My 2009 WSOP trip got off to such a slow start that I was starting to wonder.

I arrived here in Vegas late Wednesday night, in time to catch a few hours of sleep before a 1k Thursday event at Caesars.  Then when I showed up for the tournament the next day, something felt off.  The turnout wasn’t what I envisioned, the field was way tougher than a “Vegas in June” field ought to be, and I had to force myself to concentrate.  It was the start of my big trip and I felt tired and uninspired as I sat there watching the cards fly by.  I’m not sure which was more disappointing:  busting out quickly or the realization that I couldn’t muster up much excitement about being out here in the desert right now.

Friday and Saturday came and went without much poker.  I thought a little respite might have a rejuvenating effect, but even after a couple of days away from the grind, the looming Series felt more like a daunting task than something to look forward to.  I had some fun going out at night with Mincash and The Mayor™, but I still didn’t feel right.  It didn’t help that I was working through some legitimate homesickness.  I was mildly depressed, and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get things cranking for the 1k “stimulus special” event, which I played today (Day 1B).

I’m happy to say that my doubts were resolved as soon as I got to the Rio this morning.  Although this is my fifth WSOP, when I walked into the Rio’s convention center area today and found it packed to the gills and literally buzzing with donk chatter– I still got charged up.  It’s our Mecca, period.  As I walked to my table, found my seat and looked around, my mood brightened and I instantly remembered how much I love this stuff.

The tourney didn’t disappoint in most aspects:  it was sold out (6,012 runners!) and the quality of play was comedic.  So much so that it has earned my ultimate stamp of weak field approval:  MUPPET SHOW status!

Here is a sneak peek at what I witnessed when I played cards today:

Unfortunately, when you’re cast in a Muppet Show you will occasionally suffer the indignity of a Muppet beatdown.  And that’s what happened to me in Level 5, when I opened a pot under the gun with QQ and called a Muppet’s massive inexplicable reraise all in.  I wasn’t expecting pocket eights, but that’s what the Muppet turned over. Obviously I had no chance.  Maybe next time.  Next:  Venetian 500 tomorrow, WSOP 1.5k Tuesday.

I’m closing with this great picture of my two favorite ladies.  I miss you guys so much right now.

hi guys!

Tomorrow night I depart for the World Series of Poker.  As everyone knows, this is the make-or-break time of year for tournament pros.  The opportunity for a massive score is always around the corner at the WSOP.  Conversely, the possibility of dusting off a huge portion of my bankroll looms as well.

I’m cautiously optimistic.  Optimistic because I believe I’m playing good poker right now. Cautious because I’ll be tested against the best and also because I could play stupendously and still brick the entire series.

Like last year, I intend to play a pretty full schedule.  Every day will bring a new tournament.  Unlike last year, I am now settled into a home life that includes a wife and our puppy.  I’m not overly excited about leaving for (at least) three weeks, I am going to miss my home life terribly.  One week is my maximum desired time away.  But the WSOP is the WSOP.  This is where the big scores are made.  There ain’t no skipping the WSOP.

As always, I will update this space periodically.  If you’re not satisfied with that then there’s my Twitter spew.  http://twitter.com/SugDpoker

I’m gonna do suckas like this.  Don’t F with meeeee!:

Tech house always wins.  You know this.

 Off to the desert!

The internet is the greatest and the internet is the worst. 

You can file 93% of the items on the internet (including this website) under “greatest.”  I love the internet as much as the next guy.  Probably more.  Janeen insists that I have a raging case of untreated internet addiction, and she’s probably right.

But not everything on the internet rules.  Under “worst,” please save space for the most recent spate of social networking sites.  What started out as a great system to renew old friendships and possibly create new ones has devolved into a symphony of dimwits spewing their inane stupidities at no one in particular.

I’m talking about Facebook status updates and Twitter.  Until a few minutes ago, I had first hand knowledge of only Facebook status updates.  Where else can you possibly find out what some random guy you went to high school has selected as his top five potted plants?  Where else can you suffer through an unrelenting barrage of semi-coherent political rants from your outwardly quiet, nebbishy co-worker?  Or how about my personal favorite: the opportunity to learn what someone had for lunch?  Fascinating!  Yes, Facebook status updates encourage even the most boring and insipid amongst us to spew forth every hour or two, like millions of Old Faithfuls, geysers of retardation.  Thank you Facebook!

