be the farthest thing from reality. In the end it seems I spent most of the year just trying to get back to a life that even resembled that illusion of stability.

To briefly recap: the year began with me at an all-time-high, starting a sponsorship deal with PokerStars Team Online that ushered in a renewed confidence and passion for the game of poker. I was energized, motivated, looking forward to doing things right as a poker player, a blogger and a human being.

Then on April 15th, Poker's Black Friday took place, in which the DOJ unsealed an indictment against PokerStars that forced them to stop offering games in the United States, and I went into a funk. I wrote about the situation for Slate.com, played the WSOP that summer, but otherwise spent most of the several months feeling directionless and overwhelmed.

I finally moved to Canada in September in order to play on PokerStars again, and it was a good experience overall, even though I was planning on staying for six months but wound up staying for only three weeks. I then moved to Mexico, where I am living now, basically attempting to pick up where I left off during this time last year, just under slightly more surreal circumstances.

I am not feeling overly sentimental towards the year that has passed, because it feels just like a bridge in the ongoing arc of my life, just an arbitrary period of time that doesn't encapsulate anything in particular other than a fair amount of chaos. And it feels like 2011 kicked my ass. It was a humbling year, and I am just looking forward to moving on.

***

One thing I regret is not mobilizing more quickly after Black Friday. For a while, I didn't even feel capable of leaving my Southern California comfort zone, even though I was totally unproductive in the absence of online poker. Somehow, during the four months I spent contemplating my options, I wasn't even aware that Rosarito Beach, three hours away from Los Angeles, was a relocation option for poker players. I am just a bit disappointed that it took me several months of listlessly moping around, dwelling in the sense of crisis, before I could finally motivate to improve my situation.

I guess I also learned (as evidenced by the paragraph above) that I am too hard on myself, that I have a hard time relaxing and keeping things in perspective. Overall, my timing was reasonable: I waited until my lease was up in Santa Monica in August, which coincided with the start of WCOOP, and chose a decent time to make the move. Black Friday was traumatic for a lot of the poker world, and in the end I did prove myself adaptable. I was able to follow the objective advice of friends, as well as basic common sense, that moving to a new country to continue playing online was both my best option and an option that I was very lucky to have.

***

I'll be going to the Bahamas next week to play in the PCA, which is traditionally a great way to start the year, and my life is more streamlined now than it was at any point since March. So, I am cautiously optimistic about everything, looking forward to a new year, another shot to get my poker career in focus, establish some stability for myself and just keep working towards whatever it is I am working towards.

The reality is I can't even think in lofty terms or hope to establish about term goals. Going into 2012, I will be happy to establish a routine and see what develops.

Poker Update and Red Spade Open

Poker has been pretty brutal the last couple of weeks. In a repetition of a classic pattern, I was up a decent amount of money since my relocation to Canada, then withdrew some money to pay expenses and debts and buy a laptop. Then, during the last couple weeks in Mexico, I went on an ugly downswing, and now my bankroll is hurting again.

Due to a wedding and other obligations back in the States, I didn't even have the chance to put in as many days this month as I would have liked, yet I still managed to lose a lot. The difficulties of maintaining a  semblance of a life back in the USA and also getting in the work I need to do in front of my computer in Mexico is a subject for my next blog.

The only significant upwards spike in the below graph of the past few weeks is a satellite win for a seat in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an annual live event that takes place January of every year and is basically a fabulous way to start the year as a poker player. Winning the seat was great in terms of morale and also securing the expensive tournament package, but that win is not cash, and the ~$16K uptick is locked up in tournament equity and a hefty hotel allocation. So, the graph below represents the results of a pretty violent downswing. When I come back from my Thanksgiving break, I will likely step down in stakes or seek out backing options, neither of which I am too excited to do.

November 2011

Still, I am up "for the trip" overall (below is my post-relocation graph), and I am aware that the reason I find myself in precarious financial situations is the result years of bad bankroll management and the compounding effects of living underwater financially. It's just a reminder of how far I have to go to set straight the mistakes of my poker career and correct my inherent personality flaws, like my poor money management. 

