Where to begin? Why not the beginning? Wednesday night. I decide I’m not going to take drugs. I’m not going to take a sleeping pill (which I usually do the night before a tournament) . Big mistake number one. Normally I sleep from about 2 until 730. But I figure I need a really good night’s sleep so I hit the hay at about 1, but my son’s bar mitzvah portion is running in my head and I can’t turn it off. So I lie there for an hour, so what was the point of going to bed early!? And at 430 I awaken. Fucking birds! What are they yelling about? And why at 430 in the morning? Endless squawking and chirping and none of it making any sense. It’s like a US presidential debate. So there’s two and a half hours of blissful sleep the night before a tourny. Let this be a lesson to you kids. Take drugs.

So I get to the island airport in the nick of time, grab the ferry (that sounds weird!) and within seconds I’m in my seat in that little plane. I don’t mind flying. I hate planes. It’s not the soaring through the air that freaks me out, it’s the confinement. But again I decide that given the circumstances, I will take this flight solo, in that I will not be flying with my good friend Ativan, who has accompanied me on every flight I have ever taken for the last 25 years or so. On certain flights he even brought a friend (or two). Not today. And I’m keeping it together barely until the door shuts. Let me rephrase that – until the door makes this sound SHHHHH_KERRR-SHPLANK-SHHHHHH. Ok maybe it didn’t sound like that, but in that moment it sounded to me like a massive steel hunk of sheer entrapment – the kind you see in the movies on a bank vault or (maybe more appropriately) a mausoleum. I hate that sound. It’s that moment when the door closes and we’re still on the ground, and I still have the option to run down the aisle and bang on the door until they let me out, that freaks me out the most.

So I take my head out of knees and I say to the innocent bystander beside me “Talk to me, otherwise I’m going to make a run for it.” And she does. Her name is Michelle and we have everything in common. She’s tall, blond and good-looking. So OK fine, we have nothing in common. But she has two kids (like me), and she’s a kind soul (like me), and she talks me through take-off and subsequently the entire flight. In fact we bond so much that I even tell her about this stupid blog, which she is reading right now. Or at least she said she would. But probably she was just being nice. Probably she threw out the piece of paper I scrawled the website on as soon as I was out of eyesight. Bitch.

So let’s talk about poker for a second. I get to The Playground Poker Club with no real help from my cab driver. Cab drivers in Montreal are useless. And needless to say he doesn’t speak English, but it’s even worse than most cab drivers because in Montreal they don’t speak English, in French!

Playground is big. Check-in is easy. And for the first hour poker is even easier. For the first hour I’m putting on a clinic. I’m doing exactly what I said I would this time. I’m raising pre-flop about every other hand regardless of my holding, I’m bullying the table in exactly the way I know how. The Quebecois guy beside is so nice and friendly, laughing and having the gayest old time. Then I slow-play Kings so perfectly to take him out, and double my stack, and he stands up and mutters “Merde, putain piqure!” My French is not so good, but I think that means “Nice playing with you, good luck in all your endeavours”.

I’ve turned my 30K into 80K in the first hour and I imagine I must be chip leader. And then The Hand. I open with a reasonable mid-size raise with pocket 9’s. I get two customers. Flop come 986 rainbow. Beautiful. I C-bet for about two thirds of the pot because I’ve been doing that virtually every hand, nobody can put me on anything in particular. I’m down to one customer. The turn is a blank (a 3 maybe?) so I again lead out for two thirds. He calls. The river is a J. I’ve seen scarier rivers. I lead out for most of his stack. He shoves for an iota more. I call. He has JJ. He hit his two-outer. It’s about a 55K pot. If I win it I’m well over 100K. As it is down to just over 50. Still healthy, but you know how one hand can literally take the wind out your sails? OK not literally, because I don’tactually have sails. But it was a crusher. After that it was like running up hill in three fleece sweat suits with a tea kettle in each hand.

This blog is too long. And I’m writing this on a train and I’ve slept 6 hours in the last 72. I’m ending it here. I need to catch a few z’s. Stay tuned for part Doux.

Spoiler Alert: I made it to Day 2!