The nice thing about having very few possessions is that it’s really not a big deal at all for me to move to another furnished vacation rental here. It’s really just a matter of packing up a couple of suitcases, grabbing my dog, and getting in a taxi. I have decided I’ll be doing just that. Things have been going fairly well for me here. It’s kind of ironic that I had to come to a Mexican beach vacation destination to find some stability and discipline in life. But after two months in Playa, I feel that the move has basically been a successful one thus far.

There are ways in which it could be easy for me to say that things haven’t gone well here. Financially, I’m only barely staying afloat. I have had a couple of decent scores in MTTs in the past few weeks to keep my head above water a while longer. My goal here is not to “just” be getting by, I would very much like to have some real, legitimate monetary success here and establish a much greater amount of financial security than I currently have. But accumulating money can be a slow process. Given the relative turmoil I felt like my life was in when I moved here, I can accept that the first couple of months have been “just okay” and not “great” from a financial standpoint.

I feel really good about some adjustments I’ve made to my poker game here and am confident that with a little luck and more work, there are financial breakthroughs that lie ahead for me. Then again, there is also the very real possibility of finding myself stuck in Mexico completely broke. Strangely enough, this daunting possibility does not keep me up at night as much as one might think it would. I almost have a zen-like peace with my situation here and a sense of faith that it will just work itself out somehow. Maybe that disposition is warranted, or maybe it’s just a defense mechanism to shield me from the terrifying prospect of being a broke, late-20s guy isolated in Mexico with no great answers about what to do with his life next.

I attribute my stable disposition amid the unstable nature of my life right now to a couple of things. First, I am doing a really good job of controlling the things I can actually control. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our lives are completely out of our control. As a poker player, this is hard to ignore. I can’t control Michael Carroll hitting a 3-outter against me for $500,000 in equity or any other of a number of brutal financial swings delivered by the turn of a playing card. All you can do as a poker player is to make the best decisions possible and accept that the outcome might not always be favorable.

There is so much about everyone’s lives, not just poker players, that are completely out of our control. You can’t control for natural disasters, freak accidents, the economy, or a great number of other things that determine the quality of your life. People don’t even really think about the fact that every single day you and your loved ones go to sleep in one piece is a tiny miracle. Every day, there are hundreds of people around the world who wake up thinking it will be just another day but never live to see the end of it. I’m not trying to be gratuitously morbid or dramatic here, I’m just pointing out the importance of realizing that so much of our highs and lows in life can be attributed to things outside of our abilities to control. The human life span is absurdly high-variance. I think it’s important to feel a sense of humility and gratitude for however good we have things and not fall into the trap of crediting oneself too much from an egotistical standpoint. So much of who we are was determined by random things we had very little control over.

There are really only a couple of things in life that we have more or less complete control over. One is our bodies. Assuming you are an able-bodied person to begin with, you basically have complete control over your weight and fitness level. I have been embracing this power of control and have been on a great diet and exercise routine in the two months since I’ve been here. It has really helped a lot with staying sane at a point in my life where it could be rather easy to “lose it”. I feel like no matter how chaotic or unsavory aspects of my life that are somewhat out of my control are, at the very least I should be able to manage looking good.

I’ve cut back on drinking immensely. I won’t lie, like basically anyone who has ever attended a four-year university, I like to drink. But outside of the temporary highs of imbibing are a lot of horrible downsides. Drinking is just downright terrible for mental and physical health. I think it should be viewed as something to do on a very rare occasion, like a treat to one’s self every once in a while as a reward for working hard and staying disciplined. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, myself included for several years, it gets used far more than this. It’s sort of amazing how much better one can feel when they stop putting bad things into their body and exercise rigorously on a daily basis. I feel like I’m just getting started and am both excited and curious to see how far I can push the machine that is my body. We all have one and it’s exciting to test its capabilities.

Another thing we have some degree of control over is the money we spend. I’ve been living somewhat like a pauper since arriving in Playa. Bad spending habits are almost a cornerstone to the poker player lifestyle. But I’m tired of splurging on an excessive lifestyle. It can be fun for a while, but at the end of the day I would like to eventually find my way to a place of financial stability and security before I get so old that my money-making potential has declined significantly. I think there’s a lot of truth to the saying, “youth is wasted on the young.” I feel like I’ve reached an important stage of my life where I am both old enough to understand that I’m not going to live forever and that energy is a finite resource yet young enough to still have plenty of energy and capability for seeking abundant wealth. I don’t feel like I need tens of millions to be satisfied. That just seems kind of extreme. But a few hundred thousand to take off the pressure of feeling like I must constantly be generating some type of a cash flow would be pretty awesome. Ironically, I think people are much more capable of generating great wealth when they are not burdened with the pressures of needing money.