Graph since my September relocation

***

I'm also aware of how lucky I am to still be in the game, especially playing under the banner of PokerStars Team Online. My association with Stars was the clear deciding factor that made relocating worthwhile, and I am not quick to forget that.

It was really frustrating to sit on the sidelines when Stars unveiled its Red Spade Open back in July, when I couldn't play online poker, so it's a tangible reminder of how lucky I am overall that I did get myself set up in time to play the second one, tomorrow at 12:00 PST.

Stars manages to draw impressive crowds when they create these MTT promos, and I anticipate that well over 20,000 players will participate, and the $1M guarantee (with $200K being paid to first on a $55 entry fee) will easily be surpassed. As per the theme of the event, there will also be a $100 bounty for knocking out any member of Stars Team Pro and Team Online (I love making that distinction whenever someone mocks me in chat for being a "pro" after I make a bad play).

Hopefully I can have a big day before I head back to the States again for Thanksgiving, and that will allow me to erase the sting of the past couple weeks. If not, I hope you get my $100 bounty.

Eastbound and Down (Pt 3: The Second Coming)

I learned through my experiences traveling for poker tournaments just how easy it is to get around the world. Thanks to technology and the itinerant nature of the poker world, I discovered you could get pretty much anywhere you wanted to go if you had an internet connection and a passport. Follow the blue dot on your iPhone, and you just somehow wind up where you were headed.

So I was fairly well prepared for the basics of portioning off a portable version of my existence to transport to Canada. Then, when it was time to move on to Mexico, the journey was mapped out pretty smoothly again. I had learned about a beach town near Tijuana called Rosarito Beach, and I found a thread on 2+2 informing me that several online poker players had made the move. The most baffling thing was that I had not heard about Rosarito whatsoever in four months of trying to figure out relocation possibilities (and six years living in Southern California prior to that).

Thanks to those pioneering online poker grinders who had already made the move down here, I was able to create an easily executable timeline within a matter of hours, a plan that would take me from Canada to Santa Monica to the Baja peninsula in the course of a week. I drove from Vancouver to Seattle, stopped in Portland, OR and Multnomah Falls on the way to Bend, where I spent the second night. The next morning I had breakfast with one of my original poker heroes, Paul Phillips, who left the poker world behind a while ago to raise a family and work on a computer  programming language called Scala.

I stopped at Crater Lake National Park on my way out of Oregon, spent the night in the Bay Area and, after a gorgeous afternoon drive down the coast through Big Sur, I was back in Santa Monica, CA the next afternoon.

Christ of the Sacred Heart, a few KM from where I now live.

I left Canada on a Tuesday and was looking at furnished rentals in Mexico by the following Tuesday. I went back up to California to get my desk chair and my down blanket from my storage space,  switched my phone plan from the "AT&T Nation with Canada" package to the "AT&T Viva Mexico" plan, and a week after that I was re-approved by PokerStars to play from my new location in Mexico.

***

A surprising number of random acquaintances recently have told me they "used to go to Rosarito Beach" either with their family or during college party weekends. It is a town that clearly could have been a contender, before the double-whammy of the recession and the (media coverage of) violence in Mexico caused some very ambitious development plans to come to a halt. There are innumerable half-finished unfinished luxury condos, looming over the sort of picturesque mountainous seaside that you might associate with Malibu, CA or the Great Ocean Road in Australia. 


I live in one of the half-finished condo projects, in the one completed tower out of four that were planned (still displayed in the model in the lobby). The second of the four towers has been constructed right next door, but is nothing more than a hollow concrete slab, and it doesn't look like construction is going to resume any time soon. In San Diego, my apartment would cost several times than what it does down here, but most nights there is, at most, one other light on my side of the tower when I look up from my first-floor apartment to the 20-stories above. It gives the feeling of a ghost town transposed onto a resort town.


