I got my ass handed to me this month. I'm not exactly bothered by it like I would have been in the past - I'm just more or less disappointed.

Disappointed in what, though? I don't even know.

I think I'm playing okay, but I might not even recognize if I was developing some major leaks. I probably don't 'study' as much as I should, I just load up more donkaments and see what happens. I've always just kind of learned poker by recognizing patterns and reacting to them. I really feel like the majority of the evolution that has happened to my game has come from a subconscious instinct, rather than conscious poker theorizing. It's weird. I can really relate to Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink', it's pretty much poker in a nutshell, you should read it.

I've been wanting to blog more but several hang-ups keep deterring me. Basically, the day-to-day grind of an online poker pro is pretty boring. No one really wants to hear about daily results, and I sure as hell don't want to blog about them. Live poker and events are far more exciting; between the massive prize pools, the exotic locations, and the strange characters - it makes for a much better story. I just don't play live or travel nearly enough to fill up enough content for a regularly updated blog.

I guess the other reason I don't keep a regular blog is that I pretty much despise talking about the trivialities of everyday life. Unfortunately I can't always think of introspective + poker related blogs, and when I do think of such material most of it ends up getting 'lost in translation' - ie: after a long session my brain turns to mush, I begin to enter a comatose and a bottle of Stone IPA has already been popped.

I do like writing and I need to get back to it. For the time being I'll just update this thing sporadically. I do appreciate that some of you on p5's enjoy reading this.

www.thispokerblog.com

Humans like to categorize things into neatly organized and quantifiable categories. I am no exception, even if some of my greatest lessons learned from the poker table require me to think more abstractly and truthfully about time and probability. Despite this fact, I am big on the idea of closure and new beginnings - this is after all what the 'New Year' represents.

Looking back, I am not entirely sure if poker discovered me or if I discovered it. Is it a magnet or symbiotic being? Whatever the case, it soon became a part of me and I do not feel as though I had much of a choice. There's just something about the game that draws in almost every aspect of my personality. I feel grateful in the sense that many people may never find something that really makes them feel alive, but I also feel cursed that something as trivial as a game could literally 'steal' years off of my life. The game is both a beautiful rain and a ferocious storm, it gives, but it also takes.

2010 marked my first full calendar year as a professional poker player. I had a lot to prove to myself. In the back of my mind I had a nagging sense of self doubt that I somehow wasn't good enough, wasn't smart enough to succeed. Ultimately I was worried that my stellar 2009 was a fluke and that eventually I'd have to give up my dream and return to the drudgeries of post-collegiate office hell.

The poker lifestyle, for the most part, is a solitary existence where you, and you alone reap the spoils of victory and the shallows of defeat. Contrary to popular belief, the challenge of being a poker player isn't as much about external luck than it is about conquering one's own interior world. The most successful players won't necessarily be the best players, they will be the ones who can remain grounded throughout the highs and lows of their careers and tame their own mental demons.

I maintained my obsessive work-ethic for the entire year, but after the WSOP in June I really began to wonder why the hell I was putting myself through this. One of the main reasons poker is so appealing to me is the ability to have absolute freedom - but instead it seems as though I have become a slave to the daily tournament schedule. I have since attempted to add more enriching activities to my life outside of my work. I've cut down on the amount of sleep I need, I read more, I began exercising semi-regularly, and my live-in girlfriend and I have been raising a puppy together. I think all of this has improved my quality of life greatly. I'm still a work-a-holic though, in the poker sense at least, and I really don't think I can bring myself to significantly reduce the amount of volume I play any time soon. Some sadistic part of myself loves the challenge too much, even though I'm not always sure what I'm striving for.

Results-wise, 2010 was a raging success. I mainly just amassed a ton of four figure mid-stakes scores but I also had some deep runs in Major tournaments. I final tabled the Sunday Million mid-year and got eighth place, which kind of messed me up mentally for awhile, thinking that I might have blown a once-in-a-life-time opportunity. Yesterday was my final day of grinding for the year and I ended up placing 4th in the 750k on FTP for over $43k. It was a really excellent way to end the year, especially since I had been in a little slump the past couple of months.