In the interest of living more frugally, the rent for my next apartment will be about 30% less than my current dwelling. Thankfully, I’m not really giving up a whole lot to make this cut; I’m just getting ripped off a little in my current pad. Since moving here and learning a few things about Playa rent prices, I’ve realized that I’m being charged the premium, retail price for my current unit. I could probably be paying 15-20% less for living in this exact place, and even less when you factor in all of the money I lose on transactions and currency conversions to settle with my landlord. Getting nickel and dimed every time you want to move a dollar in one account to a peso in another is definitely one of the major lackluster aspects of the poker exile lifestyle, but this entry is getting long so I’ll save that whining for another day.

In conclusion, I’ve decided to stay in Playa a while longer, at least into the early part of 2012. I’m not certain what the future holds, but things are going well enough for me here at the present time that I want to stick around until no longer doing so makes more sense.

——

If you’re stuck in the U.S. wishing you could still grind online, pay a visit to DraftDay, a daily fantasy sports website started by the CardRunners people. I might make a buck if you click that link and become a customer of their site, so if you don’t want that to happen, just enter DraftDay.com directly in your browser.

I spent the first few days in Playa del Carmen exploring the area and going through the requirements needed to once again access the game my government took away in April. That mostly involved setting up an account with a Mexican bank and faxing documentation to online poker rooms that proves I have indeed relocated out of the U.S. It wasn’t a completely smooth process, but I got it done and have been back playing online poker for about three weeks now.

My results thus far haven’t done much in the way of reassuring me that I made the right decision in moving to Mexicio. I feel that I’ve been playing okay (not great) and haven’t had enough good fortune to get away with some of the subpar decisions I’ve made.

There’s really very little room for error when trying to succeed as a professional poker player. You have to play great and you have to play great all the time. Those who manage to do this can earn a fantastic income playing a game online from the comfort of their own homes. But for everyone who succeeds, there are dozens who try and fail. Every bad decision you make cancels out one of the good decisions you made. In order to get ahead, you really can’t afford to make a bad decision terribly often. It’s about accumulating the fruits of all of the good decisions without tainting them with poor ones.

Something I need to work on harder is being able to re-evaluate my hand and not being too attached to the thought that I have a good hand. I’ll share a story of how I gave away all of my chips in a $55 buy-in tournament the other day that perfectly captures what I’m talking about.

With a stack of around 5k and blinds at 75/150, I made a standard raise in late position to 375 with Ace-Queen. The player in the big blind, who barely had me covered, called. The flop was Queen-Seven-Three. I love my hand, obviously. He checked and I bet 450. He called. The turn was an Eight. He checked again. This time I bet 950. I was met with a raise to 2,000. Giving the situation little thought, I drug the bar all the way to “all-in” and clicked the button. He immediately called and I was drawing dead versus pocket Eights.

One way in which I need to improve is to realize that when he raises me on the turn there, it’s usually almost never with a hand that I am beating. My bet on the turn showed a lot of strength. He’s almost never committing ~40% of his stack on a pure bluff in the face of apparent strength. When I shoved, I knew he would call, and when he called, I knew he’d show me a set. I need to be more aware of these intuitions and sometimes lay down a hand that I was in love with at a previous point in the hand. You won’t make it very far as a poker player if you can’t allow yourself to change your mind about a hand.

Thankfully, I’ve been having quite a bit of success playing the daily fantasy sports games at DraftDay and also benefitted from running hotter than the sun on a series of sports bets with a friend, so the bleeding I’ve experienced at the poker tables has been somewhat mitigated in other areas. It’s not too late for me to turn things around before being faced with the unsavory task of finding an additional income stream. Becoming a beach bum is not even an option for me as I’d need about $30 a day in sunscreen just to avoid getting skin cancer.

In case losing my girlfriend and a nice chunk of my liquid net worth in 3 weeks wasn’t enough, mother nature decided to send a hurricane towards Playa. As I write this, Scout and I are on a bus to Merida, about a 5 hour drive across the Yucatan, in order to escape the possible carnage that Rina may inflict on the Riveria Maya area.

A few poker players I know made the decision to stay in Playa and ride out the storm even going so far as to cite that it “sounds cool”. Having been through Ike in 2008 while living in Houston, I know that there is little “cool” about a hurricane. Sure, the storm is thrilling for a little while, but when you realize all of the damage the high winds cause and that your first-world ameninties have been striped for as long as it takes the powers that be to repair them, it made more sense to me to get out of dodge for a few days. This is easy to do when you own no property or possessions that need safeguarded. Hopefully the storm turns out to be nothing and I’m just out a few hundred dollars in expenses for checking out a new city for a couple of days.

The news of a hurricane coming to Playa seemed to fit perfectly with the present state of my emotions and finances. But I’m working hard at staying positive and avoiding any self-destructive behavior. I’ve learned that it’s important to have hope and faith that you’ll come out on the other side in tact and better off than you were before. Sometimes hope is all you’ve got.

