Terrence Chan

byebye, LiveJournal

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:29:13 GMT

I've begun the process of migrating my blog over to Blogger. My new blog will be available at:

http://www.terrencechanpoker.com.

Please reset your bookmarks and feeds, and tell your friends! Thanks for reading!

2011 WSOP wrap-up

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:41:20 GMT

Wow. Every year from 2005-2010, I posted about every WSOP event I played. Sometimes the posts were quite short and abbreviated, sometimes because the tournament itself was short and abbreviated, or sometimes because the tournament was quite long and exhausting and I didn't feel like writing. Sometimes I squished a few entries into one post to save time and effort. But never has there been a WSOP like this one, where I basically haven't written in any significant detail about a single event.

(Really, I blame Twitter.)

By the numbers, total buy-ins of $59000 and total cashes of just $10394, so it was not a successful WSOP. I've certainly had worse (2008), though. In spite of taking a lot of flak from poker people in and outside of my own house for missing a big chunk of the WSOP due to my unfortunate decision to follow around the Stanley Cup Final, I was very workmanlike once I did get into Vegas for the long-haul. I saw at least some action on 16 of 20 days between June 16 and July 5, and I had already missed a lot of the events I was really looking forward to playing.

As mentioned in my last/other WSOP report, I don't feel I played that well for much of this WSOP, but I did learn a lot about myself. I was reminded that as for as cold and calculated a gambler that I like to think I am, I am indeed quite human and need to be on guard against mental errors. I also learned to not throw in the towel when tournaments don't seem to be going my way. You don't get to 5x your starting stack by dinner every day and can't you play worse just because you haven't done it. I've become a lot more mentally tough and that part of being mentally tough is not necessarily just avoidance of tilt-jamming all your chips but it can often be a re-steal not attempted or a bet saved.

And I think it's important to learn these lessons because I feel like, when it comes down to it, I can be a darn good no-limit tournament player when I play up to my potential. The main thing is that latter clause. You take someone who just okay or reasonably good at poker, and well, it's actually hard for that person to get a lot better. But to already be a strong player and be sure you play strong all the time? That shouldn't be hard. Playing to your own potential should be the easy part.

And of course, this applies to life just as much as it does to poker. As usual, I won't be playing too much poker for the next little while. I'll be focusing on the non-poker things that make me happy: being slammed into the mat, kicked in the head, punched in the face, and having my joints twisted around in unnatural ways. I've been lazy as shit this WSOP with my training and I fully expect to get ass-kicked back in Vancouver, but I'm going to work hard, and try to get a little closer to my potential every day. Join me, won't you?

My World Series of Errors

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:12:12 GMT

On the surface, my WSOP has been pretty uninteresting. Because I missed much of it (including many of my best events) due to the Stanley Cup Finals, I've only played 11 events through Event #47 today. I have one small cash (105th for $6153) and am down 8.53 buy-ins or $30347. Overall, a pretty mediocre series but far from a bad one.

I am, however, very upset at myself in terms of how I've played in the WSOP. Like the Canucks team I followed in the postseason, at times I have been lights out and made great decisions. But I've also blundered tremendously on a number of occasions. This is really concerning to me. This is actually very rare behaviour for me. Throughout my poker career I feel as though I've been a paragon of consistency. I feel like I was never really the best, but I never really tilted and never made grievous blunders. I was just fairly good, all the time. But I've made a lot of fuckups in this WSOP. In the 3k PLO event I made errors on two separate hands based on stack size; in one I failed to re-raise with aces when I could have gotten about 40% of my stack in the middle, and on the other I re-raised myself off the winning hand because I miscounted my opponent's stack. Given that managing stack sizes is a key aspect of pot-limit these are pretty unforgivable mistakes.

I was very excited to play today's 10k 6-max. I knew it would be a tough field but a beatable one for me if I played well, and I knew I'd have to play well. There would be no danger of me spewing off chips like a maniac out of boredom like in the $1000 or $1500 tournaments. And today I probably played over 500 hand and am happy with my decisions on 498 of them. (I had a hand where I folded QQ and was shown AK, but given available information at the time I thought it was a reasonable decision.) In the moments leading to my bustout hand I was annoyed to have not many chips, but yet proud that I had played well to still be here despite the things that went against me. But my bustout hand was simply embarrassing, as I just fucked up basic arithmetic and thought I was getting the right price on a call that I wasn't.

