— Are you serious Arizona? Who are the people supporting the bill that allows police officers to question people simply because they suspect they might be illegal aliens? Oh I know, the same people who ALSO say we need to keep the government small and that the government is taking over everything. Apparently they don’t mind if the government steps in and gets between you and your life as long as it isn’t affecting them!

— I’ve heard a lot of older people say that they wish things would “go back to the way they used to be” in the USA. The people saying this are inevitably white and they act as if this country was so great back in the 40s and 50s and today it is some kind of heathenistic pile of crap. Ask gay people if they want to go back to the “way things used to be.” How about black people? Asians? Women? Mexicans? In fact I will stop right there. Is there a non white human being who wants things to go back to the way they used to be here in the USA? Back 50 – 60 years ago here in the USA, I have no doubt it was a great place to be if you were white and didn’t give a shit about anyone, but you can’t tell me it used to be a batter place if you are anyone else.

— How can it be lost in this entire health care debate/poo fling that our food supply is one of the main things killing people every day? Our government has allowed a small number of companies to completely take over the food supply, and these companies will do everything in their power to make more and more money. So that means things like genetically modified foods, steroids and a whole host of other dangerous things human beings were never intended to consume. I believe this will some day be officially linked to the proliferation of cancer upon our society that is taking way too many people’s lives way too soon.

— Speaking of which, how are these companies even allowed to label 90% of the shit they sell “food“? Just because it is barely edible in small quantities, DOES NOT mean it is “food.” I’m sorry, a triple cheese, bacon, jumbo fried chili dog is not food. Think I am wrong? Try eating one every meal for the next 6 months and I bet you aren’t alive to tell me about it. These items are not food. In order to be labeled a food product it should have to be something that can sustain life.

— Why do we spend so much money enforcing drunk driving when it can be virtually eliminated for about as much money as it costs to enforce it?. It is a very simple problem to solve. All the government has to do is pay for cabs/drivers to give you rides when you are drunk. The cost of enforcing drunk driving is massive and not having to enforce it as heavily would be a huge savings when you consider the cost of police, jails, courts and loss of economic productivity from those who lose their licensees. If I am wrong and not having to enforce it as strictly won’t save enough to pay for the taxis, then impose a 25 cent a bottle tax on every beer purchase. Imagine what the roads would look like if everyone could call a cab/driver going to and from a bar for free?

— That reminds me, why are crimes that have equal or greater harm punished much less severely simply because one is much less taboo in people’s minds? I will prop bet anyone on earth that I can drive much better on a .10 blood alcohol level than they can drive constantly texting on a traditional cell phone. Yet if I get pulled over I will get thrown in jail and lose my license and the texter will get a slap on the wrist at most. What sense does this make? Can someone please explain this? I know it is much easier to pick on the drunk guy, but why should that affect the severity of the punishment? The goal is to keep the road safe. Period. Enforce laws in a way that makes sense kthanx.

— Is there a worse way on earth to spend money than flying first class on an international flight? I looked into upgrading at the last minute because I was so dead tired and was told that my first class upgrade would cost $6,000! I did not mistype. That is SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS. First class offers a slightly higher grade of dog food, a slightly bigger version of their pile of shit seats and more frequent visits from flight attendants to get you liquored up so hopefully you forget that you spent $6,000 the worst way possible. For $6,000 you can get health insurance for a year to hopefully keep you from dying from the poison you eat all day. Seriously people, what are you thinking?

— As I’m typing this in the airport waiting for my connecting flight, a pigeon just walked right on by me wtf?

— I am sitting across from the food court in the airport here. The choices are Mcdonalds, Ben and Jerry’s, Dunkin Donuts and a place where you can get reasonably healthy smoothies and sandwiches. Anyone care to take a guess on which store has no line?

— How on earth is pot not legal? If alcohol is legal, is it even possible a coherent argument can be made that pot should be illegal? I mean, if you want to outlaw it all, I think that is stupid, but I can at least see where people are coming from. But how on earth does someone decide that legalizing alcohol is a good idea, but legalizing pot is not? Especially since you can vaporize pot now. It is not even a question that pot is much safer than alcohol given it can now be vaporized. I saw a study that showed that young people overwhelmingly support legalizing pot while old people overwhelmingly supported criminalizing pot. I’m sure the old people will like to point to how we are just a bunch of crazy kids who have no morals when in fact we just know how to use a search button on the computer and as a result are actually educated on the issue. This is something the older generation can not say when it comes to this issue. They have no coherent arguments for their beliefs and I think it sucks that intelligent people have to pay the price for their stupidity with respect to this particular issue.