Although Rosarito Beach might be down, it's not quite out. There are a few ex-pat subset communities, some full time retirees, some surfers who seem to have been around a while. And now there is the burgeoning online poker community, which by my estimate is at least 30 people strong (possibly more like 50), mostly young white guys in their 20s and 30s who all play online poker for a living. My apartment is several KM south of the town and where most of my fellow Poker Exiles are located, and interacting with my peers is tough after playing 10-12 hours of MTTs and not particularly wanting to drive 30 minutes at night on a poorly paved road.


The challenge of integrating with my fellow poker ex-pats, much less with the actual local community, is significant, but a major improvement just occurred when three grinders from the USA moved into an apartment upstairs from me. One of them had already relocated (to the Philippines) after PokerStars stopped offering real money games in their home state, Washington, due to legislation. Anyway, these guys seem to be laid back and funny, but most importantly, they play tennis (I am an avid "parks player"), and we have a tennis court in from of our building (the surface seems to be some hybrid of turf and dirt). And in December, my friend Jordan plans to become my roommate, which should be the next major improvement to day-to-day life and combating the isolating nature of the online poker lifestyle.

So, even though I am on a vicious downswing in poker (the first real "run bad" since relocating, so I have actually been very lucky overall), I am feeling more positive about the actual conditions of daily life in Rosarito and dreading the future less and less all the time.

***

Next time I'll try to discuss more about adjusting to life down here, the solitary work environment, and why I am looking forward to going home this Thanksgiving more than ever before. In the meantime, check out this blog by fellow Poker Exile Marty Mathis, who already wrote most of what I was going to say on the subject of adjustment, perspective and the nagging knowledge that "you can never go home."

PokerStars Team Online Followers Freerolls

I’m proud to be a member of Team PokerStars Online. Along with the fastest poker player in the world Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew, Supernova Elites extraordinaire, Kevin "WizardOfAhhs" Thurman, and the globetrotting Dale "Daleroxxu" Philip, we make up some of the biggest names in online poker.   

Now, you will have a chance to test your skills against me and the rest of the team, for FREE!

 Team PokerStars Online is going to give you a chance to win some cash by playing in our new Team Online Freerolls.

Each month, $1000 will be up for grabs. You will also get the chance to play against me and other Team Online members, all with bounties on their heads. Eliminate a Team Online member and win a $25 bounty. It’s that simple.

If that isn’t enough, PokerStars is giving you even more chances to play and win. There will be TWO Freerolls every month! 

To enter the $1000 Team Online Freeroll, all you have to do is create a PokerStars account and make a real-money deposit on the PokerStars client using the Marketing Code ‘shaniac’.

For players who can’t deposit but still want to play on PokerStars, there’s still a tournament for you to play. This tournament will also be played by Team Online members and if you our fortunate enough to bust one of us, you will win $10 to help build your bankroll.

To enter the $100 Team Online Freeroll, all you have to do to play is:

1.      Download the free software.

2.      Open a new PokerStars.com account.

3.      During account signup, enter the bonus Marketing Code “shaniac”

4.      You are now ready to play!

New Signups Freeroll Details

Tourney Name:	Team Online $100 Freeroll
Date & Time:	12:00 ET - The first Sunday of every month.
Buy-in:	FREE - just signup using the Marketing Code ‘shaniac’ and you are eligible to play in the freerolls every month.
Prizes:	$100 prize pool in each freeroll. 20% payout structure. Team Online member bounty - $10 for each Team Online member you bust.

Depositors’ Freeroll Details:

Tourney Name:	Team Online $1000 Freeroll
Date & Time:	13:00 ET - The first Sunday of every month.
Buy-in:	FREE - just create an account with PokerStars and make a deposit using the Marketing Code ‘shaniac’ and you are eligible to play in the freerolls every month.
Prizes:	$1000 prize pool in each freeroll. 20% payout structure. Team Online member bounty - $25 for each Team Online member you bust.

To register for a Team Online Freeroll tournament, open the PokerStars lobby, click ‘Tourney’ & ‘All’.

*PokerStars reserves the right, to cancel, modify or suspend this Promotion at any time.

Eastbound and Down (Pt. 2: No Place Like Home)

When 2011 began, I was enjoying the idea of letting my roots grow deeper in Southern California. After breaking up with my girlfriend in 2010, and consequently having no home base for most of the year, I had begun to establish a new life for myself, in a new apartment in Santa Monica. I had unpacked the boxes of records that had been sitting for months in storage, hung art on the walls and got a new bed.