And then there’s Twitter, which boils Facebook (which, to its credit, includes lovely things like places to post pictures, event invitations and the capacity to email each other, etc.) down to just the status updates.  On a few occasions I have marveled at how popular Twitter has become, as it seems to be nothing more than an outlet for attention whores to gather and pretend they have something interesting to say.  What does Twitter’s popularity say about us?  The answer has to be something bad. 

This characterization feels pretty accurate:

But now I’ve joined.  I’ve been told that Twitter is the best way for a tournament poker pro to send chip count/tourney status information along, and I’ve been convinced that the universe of people who actually give a shit about my WSOP tournament progress might be larger than I suspected, so here I am!

http://twitter.com/SugDpoker

Now you can find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about my climb from 5000 chips to 5600 after Levels 1 and 2 of some random WSOP event!  

It’s not like this blog isn’t generally masturbatory to begin with, right?  Yayyyyy!

Feel free to reply in the comment section with your own Twitter shit if you’d like to “follow” (?) one another.  TWEET!

In my first tournament back from hiatus (okay, I’m not including Mohegan Sun), I made yesterday’s final table of the $1k event at Harrah’s.  Pretty nice, but I finished with a thud.

In one respect I am very happy, because I managed to finesse my way there.  I never had a commanding stack at any point in the entire tournament.  I also survived a really nasty rivered two-outer that left me crippled just before the bubble and rebuilt everything from there.

On the other hand, the final table itself was very disappointing.  I came in 6th in chips, and despite drawing the worst seat at the table, I felt confident that I could find some good spots and do some damage.  The lineup of players who made it there wasn’t too impressive.  Still, it didn’t happen for me.  I held nothing but dirt the entire time, lost the first significant pot I played, then waited a long time to get my money in.  When I looked down and saw two kings, I reshoved it on pocket tens.  One player announced that he had folded a ten, but that didn’t stop the case diez from falling on the turn.  Even had I won the hand, I’d still be pretty short.  Just not a good day. I finished 8th for $5,300.  So it goes.

That runs my total final tables for the year to five, which is a respectable number considering how much time off I’ve taken.  The bad news is that my gross earnings is a rather paltry number in light of the five final tables.  I’m like the Knish of tournament poker, I guess.

Back to the grind…

The blog posts have come to a standstill for a reason:  nothing has been going on with me.  I have played maybe a couple of hours of poker since April 1st and have spent the last couple of days trying to figure out why.

I should give credit to all the folks who laughed in my face when I told them I’d still be playing 40 hours of poker per week even after I became a family man.  With only a wife and a puppy this is impossible–lord help me if we ever add offspring to the mix.  I am Ruthie’s daytime caretaker, and she simply cannot be left unattended for more than five minutes or mass destruction can and will ensue.  She has also recently learned that whining at the top of her lungs will get her released from her crate if anyone has the gall to lock her up. She reliably wakes up sometime around 7:00 am and commences whining (and is very lucky that she is so cute).  These are not ideal conditions for playing online poker tournaments (nor for sleeping in, which was once my forté).  

And then of course there is Janeen, who works hard every day and expects something resembling relaxation when she gets home.  Disappearing into my office to fire up a bunch of donkaments and leaving her alone with our evil puppy isn’t the nicest way of saying “hey honey, how was your day?”  My window of opportunity for playing online poker is at night, after my wife and puppy have gone to bed.  Imagine how pleasant Ruthie’s early morning baying sounds when your last waking activity was bubbling a $26 tournament on Full Tilt at 5:23 am.  I have been told that Ruthie will at some point become a normal adult dog, which is currently hard to conceive of.    

In the past month I’ve also come to grips with another reason for my inactivity:  plain old complacency.  I’m just not that motivated (a recurring theme in my life!).  Don’t get me wrong:  I love poker and I’ve worked really hard on my game.  I never could have made it this far without a strong will to succeed.  Still, one of the byproducts of my new friendships with other pro poker players is a fresh perspective on how I compare to them.  And nearly all of them are way more into poker than me.  I sometimes get tired of playing poker, many do not.