Aside from online play, I managed to crawl out of my grind-hole to spend several weeks in Vegas (WSOP), a week in Atlantic City (WPT + prelims), and I was fortunate enough to have won a nice poker vacation for my girlfriend and I to the Dominican Republic. I blew a decent amount of money playing in these live tournaments but I feel my edge is huge in these, so I plan on doing quite a bit more traveling next year.

This wouldn't be a true reflection if I didn't include something beyond the mere trivialities of money won, and places seen. Beneath the luminous glow of casino lights or computer monitors, there is something much deeper taking place.

Poker is an enigma. An unsolvable, ever-evolving philosophical, psychological, and mathematical puzzle. The more you play, the more your pseudo-understanding of the game beings to dissolve. Your walls slowly begin to crumble. After you play your first one-million hands, a transformation begins to take place. Everything you thought was true slowly begins to fade. Soon you begin to truly understand the theory you've painstakingly memorized and now you're questioning everything. For the first time you realize you're exploitable, you're vulnerable, the way you think about the game is cookie-cutter and generic.

That's when the floor falls out and you realize the rabbit hole was a lot deeper than you originally envisioned. And just like that, you're knee deep in the game. But suddenly it's not just a game anymore - it's life, and poker now becomes a symbol of all of its mysteries. What lies before you now is a deep, dark, abyss. It's doubtful that you can turn back at this point, so dive in. Without so much as a flashlight - you must let uncertainty be your guide.

I live for this and the challenges that await me. See you all next year.

www.thispokerblog.com

Borgata is its own island - separated from the rest of the city it is surrounded by the asphalt highway of the Atlantic City expressway. I’m lying in bed looking out the window now; and this black dead cloud keeps rolling though. At first I thought it must be the smoke of a burning building or some type of factory pollutant – but it’s not attached to anything. It’s just sitting here – lingering now, as this bright late-afternoon sunshine illuminates its backdrop.

I slept a great deal today. I let the alarm blare on in my empty room until I was conscious enough to turn it off and sleep a few more hours. I woke up around 2pm feeling both fresh and slightly groggy, a paradox I know. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself so I decided to follow though with what I had planned and explore the city a bit.

AC is a gritty place. The homes are small and run-down; the locals appear poverty stricken and despondent. Seagulls are everywhere, dipping in and out of busy city streets, over traffic lights and up into the light blue sky. I navigate the maze of side-streets and dead-end roads until I find the Tropicana parking garage. I stayed here several years ago and I remembered it was in close proximity to the board walk.

The boardwalk is a wooden pedestrian road that runs along the coastline. Small shops and towering casinos line one side of it, while a beach and the Atlantic Ocean occupy the other side. I find a deli selling egg-salad sandwiches. I take one outside to eat on a park bench. A lazy sun lightly shines down upon me as I hear the crash of waves and the squeal of the gulls. The people on the boardwalk seem happy. Some are riding rented bicycles, while others are being pushed by workers in these odd-looking wagons. This is the tourist section of the city. People come here to spend money and enjoy themselves. If you close your eyes and take everything in with your senses you might think it was paradise – just for a second. A few hundred yards away and you’re back to reality. A bum carrying a plastic bag hobbles on by, and all of a sudden this picture perfect scene just turns into shit. It was beautiful.

After snapping a few photos of the beach I headed back to my hotel. Tomorrow I play in the Borgata Open Main Event. It’s a $3,500 World Poker Tour tournament and my last shot at redemption. The whole shebang will last 5 days if I’m fortunate enough to make it to the end. Most likely though, I’ll be checking out and heading back to Ohio either Monday or Tuesday. That’s okay with me though. I miss my girl and my dog.

This will be the most expensive tournament I’ve ever played. It's a real fucking long-shot if I ever saw one. Winning it would mean between 500k-1M dollars, and my mug plastered all over the place. The event will be televised sometime in 2011 but unless I make it extremely deep it's doubtful I’ll get any ‘TV time’. Every once in awhile some asshole will find out I play for a living and ask if I’ve ever been on TV - it’s basically their way of determining if I’m just some busto degen wanna-be, or the real-deal. When you tell people you play mainly online, and they know nothing about it, they look at you as if you told them you scrub toilets for a living, and for fun you like to lick off the seat. In the end a little respect from the sheep would be nice, but that kind of life-altering cash would be much, much sweeter.

Tonight some 2/5 live cash, hopefully some quality sleep, and a blessing from Lady Luck because she’s been a frigid bitch as of late.