— All right, I feel much better now

And if it is someday, I might go find something else to do with my life.

I think there is a very real chance that we are experiencing what we could look back on and say is the hardest period to make money as an online poker professional.  The nosebleed games are pretty much dry save for a bunch of guys in relatively neutral EV situations passing money around to each other.  The high stakes action is pretty much dead.  The 25/50 and 10/20nl games barely ever run unless a bunch of regs want to bash heads, which again, is not producing any income for anyone other than the poker rooms.  Sure, occasionally a spot sits at the table, but it is usuallly a 40BB weaker player which is hardly going to pay the bills for anyone.

The United States continues to try as hard as possible to be complete idiots about poker when it comes to the laws here.  I will have to admit, I once again wrote a not insignificant check to the government  a few days ago which is starting to tilt me to no end.  Let’s forget I live in the United States and say I came across a stranger and he asked me about taxes in the country I lived in.  I would probably say something like this:

Me: Well, I live in a country where I risk significant sums of money each day and work very long days.  When I am through with my long day of risking incredible amounts of money, my government tells me that I need to give them about half of what I have made.

Stranger:  WOW.  That country must do many great things if they are demanding from you that kind of money.

Me: No not really.  They don’t care if people live or die here.  They don’t regulate the food so they let companies serve poison to our citizens.  If they get sick from the poison, er I mean food, then they tell them they better have a really good job to get treatment or otherwise they will just have to suffer and eventually die.

Stranger:  So where does the money go to?

Me:  Mostly to just blow shit up all over the world and wreak havoc wherever possible

Stranger:  Surely it must go to other things

Me:  Yeah it does.  The government likes to try and run things into the ground and it takes a lot of money to do that.  You can’t waste money if you don’t take a lot in.

Stranger:  At least you can work hard and still have a good life right?  They surely must be appreciative of you working hard and giving them so much of your money

Me:  Not at all.  In fact they work hard to make sure I am not allowed to work.  They pass laws in the middle of the night to try and make sure I can’t make a living at what I enjoy most.

Stranger:  Man I would be pretty upset if I were you.  What would happen if you just told them you’re not going to pay them your money?  That seems fair given they are wasting your money and trying to tear down what you do for a living.  I mean, surely they can’t simultaneously expect you to give them money to fund their efforts to try and tear you down.

Me:  No.  Can’t do that.  They will send people armed with guns to my house and throw me in a cage for a long time if I don’t pay up.

Stranger:  Jesus Christ!  What 3rd world country do you live in?

Me:  The United States of America.

OK back from that little rant.  The legality of poker is not helping the situation either.  It is possible poker could be a heck of a lot better right now if it just became legal.  But with poker being a gray area sort of activity at the moment (it’s not legal or illegal really), the games suffer.  If this changes some day, we could be in for a fun ride as poker players.

I guess what I am most concerned about is the proliferation of so many professional players.  I think there are actually far more casual players dropping by the mid to high stakes games these days, but the number of pros has increased at a rate 10 times (or more) as fast.  So imagine you have a family of 4 and you have a regular sized pie.  This allows everyone to have a nice slice for dessert.  But imagine if you had an extra large pie instead, but now it had to feed every family on the block.  So the pie has grown, but it is being divided too many ways at the moment.

I think there is going to be a “come the Jesus” moment for a lot of the pros here in the next 12 months.  I think there are going to be a lot of pros who play and play and play and realize that they aren’t making any money.  You can only sit with a bunch of regs and pass along money for so long (and pay rake for the privilege) before everyone winds up broke.  I think we are going to see hundreds of poker players go off and pursue a different career.  The market needs to make an adjustment and I think the adjustment is going to come in the form of an enormous number of people who pursue other interests.  I just don’t see poker being a way for many people to make deep into the 6 figures (and some into the 7 figures) the way many did up until 09’.  If I am wrong and it doesn’t adjust, then I suspect we are in for a long time of much leaner paychecks as poker professionals.

Poker is hard right now.  It is very hard.  At one point I could make a million dollars a year at poker without doing anything more than grinding 5/10nl for about 40 hours a week.  In fact I once posted a half a million hand graph of just 5/10nl hands where I made over a $1 a hand playing an insane number of tables at one time.  That will NEVER happen again unless maybe if poker is fully legal here in the US.  It just isn’t possible any more.  I think 50 cents a hand is like the new $1 a hand for multi tabling pros.  If you can make 50 cents a hand online over a very large sample playing many tables at 5/10nl, you are a super star these days.  No limit win rates are looking a lot more like limit holdem win rates these days.