I think this is both a blessing and a curse.  It certainly sucks that I have chosen (read:  prefer) a lifestyle that will keep me from ever reaching my full potential.  Barring anything but the most miraculous over-expectation mega-tear, I am never going to finish near the top of Cardplayer’s Player of the Year race.  Also, my desire to study poker has waned.  My long-held goal of learning to become expert at another form of poker will likely never happen, and I will never teach myself to effectively multitable online tournaments.  In terms of learning new tricks, I’m out of gas.  When a group of guys is discussing poker hands (supposedly the best way to improve your game), I usually suppress my yawns and am invariably the first one to excuse himself and go find something else to do.  I am certainly driven, but I’m also cursed by the absence of an overdrive setting in my machinery.  Sadly, this flaw (along with my sub-genius intellect) will keep me from becoming an all-time great.  

Then again, this is also a blessing.  A lot of the guys who say they’re “driven to be the best!” are actually just addicted to poker, a concept that is considerably uglier.  Those who allow poker to consume their entire lives remind me of those freakshow bodybuilders you see on ESPN 2 at 3:00 in the morning.  You know– those guys who smear grease all over themselves then stand on stage in a Speedo, contorting themselves into bizarre poses, with crazy muscles bulging out of every square inch of their bodies?  Yeah, those weirdos.  In their worlds the line between bodybuilding and real life somehow got blurry, and they ended up in an alternate reality where it’s okay for your head (and genitals?) to look like a pimple on a grapefruit.  

A lot of poker players are the same way.  Poker ain’t life and life ain’t poker.  For a lot of guys, somewhere along the way life became 350 days a year in a casino, living out of a suitcase and spending your spare time discussing nothing but three-betting hand ranges.  For how many years can someone honestly pull that off? The sick part is that a lot of the guys that live this way are not winning players.  They eat, drink, sleep and shit poker but somehow are not profitable.  Trust me when I tell you that there is something peculiarly pathetic about a guy who spends all his waking hours in the poker world yet still cannot figure out a way to beat the game. 

To some, this probably sounds like the rant of an old guy stuck playing a young man’s game.  In a way that’s true; my station in life is definitely different than many of my peers’.  But (chronologically speaking) I chose poker first and domestication second.  I’m where I want to be.  I just need to remind myself (and now, you) of that sometimes.

Also, I don’t mean to downplay my overall drive or how competitive I am.  I have a ton of pride; if you run into me with twelve players left in a live tournament, don’t expect to find me feeling less than fully committed to busting your ass.  I am just saying that I have my limits.

In closing, happy six-month anniversary to my beautiful wife Janeen.  I love you!

I’ve been playing tournament poker for three years and have more combined TV time doing drunk interviews in a Snuggie than I do playing cards. 

SnuggieFest now officially ranks among the greatest David Zeitlin/Matt Catapano goofball capers, and there have been many.

No poker at all going on in these parts, but the blog is starting to get neglected. Life update, for those keeping score at home:

Snuggie Fest 2009 was a big success. About thirty Snug-a-maniacs braved the cold and rain and got sloshed. We got written up in Time Out New York, the Village Voice, and Gothamist. And we were interviewed for a segment that will supposedly air next week on CNBC.

I’m an uncle again! My sister gave birth to Zia Victoria Mellor on April 13th! She’s a cute little peanut.

Zia and Ezra!

I managed to get invited to the New York Mets’ annual welcome home dinner, where Matt and I purposely focused on collecting pictures with the club’s B-list employees while everyone else clamored to get player autographs. Brilliant!

Ruthie is a huge pain in the ass but is adorable. Here she is looking somewhat forlorn in her cone after getting fixed.

I went to CitiField to witness the finished product last night. There’s been a lot of bitching and moaning about the new stadium amongst fellow Mets fans, and I have no idea what sort of bug has crawled up these peoples’ asses. It’s a fantastic place to watch a ballgame. It looks, feels and is nothing like our old beloved dumphole, Shea Stadium, which is now a parking lot. The Mets won, but no one was really there to see a ballgame.