It's very annoying, because poker is getting tougher year after year, and so the margin of error shrinks smaller and smaller. The types of mistakes I am making are just so avoidable and so careless. It would almost be better if I were just a weaker poker player and simply wasn't equipped to beat these tournaments. But that's not the case. I honestly do feel that I am good enough to be anywhere from a solid to a big favourite in these fields. But if I just continue to shoot myself in the foot doing making horrible inattentive blunders, then what can my edge actually be? It does no good to play lights-out poker and carve out an extra few blinds worth of ev here and there yet occasionally make huge blunders that cost heaps of them. It's like being a pro blackjack player who can memorize a super-complex system, side track aces, knows all the count adjustments, gets deep penetration, but randomly screws up and doubles on hard 13 -- all those accumulated edges just get nullified in one shot.

It's actually been a very very long time since I was truly frustrated with poker. I simply don't play enough of it these days for that to really happen. One benefit of this is that I'm a lot fresher and I have a much more positive attitude when I go into tournaments, and I think that counts for a lot. But it is also possible that some of these big blunders are manifestations of table rust. Or maybe it could be my sleep (which has been extremely poor during this WSOP), or any number of other factors. One thing I do know is that there are only about 3-5 tournaments left on my 2011 WSOP schedule, so I'd really like to at least make it deep in one of them and be able to say that I played every hand well. Even though I don't really deserve it, I hope I get the chance to redeem myself.

Ashamed in Vancouver: The city I love, and the idiots I have to share it with

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:01:20 GMT

What can one say that hasn't been said by everyone? In a matter of less than 12 hours it's already become a cliché to say that the events of Wednesday night were a disgraceful embarrassment. I'm deeply and incredibly saddened by my city, the city which -- no matter where I was in the world -- was the one I identified with. The city in which I was raised and that I ultimately thought that one day I would raise my family and my kids. I've always been so proud to be able to travel abroad and say that I am from Vancouver. Everyone I said it to always beamed with jealousy, saying they'd loved their trip to Vancouver or that they'd always heard it was great.

The line from the Vancouver Police Department and the politicians is that some "small number of troublemakers" were responsible for this. I was there, and it was no small number. There were thousands on the streets. Maybe not all of them were actively overturning cars, smashing windows and tossing stones, but just being in the mob at all makes you a moron.

The other line that's frequently trotted out is that "these are not hockey fans". Yet one moment of the footage stands out to me in particular, a guy in a Henrik Sedin #33 jersey smashing a burning car. Seriously, a Henrik jersey? This is a guy considered one of the classiest people in the entire NHL, a true team leader and a guy who quietly donated millions of dollars to Children's Hospital. And I just wonder about this mentality. I was in the building for Game 7 and when that 3-0 goal went in, I was emotionally done. I can't even tell you what happened in the third period because I was barely watching and pretty much just forlorn. I was fighting back tears in the second intermission talking to Adam when he summed it up: "We're grown adults. How do we let ourselves get so emotionally invested in watching guys skate up and down the ice?" I had no energy in the third period, and the prevailing mood in the arena seemed to be with me. I planned to make it through the presentation of the Stanley Cup, but I decided I didn't have it in me to watch the Bruins skate it around, and left early. And thus I was one of the first people in my group to see the fire and clouds of smoke first emerging from near the Canada Post building on Georgia Street.

I just didn't get it because I wasn't angry. There was nothing to be angry about. Boston was clearly the better hockey team. Better goaltending, better defensive coverage, and scoring contributions from everyone when they needed them. We got outplayed, what's there to be angry about? I was just sad, because once again Lucy pulled the football away when I came running up to kick it. Where do these guys find the energy to riot? And why are they so happy? I mean these guys are wearing Canucks gear, why aren't they as devastated as I am? How does lighting a car on fire make them feel better? I was watching these guys and there is nothing but pure joy in their faces as they wantonly vandalize and destroy the property of others.

As I talked about in my last post being a pro sports fan doesn't really make sense. As Adam and I watched the riot on television, Adam tweeted that we should lose our team for this. He explained further to Spencer and I that he is just angry, because he doesn't want to be a fan of the same team these people are fans of. He wants to hate what they like. And of course that doesn't make any sense, but it's totally understandable. We are a joke. I watched the news and saw Boston celebrate their win in a positive way. They mentioned that there were just 7 arrests in Boston. As badly as they treated us in Boston, they ended up being orders of magnitude more classy than us. And it has nothing to do with winning versus losing. These people in Vancouver would have done this whether it was 4-0 Boston, 2-1 Boston or 12-0 Vancouver. It's just an absolute joke and I'm embarrassed to be a Vancouverite. I'm sick to my stomach that I don't get to wear my pride in being from here on my sleeve any more. After tonight, we don't deserve to be proud.