My PokerStars Team Online deal began, and after spending a lot of time on the road in 2010, I was really looking forward to enjoying my time at home, working hard and putting in a lot of hours online. I improved my work station by buying an antique wood desk and a new computer setup featuring a monolithic 30" monitor. I also bought a stand-up paddle board, and was hoping to achieve a previously unreached level of balance with a new oceanic hobby.

Then Black Friday hit and PokerStars withdrew from the US market, which meant all the things I had happily and purposefully accumulated in order to relaunch my existence now just seemed to stare at me mockingly. The 30" monitor became a Twitter and instant messenger station and the enormous paddle board propped against the wall in my kitchen now represented another instance of frivolous ambition. I could not work from home, and I was too emotionally paralyzed to pack up and leave, as I now wish I had done in May.

When I finally reckoned with my situation, it was time to box up my records again and rent another storage space, this time big enough to stash the desk in addition to the boxes and bags filled with my belongings. I sold the paddle board for a fraction of what I paid for it a couple months before and sent my computer to Vancouver via UPS at an absurd cost (I was overcharged for shipping by Box Brothers). I  parked my car in a beach lot and packed a couple of bags for Vancouver and got on a plane. 

Daenerys Targaryen: "What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?"
Jorah: "Home."

Separating myself from Santa Monica, a city I am fully in love with, was difficult in a way that is hard to explain. I'm almost amazed that I managed to do it. I don't require much from a home, but whatever I needed, I had found in Los Angeles. It takes years to get to know a city in any thorough way, and after six years on the West Coast, I felt very comfortable with the lifestyle and familiar with the landscape. I loved riding my bike along the beach, I knew where to get a good burger at 10PM, and, more significantly, two of my closest friends moved to Santa Monica recently. (They are still there, playing live poker primarily.) I also started communicating with my longtime girlfriend/ex-girlfriend again, around the time it became clear that I would probably be leaving the country to continue my poker career.


***

After dealing with the anguish over leaving California, it was relatively easy to part with Vancouver, although I was actually enjoying enough aspects of the situation to want to make it work.

The balcony, as previously discussed, was horrifying, but I liked stepping out onto it during synchronized breaks, looking at the boats coming into the harbour, and telling David, "yep, I see some big ships coming in." We had a number of running jokes, were well fed, and the roommate relationship was surprisingly effective and happy all around. The dishes never piled up and there was usually music or some form of entertainment in the background.

Yet, when the shit hit the fan, it seemed almost appropriate and at least vaguely amusing. It was certainly a relief to get rid of the apartment, even if now it meant more expenses, like breaking our lease. I rented a car in order to transport my belongings and my computer back. Actually, two cars, since I was only able to get a one-way rental from Vancouver to Seattle and then had to rent a different car to go from Seattle to Los Angeles. I decided to do it this way because I could not stomach the idea of paying hundreds of dollars to ship the equipment once again, and because I really love driving through America, especially the Pacific Northwest and West Coast.

 ***

The only reason I didn't drive up to Vancouver in the first place was because I thought I would have a harder time crossing the border. Canadian immigration is at least a little bit tricky. As an American, you are allowed to stay in Canada for six months out of a year, but they seem eager to deny your entry for a variety of reasons.

One reason you might get denied is if you can't demonstrate sufficient ties to the US. The fact that your friends and family and your storage unit exist in the US might not be enough, there's still a chance the border official will think you are planning to illegally stay in the country longer than six months. They might arrive at a similar conclusion if you can't demonstrate that you have enough money in your bank account to support yourself.  Then there's the fact that you aren't allowed to work in Canada. Even in a case such as online poker, where your work has zero impact on the native jobs economy, you are not likely to be allowed into the country if you tell them you are going to "rent a place for six months and work from home."

They say the best thing to tell the customs official is the truth--but if you ask me, it better be the truth that they want to hear. When asked what I was doing there, I told them I was visiting a friend. When asked what I did for a living, I told them I was a writer who wrote about gambling. It was the version of the truth I thought they wanted to hear.