My next poker action is still a week away, at Mohegan Sun.  I’ll be chasing a puppy around until then.

The scene:

It was late at night on March 29, 2009.  Actually, probably very early in the morning on March 30th.  I had been playing poker all day at the illustrious Foxwoods Resort and Casino in a $1500 No Limit Hold ‘Em event, and the field had whittled itself down to two tables.  Fifteen players remained.  We were playing down to the final table before quitting for the night.  I short-stacked my way all the way there.  I was tired but focused.

Seated two seats to my left was a young fellow pro with a lot of big cashes to his credit.  He’s confident, tricky and dangerous. Seated to his direct left, three seats away from me, was an older amateur.  He is neither tricky nor dangerous, but he certainly was not scared.  He’s what we call a station:  he was playing more pots than anyone else at the table.  These two players both had plenty of chips and had been clashing a lot in the prior hour or so, and also sparring verbally.  Then the following hand developed:

Blinds were 3,000-6,000 with an ante.  Both players had stacks of about 300,000.  Everyone folded to the pro in the small blind and he raised to $18,000.  Old Amateur immediately called.

“Spite calling me now, huh?” snapped the pro as he glared at Old Amateur.  Old Amateur remained steely in his cap and sunglasses.

The flop came K-Q-7 with two clubs.  Pro checked and Old Amateur bet 33,000.  Pro quickly called.

The turn was another seven.  Pro checked and Old Amateur made another healthy bet of 56,000.  Pro considered briefly and called.  Big pot brewing.

The river was the four of clubs, making the final board K-Q-7-7-4 with a flush possibility.  Pro checked and Old Amateur studied for about ten seconds before turning to Pro and asking:

“How much you got left?”  The answer was around 180,000.  Old Amateur studied for a few more seconds then announced that he was all in.  

This news widened the Pro’s eyes.  He stared at Old Amateur with disgust, then got out of his chair and walked behind it.  He leaned forward heavily, using the vacated chair for support.  Then he shot Old Amateur a longer, even more disgusted look.  Then he sat back down and deliberately said “I call,” never taking his eyes off Old Amateur.

Old Amateur’s despondent reaction was to sit there stone faced, refusing to turn over his cards.  It was obvious after a few seconds:  He had zilch.  Nothing.  

Pro, now practically seething with adrenalized bravado, looked straight at Old Amateur with wild eyes and said “c’mon, c’mon!” the same way Rocky Balboa once uttered those same words after absorbing Ivan Drago’s best.  Still, neither player turned over their cards.

Then Old Amateur finally dejectedly muttered “I have nothing,” and flipped his cards face down towards the muck.  I managed to catch a glimpse from my vantage point:  10-5 offsuit.

Now the Pro sprang back to his feet.  In one fluid motion he grabbed his hole cards, flipped them over in his right hand, lifted his arm up over his head, then SLAMMED the cards face up onto the felt:  pocket threes.  Then, with a mixture of bluster and utter contempt, as the pot was shipped in his direction, he screamed:

“YEAH SON!  THAT’S HOW WE DO IT ON LONG ISLAND!”

Wait, what?!  This comment diverted my attention completely from the great call he had just made.  All I could focus on were the most hilarious words I had ever heard at a poker table.

Whaaaaaaat!?!? That’s how you do it on Long Island?  Wait.  No way.  WHAT?!

Where do I start?  Holy crap.

First, is Long Island a hotbed of poker talent?  Wow, I didn’t know that!  News to me.  

Second, Long Island isn’t a bad place, but it’s also not the kind of place you’re allowed to rep like that. Long Island is where your parents moved so that they could have a yard and get you a decent public education. Unless your grandparents were farmers, fishermen or innkeepers, you’re probably a first generation Long Islander; your family hasn’t been there forever.  Your parents lived in Brooklyn or Queens (maybe the Bronx), then one day they found a nice house in Levittown that they could afford. So you had a swing set. You hung out at your local diner a lot.  Then you hopefully went off to college somewhere else, and if you were lucky you never returned.  Jesus Christ, you’re allowed to have deep long island roots, but you don’t brag about it! When you do that, you inadvertently advertise the fact that you were zooming up and down Deer Park Avenue in your retarded Camero while the rest of us were in college. 