I was only 13 in 1994, so I asked Adam whether 2011 was worse, and he said that it definitely was. All I'd heard going into Game 6 and Game 7 was that the police were ready and they did not expect a repeat of '94. Maybe the success of the 2010 Olympics went to their heads because to me, they seemed totally unprepared. The first cops on the scene did not have riot gear. They were not in formation. They were badly outnumbered and it could have gone very bad in that period where they were awaiting reinforcements from other cities. Speaking of which, why were those reinforcements only called in after shit went bad? They should have had riot police from other Canadian cities ready to go. There should have been a big show of force as a deterrent. Someone should get fired for this because it was easily preventable and they fucked up.

But in the end it's not about the cops, it's about the idiots. I mean what can you say about this guy, for just one example. This tosses aside any idea that us Canadians are better, or that our west-coasters are laid-back hippies. When you get enough of us together, we're as fucked up as anyone else, and we don't even have a good reason. We live in a beautiful city with a consistently solid economy and high standard of living. While I have no love for their politics, at least when the left-anarchists smash things up at G7 and G20 summits they are doing it for a reason, misguided as it may be. These retards are overturning cars and lighting them on fire just so they can yell "wooooohoooooo!" like it's an awesome party. Adam says he doesn't want to cheer for the same team as these people. I don't even want to be from the same city as them.

I could go on for a while and I had a few more thoughts, but my flight to Vegas is boarding, and never have I been so glad to get out of this city. Every year when I leave for the WSOP it's always bittersweet because Vancouver is so awesome this time of year. This year I can't get out of here fast enough.

Home or Away? Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:08:19 GMT

This is Robson Street, the most well-known street in Vancouver and its major downtown commercial thoroughfare. This picture was taken by me on my crappy cameraphone at about 1 AM. As you can see, it is completely deserted on this Sunday night. It's true that it's late, and people do have to work tomorrow, but usually there are at least a few signs of life. But not tonight.

About 18 hours from now, it is possible that this intersection -- like almost every intersection in downtown Vancouver -- will be a veritable orgy of celebration. The Canucks are one win away from the first ever Stanley Cup win in their 41-year history and better than 3:1 favourites to win the series at this stage.

For a very long time, the Canucks were a very bad team. They were especially bad in my early childhood. They were probably the worst team of the 1980s with the exception of New Jersey (which happens to be my Eastern team). But as early as I can remember, I cheered for this hopelessly inept team. I do wonder why I loved these losers so much. My parents emigrated to Canada and Vancouver in the 1970s as Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong who wouldn't know an icing from a high-sticking. But today they are both Canucks fans, because their only son was such a rabid one, who like every other kid refused to obey his bedtime when his team was in any game.

When one really thinks about it, professional team sports are a silly thing. Players are sent this way and that way, and millions of people in any given city are cheering for logos. The bonds tying the players to the cities they represent are not non-existent, but nor are they forged in steel. It is slightly insane that people have this tremendous passion for watching other people shoot pucks with sticks, toss balls into hoops, kick other balls into nets, and run yet other balls into end zones. To anyone who says that team fandom and passion is totally irrational: yeah, okay, you're right. But you're also missing out on the tremendous amount of fun that you'd be experiencing if you just turned your brain off a little bit. Just look at the joy around you. As Jerrod said to me as he observed the Canucks fans at the Palazzo sportsbook going crazy after our Game 5 win: "Sports are awesome."

***

To Boston, or not to Boston?

I busted out of the $2500 6-max limit hold'em at the WSOP at around 4 PM today. I had a choice for Game 6: a midnight flight to Boston or a 9 PM flight to Vancouver. It was a tough one. I had always said I would go to Boston if it was a potential Cup-clincher for the Canucks. There is nothing that can possibly compete with being there live to see the team you've lived and died by win for the first time. Or is there?

I called up some friends. Basically I called up anyone I thought potentially had the means (and insanity) to go to Boston on a few hours notice to go to the game with me. I posted on Facebook. But it quickly became apparent that I was pretty much the only one this nuts, and that most of my good friends would be in Vancouver for Game 6. The Canucks' slogan for the last few years is "We Are All Canucks", and to be sure, there has been tons of hi-fiving and hugging of strangers this playoffs. It would be great to celebrate with 2000 Canuck fans in Boston. But it would be at the cost of celebrating with 2 million Canucks fans in Vancouver, including all of my closest Canuck fan friends.