I will be the first to admit, it is brutal out there right now.  Granted, I am running horribly bad this year and am down about 100 buy ins below EV on the year, but I am still up around $150,000 including VPP bonuses.  If I ran half decently and played a bunch, this would be just a nice month for me back in 07’ and 08’.  And the sick thing is that Tableratings has me as one of the top 4 winners at my limit.  So I know that I am doing better than most still, which is even more depressing.  If there were 100 guys in front of me, I would know I just need to work harder and start running better.  But I am still one of the bigger winners which is what is really making me worried.

I actually just came across an old word document that I made in 07’ where I had detailed notes on all 30, that’s right 30, of the regulars I played against at 5/10 and up.  There were some more semi regs of course, but these days I am sure there must be at least 500 or more playing in the games I am at now.  It’s totally nuts.  In fact I am going to get serious about using a HUD again with tons of stats on the screen because I have a terrible idea about each player’s tendencies now.  There are just too many.  People used to ask me why I don’t use a HUD and I would say because there is I play so much with the regulars at the tables that there is nothing a HUD can tell me that I don’t already know about them.  Those days are long gone and I need to use a HUD for sure now to keep track of them all.

The good news is that I don’t think it is going to get much worse.  I just don’t see all of these pros, many of whom are highly intelligent people who could get excellent jobs doing something else, wanting to play poker for little money.  I think there will be a re sorting period in the poker economy where you will see only the strongest survive and the rest will go off and do something else with their lives.  Then the pie won’t be chopped up so many ways and we can all do a little better.

I hate for an aspiring professional to read this and become disheartened.  I suppose if you are aspiring to be a professional and have dreams of making millions and living the baller lifestyle, then yes you should be very disheartened.  But if you are someone who simply wants to work hard at their game and replace their presumably somewhat average income through playing poker rather than working for your dick head boss, then there is no better time to be getting into poker.  As hard as poker has become to make life changing sums of money, it is a great time to grind a lot of hands and make around 6 figures a year.

Poker Stars has a wonderful program where you can pretty much break even at the tables and get around $100K + a year in cash bonuses through their rewards program.  So if you are someone who makes $35,000 a year at a job you hate, if you can work hard at poker and be able to break even at small stakes no limit, you can make about $100,000 a year through multi tabling low stakes games.  Additionally, the legal landscape could change for the better and we could experience a new wave of players that add a tremendous amount of money to poker players’ bottom lines.

I know when I was working for a living at the terrible job I had before becoming a poker pro, that was only a dream to me.  To think I am in a position now to be worried because my 7 figure years are behind me, is something I have to consistently remind myself is a life for which I should be tremendously grateful for.

I have been incredibly tired lately as I have been feeling a little under the weather and have had the most jacked up sleep schedule of all time.  I have pulled a couple of double all nighters due to playing on the Party Poker Big Game as well as commentating for the show for 24 hours straight!!  It has been a crazy and unforgettable week.

I have badly wanted to get home to see my wife and my baby girl, but am unable to come home because of the massive volcano eruption in Iceland that grounded pretty much all of the flights in Europe.  I will have to admit I am pretty sad right now because all I want to do is get home and see my family, but when I get home is completely out of my hands at this point.  It looks like I can leave on Saturday and get into Portland, Oregon on Sunday afternoon.  That feels like 3 lifetimes from now though.  Very frustrating…

I will do a full trip report soon, but for now I just wanted to give some quick updates.  Basically I played on the Big Game for about 7 hours and ran into some tough luck.  I actually was a card rack preflop in getting TT twice, JJ-AA once each in about 100 hands.  Unfortunately I lost about $10,000 pounds on those hands combined which makes it tough to win at poker when that happens, of course.  My biggest pot came when a weaker player at my table decided to ship all in after several raises in front of him with AQ off suit.  I had KK and the flop brought an ace which is pretty much what I expected after I saw his hand pre flop…lol.  Figured there was no way I could dodge that and I was right.