Third, you really need to be more specific about this.  Long Island is a big, diverse place.  You can’t say “that’s how we do it on Long Island.” Eight million people live on Long Island.  You need to give me something to work with, like a specific town.  ‘Cause I gotta know:  exactly who on Long Island does it that way?  

Is that how Mrs. Jones does it while she shops for discounted fine china at the Fortunoff’s on Old Country Road?

Is that how all the suits reading the Newsday sports section while they wait for the 6:38 at the Hicksville LIRR station do it?

Is that how an old lady humming Chattenooga Choo Choo at her kitchen table whilst cutting coupons out of the Waldbaum’s weekly circular does it?

Is dat how da boyz do it down at Sal’s Pizza, next to the stationary store ovah in da strip mall?  Or maybe those waitresses at the Ben’s Deli in Wheatley Plaza?

Wait, it’s probably how those slobs do it in the bowling alley on Jericho Turnpike?

Madon a mia, is that how they do it at St. Rocco’s in Glen Cove?

Oy vey, is this how they do it before Friday night shul at Temple Beth-El down in Hewlett?

Or maybe that’s how they do it in the arcade in that big Nathan’s in Oceanside?

It could be how little red-faced Johnny does it while he eats a delicious Marino’s Cherry Italian Ice with a wooden spoon over at Jones Beach?

Is it how we do at the fancy Commack Motor Inn?  Or the White Castle next door?

Is it how those fat nasty ex-jocks playing softball in Eisenhower park do it?

No wait, it must be how they do it at the Artful Dodger in Huntington, or Tavern on the Plaza in Locust Valley, or Partners in Sea Cliff, or Finn Mac Cool’s in Port Washington, or maybe McHebe’s in Hempstead, or Dublin Pub in New Hyde Park or possibly even Mulcahy’s in Wantaugh?

Maybe it’s how we all used to do it when we went rollerskating at Laces and the DJ dropped Shannon–Let The Music Play ?  Or how we used to do it at NY Arrows games at Nassau Coliseum, or how we did it when we bought baseball cards at the Roosevelt Field Flea Market, or when Roosevelt Field was all about Le Petit Mall and Lum’s, or when we went bong shopping at Utopia, or when we chilled at the Oak Beach Inn (“OBI”) in Bay Shore back in the day!?

See, I know from what I’m talking here.  But I also know you can’t shout out Long fucking Island that way. Jesus Christ man, WTF are you smoking!?  How we do it on Long Island, LOL…

Parting thought:

After a pretty horrendous January and a so-so February, I have made a bit of a breakthrough.  March 2009 was my most productive month in my three-plus years of playing tournament poker.  It was not one of my highest grossing months and I didn’t have any outright wins, but it was easily my most consistently dominant stretch of tournaments ever.  I made it to four final tables in three different locations, including one in a 5k main event.  I also accomplished a rare feat:  back to back final tables this past weekend at Foxwoods. It’s satisfying to get deep in so many tournaments in such a short period of time.  Lots of my colleagues–including some whom I have the utmost respect for–have recently paid me some really nice compliments, and that is also especially gratifying.

So what happened?  Am I running insanely hot right now or have I turned some kind of a corner as a poker player?  It would be convenient to say the latter is the case, but it would also be self serving.  The truth is likely closer to the former; I’ve definitely won a lot of coinflips late in these tournaments.  I do feel particularly dialed in right now– my understanding of preflop hand ranges is pretty impeccable (if i may say so), but for the most part I think my number is just getting called more often than it has in the past.

Either way, I have no complaints and hope to continue popping up at final tables.  

I haven’t had a really good night sleep in weeks, so I’m not interested in describing any key hands I’ve recently played, but I expect I’ll get around to it sometime soon.  Also, I have a few amusing stories to tell. Probably next time.

Again, to those of you who have recently given me props:  thank you.