They say moving and breaking-up are two of the more stressful things you can go through in life, just behind death of a loved one and losing your job. Just in 2011 alone, I’ve gone through a move, having an online game that has enriched my life immeasurably and served as something of a part-time job for me for five years eliminated by my government, another move (this time out of the country), and a break-up.

And now, I find myself in Mexico where I have access to the game again and for the first time in what feels like ever as an adult, am single. Although my girl and I had a lot of really great things going between us, it just didn’t work out for now. We could both probably psychoanalyze a million reasons for why our relationship ended, but I don’t really think it’s too complicated. The past six years for me have gone by pretty fast. I think I just needed some space to catch up with myself, clear my mind, and straighten out my financial picture. And until I get the chance to do that, I don’t think I’m ready for the type of serious, indefinite commitment she wanted.

I can look back on this time from when I graduated college and moved to Houston until now and in a way it all seems like a blur. It all went by pretty fast and I feel like I’ve been one step behind on absorbing it all.

This is the nature of the shot-taking lifestyle. I could have gotten a conventional job after college. But as a kid from a small town in the midwest, I wanted a shot at more. So I took a chance and moved away from home to a city where I only knew two people. I’ve traveled, gambled, and had some pretty good times. I’ve met a lot of intelligent and interesting people. It’s been a very rewarding and eye-opening ride. There’s so much to be said for leaving the safe little bubble you grew up in. It really gives you a greater appreciation for the world and the types of people and cultures it consists of.

I’ve chased the poker, shot-taking lifestyle pretty far. For me, it’s been my only realistic chance at making a huge pile of money at an early age. I was never good enough at sports or well-educated and connected enough to find my way into a high paying career. Poker has kind of been it for me. I don’t have some master plan of exactly what I will do if I have abundant financial security, I just know that I want it. I don’t even care if I spend the rest of my life figuring out what to do once I have it. Short of opening a highly successful business, which appears to be a pretty damn hard thing to do, poker is really my best shot at generating a substantial net worth at a young age.

When Uncle Sam took poker away from all his little nieces and nephews last April, I decided that I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel on it. Maybe poker will prove to be for me what baseball is to Kenny Powers, but even if it is, that’d be okay. It seems better to try and fail than never try at all and spend your whole life wondering what if.

I also seem to be seeking out some time for myself to, pardon the cliche, just be. I look at Mexico as a chance to get away from the high expectations of American culture. You’re never good enough in America. There’s always another hoop that needs to be jumped through. I’ve definitely had way too much stress in the past several years trying to reach some vision of success that was marketed to me somewhere along the way. It’s pretty stupid to spend time trying to be someone you think others will be happy with versus just being yourself. I definitely fall into this trap too often. People should just like themselves more and be okay with who they are. It’s sad how much people have been sold on some sense of inadequacy.

And so I find myself here in Mexico with a chance to clear my head, reconnect with myself, and play a game on the Internet that the residents of the supposed “land of the free” are not free to play. If you had asked me at the start of the year if I’d be living in Mexico by the fall, I would have laughed at you and said, “not a chance.” But here I am. It’s funny how life works out.

Although I haven’t been here long, I feel happier and more relaxed. I’ve awoken most every day in the past six years in the U.S. overwhelmed with a sense of needing to do something to prove my worth in the world. But having that feeling for so long is like beating your head against a wall. You don’t really get anywhere. Since getting to Mexico and becoming single, I’ve woke up each day with a renewed sense of vitality and appreciation for being alive. I wake up and take my dog for a long walk on the beach without the sense of urgency that I need to be living up to some expectation. I work out, eat well, and sit down to do my work with a clear head and sense of stopping point. In the evenings, I unwind with maybe a swim in the ocean, a sporting event on TV, a good book, or all of the above. I’m enjoying each day for what it is and not feeling rushed or allowing a sense of inadequacy to creep in. Life is too short to spend each day panicking about work or the future.

I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Maybe just a couple of months. Maybe several years. And it doesn’t even really matter. For now, I’m just happy to have found my way to a place in life where I can reconnect with myself and honor the need to see this poker thing through to its proper conclusion.

I spent most of the afternoon in the waiting room of an cargo company in Cancun that I hired to process the importation of my dog, Scout, who rode in the undercarriage on the same flight as myself. Once the dog was put on the plane, he was considered a piece of cargo as far as the Mexican government is concerned. With that being the case, I needed a broker to handle the importation of the cargo. I was paying them extra (about $300 extra to be precise) for expedited service so that I could get Scout back from customs the same day I arrived. I was unsettled at the notion of him being stored in a non-air conditioned warehouse in his crate overnight presumably without food or water. Unfortunately, that possibility turned to reality when an error with the custom’s computer network prohibited them from processing Scout’s same-day release.

Discouraged, and feeling generally upset at the uncertainty of the dog’s fate and situation, I took the 45 minute cab ride to Playa and met with my realtor and landlord who gave me the keys to the condo I’m staying in here. There’s an issue with one of the air conditioner units here, so it’s been rather hot in the living room and kitchen area, but otherwise I like the place a lot. There’s a huge, spacious balcony and the location seems great.

