Alright after 14 hours of travel today I am finally back from Aruba. Why my flight home included 2 different stops I am not sure and I am pretty sure it is LatestLines fault. Anyways I figured I would recap a little bit of the past 9 days here and I hope I don’t forget anything or anyone. This is gonna be long and I apologize for that now.

First off the trip was unreal, now I’m not saying I don’t St. Louis or the Midwest at all but the island of Aruba could be the greatest place ever. I was really looking forward to seeing some of the big names in poker while I was down there and meeting up with people that I knew online. However on my layover in New York on the way down there I literally ran into Phil Hellmuth and his wife as I took a corner too fast. The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing sunglasses in an airport, I thought it was odd but that encounter got me more pumped up about the upcoming week. When I first arrived at the hotel I ran into LatestLines and we went and hung out with KrazyKanuck and Mucker and their friends Debo34 and his wife. We saddly spent some time in their room playing online poker on a beautiful day in Aruba, but I was also able to put the fake ID away for the week and we did a little drinking. Later that night, KK decided to take us to the UB party, which I thought was a welcome party, well it was but it was for the UB staff, as I rolled into Phil Hellmuth’s penthouse in shorts and having a chew needless to say I felt a little out of place. All of team UB was there and Phil served us some Dom Perignone which was a really fun experience. Everyone there was really nice and I am pretty sure none of them remember meeting me which is just fine by me.

Anyways the next day I decided to play some poker, I had some horrible luck in the satelites for the main event and decided to play the 500 multi in the afternoon. It was my first live tourney over 50 bucks so I was really looking forward to it. Knucklehead was seated to my right and the first hand I played he limp reraised me all in, sweet start. I don’t really like telling hand stories but this one warranted a mention. Less then a full round into the game I was dealt aces, made my raise and got 2 calls, one of them being Knucklehead. The flop came down kq2 with 2 diamonds, it ended up being a 3 way all in, me with aces, one guy with 222 and knucklehead with 34 of diamonds. I realized I was in bad shape and Knuck said, hey at least you got an out, and sure enough a black ace peeled off on the turn and giving me the lead, of course knuck rivered a diamond to be a huge buzzkill knocking me out of my first tourney after I hit my first one outer.

I final tabled the next 500 multi I played the next day and it was a great learning experience. I actually felt so good about how things went that I decided to buy into the main event the next day. Now I didn’t buy in with all my own money, a group of players who I have known a while approached me with a proposition to get me into the tourney. I decided to take the deal because it would be a great experience for me to play in my first WPT event. I would like to thank all of these people, I would love to mention their names but I’m not sure if they want people to know but they know who they are so thank you very much, your generosity, trust and confidence in my play is greatly appreciated. I was hoping to repay you all by cutting you a piece of my million dollar win, we all know that didn’t work out, but thanks anyways.

Anyways the next day was day 1 for me and I was nervous, I didn’t sleep well at all the night before and was ready to get things underway. A special thanks to p0ker h0 for keeping me stocked up on chew through this first day, don’t think I would have survived without it. I found my table and saw Victor Ramden, Mrs. Grinder and another New Yorker I recognized. Mrs. Hellmuth was also there with Phil lurking behind her and there was an empty stack. The missing player showed up about 5 minutes later and it was Eric Lindgren. He proceeded to raise the next 7 hands and ya, you know what I was intimidated at first. However, the first pot I won in a WPT event was off of Edog. He raised on my BB as usual and I missed a flop with none other then POCKET 5s, anyways I check raised he mucked and I felt like I was really underway. The table broke and I moved to a table with fellow UBer Sophiea who had some pisspoor luck but played very well. I was really disappointed that he didn’t look like the Swedish model I always imagined but he was a great guy. That table stayed OK for an hour or two until they brought in all within 20 minutes, Surrinder Sounar (sp?), Barry Greenstein and Scotty Nguyen to my right. Greenstein beat me up a little while Scotty was super friendly and talkative wearing a new necklace that UB on claiming that it stood for “UnBeatable Babbyyyyyyyyy.” I somehow survived this day with a decent stack and it was hands down the coolest event of my small poker career. I found MuddyWater at the end of the day who had a massive stack and was in great shape, Tranquil Chaos who I drunkenly met the first day down there was in good shape going into day 2 as well. I remembered him because he was a great player, he remembered me as a suckout artist who would not go out at the final table of a 200 one Sunday when I was short stacked. He seemed like a great guy though and we kept checking in on each other as the tourney went on. As everyone now knows he took 4th which is unreal. Such a great finish for him and it was great to see a young player handle himself as well as he did, he is a class act and friendly to everyone, congrats again TC, sure it won’t be the last final table your at. Also a great showing for Muddywater, the same can be said about him, he handled everything great for his first WPT event and you can be sure he will continue to be successful in future tourneys.

Alright lemme try to wrap this up quick, day 2 was no good for me, Knucklehead was at my table again, cutting me up as usual, as was Johan, who I played with earlier in the week. I bounced out in 116th place after battling with the chip leader at the table twice. Sweet move by me. I do need to give a shout out to MR. 127 out of 125. My buddy Brian was at the table next to me and we were both looking ok as the bubble neared. Brian taught me the game and was also in his first WPT event. As Jack announced after the hand we would be going hand for hand I saw Brian stand up and put his head down. He ran his QQ on the button into AA in the bigblind and was out. I was pretty sure he was going to stab the guy who stood up and yelled as Brian passed, “600 chips and I made the money!” However that guy was Polariss and I would like to congratulate him on getting the job done. Now when Brian lost we at least thought he would be the bubble boy, number 126, it turns out he was bad beat again going out in 127th place receiving no recognition by anyone so I had to say something. Needless to say he didn’t commit suicide and we drank away the pain the rest of the night.

Ok that does it, congrats to everyone, who did well out there. Thanks to everyone for showing me a great time: One O Clock, Polariss, SuzieQue, Raisor, debo34, Nut_Flush, highroller48, Adam, Cal, Riley, Angry Clec, jsbyun and of course people like H0 Knuck, Fatcats, Westtexman, BR, KK and beanie who for some reason always take care of me on these trips. Sorry I couldn’t fit everything in here but it was 8 days of stuff and sorry this was probably long and meaningless to at least 2 out of the 3 people who read this, and thanks to lucky-7 for helping us out a bit out in Aruba and for actually reading this thing. Also thank you to escotch24 for getting me hooked on the game of craps, thats just what I needed. Thanks again to everyone and I look forward to seeing everyone there next year but hopefully in the Bahamas in January. Good Luck everyone and again sorry if I left someone or some event out.