Also, take a look at what else I’ve been up to.  I’m quite the multi-tasking guy.  Not only have I been appearing at final tables near you, I’ve been penning diatribes for NYC in the ongoing war between Chitown and NY Snuggie entusiasts.  Snuggie pride y’all!    www.snuggiefest.com

I’ve only played one tournament since Caesar’s.  Janeen and I have placed our lives as we knew them on hold thanks to Ruthie.  Our days and nights are fully dedicated to the difficult chore of looking after our puppy, who I’ve begun to call (somewhat affectionately) “LT” or “Little Terror.”  She is a miniature tornado.  We have time for absolutely nothing else right now. 

I can sense all the parents out there in the blogisphere collectively rolling their eyes, but I’m sure that my seven-week old puppy is more difficult than any of your children ever were.  Imagine a witless, diaperless, rampaging two year old child that urinates every half an hour, defecates every two hours, and in the interim runs around shredding everything in her path.  Now imagine that you don’t have the assistance of a nanny or a day care provider.  That’s my life right now.  I did manage to play one tournament–the Borgata Deep Stack event from this past weekend, and this blog entry is sort of about that.

One never knows when he might be visited by an existentialist epiphany.  Well, for many of us the answer is never, but I do occasionally stumble into deep thought.  My latest such episode occurred this past Sunday morning as I stared blankly through my windshield as my car hurtled southward down the Garden State Parkway, Borgata bound.  A sports talk program was droning white noise through my radio speakers.  I was sipping coffee from a perforated hole in a plastic cup, still half asleep, when a question posed itself.

What was I doing?

The short answer:  driving to a poker tournament in Atlantic City early on a Sunday morning.  But I was searching for an answer of larger magnitude.

What was I really doing? 

I’m a professional gambler, and I’m pretty good at poker.  My expected value in these tournaments is a positive number.  I was doing my job.  

That answer was still not enough.  

On the deepest level my pea brain is capable of pondering, what was I doing?

(Here I must warn the reader that my background in existentialist philosophy begins and ends with a novel by Milan Kundera that I read many years ago; if you don’t want to hear my amateur philosophical musings please click on something else immediately).

Start with a premise that horrifies most people:  our lives are pointless.  There is no point to our time earth. Our stupid lives are hilariously pointless, devoid of meaning.  No matter what we do or how much we “accomplish” in our short lives, we come and we go, and then everything moves forward without us.  Poof.  Our existence is futile.  Mankind has been grappling with this difficult reality since time immemorial.  Concepts like purpose and legacy and meaning have emerged to combat the unbearable lightness of our lives.  In the end, there’s nothing weighty or important about all the thing we spend our lives agonizing over.  Oh noes. 

Man is obsessed with his collective fear of the lightness, so people occupy themselves with all manner of weighty plans and ideas.  We are encouraged to work hard, to contribute to society, to achieve, to make things better for those who come after us, make others proud, to leave our mark, to make a difference.  But in the end, all of that is bullshit.  There is nothing we can do to alleviate the ultimate absurdity of our lives.  Nothing makes a difference and all those concepts exist only to comfort us and shield us from the pointlessness of everything.  This is absolutely beguiling to people and will never be accepted by most.

So why was I driving a car down the Garden State Parkway so that I could play a poker tournament?

I was pursuing the concept of living light.  Professional gambling is attractive to some of us for a reason:  it is supposed to offer a means of escape from a world in which all that heavy shit is crammed down your throat.  Gamblers are supposed to be the free-wheelers of society; we live in the moment, we make our own schedules and we are our own bosses.  We live our lives on our own terms, free from many of the demands foisted upon others.  More fundamentally, we are embracing the lightness that most can’t bear:  we’re not concerned with adding value to society or of fulfilling some imaginary purpose.  We spend our days playing a game.

And that is precisely why professional gambling seems so vacuous and insipid to a lot of folks:  “You play a game for a living.  What is the purpose of that?  What meaning is there in that?  What value are you adding to society?”  The answer to those three questions, respectively, is none, none and none.  But so what?  Every day, this profession puts me in a realm where only the game matters, and within that realm I come closer to pure awareness than most ever will.  Isn’t that enough?