Professional sports teams are shared by the community in which the team plays. I've always enjoyed going to away games in my Canucks jersey and being the bad guy and taking the abuse. I'm proud to represent the team on the road. But this isn't the game for it. The reason we got so much abuse hurled at us in Boston is because their fans want it just as bad as we do. The message the Bruins fans sent to us was clear. "You are the bad guys. This is our house. You don't belong here, and you are not welcome here." And in their own meathead douchebag way, they're absolutely right. I don't belong there. I belong with the fans of my team. Because that's what being a sports fan is about.

So even if the Canucks are skating around with the Cup in Boston, I think the place to be is Vancouver. I don't know yet where I'll be between the hours of 5 PM and 8 PM tonight, but it'll be among other die-hard Canuck fans. I think that's the way it should be.

Go Canucks Go!

Stanley Cup finals in Boston and the WSOP

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 04:30:31 GMT

I'm in Vegas, where I've been for about the last 30 hours. Before that, I was in Boston. You can kinda guess how that went. Game 3 was particularly bad. Fans were abusive and obnoxious throughout the game. I expect a lot of heckling and I actually love the fun abuse, but a great deal of Boston fans were over the line. There was a lot of shoving, throwing of beer, threats of personal violence, and stuff like that. Security was really inept/unwilling to do anything. And of course, I paid $800 to watch my team get shelled. Game 4 was just as bad hockey-wise, but they stepped up the security in a big way and people for whatever reason were just not being jerks. It also helped that I was in the same section as a lot of Canuck fans/sympathizers including Steve Nash and his girlfriend, who sat next to me, as well as a lot of members of Roberto Luongo's extended family. The Green Men were also in the adjacent section, which also led to beefed up security. Overall though, the trip was just a tremendous bust.

My plan was to come back to Vancouver for Game 5, but my retarded self left my passport in Vegas, so I just finished watching it at the Emeril Lagasse Stadium at the Palazzo. Since I am here I'll probably play the $2500 6-max tomorrow, since the only way I can miss Game 6 would be by final tabling it. I'm about 50-50 on going to Boston. The money and even the two previous blowouts aren't really an issue, but the potential for violence if Vancouver wins (or even if Vancouver loses), is. In Game 4 we resolved this by basically parking inside the arena building and getting in the car immediately, so this might work.

Most Canucks fans are obviously hoping really hard that there isn't a Game 7. I am really hoping there isn't: the 10k limit hold'em is that day. If you're reading this, you probably know what I plan to do in the event of that conflict.

back in the USA

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:56:39 GMT

This post comes to you from Las Vegas, where I finished Day 1 of the $5000 NL hold'em (with not nearly as many chips as I'd like). As I announced on this week's 2+2 Pokercast, I was approved for a visa into the United States and will be attending the 2011 World Series of Poker (but most of it after the Canucks win the Stanley Cup, of course).

I was still quite adamant up to a couple months ago that I would not be returning to the U.S. A number of people did advise me, upon seeing me in person in Australia, that I should see a lawyer "just in case". It was an argument that did make sense. It didn't help that my WSOP housemates started copying me on house related e-mails in February. So I decided to contact one of the lawyers who posted on my blog after the initial denial. I chose Cory Caouette of bsis.com and he turned out to be fantastic and if you find yourself needing visa help for the US, I recommend that you get in touch with him via his website. Getting the visa was some amount of paperwork and hassle, but once at the consulate's office the person assisting me was courteous and professional. I was approved three days after my appointment.

Ultimately the decision to return to the U.S. was not really one of poker (or even hockey). It's one of friendship. While it'd have been nice to see my American friends all over the world, that wasn't happening, and the weeks that I spend at the WSOP in our house are without question the best weeks out of my year. It's not about the WSOP, it's about the friends and good times. If the WSOP were held in any other country -- or if it ceased to exist altogether, but the same group of people were forced by some circumstance to meet somewhere in the world for seven weeks -- I'm quite sure that I'd still have no desire to come to the U.S. But the camaraderie is something that was too much for me to give up after all. I'm sure I will get some people calling my a hypocrite or smugly cashing in their "I told you so"s. But that's fine; perhaps I deserve them. But depriving myself of my own enjoyment just to avoid those slings and arrows would be pretty silly.

As for my plans going forward: I'm only in Vegas for a couple days. As mentioned, I'm still in the 5k NL (but barely). The current plan is to be back in Vancouver for game 2, and travelling to the US again on Sunday -- this time for Games 3+4 in Boston. I figure if this whole thing about ending the U.S. boycott is about good times and memorable experiences, it should certainly be about watching the Canucks win their first-ever Stanley Cup!

So, I'm back. Now that my ever-so-principled stand has come to an end, I guess I had better make the most of it. Time to run good and cheer loud.

