OK, so it’s been about a year since my last blog. So what!? Sometimes the days just slip away from you. Who among us hasn’t been guilty of that from time to time? Fess up. Who doesn’t have a best-friend-from-high school, ex-spouse, blind uncle, or Guatemalan Foster Child that you just keep meaning to drop a line to, but somehow it never happens? C’mon, let me see a show of hands! OK then, I think I’ve made my point. Let’s move on.

Besides, the truth is that 2009 was a very uneventful time for me, poker-wise. There just hasn’t been much to report. To fill the page I’d have had to resort to combining my dullish poker stories with non-poker related current events leading to entries like:

“It snowed today. My Aces got cracked by 67 suited.”

Or “It was sunny today. The Leafs lost. I hit my gutshot on the turn.”

Or “Traffic was heavy on the DVP. Sarah Palin wrote something on her hand. I spiked a 3 on the river to fill my tight”

Redundantly boring and boringly redundant, don’t you see? It was without a doubt my most banal year of poker ever. Oh, I showed a modicum of profit for the year but if I amortize the amount won over the hours and energy spent, I figure I’d have done slightly better working as a migrant Chinese labourer on a rice plantation in Guanzhou. And while that line of work would have been decidedly harder on my back, the plantation wins for lack of stress and the elevated social circles, not to mention the great tan I’d be sporting.

Which brings me to why I am writing today. Finally I have something to say.

2010 started with the most disgusting, soul-destroying, gut-checking, heartbreaking, on-line poker losing streak I’d ever seen. Live poker wasn’t going so well either. I told my friend Dom that I needed an intervention. He told me I needed a win. Ultimately he was right of course. And eventually I got one, which eased the pain immensely. And as so often happens, one thing leads to another, and the very next day I got another win, this time for a seat in the inaugural tournament of the newly-formed NAPT (North American Poker Tour). It starts this Saturday February 20th at noon sharp. It’s a $5000 buy-in at The Venetian Hotel in my home-away-from-home, Las Vegas, Nevada. This is significant in more ways than one, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

Y’see, the last time I was in a really big tournament (in the Bahamas in January of 2009) I decided not to blog. I posited that perhaps the blogging was too distracting, taking me “off my game”. Turns out it was my weak play that was distracting, I guess. My results at the big tournaments were consistently unprofitable, avec or sans blog.

Moreover the problem is this: at the big tournaments you have essentially two kinds of people. Pros and amateurs. Needless to say, within the two categories you have various subsets. Certainly there are good amateurs and bad amateurs (I think I’m a good amateur). There are good pros and there are better pros. But you can be sure of one thing. The pros seek to feed on the amateurs and they mean to do that early. Amateurs are like hors deurves to the pros. Tasty morsels to fill up on, and build their appetites for the main course – each other. But every once in a while one of those little noshies can get stuck in their throat causing the gag reflex to kick in. Or (to take this disgusting analogy a step further), perhaps get wedged into that spot between their lateral incisors and their first molar resulting in a puss-inducing bloody gingivitis. Well, come this Saturday, I plan to be that gum disease.

Mah–nish–tah–na, you ask? (some of you, anyway) Why should this tournament be different from all other tournaments? Here’s why.

When I play on-line, or at my bi-weekly Tuesday tournament, or my once-in-while Friday tournament, my attitude is exactly where it should be. I’m focused and relaxed and most importantly I’m quite willing to die for my cause. It doesn’t always work out, but it’s the only mindset you can have if you want to have any success at tournament poker. In Copenhagen, in Monte Carlo, in The World Series, in The Bahamas, I have to admit I just wasn’t playing my game. I wasn’t tight-aggressive, I was just tight. I was blown off too many hands by young savvy pishers who knew that I just wasn’t going out in the first hour, period. They knew that I didn’t come all that way to play for ten minutes. And I knew that they knew. And they knew that I knew that they knew that I knew. And believe me, that’s as frustrating to experience, as it is to read.

For them, however, these 18 year old math nerd poker geniuses who travel the poker circuit all over the globe, what do they give a fuck? To them, Monte Carlo is just another stop on their European tour, with a paltry 15K buy-in. When you’ve got 900 grand in your Pokerstars account and you live with your freakin’ parents!? and you don’t have a wife or even a girlfriend!? and you don’t have kids!? and you’re not renovating your fucking kitchen!? What’s 5 or 10 or 15 grand on a poker tournament? No big deal. They sit back and relax and feed on the sardines. And they play their game.

But this time the playing field’s a little more level. First of all, I’m taking a side trip to Los Angeles to take several meetings (note that when you’re a big-shot agent like me, you don’t “go to” meetings, you “take” meetings). This is notable because turning this into a business trip gives the whole matter a broader sense of purpose (not to mention a sizable tax-dodge). It’s as if the all-expenses paid poker tournament is merely incidental. Also I won’t be gone for that long. Also, I don’t know if you heard, but The Venetian does not have the monopoly on poker in Las Vegas. If I go out early in this one, I’ll just paddle over to The Bellagio or The Wynn and see what they are serving up. And also who gives a shit, I won my seat, and it’s only 5 grand, a pittance, ESPECIALLY when put into the context of how much it is costing me to renovate my fucking kitchen!

So the results may be the same, but I can assure you of one thing: this time no pimply-faced adolescent will be serving ME up on a cracker!

Stay tuned.

RC