Unfortunately, those last two paragraphs are not exactly an accurate portrayal of my world.  Those are idealistic concepts I’ve expressed.  Even the freewheeling world of professional poker is permeated by the same heaviness that the rest of the world suffers with.  Even professional gamblers (myself included)–the very people who have managed to make their escape–find the lightness of being unbearable.  We need concrete things to grab onto.  We occupy ourselves by incessantly comparing our profit margin to others’, we complain about the structures of our tournaments, we worry about going broke, we bitch about bad beats.  Oh, it’s so hard for us.  And many of us are so driven to win, achieve, win, achieve that we render ourselves incapable of doing what drew us to professional gambling in the first place:  appreciating our daily lives.

Having pondered all this, I experienced a moment of unusual clarity as I continued to drive southward down the Jersey shore.  I resolved to try and thwart that classic existentialist dilemma:  to not constantly preoccupy myself with bullshit and enjoy my life for what it is.  In the end, none of this freakin’ matters anyway.   I’m a poker tournament grinder, and I’m lucky to be one.  I enjoy what I do.  Life is (and ought to be!) good.  Although it really hurts when Ruthie bites my toes.

At Borgata, freshly epiphinated, I played my best day of poker in recent memory.  Everything I did worked, even though I ran bad throughout the day.  I had a decent stack going into Day 2, and on Day 2 I built it upward until I was threatening to take my table over completely.  I was all set to dominate.  And then it fell apart in the span of two hands.  I made a really bad read (committing my favorite error, ascribing too much sophistication to an opponent in a big spot) and then stacked off with QQ against a very tight player’s AA.

The sting of defeat that usually accompanies a bustout was absent.  I packed up my things and hit the highway, happy to be returning to my wife and pup.  It was a crisp, remarkably clear day.  The sky was so blue and the sun shone so brightly that even the Raritan River gleamed as I crossed from New Jersey into Staten Island.  As soon as I walked in my front door, Ruthie ran to my feet and chomped at my shoelaces.  I had blown an opportunity to make a big score, but so what?  Life is good.  

There is only one person I have ever personally known who was consistently capable of embracing the lightness of life, and that was my grandfather (he is also the person who first taught me how to play poker).  His conscience was always free from worry and he lived in the moment.  I think that only his strict catholic upbringing (“pointlessness” is definitely not in the catholic vernacular!) kept him from mastering a life completely free and clear of imaginary obstructions.  As it was, he was a wondrous person who brimmed with legitimate positivity and refused to kowtow to convention. One of his mantras was his succinct way of telling everyone to appreciate their lives: Count Yer Blessings!, and that’s what I’m about to do.

-I’m blessed to live in a time when being a professional gambler is relatively easy.  Thanks to the internet and television, I don’t have to be an absolute savant to make a living at gambling.  We’re a pretty healthy little sub-sect of society nowadays.  Only ten years ago, the life I have chosen for myself would have been impossible.  Now it only takes dedication and a modicum of ability.  I am blessed to have both.

-I’m blessed to have a family that supports me.  Janeen gets everything about what I do and is my biggest fan.  To the surprise of many, my parents are equally supportive.  I was proud to have my father along with me two weeks ago at Caesar’s.  Not only did he sweat my brief appearance at the final table, he experienced a complete day with me on the road and met many of my new poker player friends.  He has done his share of hanging out with losing gamblers, so I imagine that he really appreciated getting to meet a handful of winners from the poker community.

-I’m blessed that poker is practically recession-proof.  The turnouts for the tournaments I grind have been stellar this year, and there are no signs that things will slow down.  We’d need to get blasted with a full-blown bread line, “brother can you spare a dime?” kind of depression for poker tournaments to lose their steam.  To that end, I’m blessed that I have as little to do with corporate America and corporate law firms as possible right now.  If Janeen wasn’t so intimately involved in that world, I’d feel smug–very smug indeed– about this fact.  Janeen is constantly coming home with news of corporate layoffs, law firms closing their doors, downsizing, etc., and several friends of mine have recently been laid off.  Sounds like a lot of misery begetting misery.  Not my thing.  I’m blessed to have bailed out when I did.

That’s all for now.  I’m off to Foxwoods tonight for a couple of tournies.  Good luck to The Mayor and MC, who have made Day 2 of the $600 Event up there.