I got in a fight on Sunday

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:25:00 GMT

Video here, more detailed play-by-play (as I remembered it on Sunday) on my fight blog.

(partial) Madrid trip report

Tue, 10 May 2011 18:19:29 GMT

My impressions of Madrid, having been here for five days now, are very positive. Madrid seems like a very underrated city. It never really seems to get mentioned as a top-tier European city, but I think I like it better than the other Western European cities I have visited for more than a couple days (which admittedly, is a very short list: London, Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona). Cost of living also seems a bit lower here.

The train system seems quite good and taxis seem to be cheaper than most of Western Europe (flagfall is just E2.20). We've also never spent more than 3 minutes waiting for a cab. The centre seems very walkable.

It's probably a bit below average for scenery, not being a coastal town, but the parks seem okay. There is some pretty cool older architecture, in some part due I guess to Spain's non-participation in WW2.

There are a lot of panhandlers. The majority are non-aggressive (simply posting signs while sleeping on the street) but because there are so many of them, the aggressive minority means you are bothered quite frequently. If you are eating outdoors on a big street you are seemingly a favourite to be approached for money.

Late at night there are also a lot of prostitutes, or at least this was the case last Saturday night. Some Russian hooker grabbed my junk as our large group of Canuck jersey-wearing tourists were returning to the hotel. (Speaking of the Canucks, watching American sports in this time zone is one thing that absolutely sucks.)

The girls are very attractive. Probably even better than Vancouver. I'm not entirely sure if it's ratio or volume. Everyone walks around here, so the really hot girls are a lot more visible.

I've yet to find a really great restaurant here, though we've been enjoying the cured ham pretty much everywhere. Suggestions welcome. (On this topic, if you are ever in San Remo for EPT or anything else, eat at Mare Blu. Dan and I ate there every day that it was open.)

One of the best pleasant surprises: I went to a store to buy some bottled water. I asked what time they close. The answer was 3am. Love that. I also like that because Madrid is on CET but almost as far west as Europe gets, the sun is still out at 9pm in May.

As for me, I hosed the tournament, obviously. Am considering side events but I've been working out with ElkY (who has a Muay Thai fight later this year against Lex Veldhuis) and his trainer, so that has been more fun than side events. Might play the SCOOP turbo at 11pm tonight depending what time I get back from dinner and whether the PokerCast team has anything going on.

EPT San Remo: E5000 main event

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:00:05 GMT

Made it through to Day 2 with 86,800 and was feeling good about it. I should have been sent home shortly after dinner with my last 12k in the middle and AQ against KK, but I spiked. From there I went on a pretty good heater, flopping a set and getting my man to fire multiple barrels at me, and just generally betting and taking it down for the rest of the night.

But Day 2 started off pretty ugly. I put on a wonderful performance of how to play poker like a scared little girl, folding to 3-bets like it was my job. Which I guess it is, sorta. I just always had the bottom of the distribution, so what can you do? I was actually pretty happy to be down only to 60k by the second break. At 1k/2k/200, I made it 4500 with Ah7h from 2-off, button (very liberal 3-bettor who has been one of the beneficiaries of my frequent folding) makes it 5000 more, all three options occur to me, I call. Flop QhTd4h, k-12500-28000-shove-call, he has AQ, brick-brick.

I was not the beneficiary of the awesome table draws that other people talked about. I did see one or two ghastly plays on Day 1, but for the most part players were just mediocre/okay/good rather than awful. On Day 2, we did have two shocking bustouts right at the beginning (the latter of which caused my Belgian neighbour to exclaim "what is going on at this table?!" but by a couple levels in, everyone seemed fairly competent and I would have to think the table was much tougher than the field average.

The field size in San Remo shrank pretty dramatically, from over 1300 players last year to just under 1000 this year. The majority of the difference are going to be weaker players, of course. While there is still excellent value in this tournament, the days of hundreds and hundreds of players in big buy-in events who are just drawing stone dead are a thing of the past.

With over a week until the Madrid event, Dan and I are left to try to figure out what we're going to do until then. Playing side events here is certainly one option, but neither of us brought enough cash and we probably overestimated the ease of acquiring it. Another is to travel and hit up some other part of Europe. There are even a couple of PokerStars pros who are interested in training with me (one of them brought his MMA coach with him on the trip) here in San Remo, although there is the issue of finding some appropriate mat space.

All this could have been averted by just winning the tournament! Note to self for next time.

San Remo pre-tournament report

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:43:09 GMT

I'm here in San Remo, Italy. As I write this, it's noon, the scheduled start time for Day 1, but due to registration issues, bureaucracy and so forth it looks like 1:30 PM is the new start time.