I crashed pretty hard last night after having been awake for 36 hours; I was unable to sleep after a long day of clearing out my apartment in Austin and had to leave ridiculously early to catch a flight from Houston to Cancun.

I slept like I was dead for 11 hours. After waking up, I made the 5 minute walk to the beach. It’ll be hard, but somehow I feel like I’ll figure out a way to survive living a stone’s throw from this:

I took a taxi back to Cancun where I was told to arrive around noon when hopefully Scout would be processed through customs and released to me. I was pretty nervous to start the day; another long day of waiting and being told they’re unable to release the dog would have been exponentially worse than it was on the day I arrived. I could accept one night of him being stored in a Mexican warehouse if I had to, but multiple nights and I probably would have been panicking and trying to figure out a way to get him out of there even if it meant having to fly back to the U.S.

Upon arriving at the customs broker’s office, I was told that the dog was being delivered within the next five minutes. I can’t even describe how relieved and happy I was for that to be the first thing I heard when I walked into the office.

Sure enough, Scout was delivered in a cargo truck about five minutes later. He had been in his crate for 30 hours (as evidenced by the plastic ties still being in place that were put on in Houston to hold the door locked). When I let him out, he ran back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the broker’s office about 5-6 times smiling from ear to ear. I think he was just so happy to be out of that crate that all he wanted to do was run. I was so happy for him and relieved to get him back; having him fly here with me and processing him through customs has been the most stressful part of this move. When I offered him some water, he drank about 20 ounces without pause. That was by far the most water I’ve ever seen him drink which leads me to believe he went without through the night. Not an ideal situation, but he seems no worse for the wear and is settling in to the new place nicely.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon napping and picking up some necessities from a nearby store called “Mega”. It’s somewhat similar to a Wal-Mart only with lots of peculiar differences. For example, chicken is just stored on ice out in the open rather than being encased in packaging behind a meat counter. I already miss my nice, yuppy organic grocery stores in the U.S., but I’ll learn to make do here.

This evening, I went with my realtor to a really good Venezuelan restaurant just three blocks from my place. One pleasant surprise of Playa so far has been the restaurant selection. I guess I had assumed it’d be mostly just Mexican cuisine, but Playa is a very international city. Many people from all over the world have relocated here which is evident from the dining choices; in what little time I’ve spent walking around the city, I’ve seen a steak and lobster place, a Mediterranean place, the Venezuelan place I ate at tonight, and a Spanish tapas place. A lot of the restaurants and cafes are open-air with outdoor seating. In this way, it reminds me a little of Paris.

I think I’m really going to enjoy living here. So far, I have almost no complaints and, like most poker players, I’m usually pretty good at finding things to complain about.

Tomorrow, I am going to start the process of getting back up-and-running online by opening a bank account. I’m hoping to be back on Stars by a week from this Sunday, but I’m also not too panicked about it; I’ll get back on in due time I’m sure. In the meantime, I want to enjoy the area and maybe soak in some sun. But not too much. Sun is ginger kryptonite.

——

If you haven’t heard by now, CardRunners founders Taylor Caby and Andrew Wiggins recently launched a new, legal daily fantasy sports website called DraftDay where you can test your fantasy sports skills for real-money prizes. I was excited when Taylor asked me to contribute to the site as a blogger since real-money fantasy sports is pretty much right up my alley. I had a good weekend last weekend taking 3rd and 4th in their multi-entry $5 NFL league that had ~100 entrants. I’m looking forward to sweating more short-term fantasy sports line-ups as the site’s player volume continues to grow. Here is the first blog I wrote for Draft Day, A Poker Player’s Take on Daily Fantasy Sports. If you have even the slightest interest in fantasy sports, check out that blog and read the part about the ‘Perfect Lineup’ promotion they’re doing which is a really cool, free way to take a shot at winning $1,000,000 by predicting the highest scoring players at every position in any given week during the NFL season.

After Black Friday, the day on which the U.S. Department of Justice effectively shut down online poker, I told WSJ reporter Alexandra Berzon that I would not relocate to another country for the sake of playing online poker. At the time, I meant it. I just didn’t see a scenario in which I would actually pick up my life and move it to another country just for poker.

But life has a funny way of not always going exactly how you predict it will. After a few months, I realized I missed poker more than I thought I would. In July, I made my second deep run at the WSOP Main Event. That served as an invigorating reminder that I love the game of poker and am pretty damn good at it.

Around this same time, my girlfriend made the tough decision of relocating back to New York to continue her career as an attorney after mostly failing to establish herself in Texas. Faced with one of the toughest decisions of my life, I decided not to relocate there at this time with her. It was a very hard decision because, emotionally, I am still very much invested in her and our relationship. But logically, I see problems with my financial and lifestyle picture in New York and don’t feel ready to take that much of a plunge into an overall situation that doesn’t seem to make sense for me.