Doing commentary for 24 hours straight in the booth with Jesse May was an unforgettable experience.  First off, I think I will improve my game immensely simply by getting to see 24 hours straight of all the hole cards and watching many of the great LAGish players play their hands.  I think it was quite an education for me and it was a heck of a lot of fun for me as well.  I was only supposed to go into the booth for a couple of hours, but apparently the producers thought highly of my commentary and 2 hours turned in to 24!!  So hopefully my commentary enhances the show in that I was able to really go in to great detail of what I thought of the play of each hand and going through the thought process of what I think the players were thinking and what some good strategies might be.

I did commentary for 24 hours which should mean I am co hosting 8 episodes when the show airs.  I do know that I was fading at a few points towards the end of the broadcast and my commentary was tragically bad at a few points lol.  I actually fell asleep in the booth and was getting woken up by Jesse when critical situations were arising.  I remember at one point he woke me up and asked me what I thought of the Unabomber’s turn play and I mumbled something about how I thought he should check raise here and Jesse said, “Well, he has the button in this hand so that might be pretty difficult!”  It was actually not bad that I said stuff like that because when we are running a 48 hour cash game, we were all fading big time at points and in some ways that is part of what makes the show so awesome and so unique.  Some of the pros made terrible plays late in the session and so did the commentators at times haha.

One play that woke me up and actually gave me a second wind was when I virtually fell out of my chair at the terrible play that Barney Boatman made towards the end of the show.  Barney was fresh as could be since he started the game 42 hours into the show, presumable well rested.  This hand is already being discussed on the <a href=”http://thehendonmob.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34675&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0.com”>The Hendon Mob forum</a> and I can’t believe Barney is defending it.  The play gained some attention because I was fairly critical of it in the booth and my commentary made it onto the Party Poker Blog that was issuing live updates.

Basically just about the whole table limped in to the pot.  Barney had 64s and limped the button.  The flop came down J44.  Phil Laak had AJs and lead into the field.  Barney called.  The turn brought a 7 which gave Phil a flush draw.  Phile bet just under the pot and Barney tanked and tanked.  I was in the booth saying Barney is deciding when, if ever, he should raise Phil.  Barney tanked it some more and then FOLDED!!  That’s right. He folded!!  Presumably when you call on the button with a trashy hand like 64s you are hoping for some type of miracle flop like 3 of a kind or a flush or something.  Barney hit the flop in a major way and didn’t even make it to the river!  It was about the most incredible fold (not in a good way) that I have ever seen in my life and I suppose I had a little trouble not expressing my disbelief in the booth, but I do feel the criticism is warranted.

Anyway, I am pretty surprised that Barney didn’t just admit that he made a bad play or was on scared money.  In fact it was pretty obvious that he was on scared money (although he denies this in the Hendon Mob thread) given the moment he sat down he tried to lower the stakes of the game (he cited his contract which said the game would only be $25/50 pounds) and the entire table became upset at him and asked him to leave the table.  It even resulted in a delay of play.  Barney ultimately decided to stay at the table and agreed to lift his demands to lower the stakes at the table.

Honestly I felt a little bad after the show that I was tremendously critical of his play on air, but after seeing him deny that he wasn’t scared money and that his fold was a good one, I feel glad that I was more critical of his play now.  There is simply no excuse for such a play other than to simply say, “You know what, I messed that play up.”  I have messed up tons of hands and will freely admit that.  I am not perfect, but when I make a clearly tragic play, the last thing I am going to do is publicly defend it with some ridiculous reasons that were obviously untrue.

I look forward to getting home and seeing my family.  I absolutely love London, but being away this long is simply not fun anymore as I deeply miss my family.  I hope the volcano calms down and the ash is no longer a factor to the planes and I can get home.  I miss my girls!

EDIT

Barney is out of town now and wasn’t able to accept my heads up challenge.  If you see this Barney, I will be at the WSOP and will give you all the action you want, if you still want it then.

Also, I saw Barney’s play for all hands and it is true that he did make some aggressive plays and did move some chips around.  It was just odd that he moved chips around when he had nothing and kept checking and folding when he had big hands.  I guess truth be told I have no idea what to make of what was going on in his head.  Anyway, no hard feelings.  You are defending the job you did as a player and I am defending the job I did as commentator, which I think is perfectly reasonable.  My commentating on folding three 4s being a weak play was based 0% in part on knowing the hole cards and 100% on understanding poker and game theory.

Well so far the Big Game went about as poorly as it possibly could.  I basically lost just about every pot I played and got voted off on the first round of eliminations.  I will be able to get back in the game as it will be running for 36 hours more, but man oh man did it go bad.  I am down about $17,000 USD on the show so far.