When I ran into EPT Events staffer Mad Harper at the PokerStars party on Tuesday night, she gave me a big hug and exclaimed, "Terrence, we never see your presence here at EPTs!" While not technically true, it is the case that the two places where I spend most of my time -- Hong Kong and Vancouver -- are pretty darn far hikes to get to most European stops. Nevertheless, I've heard such amazing things about the action from last year's San Remo event that it would be a shame to miss a 5k Euro buy-in when I have nothing better going on.

The timing for this poker event is pretty good. I competed in gi BJJ last Sunday in Hong Kong, and posted about it here. That night I flew out from Hong Kong to Istanbul, spent 8 hours in the IST lounge, then flew on to Nice, which was nice.

Nice is very pretty. I don't think I've ever been on a drive that nice straight from the airport. The airport is actually on the coast and it's less than a 15-minute drive down Promenade des Anglais, which is the primary tourist attraction for its scenic shore. My trip roommate Dan and I spent less than 24 hours in Nice before heading on to San Remo, but it was pretty enjoyable. We even got to experience authentic French waiter snobbery at the restaurant where we ate dinner!

The train ride from Nice to San Remo kinda sucked. The train was packed and cramped as any Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York subway. Dan and I were the idiot tourists with all our luggage on board, and we were standing for about the first 30 minutes of it. Once we hit Monaco, most people departed and we were able to find seats the rest of the way.

San Remo is also pretty to walk around, but has gotten boring pretty fast. It's very small, and you can see pretty much all of it in a couple hours, which doesn't leave much. Dan and I went for a 4-5km jog along the water which was probably the highlight. But other than fashion shopping or eating there isn't much to do. Walk along the streets, see churches, that kind of thing. Usually the most entertaining thing to do is just sit on the street and have coffee and pastry. Heck, the city is so small that poker/the casino are the two lead items of interest on the Wikitravel page under the "Do" section, and we were featured on the front page of yesterday's newspaper.

In any event, we are paid through this hotel for the week, so hopefully I don't get coolered or do anything dumb. I can't think of a better way to create positive vibes about the town than by winning a million Euros or so.

Finance in the Time of Prohibition: pros versus DIY

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:56:55 GMT

I don't like how my financial portfolio looks. It's unbalanced, undiversified, and currently cash-heavy when considering predicted online poker shrinkage.

Here's the question: Should I hire a pro? Are financial advisors actually worthwhile? How do I go about finding the right pro?

Alternatively, should I handle my finances myself? This will require a significant investment in learning (which I am willing to make). But I don't know where to start or what to read, specifically. I have a business degree so I'm familiar with the basics of personal finance but personal finance is an area where it's incredibly hard to tell good advice from bad if you don't already know a lot. What should I read?

a personal look at Black Friday

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:08:53 GMT

Black Friday was actually Saturday for me here in Hong Kong; I woke up to Twitter, my IMs, and my phone going crazy before I'd even had a chance to make coffee. Now it's 10 PM here and my day is winding down just as poker players in North America are realizing that sadly, yesterday was not a bad dream.

What is there to say that hasn't been said in the last 20 hours? The poker media did such a fantastic job covering the key points on their sites, blogs, and on Twitter that my own two pennies on any sort of "what this means" outlook would be a waste of perfectly good copper. But I what I can add is my own personal insight on Black Friday from the perspective of someone who was an insider long, long ago.

Although it's been over six years since I did any work for PokerStars, I do feel a connection with the site and I'm proud to have been a part of its formative years. I don't claim any great importance to the growth of Stars or online poker in general, but I can say "I was there; I remember when." It's like if you lived down the street and shot hoops with the little kid who grew up to be Lebron James. Four years ago, I wrote about how I first got in the online poker industry and my pride at watching Stars become the juggernaut of online poker. I feel like I was a part of something, and now I feel like the U.S. government is trying to destroy that thing.

I don't know what Stars looks like from the inside now. It's been years, I'm out of the loop, and even if Stars employees wanted to or were able to talk "insider" stuff with me, I likely wouldn't even understand most of it. I do know that Black Friday has turned peoples' worlds upside-down. Poker pros, obviously, have been immediately shut down and cut off from their income (and in many cases, their savings). Members of the poker media are unsure whether their services will be needed if the live poker world shrinks as a result of the online one doing so. And the hundreds of people who work for Stars/FTP/AP/UB could be forgiven for dusting off their résumés. A friend of mine who works for a site -- and is a new single mom -- messaged me today worried that she might not have a job soon.