When she moved back to New York, I figured I would just live in Austin for a while and even claimed I would on this blog less than a month ago. I’ve been living here on a month-to-month arrangement with my apartment complex. Just a day after committing to stay here through September, I received an email stating that my unit was leased out to someone effective on the first of October. This totally threw a wrench into my plans. At the time, I was very annoyed. But looking back, it almost seems like a stroke of fate to trigger the inertia for me to make a big change in life.

I began exploring possibilities for where I might live. Around this time, Pocket 5’s released a great guide for helping American online pros relocate outside of the country, and my friend Shane, with plans to move to Canada, suggested that I go to Mexico. Both the Pocket 5s service and Shane’s suggestion motivated me to give casual thought to relocating, so I started tentatively exploring the possibility of moving to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where I had heard of a couple of other American poker refugees were going, Jon Aguiar, BlueFirePoker.com instructor Chip Ferguson, and Shaun Deeb.

At first, I put little seriousness into what seemed like a longshot idea. The slightest con such as a complicated visa system or reports that the area is less than very safe would have put an abrupt halt to the notion. But every question I had was met with an acceptable answer. It’s easy as pie for Americans to effectively relocate to Mexico; you can stay for 6 months on a visa that can be renewed automatically just by leaving the country and coming back in. The Playa del Carmen area, known for it’s large influx of tourism, is reportedly as safe as it gets in Mexico.

Some other positives that stand out to me include:

• The chance to live somewhere outside of American society for a while.
• Transporting my dog there is safe and not too big of a deal (it will cost about $900 overall, and the dog will be fine).
• Low overall expenses (I’ll pay $900/month for a one bedroom condo and won’t need a car as taxi rides from one end of the city to the other are $4).
• There’s a studio for the type of yoga I enjoy practicing in Playa del Carmen.
• Proximity to beach (I’ll be a 500 yard walk away).

A key business liquidation was the final thing I needed to say, alright, let’s do this. How many times in life will I get a chance to just pick up and move to another country to make money playing a game on the Internet? I feel like if I don’t take this shot, I’ll always regret it. And so I’m doing it.

I’m moving to Playa del Carmen, Mexico at the end of this month.

I have to admit, I’ve chuckled quietly to myself overhearing the various L.A. pipe dreams of bar patrons and pedestrians. It seems like everyone out here is writing a screenplay or going to an audition in the morning. The city is such a huge lottery. For every big superstar who makes it, there are hundreds of people working in a Starbucks hoping to catch their big break. Despite the misery that I’m sure is associated with that struggle and lifestyle, it seems that people make the best of it and maintain a pretty upbeat demeanor.

Here are a few shots I’ve taken on my iPhone since getting into town:

Venice Beach:

A medical marijuana evaluation clinic right on the beach; somehow I doubt their standards for dispensing a marijuana license are too rigorous:

The palm trees here can be really tall:

Standing on the Santa Monica pier looking back at the beach:

The sun setting over Malibu:

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my stay here a lot. The major downsides seem to be that it’s expensive and the traffic is terrible, but otherwise I think I could definitely enjoy living here.

I’m in Los Angeles for the World Poker Tour event at the Bicycle Casino, a $3,500+$200 buy-in that lured something like ~700 entrants. Having not played a live tournament since busting out of the WSOP Main Event in 133rd place, and having never been to Los Angeles, I arrived in the city on Wednesday evening full of excitement and optimism for the trip. Three days later, I feel defeated by life.

This morning, I made my way out the door of shaniac’s now-mostly-empty Santa Monica apartment (he’s moving to Canada to play online poker) for day two of the tournament. Alarmingly, my rental car was nowhere to be found. I was 99.9% sure I left it parked across the street from his apartment a few doors down; I distinctly remember having made a mental note last night after getting back at 1 am from day one of the tournament: “okay, you’re across the street a few doors down to the left.” But somehow, my car wasn’t there.

In a rather panicked state, I called Shane, who stayed the night at his girlfriend’s. I wasn’t sure what to do. Obviously the missing car was a very major problem, but my priority lied mostly with getting to the Bicycle Casino to tend to my equity in the WPT event. He arranged for his friend Owen Crowe (@owencrowe), who was also still in the tournament, to swing by and pick me up on his way to the casino.

With that problem solved, I called the Santa Monica police department to inquire as to whether a car matching the description of mind had been towed.. I was relieved to hear them say that they did indeed tow it. At the time, it having been towed seemed vastly preferable to it having been stolen. I would later come to question this outlook.

I was informed that the vehicle was parked in a manner that blocked someone’s driveway. I guess in my tired state from the night before, I paralleled between two cars without realizing the spot I was parking in wasn’t a spot at all, it was the entrance to someone’s driveway.