I got it all in with KK against a very loose amateur player only to lose all in pre flop vs. his AQ.  I got AA cracked by T6 when a guy made 2 pair against me.  I got several good situations that just turned out very poorly in the end….sigh.

So basically what happens is every 6 hours the players themselves vote people off.  I got voted off as one of the bigger losers in the game which is pretty frustrating.  When you run bad you at least want a chance to get things turned around, but I am confident I will get some more cracks at the game before it is through.

Being on the show was pretty fun.  I sat next to Jennifer Tilly and got to chat with her a bit.  Isaac Haxton sat to my left and we had a pretty good time.  Viffer was playing like a total maniac to start off.  He was open shipping like $30,000 into $500 pots which is something you don’t see online too much lol.  In fact you can’t see it online in the games I play as the buy in is usually capped at 100bb and games tend to break before players get super deep.

All in all it has been a fun experience no question.  Sure it sucks to get crushed, but there is no hand where I am too disappointed in my play.  I may not have played each hand perfectly, but I didn’t make any tragic mistakes so I can at least feel good about that.  As poorly as it went, had I simply won the KK hand all in I would be ahead for sure.  When you get all the lewt in with KK and lose, well, obviously you can’t exactly fault yourself.

I am going to catch a nap and hopefully get back in the game later on.  I may get an opportunity to do some commentating in the booth which would be pretty fun.  I think that would be right up my alley since I am used to commenting on hands and going in depth as to the logic behind it.  We’ll see if they want me to do any of that next time I am away from the tables while the game is running.

I will keep everyone posted soon so expect a lot of updates to follow.

Here’s my latest column for Card Player Magazine, on the TRUE life of a poker pro! Hope you enjoy.

Day 1 of the trip is a travel day which pretty much sucks no matter who you are. As much as I could theoretically travel in style and pay $10,000 a ticket to fly on some baller plane and have my own bed, I will probably never feel rich enough to actually pull the trigger on doing something like that. Heck, it has only been 5 years since $10,000 would have seemed like enough money to retire on to me. No way, no how am I going to blow big bucks on a plane ticket so I have been going coach all the way and wow does it suck.

I started in Portland, Or with a 5 AM wake up call (after going to bed “early” at 1AM) and a couple hours later after a commute to the airport I was on a Continental flight to Newark, NJ in the middle seat, obviously. Somehow I paid extra when I was booking the tickets over the phone to get an aisle seat, but still ended up in the middle seat next to a woman, ironically enough, who swears by the same naturopathic Dr. that I see. Small world.

After 6 long hours in the middle seat being dead tired yet having to sit perfectly upright crammed in like a fucking sardine (shit, as I write this maybe I am talking myself into buying the $10,000 ticket next time), we deplaned and I was in New Jersey where I quickly made my way to a restaurant to watch Tiger Woods at the Masters and pound a few beers at the bar served by a classic New Jersey type named Ciro. It was there that I met Jared Tendler, who is traveling with me on this trip to make sure I don’t go on uber tilt and donk off my whole roll in the Big Game haha.

Ciro quickly reminded me of the way they do things in Jersey which is often their way or the highway. I was absolutely starving so I ordered a burger and fries (hey, I have to leave America in style) and since the restaurant was also a high end steakhouse, I decided to get the filet mignon skewers as an appetizer.

Well, Ciro apparently decided that I had ordered too much food and about 15 minutes later he brought out my burger and said, “I canceled your filet skewers; you weren’t going to eat all that meat. Enjoy your burger.” I’m thinking, “Wtf? Thanks for making up your mind on my order haha.” I wasn’t upset or anything. I actually find stuff like that pretty amusing. It takes some balls, but he was dead set in his mind that I had ordered too much and guess what? He was right. I barely made it through the burger and the filet skewers would have just added to the bill. So yeah Ciro for having the balls to risk pissing off a customer only to make LESS money.

As I write this I am about an hour from landing in the Heathrow airport. The folks at the Big Game were kind enough to send a driver to pick Jared and I up and take us to the hotel. That is huge because if it were up to me to get us from the hotel to the airport and have to drive in some mini car on the other side of the road, I am pretty sure that wouldn’t work out too well. Not to mention I am pretty much dead tired. I got 4 hours sleep and then when I arrive at my hotel in London, it will be around 8 AM which really sucks since I am going at it 24 hours straight after only 4 hours of sleep the night before only to arrive early in the morning! How is my sleep schedule doing?