I saw some tweet today saying the Isle of Man has an extradition treaty with the United States. Just the idea of extradition made me ill. Unlike many people in poker, I actually know Isai Scheinberg. He's a good man. He's not a scheming underworld criminal. Yes, he's a businessman, and yes, he was a tough and demanding boss. But I also know he always ran the company with fairness and honesty. I was in the room when he made tough decisions because they were the right thing to do. Isai was definitely about doing the right thing, and he'd do it even if no one would ever know about it. On top of that, he often told me that he wanted PokerStars to run towards regulation, not away from it. He wanted to work with governments. There would be subsequent proof of these words in the creation of pokerstars.fr and pokerstars.it, sites that are regulated in their respective countries. All he -- and thus PokerStars -- wanted was an opportunity to do what they do best: provide a place for millions of people worldwide to play poker. And at least partially because he did it better than anyone else, today he is staring down the barrel of a federal indictment. How fitting that on the same day that Atlas Shrugged is released in movie theatres, we see a real-life example of the government persecuting successful businessmen specifically because they are successful.

***

It won't be the same.

In a chat conversation today, I mentioned that reading Kevmath's tweets starting from the beginning of the day to the end was like watching a time-lapse of a disaster. Today is momentous. At times the poker community has been guilty of overreacting to news that turned out not to be big news (the Reid bill, for example). This time though, everyone in the media is saying that this is not just big news; this is the biggest of big news. Nothing will be the same after this.

It's hard to say what the fallout will be. To think of the potential worst-case scenario effect is amazing. But at a minimum, it is a wipeout of nearly the entire population of American professional online poker players. I've never really been a fan of most young poker pros (despite having been one myself) but they certainly don't deserve to have their income legislated out of existence overnight. And we are probably talking about job loss with resounding effects. As just one example, will there be a 2012 PCA in the Bahamas? Will it get 1500 players? If not, that's a lot of lost jobs at the Atlantis.

It's all pretty overwhelming. As much as my relationship with poker has been rocky over the last few years, it is still what has given me the life I have and love. Even if it's no longer a huge part of my life, I understand that it is everything for others. It's simply not fair what they're doing. They're taking something from us, and there seems to be so little we can do about it.

at Tiger Muay Thai in Phuket

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:19:07 GMT

It's past 1am in Phuket, and I'm settled into my small bungalow here across the street from Tiger Muay Thai and MMA, where I'll be training for the next week. The bungalow will seem a bargain by first-world standards at about US$230, but I'll be training alongside people who have paid less than one-third of that price to train at the same location.

I've heard both good things and bad things about TMT. It does seem to be polarizing. Those who like it -- and there are many, many positive reviews scattered across the web in addition to the pages of testimonials on their own site -- do really seem to like it. It also seems to inspire a lot of ill-will, as well; there is a Facebook group entitled "The truth about Tiger Muay Thai" whose profile picture is a man in a suit with a dollar bill covering his eyes; the implication is obvious.

If you tour the website, TMT does seem quite nice. Indeed, one of the more common, if somewhat unoriginal, criticisms seems to be that it is too nice. There is, naturally, the perception that fighters are forged not on beautiful islands like Phuket and farang-friendly gyms like TMT, but rather under dusty tin roofs on the chaotic streets of Bangkok. In a way similar to those who fancy themselves true fans of music are drawn to indie bands no one has ever heard of, those who think themselves badasses are drawn to Muay Thai gyms with unprounceable names and harsh living conditions. Of course, there is some chance they are right. But too bad. I will take my air conditioning and smoothie bar.

In any case, I don't need the hardcorest of hardcore Muay Thai training anyway, since I'll be here to train no-gi grappling and MMA for the most part, and Phuket is probably one of the better places to do MMA in Asia (maybe third behind Japan and the Philippines). I've been training the last two months consistently in Hong Kong, but my gym there is almost 100% gi BJJ for grappling. I miss no-gi grappling quite a bit. My game is more underhooks, transitions and scrambles than it is a tight, suffocating game. I'm lazy as fuck when it comes to grip fighting, and that is a recipe for disaster in gi grappling. Finally, for someone who has MMA ambitions, I have trained almost no MMA. I've taken a handful of MMA classes at Universal in Vancouver, but most of what I would call MMA skill is really just cross-training in isolated disciplines. I can box a little, kickbox a little, grapple a little, wrestle a little, but I have yet to put this together in any sort of coherent way. It's a lot like having spent a ton of time learning to dribble, learning to pass, learning to shoot, learning to rebound and learning to defend without actually ever playing any basketball.

