I guess one part of my creative inertia is rooted in an all-consuming routine that I've discussed before. When I'm in Mexico, all my energy is devoted to playing online poker and trying to feed myself during five minute breaks every hour, and when I'm back in Santa Monica, I spend a lot of time organizing my next jaunt to Mexico, making sure all my bills are paid and that the bed is made before my girlfriend gets home from work. I wind up spending a lot of time getting from point A to point B, and when I'm not running around organizing the next stretch of my life, I try to enjoy my downtime. However, I am pretty bad with budgeting my time, and I don't even get to the movies much.
I've also been dealing with a health problem in my middle ear (yes, there's a "middle ear") for several months now, and it has consumed a lot of time, energy and money. It's a story for another time, but the short version is that there is constant medley of annoying sounds and weird pressure in my ear, and pretty much the only time I can completely ignore it is when I sleep. I'm not in pain, but a sort of constant state of discomfort and distraction.
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To start off the year, I was fortunate enough to unburden myself of most of the above with a trip to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), which is held every January at the Atlantis Resort in Paradise Island, Bahamas. If memory serves me right, this was the fifth time I've been since 2005 ('06, '09, '10 and '12 were the other four), and I really think it's the best possible way to start the year off as a poker player. I'm not a particularly social person, but for some reason I always enjoy the time I spend hanging out with other poker players in the Bahamas.
I think the good vibes might be attributable to the fact that it's early in the year, and the collective optimism of the poker community is at its peak. There's a sense of rungood to come, a sense that "this is gonna be our year" that doesn't have a chance to get too badly shattered in that 10-day stretch in January.
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| The view from our hotel room at the Atlantis Resort. |
This year, though, there was certainly a more subdued atmosphere due to the lower number of Americans who showed up in the wake of Black Friday. The lobbies of the Coral and Royal Towers, which are usually bursting at the seams with online poker players on their laptops, were pretty much empty this year on Sunday. It was noticeable and definitely a little sad when I thought of all the friends of mine who would have made the trip if it hadn't been for Black Friday.
Oh, I also played a few poker tournaments: In the $10K main event, I wasn't happy with how I played on day one, but came back decidedly more focused on day 2. I won two huge flip early in the day against Jamie Rosen, and more or less coasted the rest of the way to day 3. On day 3, getting close to the bubble, I ran AK into AA, and had to sit pretty snug on my <20BB stack. After we made the money, I got moved tables and shoved allin with A4s from the SB against a player's cutoff open. David Peters found jacks in the BB, and I busted in 156th place, a min-cash of $15,000.
The other notable tournament I played was the $10K 6-Max "High Roller" event, which was one of the sickest events I've ever played, in terms of tense fun and the ability to win over $200K in about seven hours of poker. They paid 10 spots, and I busted around 22nd place, losing the crucial flip with A7 to KT of Stefan Huber, who went on to chop the tournament with Shawn Buchanan and Andrew Chen.
I did get to bask in some old glory though, and on my penultimate night in Atlantis, before the PCA closing party, PokerStars held a bracelet ceremony for 2011 WCOOP winners. Here I am showing off the jewelry I got for winning the 2-7 TD WCOOP event in September.
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One of the surprise pleasures of the trip was meeting the other members of PokerStars Team: Online. Most of us were in attendance to participate in the PCA Scavenger Hunt and for a sort of corporate training seminar, which was a lot less onerous than it sounds. We sat around a conference room and spent the day acquainting ourselves with one another and learning a few things about how Stars works.
I am not inclined towards a sense of team spirit by default, but I wound up genuinely liking all of the personalities in the room and voluntarily spending time with many of them throughout the week. As my former fellow "teammate" Andrew Brokos wrote in his excellent recap, "They were a fascinating bunch of people, and I loved spending the week with them." At the end of the trip, more than a dozen of us got together for a meal at Nobu, an Richard Veenman wound up losing a sizable $1300 credit card roulette spin to pay for most of it.
Earleir in the week, we played a doubles match, and Richard and I got our asses handed to us by the team of and Diego Brunelli (who is a legitimately good tennis player) and Tyler Frost. Tyler is also the latest team member to have a short film released on him (there will eventually be one on me, too), and you can check it out below: