Sunday Feb. 21 I’m up early so that Ben Bass and I can climb a mountain, a fantastic tradition that is now two years old and I hope lasts as long as the mountains themselves. He amps it up a bit this year and so I don’t get back to the casino until 2:00 PM.…

Saturday Feb. 20 Mornings don’t get better than this. Well, except for the very mediocre muffin I was forced to eat. I really need to start bringing my muffins with me on these trips. But other than that it’s a glorious morning. I work out, read my book by the pool, beautiful sunshine,  close a…

Friday Feb. 19 My last meeting of a very long day is with a guy named Jim Hess who is an LA manager that I’m hoping to work with not only because from all accounts he’s an excellent manager and a good egg, but also because I keep hearing he’s a poker guy. So much…

OK, here’s something I don’t understand. Three times last week (two of those times during a meal!), relative strangers, in broad daylight, say to me “I have to watch everything I eat, I have such a slow metabolism”, or “Rich, you stay so thin, you must have a fast metabolism”, that sort of thing. I…

So I get to the Casino at about 8:00 PM. They just renovated the whole hotel and it looks pretty good. It’s not Vegas but it’s certainly Vegas-ish. The reason I’m here is The Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC), a series of tournaments, about fifty individual events ranging from inexpensive buy-ins right up to the…

OK this will be the Tarantino-esque version of my blog… in that this will not be the usual chronological retelling of one of my valiant, yet ultimately disheartening attempts at winning a poker tournament. Usually I write this blog diary-style, and the story unfolds in the blog pretty much as it happens in my life.…

You’ve heard of Antonio Esfandiari? No? He’s the leading money winner in the history of poker. They call him “The Magician” a little because of his sleight-of-hand skills and mostly because of his poker skills. Nice to see him sit down at your table with a huge stack of chips, eh? Long story short, none…

To borrow a phrase from “The A-Team” (and date myself in the process) I LOVE it when a plan comes together. I’m writing from the parking lot. The top is down and I’m catchin’ some rays. The drive in was beautiful this morning. My complimentary breakfast at the hotel was beautiful. As the song goes…

I’m writing to you from Cornwall, Ontario. That is a sentence I would never have imagined typing. In my life. It’s a stopover. I drove this time, if for no other reason than to complete the triumvirate of  “Planes, Trains and Auto-mobiles”. I actually feel so much better about this trip to Montreal than the…

First of all let me say that trains are good. You can do work on trains. You can write your blog. If you were a normal person, you could probably sleep (especially when you’ve been so horribly sleep-deprived for the better part of three days, but for some reason that doesn’t hold true for yours…