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!

Last summer, I texted him from Vegas asking him if he was going to make it out for the WSOP. He texted back saying, “nah too cash broke.” Two days later, he was sitting in a Deep Stack Extravaganza event at Venetian. I guess he came up with a couple thousand and got on a plane. Days later, he used pretty much all of the money he had on him to enter the $5,000 PLO/8 event and promptly finished 6th for $65,000. When I texted him the following day asking if he was sticking around for the Main Event, he responded, “my tooth is messed up, I left town.”

That’s pretty much the m.o. for a guy who burst onto the poker scene in 2006 by using the last $10,000 he had to his name to buy-in to the WSOP Main Event where he became known as “that guy who looks like a caveman” en route to a seven-figure 11th place finish. Eccentric to say the least, Leif is a good guy, and as Sam Elliot said as the voice of the narrator in The Big Lebowski with regards to The Dude, it’s good knowing he’s out there.

• Rep Porter
• Steven Fung
• Jonathan Little
• Uri Keidar
• Rony Jazzar
• Janar Kiivramees
• Huck Seed
• Thomas Bichon
• Nenad Medic
• Layne Flack

Okay, not bad. Gotta figure the TV final table of six will feature at least a couple of familiar faces, right?

Think again.

Flack, Medic, Little and Seed bust out 10th, 9th, 8th and 7th, respectively, leaving a TV final table of random Asian and Lebanese guys.

I can almost hear the producers muttering to themselves, “remember when every final table had Ivey or Gus or at least that f***in’ Professor douchebag?”

I’m not the authority on Prahlad Friedman’s poker career, but I believe his once colossal bankroll gradually shifted ownership into the hands of eventual CardRunners founder Taylor “Green Plastic” Caby. Since then, Friedman’s name hasn’t popped up as much as it did a few years ago, but he’s clearly still got it.

With that win, Friedman was the benefactor of one of the most ridiculously top-heavy payout structures in major tournament history. For winning the Legends of Poker, Friedman received $1,009,000. Kevin Schaffel, playing in his first tournament since reaching the Main Event final table, finished second (what’s he eating for breakfast?). Schaffel’s payday when compared to Friedman’s is nearly insulting, $471,000. The dropoff doesn’t stop there.

Sixth place finisher Mike Krescanko won $89,220!

Who is organizing these tournaments? I understand that a seven-figure first place payday looks better in promotional publications, but that short-sightedness is killing the WPT in the long run. No one wants to play a tournament where sixth is less than 1/10th of first, not for a $10,000 buy-in anyway.

I would be willing to wager that whatever value is gained from having a seven-figure first place prize is erased, and then some, by a.) ratcheting up the variance on participants this much (one guy getting all the money equals fewer guys that can play in the next one) and b.) turning players away who have better things to do with $10,000 than to risk it on a small-field, top-heavy tournament.

News flash to the WPT: it’s not 2006 anymore. Your prize pools are smaller. Adjust accordingly.