Apologies for bringing you nothing of real substance here, just my second consecutive not-so-thinly-veiled brag post.  It’s all I’ve got right now, unless the world wants to hear about my life consisting mostly of studying NFL football rosters for the past ten days (thanks to Janeen for understanding!).

That is a screen shot of my current PokerPages profile, and as you can see by my expert highlighting job, I have reached one million dollars in lifetime earnings.

That picture of me was actually snapped before I had any idea that anyone bothered to track poker tournament earnings.  It was March of 2006 and I still had no idea whether I was going to be a tournament player, a cash game player, some combination thereof, or whether I would slip quietly into the night and back to a “normal” job of some kind.  Then I hit my first big tournament score (at Foxwoods, natch), which not only irrevocably altered my career path but also resulted in the photograph you see above.

After I drove home I engaged in some typical self-adulation:  I searched the internet for reports on my triumphant win.  It was then that I discovered the world of Cardplayer and PokerPages player rankings and saw that I had my very own profile that any schmuck with an internet connection could see.  As I perused other players’ entries, I saw that some of them had logged impressive numbers of tournament cashes.  A select few had reached a pinnacle that I then thought unimaginable:  one million in career earnings.  I envisioned that I would someday become rather baller if I had one million in earnings.  Rather baller indeed.

As I got within striking distance of the seven figure mark this year, I must admit that I began to monitor my approach closely.  Probably because of the initial impression created when I first clicked through those profiles in 2006, getting there was a big deal to me and I’m happy about it.   I’m particularly proud that my million is a “heavy” million.  And by that I mean that it is solid figure.

I play a lot of tournaments but not the super insane “live out of a suitcase” schedule.  I play my own bankroll.  I have only played seven $10,000 buy in events in my life, and I satellited into five of them.  I have only signed for significantly more than I actually won in a tournament one time.  My largest cash is only 1/4th of my total arnings.  There are no inflated figures up there; what you see is what you get.  I’m an official real deal tourney grinder who took 3.5 years to reach a million in earnings.  Not too shabby.

As it is vainly dedicated to discussing my salary, this blog entry puts me squarely in the ignoble  “tourney earnings watchdog” category (current chairman:  Gordon Eng), but it is what it is.  I’m really proud of reaching this goal.  I was waiting for PokerPages to get their ass in gear so I could mention it.

Thank you for listening to me brag.  Next time I’ll probably have something interesting to say about either football or the Borgata!