Satisfied with having solved the missing car mystery, I turned my focus to the tournament where I had a stack of 45,400 to start 500/1000 with a 100 ante. I built the stack up to 60,000 without having to show any hands at a tough table that featured Allen Kessler, Gavin Smith, and to my immediate left, Matt Affleck.

During 600-1200 with a 200 ante, Allen raised under the gun to 3,000. Next to act, I looked at Ace-King offsuit and re-raised to 7,600. Action folded back to Kessler. I half expected him to fold to my strong-looking three-bet, but he called. I was pleased to see an Ace in the door with a Five and Four revealed behind it. Allen checked and I bet 9,000. He rather quickly raised to 20,000. Although Allen is a notoriously tight player, doing anything other than re-raising all-in never crossed my mind. When Allen called immediately, I figured there was a better than 50% chance we were chopping the pot both of us holding Ace-King. Instead he just had Aces and like that, I was out of the tournament.

I took the long taxi ride all the way across L.A. back to Santa Monica to tend to my impounded rental car issue. At the police station, I was met with a very helpful and rather frank officer who responded, “an arm and a leg,” and “this will be a huge pain in the ass for you,” to my questions of how much the car bailout was going to cost me and how long the process was going to take.

Since the paperwork verifying that the rental was mine was in the glove box of the car, I had to get a piece of paper giving me permission to get into the car from the police station, walk a mile to the towing company’s lot, get the papers, walk back to the police station, pay the impound fees, walk back to the towing company lot, settle with them, and then finally be on my way.

All told, the expenses, fees, and penalties from having parked my car illegally amounted to $468. That’s no small chunk of change and the bill stung slightly worse coming on the heels of the cooler hand at WPT.

Notwithstanding a day of running bad from seemingly every angle, I am enjoying L.A. I am determined to have some fun tomorrow, my last full day here, at hopefully an affordable cost. When I’m in a better mood, I’ll share some of the more positive aspects of the trip along with a few pictures I’ve taken.

But for now, I could use a drink.

To get around this conundrum, many American players are simply relocating. In fact, the number of players relocating to Canada or Mexico has been rather startling to me. You can follow Poker Exiles on Twitter to hear some of these stories.

After Black Friday, I told a WSJ reporter that I had no intention whatsoever of relocating to be able to play online poker. In the time that has transpired since that interview, I’ve realized I miss online poker more than I anticipated I would. I actually miss the hell out of it. There have been so many nights where I’ve been bored and aimless and thought to myself, “man, what I wouldn’t give to be able to fire up a few tournaments right now.” I’ve never leaned on poker as a sole source of income, but I have leaned on it as a money-making activity to fill my spare time with and I miss it. Badly.

However, I’m just not quite ready to commit to something extravagant like a move to Canada or Mexico. There are a few reasons for this. One reason is that I’m not so convinced that the hassles and costs of such a move are something I can greatly offset by the expected value of being able to play online. Despite only playing a casual volume far lower than that of some of my contemporaries, I’ve been a loser online over the course of about the past two and a half years. I mostly attribute this to variance. I mean, I would like to think that I am a winning player; it’s not hard for a good, winning player to actually be down money over the course of ~1,000 tournaments. If I had grinded harder and played more like ~5,000 tournaments over the course of that span, I tend to think there’s a decent likelihood I’d have a profit to show for it. But maybe not. There are plenty of full-time players who have lost money over the course of their last 5,000 events.

So I have a couple of options when it comes to keeping poker in my life:

• Relocate to out of the country to play online.
• Relocate within the country to an area nearby casinos (Vegas, Florida, and California would be the most logical options).
• Stay in Austin for a while and travel to play major tournaments and grind cash games after busting out.

For now, I’m sticking with the latter option. While the idea of picking up my life and moving it somewhere else for poker is on the table for me, I’m just not overly enthused about any of my options. Also, I’m enjoying living in Austin a lot; it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’ve found a home as an adult.

So the plan is to ride it out here for at least another few months while seeing what unfolds on a couple of other fronts. But since I’m doing that, I need a travel schedule for poker. I loathe the idea of leaving this hippie oasis on a regular basis to go rot away in casinos around the country, but it’s a compromise I’m willing to make to keep myself in the game.

For now, the following appears to be on my horizon:

• WPT Legends of Poker in Los Angeles on August 25-30 ($3,500 buy-in)
• The River at Winstar Casino in Durant, OK on Sept 2-6 ($2,000 buy-in, $3 million guaranteed)
• WSOP Circuit Event in Shreveport, LA on Sept 17-19 ($1,600 buy-in) OR WPT Borgata Poker Open in Atlantic City on Sept 18-23 ($3,500 buy-in, $3 million guaranteed)

That’s all I have penciled in on the calendar for now, but I anticipate taking a few more trips in addition to those between now and the end of the year.