Returning to the US by road, with most of the essential components of my life filling a rental SUV, I felt somewhat liberated, at least for the opportunity to not paint a false picture at a border crossing. The US Customs official looked at the sticker on the box in the backseat of my car and said, "Why does it say 'alert?'"

"Oh," I said, "that's from the packaging for the computer stuff. The shipping guys put it on there."

"What were you doing in Canada?" she asked.

"I was playing online poker for three weeks."

"Why did you go to Canada to play online poker?"

"Well, there was legislation passed in the US that made it impossible for me to continue to play here anymore."

"Really?" The border official had never heard of Black Friday. "Why don't you just play at casinos locally?"

"Well," I said, "that's an option, some of my friends are doing it, but I am better at poker online."

"Did you win money?" she asked.

"Yeah I did allright," I told her.

"Did you win more than $10,000?"

"Nah," I said. Here, I felt compelled to lie. I certainly wasn't transporting more than $10,000 and I didn't see how it was any of her business how well I did in MTTs last month. That information is between me and a different branch of the government.

Finally, before letting me back into my country, she said, smiling, "And they let you in with all that stuff?"

***

It felt strangely, incredibly good to be back in the United States. There is a feeling I get when I am in America that I just don't think anywhere else can offer. The landscape offers me solace. I feel a relation to the people that can't be manufactured elsewhere. I appreciate the diversity and the way Americans interact with each other. Although I severely dislike the way our government works, our government isn't our country.

It's a duality I can't easily resolve. I was forced to leave the country to maintain my livelihood, and I still have to pay my taxes. There seems to be no rationality in the way our country is governed, it's very frustrating, yet I can't give up on America, it will forever be the only place that truly feels like "home" to me.

***

When the story resumes, I'll be on my way to the Baja peninsula.

Eastbound and Down (Pt. 1: Hello/Goodbye Canada)

Since the last time I wrote about Black Friday and my future in online poker, I have not only relocated, but done it twice--first  to Vancouver, BC, Canada and now to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, a town in the northern part of the Baja California peninsula.

My journey to establish myself in another country still feels so bizarre that I don't know how to most concisely tell it. I should start by apologizing for not updating this blog along the way, but the steady movement associated with bouncing up and down North America, along with the necessity of spending 50+ hours a week in front of my computer playing poker (the reason I moved to begin with), has made it hard to sort out my thoughts.

I went to Canada with my friend David, an online poker player in his 20s, who had also been living in Los Angeles when Black Friday took place. After the WSOP, we began looking for a place in Vancouver, but we were both still engulfed in a post-Black Friday hazy depression, and as a result our decision making ability was not in peak form. We clumsily rushed to sign a lease in a high-rise apartment in the Yaletown area of downtown Vancouver. Somehow, I overlooked two critical things I knew about myself--first, that I don't particularly like downtown, big city living, and second, that I abhor living in high-rise apartments. I managed to forget how unhappy I was when I spent a summer at the WSOP living in the Panorama Towers in Vegas.

Living 28 floors above the ground--in an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and a tiny slab of outdoor space for a "balcony" that compels you to contemplate the ease of jumping each time you step out onto it--feels completely unnatural to me and fairly scary. The apartment was bright, hot, and very loud, with a steady stream of construction noises filling the room during the day and the gamut of city sounds--sirens, dogs barking, drunk people yelling--at night. The ironic thing about living that high up in the sky is that it's actually far less quiet than living closer to the ground.

Despite the suboptimal apartment situation, and the residual and ongoing stress of uprooting our lives to come to a new country, we got ourselves set up relatively efficiently over the course of a week, getting most of what we needed for our apartment and office (chairs, a desk, bedding, coffee machine) and evertyhing we needed to get our PokerStars accounts re-opened--basically getting a bank account and utility bills in our names in addition to the lease. It was important to me to get set up before the WCOOP began in the first week of September, and I did, with a few days to dip my foot in the water and get back into the online poker groove.