One way or the other I am going to make it to the big boxing match later tonight (I have no idea who is fighting except that my friend Matt Amen knew all about the match) which I am pretty pumped about. I have some sweet tickets and I feel like you can pretty much never go wrong with getting to watch a bunch of guys beat the shit out of each other amongst a rowdy English crowd haha. I have gone to a couple of huge boxing matches at MGM in Vegas and had a great time. I am hopeful that it is even more enjoyable in the UK as the culture over there may just be a little more fun to be around than the Vegas crowd. I love the way they all rallied around Ricky Hatton. I guess the crowd just seemed more like a bunch of fun guys who want to drink a lot of beer and watch a fight, although that is only my perception. In Vegas I feel more like the crowd just wants to watch the fight (before and/or after) snort lines of coke and beat their girlfriend. That is definitely the one thing I did not like about Vegas fights. I simply do not feel safe around the people who go to those fights. Maybe if I can get super baller one day I can go there in style like a guy like Denzel Washington would do and get a security team around me haha. Fat chance.

I am going to keep my blog very updated the next week or so fyi. I will get some pictures to put in the blog. Maybe I can get one of Isildur to post, but it may be one of those situations where he only lets me take a picture of him on the condition that he gets to kill me haha. I will see what I can do, but if nothing else I will get some other cool shots up in my blog quite a bit this week, as well as a recap of what is going on.

Next week I am going to actually play live poker for the first time since the WSOP Main Event in 2008. And I can’t think of a better place to start playing live again than on the BIG GAME in London, England next week. Many have heard the buzz that Isildur will be emerging from behind the curtains to make his first public appearance and I am very excited to get a chance to play with him and all of the other outstanding professionals that will be appearing on the 48 hour high stakes cash game show. I am not sure when the show will actually air, but I am inclined to believe that when it does, it will probably have about the highest ratings imaginable for a poker TV show. Heck, I am just as curious as anyone else to find out more about the young (supposedly) phenom. I am hoping he truly does reveal himself and I don’t wind up sitting next to (some have speculated Isildur will wear a Kermit the frog mask to continue to conceal his identity) Kermit the Frog soul owning me for all my chips!

I am not really going there with any expectations one way or the other on how I will do. Poker is one of the only sport like events where you can play your best and get destroyed, so I tend to never really play poker with any expectations other than to simply play my best each and every hand. It has been quite humbling to have such poor results over the past 6-7 weeks. For the first time in my career I have hit a bad run that I simply can’t shake off. I have stayed the course and played my best, trying to hang in there with every bad beat, and I still have scratched out a not insignificant profit over the past 6-7 weeks, but relative to my past performance, I have never struggled so mightily in my nearly 8 million hand career. For the first time I have been actually looking forward to things like FPP bonuses. Usually they are just icing on the cake, but lately they have been a way too high percentage of my poker earnings, which is something I am intent to try and figure out if there is anything I can be doing differently to change.

Often times bad runs can lead to even greater performances in the future. Usually I am pretty optimistic that will be the case, but I actually feel like I am playing half decently. It seems like the main problem is that I just am really not getting very many great situations. When I flop a set it I am watching the board runner a flush draw and wind up losing a big pot. Or I am just too frequently the guy with QQ against KK or KK against AA. I have too often been the guy with middle set against top set. Stuff like that. We’ve all had it happen to us a million times and I am not immune to it of course, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t bothering me. No matter who you are, it is no fun to run poorly. Despite all that, I would be foolish not to spend some time extensively analyzing my game and seeing what I can find. If I can find a way to play better against the opposition and have that translate into an extra .5bb/100, then that can mean an extra several hundred thousand dollars a year in income given the massive volume of poker I play. In fact, even though I am running poorly, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I was playing better.

Regardless of all that stuff, playing on the big game is going to be a special treat. First off, I have never been to Europe so that alone will make it a lot of fun. It will be great to experience that culture and learn more about what it is all about.

Playing high stakes poker is also something I don’t do much of. I play the high stakes games on Poker Stars nearly every day, but the bulk of it is 5/10 and 10/20. The BIG GAME starts at 25/50 pounds and may end up higher. So that will be pretty fun. I am really not worried that it is a much bigger game than I am used to. The bottom line is that I am plenty rolled for that game and I always just make the play I think is best, the money be damned. But either way, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that playing some of those large pots will get the adrenaline going much more than playing a pot at 10/20 online.