I’m pretty excited for the L.A. trip. It will be my first time in L.A., first WPT event, and first hand of live poker since busting out of the WSOP Main Event in 133rd place (excluding a home game I had a nice time at last week). Poker pro shaniac has been gracious enough to agree to let me crash on his couch in Santa Monica making that trip a viable one. Thanks, Shane!

There are a lot of good players out there nowadays, but I believe I’m one of them and I’m ready to take down something big.

Follow me on Twitter to watch it all unfold!

My last two days at the WSOP were fairly frustrating. Both days, in a $1500 and then $1000 event, I made it to the last level of the day with an above-average stack only to bust out in that level. I’ve pretty much internalized the “that’s poker” mantra needed to survive in this game, so it doesn’t really bother me that much, but playing back to back 12 hour days for $0 is rough. Both nights I walked out of the Rio too annoyed to even be able the appreciate the moon hanging over Caesars Palace in the night sky. “That’s poker” though, and you have to be able to take those outcomes in stride and do it all over again the next day if you want to survive.

I spent a couple more nights in the city after those events just hanging out with friends and my girlfriend. We stayed at the Aria our last two nights there. For those of you not too familiar with Vegas, Aria is the newest monstrous casino property on the strip (along with it’s neighbor The Cosmopolitan). It’s bar-none my favorite casino for a few reasons I won’t bore you with. But I had yet to check out the hotel until this trip.

The rooms in Aria are state-of-the-art for sure. Everything is controlled electronically including the blinds and whether or not you want the “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door. It’s a futuristic hotel like nothing I’ve seen before. For that, it’s very awesome.

But there’s somewhat of a problem with the Aria rooms: they get really hot. I think it has something to do with the tint on the windows. A couple people had mentioned this problem to me happening to them in other rooms, so there’s definitely a pattern. When you sleep at night, you’re really hot even though you have the air conditioning on full blast. I’ve never had that problem at any other Vegas hotel, so you can’t blame it on the climate alone. There’s just some type of climate control problem that makes Aria’s otherwise jaw-dropping hotel kind of a nuisance.

I’ll be going back to Vegas two weeks from today to play in the WSOP Main Event. It will be my fifth consecutive year in that tournament which is definitely something to feel happy for. As someone recently observed (paraphrasing), “in poker, money is how we keep score. If you don’t have any, you basically don’t exist.” Playing in the WSOP Main Event is a major yearly benchmark that reminds you that you still exist in the poker world. Somehow, someway, you are still a poker player and you still have a chance at fame, riches, and the right to call yourself the World Champion of Poker.

Some of us rely heavily on outside investors to keep that existence alive. Some of us shill for shady online poker rooms to stay in the game. And believe it or not, others of us actually excel at the game, build a bankroll, and survive on the backs of an all-encompassing ability (or in some cases, absurd luck).

As a friend said to me when he ran into me at the WSOP a couple years ago, “it’s good to see you’re still in the game.” It is good to see one’s self still in the game. Getting the chance to play in the WSOP Main Event is a nice time to appreciate that.

Today was WSOP Event #28, a $1500 no-limit event. I got to the Rio an hour late and stood in a long line to late register. By the time I took my seat, blinds were at 50/100, starting stacks of 4.5k.

I’m going to spare you a lot of banal commentary on how I got chips (except to say that I did get QQ all-in preflop against KK and bink a Q on the flop to stay alive) because there’s more interesting stuff to report:

With one hour remaining in the day, I took my seat after a color-up break to find Joe Sebok, a guy who has made several hundred thousand aggressively promoting and defending UB, an online poker room that has twice scammed the poker community out of millions, sitting on my immediate right. I’ve monitored and written a little about Joe Sebok and UB so having the chance to be seated less than a foot away from him felt fateful.

I had no intention of engaging Sebok in some impromptu debate about UB. I’m here to play poker, not listen to the defense mechanisms of some delusional, spoiled manchild. But while I wasn’t about to try to engage Sebok in a debate, I was certainly game for some slowrolling, trolling, and other childish antics. And believe me, those things are childish. I have never slowrolled anyone in my life. I have never celebrated in an obnoxious manner after winning a pot, nothing. Anyone who has played any poker with me can vouch for my having pristine etiquette at the table. But tonight, I saw no need to apply that same level of decency to a guy buying into tournaments with the blood money from a poker community fleecing/cashgrab. My personal opinion is that he should be unwelcome at poker tournaments until he returns UB money to affected players and I was happy at having a chance to create that atmosphere for him.

A half hour into Sebok’s addition to our table, I got my chance to troll. Keep in mind a lot of the back and forth is me recalling from memory and paraphrasing. I’m sure Sebok has his side of the story and I’m sure that it differs from mine in it’s perspective.