Although I thoroughly detested our apartment and workspace, I was fortunate to have a very good month playing tournaments on PokerStars, winning a WCOOP event and generally easing back into the daily poker grind. David, on the other hand, could not "get it going." I consider him a better player than me for all intents and purposes, but it seemed he was not running good in the spots where it mattered, and while I was seeing steady chunks of profit, he slowly and steadily bled funds.

David was also focused on trying to arrange a more long-term plan for Canada, which added to his immediate stress level but promised to lend him more stability eventually. Whereas I was planning to stay only up to six months and then reevaluate my options (visitors may only stay in Canada six months without a visa), David had applied to school in Vancouver and was planning to get his student visa, have the contents of his storage pod delivered and establish a home for himself in Canada. He was even going on dates and had sorta kinda acquired a girlfriend.

On the Friday afternoon before the WCOOP main event, David left the apartment to drive to the border, where he expected to get his student visa and the come back to the apartment. He was under the impression that it would be no problem, since he had his school application and other documents in order. A few hours after he left the apartment, I got a text from David, saying they weren't letting him back in the country. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. Without getting too much into the details of his personal business, the customs official would not let him into the country three months before school started, because he could not demonstrate ties to the US. They told him to try again a week or so before school started. They knew David had his belongings in our apartment and eventually gave him 48 hours to retrieve them.

At this point, it seemed my best option was to move on, too. I had planned a visit back to LA after the WCOOP and did not want to risk the possibility that I would be denied re-entry into Canada when I came back the next week, with all my stuff stranded in a downtown apartment and no roommate to pack it up and send it back to me.

I liked Vancouver a lot as a city, and I was looking forward to making it work for the winter (I didn't even mind the overcast weather that was becoming prevalent towards the end of September), but our Canadian adventure was riddled with problems, and if I hadn't had a good month on the "virtual felt," I would consider it an unmitigated disaster. I played through the weekend, finishing strong with a profitable final Sunday of WCOOP. Then I packed up my computer, arranged for a rental car from Vancouver to Seattle and another from Seattle to Los Angeles. It was time to regroup and move on.

If the story reads disjointed and incomplete, that's because it's basically how it was. We went through a lot of expense and effort to establish ourselves in Canada, yet it never felt like a fully realized situation. When it all fell apart, it almost seemed like a fitting conclusion.


***


In the next installment: driving through the Pacific Northwest back to California in a stuffed rental car, discovering Rosarito and establishing a new apartment in Mexico.

Press Past

Last week,  The NewYork Press finally (more or less) shut down. It gave me a chance to reminisce about my experience at the paper during its heyday in the mid-to-late 90s.

In the Spring of 1994, I was a senior in high school when I responded to an ad in the NYPress seeking new writers in a variety of areas, including the "First Person" section, a column that featured a different writer each week relaying a personal experience or a lengthy rant.

At the time, the NYPress was a wilder, more freewheeling, yet more intelligent, competitor to the The Village Voice. The Press was on the cutting edge of at least a few media trends, notably for their practice of publishing (and occasionally responding to) every single letter-to-the-editor. This created the sort of open dialogue between media and reader that would soon become the norm in the era of message boards and blog comments and micro-blogging.

The editors were also ahead of the curve for printing the sort of life-on-your-sleeve oversharing that has become a hallmark of pop culture in the meantime. They realized that writers could produce extraordinary results if given enough freedom, or enough rope to hang themselves. The most memorable example of this was a cover story by William Monahan, which I remember as a sprawling tribute to the virtues of casual heroin use.

New York Press founder and publisher Russ Smith.

For my part, I had actually taken my father's only two pieces of advice before high school started--study Latin and write for the school newspaper. Our high school had a top notch weekly newspaper, The Record, and I enjoyed a role there from ninth grade until I graduated. Over the first couple of years, I learned the basics of high school journalism writing generic news and feature stories. By the time I was a junior I had begun to develop my style a bit and to write a regular column about music called "Shane's Addiction."

