I have, in fact, been running through a pretty full schedule, putting in my share of hours online in Mexico and fine tuning the stops of my weekly travels up and down the West Coast.
I try to take advantage of the bells and whistles that Southern California has to offer whenever possible, and to that end, the best idea I've had in a long time was to find a place to go waterskiing in San Diego. I used to be pretty good on a slalom ski in my younger, summer camp days, but for many years I haven't had regular access to the sport at all, except for some one-off shots in Lake Mead and Aruba.
I found the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in Pacific Beach was exactly what I was looking for. For a non-exorbitant amount of money, you can get into a whole variety of water sports. It's really an amazing resource. Until December I will be part of a college class (apparently at UCSD you can get a college credit for wake-boarding) that meets every Friday for a couple hours and guarantees you two passes around the bay each session.
It turns out that a boat dragging me on a slalom ski at 28 MPH has a significantly more taxing effect on my body than it did when I was 14 years old. It kicks my ass thoroughly every week, but I love it just as thoroughly.
I'm also loving the newest variation to the sport that I've been experimenting with--Wakeskating--which is like wakeboarding, but on a smaller board and with no bindings! It's like riding a skateboard on the water, and it's super cool, the most fun I've had in a while.
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| A picture of someone who is not me on a wakeskate. |
After class ends on Friday, I slowly make my way back down to Mexico. Sometimes, I'll wait out rush hour either grabbing some bar food in PB or going to a movie; other times I'll just do my grocery shopping and get down to Mexico right away, soak my sore bones in the hot tub and try to get an early bedtime for the weekend action online.
For the next four days of the week, Saturday through Tuesday, I am completely immersed in the online poker grind, and then Tuesday it's time to head back, cross the border to the USA, and start the cycle all over: Wednesday, I chill out do some errands in Santa Monica, usually take a nap, watch TV, sometimes go to a movie. Thursday, I play tennis and usually repeat the same nap/TV program. Friday morning, it's time to hit the road again and go back down to San Diego for my "class."
***
Poker itself has been mostly unremarkable. I lost money during WCOOP in September, but I did make a highly improbable run at defending my 2011 WCOOP title in the 2-7 Triple Draw event, taking 3rd in the exact same tournament this year for $14K or so. That, plus some decent results on the last two days of the series, prevented the WCOOP from being complete bloodbath, but it wasn't a good month at all, and the weeks since then have been somewhat frustratingly breakeven.
Overall, though, I think I am in a good groove, approaching the game every day with a clear head and putting myself in the right frame of mind to play mistake-free poker for many hours at a time and to even enjoy some of the quotidian aspects of the lifestyle. That's as close as I'll ever claim to the cliched poker player's affirmation, "I'm playing the best poker of my life."
On the other hand, the grind can certainly wear on me, and somewhere amidst the emotional and financial swings of the game, there is a spiritual monotony to the life of a poker player. I relate to plenty of what Olivier Busquet wrote in a blog back in June, and I often feel that playing poker for a living amounts to an ongoing flirtation with an existential crisis. It's an occupation, and I guess you can call it a profession, but is it "work?" It's a larger subject for a different time, but it sometimes feel like a fine line between a groove and a rut, and as a poker player, I often feel like I'm on it.
One of the things that keeps me going is that I feel I haven't accomplished what I'm capable of accomplishing, and I still want to "get it right." I guess I also still enjoy playing MTTs on the internet, I really do. I still possess a level of excitement for the game, and I'm truly looking forward to a weekend like this one coming up, when my part-time roommate Jordan comes down from Oklahoma, and there's some special stuff on Stars, including the $1M Supernova Freeroll on Sarturday and Double Vision Sunday.
I also realize that having an occupation which allows me to indulge in a sentiment like "flirting with an existential crisis" is a huge luxury to begin with, and I could be stuck in a variety of equally, or less, fulfilling occupations, most of which wouldn't allow me the freedom to play tennis and go waterskiing every week.