With a stack of somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000, he raised to 1900 during 300/600/75. With around the same stack, I called (in the seat immediately after him) with Ace-Queen offsuit. Everyone else folded. Sebok bet 2400 on a flop of Ace-King-Six. I called. He bet 4100 on the Ace turn. I called. He bet 7200 on the King river. I took a few seconds to count out chips and put in a call (I’ll explain later why there was zero reason to raise). Sebok insta-mucked his hand. I waited as long as I could to show mine, the table had to insist that I show (and I do have to, so I did after waiting a few seconds). I turned over my hand and clapped/fist-pumped right in Sebok’s face while saying “that felt nice!”

He said, “wow, way to be a dick.”

I said, “yea, I’m the dick here.”

Him: “Oh, you’re one of those guys huh?”

Me: “Yup, one of those guys who doesn’t like you.”

(Now, while this convo was happening, I was counting out my chips after winning the pot and crossing way over into his space. Like basically counting his chips in as obnoxious and obvious of a manner as I could).

Him: “Ahh… yup. Another internet forum tough guy. You guys know absolutely nothing about anything. You just read some stuff online and believed it.”

Me: “So why don’t you tell us what happened?”

Him: “Every time I try to, I get shoved out.” (whatever that means) “You guys know nothing.”

Me: “I know you blackmailed someone to protect your UB allowance.”

Him: “You don’t know anything about anything. That was completely made up. Aguiar’s friends even all come up to me apologizing for it and saying it was wrong.”

Me: “Oh WOW… really? Like who? Name one of his friends who has said that.”

Him: “All of them! All of them have said it!”

Me: “Okay, so if all of them have said it, it should be easy for you to name one of them so I can go ask him.”

Him: “All of them, all of his friends.”

Me: “Okay, so just name one of them.”

Him: “I don’t have to, it’s all of his friends.”

Me: “I just don’t see why you can say that but then not give one name of someone who has said that to you.”

Him: “I don’t have to, just go ask anyone.”

Me: “LOL… okay. I can see you’re in a deep state of denial, there’s no point in talking to you.”

Him: “Okay, tough guy.”

Me: “To be honest, I have to give you a lot of credit. It takes a huge pair of balls to not only show up and play these events, but to actually run your mouth at the table too! I honestly am impressed in a way.”

Him: “Good, I’m glad I could impress you.”

Some other guy: “Are you two friends or something.”

Me: “No… NO… He is not my friend.”

Him: [more stuff about internet tough guys who know nothing]

French-Canadian guy (to Sebok): “Man, it is so bad how you handle this stuff. You put yourself into a deeper hole because you just handle it so bad. I laughed so hard when you were telling a guy to confront you… on Twitter. Twitter is not a confrontation!”

Sebok gets real defensive and starts explaining to the guy that he was trying to move the confrontation away from Twitter to real life, but French-Canadian guy just kept repeating, “it’s so funny though, you challenge people to dual… ON TWITTER!”

Sebok was getting more steamed and defensive with the French-Canadian dude. By this time the banter between he and I had calmed down. I did notice however that he kept staring at me as if to intimidate me which is just so LOL. I’m 6′4″ 230. He’s probably something like 5′8″ (very short guy, lots of little man syndrome) and probably 165. I mean, it would require a whole new degree of stupidity on his part to do something physical. And we’re talking about a guy who has done lots of stupid stuff!

Once play was done for the day, he seemed to sit and wait for me to finish bagging my chips. Then he got up from the table at the same time I did. I thought he was going to follow me out into the parking lot. I wasn’t sure how I would have handled that other than just to be sure I wasn’t the one who initiated any physical contact (I obv have like less than zero interest in going to jail for trolling Joe Sebok). But a cooler Sebok-head prevailed and I never saw him again after walking away from the table.

Okay, for why I never raised that hand. I think first of all, now knowing he had air, you’ll see that never raising got max value out of him. Secondly, there is simply zero value in raising him on the river. PokerNews reported on the hand and acted like I was some fish for raising on the river, but PokerNews is painfully retarded and bad at what they do. There is just no value in raising on that river. He never calls with anything I beat because he knows I have an Ace there 100% of the time when I shove (getting no fold equity). And with the non-zero possibility that he had quad Kings, I gain literally nothing from raising. Okay, end of that rant. I was just annoyed that PokerNews and people at my table were acting like I was dumb for not raising. Not raising was 100% standard.

A final note to Joe Sebok: if you decide you’d like to make a real apology and return all UB money you earned to players affected, I’d be proud. I’m also happy to help in any way. We can advertise to our U.S. readers on how they can file a claim to get some of their lost UB money back. Would be easy to give like a year for all players with UB to verify how much they have on there, then you (and any other UB shills/affiliates) return all money you made to an account that is distributed to affected players based on proportion of how much they lost to UB. It’s doable and you should consider spending a few thousand on the right lawyer to help you with it if you value your reputation in poker at all.

Anyway, I made day two with 51,400 in chips which is quite good. I think average is more like 35,000 or so. We should be in the money within a couple of levels. You can follow me and my chip count updating account on Twitter if you care to follow along with live updates from the WSOP (pending phone battery life).