During my senior year, I was a member of the paper's Executive Board but, as a reflection of my generic teen rebellion phase, I was most proud of writing articles that challenged the boundaries of a high school paper's typical editorial mandate. The highlight of my high school publishing career might have been something I wrote about skipping school in the middle of a wintery day, when my friend and I went to Central Park to eat lunch and smoke a joint. I think my message in the piece was that there are other things in life besides school, and I was going to enjoy those other things.

It seems goofy to remember that as being "edgy," but it was not standard for the paper to print an editorial celebrating cutting class, and I had to fight with the faculty advisor to get the piece published. It was also probably the writing sample most grabbed the attention of the Press editors.

***

I remember that very rare feeling I had when I saw the Press ad looking for writers, a sense that it might be a perfect fit, or at least a good spot for me to fake my way into something bigger than the HS paper. My confidence was only bolstered when I met with the editors--Russ Smith, John Strausbaugh and Sam Sifton--at the Press' gorgeous office loft space in the Puck Building. 

We all sat in Smith's office, smoking cigarettes. I was especially into smoking at the time, so I felt very comfortable. They were straightforward New Yorkers, open to many aspects of culture, personality and politics. They liked my samples, and the conversation was lively and smooth. I don't think they were entirely sure that I could produce anything worthwhile for the paper, but in what might have been my lifetime peak in confidence, I definitely was.

John Strausbaugh, my editor at the NYPress.

I recall Russ Smith giving me some sort of editorial suggestion, but mostly I remember the continued sensation of, "I can do this." I probably had my first piece outlined in my head by the time the Puck elevator reached the ground floor, and I probably submitted the writing a few days later. I also recall my elation as I listened to the message Sam Sifton left on my answering machine, saying, "you hit a home run" and asking for my Social Security Number so I could get paid.

That first article was a 1500-word declaration of my frustration and anger at life, a screed against the NYC prep school system, and a detailed justification on why I thought higher education would be a waste of my time. It appeared a week or two after our meeting and received a lot of strong reactions from readers, mostly negative, all preserved in clippings I still have from the paper's "Mail" section.

***

After high school ended, I sporadically published about a dozen pieces over the course of a few years. Mostly they appeared in the "First Person" section, with a couple of things about music and one about how the movie Kids didn't really reflect the character of "real city kids." But I never truly figured out how to put in the work to be a professional writer, and there was no one who held my hand and taught me either. The last piece I wrote for the paper is the only one that's archived online, and it was published after a long stretch of writing inactivity.

Part of my false start as a writer can be attributed to the lack of experience and perspective needed to churn out volumes of compelling material. That stuff isn't necessarily available to an angst-ridden teenager, or it wasn't to me, despite my thinking at the time that I had a unique and omniscient take on everything.

My friend Peter told me, "you're either living or you're writing," and I agree with that, but I also I know I could have paid more attention, worked harder and smarter. I could have continued to expand my horizons in life while also training myself to become a professional writer, and I wish I had. I failed to find the discipline necessary to maximize my talent. It also turned out that most of my ideas from the time--especially my idea that college was a frivolous waste of time--were rooted in a fairly ignorant level of teenage hubris.

***

Not long after I started writing for the paper in '94, another high school student, Ned Vizzini, came to the Press. I remember being in the offices one day after Vizzini had published a few articles, and Sifton got my attention to give me a good ribbing, "boy, he really trumped you, didn't he?" It was funny and and slightly painful, because it was true.

Sam Sifton, NYPress alum, currently the Tines food critic.

Ned was a classmate of my brother's at Stuyvesant, four years younger than me, and he went on to have a prolific stint at the Press and then to publish three books, the third of which became the movie It's Kind of a Funny Story. I think he's working on a fourth now. Then there's aforementioned author of the heroin article, William Monahan, who won an Academy Award in 2006 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Departed.

There are numerous other successful writers with origins at the NYPress, and when I think about their collective accomplishments, I am not envious, rather angry at myself for what amounts to squandered potential. We were all at the same Christmas parties, and I saw how other writers were getting it done, yet I never managed to do it for myself.

I guess for me it's a lesson in how rarely great opportunities come along and how difficult they are to nurture. I don't think I have the talent or skillset to write screenplays for Ridley Scott like Monahan does (or write food criticism for the New York Times like Sifton); I'm not even sure what I should have tried accomplished as a writer, but I know if I had focused my energies better during my time at the Press, I could have done more.

America Eats Its Young

For the first two weeks in April, I was enjoying a visit to my hometown New York City. During the trip I didn't play one hand of online poker. Usually on the road, I would fire up the laptop for a session of hyper-turbos here and there and go to a friend's apartment for Sunday tournaments. But for this trip, I decided to focus on my usual NYC activities--catching up with friends and family, eating as much pizza as possible and walking aimlessly through Central Park--and not cross-pollute the experience with "work."

During the trip, I got the chance to appear on a live episode of Seven Second Delay, (my segment begins at the 32:40 mark), a radio show I have been listening to since I was in high school, and it was a fun experience.  Generally, I was riding high, coming off my best three-month stretch of online poker in seven years and feeling a rare overarching sense of positivity about my direction in life.

It felt good to take a break from poker while in NYC, but after nearly two weeks spending money in New York and not generating income, I was feeling the pressure to get back to the grind. My flight to LAX was booked for Saturday, April 16th, and I was really looking forward to sitting down on Sunday in my Herman Miller chair, in front of my monolithic 30" monitor, and playing online poker tournaments all day, as I had done on most Sundays since 2004.

Then, on April 15th, the day before I was set to come home, after two weeks of idle-time that was starting to wear out my bottom line, the DOJ released an indictment that forced PokerStars to stop offering real money games to US customers.

The lack of activity on this blog is a direct reflection of my general malaise since Black Friday. For most of the last four months, with the exception of the time I spent in Las Vegas at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), I have been adrift in a sea of frustration, confusion, anger and denial. I haven't been writing, because I don't feel I have anything to say.

The consequences of Black Friday still seem unreal to me, and I guess I am still in shock. It has caused me to question every aspect of my existence--as a poker player, an American and as a member of society. It has caused to me to question the meaning of concepts like "home" and "work."

Now, I must leave the city I love, and the country I will always love despite how ridiculous our government is. Until I get relocated and approved to be clicking buttons again on PokerStars, which should be within a few weeks, the whole thing will still not feel real. For a variety of reasons, I also don't feel like I can document this part of the process.

Of course, I have a lot to be grateful for, and most of all, I am looking forward to continuing my relationship with PokerStars, one of the best products I could ever imagine having the opportunity to endorse. But leaving your native country in order to pursue your occupation is not what I consider an enviable situation. This is one of the toughest and most unlikable moves I've ever had to make. I am not feeling sorry for myself, but I am supremely frustrated.

***

The WSOP was the one thing that brought me out of the post-Black Friday stupor and gave me something to focus on. I played 19 events and cashed in three of them. I was "in the hunt" in one event, the $5K 6-max. I wound up busting 17th, reshoving 20 BBs from the big blind vs. a button raise with the "signature hand," A7o. I got called by KJo and lost. It was a $31K cash. This year again, I busted the main event on day two, bringing my record in that event to 0-7.  I was a net loser on buyins, but with a backing deal on gross cashes, I earned a little bit of money for the summer. Somehow I think I spent more.

Most importantly, I maintained my equanimity better than ever this year in the face of Vegas' relentless pressure. Usually, I feel lots of anxiety when I'm there, a desire to take a break and go home or go to Utah. But this year I woke up every day feeling relatively fresh and ready to play a poker tournament. Maybe the change in perception was due to the fact that six weeks at the WSOP felt less overwhelming than the circumstances of my life after Black Friday.

Slate Article on Black Friday

Two weeks ago today, the DOJ took action against three online poker site operators, including PokerStars, that prevents me from playing online poker in the USA indefinitely.

I've been kind of listless and unproductive since it happened, but if felt good to write this article for Slate explaining the situation. You can find it at the link below:

Black Friday article for Slate.

New Blog (Rated *R*), Pt. 2

**EXPLICIT CONTENT**



Famous scene from The Wire. As per the description: Bunk and McNulty "investigate a crime scene only using the word fuck."