So, while a week probably won't do a whole lot for me in the skills department, it will probably give me a decent assessment of where I stand, and what my attributes are as a fighter. But really, I just hope to have a lot of fun. I've enjoyed the last couple months training in the gi, but I'm also getting substantially diminishing marginal returns on fun. I'm hoping slip-sliding around and scrambling in the warm, humid, sweaty environment of Phuket punching and getting punched by 6oz gloves is what the doctor ordered. Figuratively, anyway. I don't think any doctor would actually order traumatic encephalopathy. But that's a blog post for another time.

If you're interested in following my training at Tiger Muay Thai and MMA more closely, bookmark/subscribe/friend/RSS/whatever my MMA/training blog at http://potlimitfighter.livejournal.com where I hope to update throughout the week.

9:00am training, so off to bed with me!

would you rather

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:14:37 GMT

...be yourself, in your station in life, here in the year 2011? Or the wealthiest person on the planet in the year 1700?

Stipulations: You are you. The 1700-you has knowledge of whatever you have knowledge of. Basically you're going into a time machine and popping out in the year 1700 (where ever in the world you choose). But obviously you can't bring modern stuff with you.

View Poll: In another life

(Edit: Obviously I screwed up the fourth option, which should not have the "not". I can't edit it now that it's up there.)

This question is borne out of last night's dinner conversation, where I disagreed strongly with my friend.

I think this is a case where the whys matter more than the numbers, so discussion in the comments is highly encouraged.

the value of sleep

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 06:42:49 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, over one of my many lunches with my friend Mike here in Hong Kong, I complained to him about feeling tired and ineffective during daytime training. When I'm in Vancouver, it's a breeze for me to train twice a day; usually at noon for an hour, and then around 7pm for two hours. I have absolutely no trouble doing so and I rarely feel run down even after an extended period of this. In Hong Kong, I've been having trouble getting on this consistent schedule.

We went over possible theories as to why. He suggested food, but I don't feel I've been eating poorly. I considered possibly air quality -- I have had a persistent mucusy cough/congestion for close to a month now -- but well, everyone in this city has to deal with that.

My best guess is that when I'm in Vancouver, I sleep a lot and nap liberally. I'll sleep a full eight hours and night, and my naps are actually longer than the typical recommendation, as I often nap for as much as 90 minutes. Random Googling indicates that most pro athletes sleep a lot; many for as much as 10 hours a night. This link indicates the average "world class" athlete sleeps an average of 8.75 hours a day.

Being in Hong Kong, for all its virtues, is definitely rough on sleep. It is especially hard to get a full night's sleep here on a typical poker player (3am-11am) sleep schedule. Hong Kong is generally considered to be in the midst of a pretty solid housing bubble (over 50% increase in the last two years). With that comes a lot of construction and renovation, and with that comes a lot of construction and renovation noise. My morning wakeup call is often some sort of drilling or hammering in my building. Afternoon napping is prevented by jackhammers, and often, massive piledrivers. It's an endless parade of noise pollution.

The obvious response is to shift my sleep schedule to that of a normal person and try to fall asleep by midnight, but this has never worked for me. It would be highly beneficial, but throughout my life -- starting from my early teens -- I've never really been able to do it. When I came back to Hong Kong from the Aussie Millions, my first couple nights I was sound asleep by midnight, as that corresponds to 3 AM in Melbourne. But pretty quickly, midnight became 12:30, which became 1:00, which became 2:00, which became 3:00. And it's not really a function of being a poker player; I didn't become a night owl because I was a poker player, rather I think that I was suited to poker because I was a night owl. When I had a job at Stars that required me to be up at 8:00 AM, I asked my boss if I could start working the swing shifts because I just wasn't getting enough sleep. Him saying I had to work daytimes was a significant part of my decision to leave. I'm like the kid who never stopped pushing his bedtime forward, only I never managed to grow out of the phase.

So here I sit in Hong Kong, at my desk at 2:30 in the afternoon, waiting for a brief lull in the jackhammers and cranes so I can get in a mini-nap. At some point I will climb into bed and put on some classical music. If the music is on loud enough to drown out the noise, it's loud enough to prevent me from sleeping, so I usually set it to about the same level as the noise. The end result is that I am able to drift into semiconsciousness listening to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms punctuated by construction noise. The length of my nap could be 0 minutes on a bad day or 30 minutes on a good one. It depends when the piledrivers start up.

WSOP Rule #89: Accepted Action

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:10:44 GMT

I think this is probably a bad rule.

Accepted Action: Poker is a game of observation. It's the players responsibility to ensure the accuracy of another player's bet and/or all-in wager regardless of what is stated by the dealer and/or other players at the table. If a player requests a count but receives incorrect information from the dealer or another player at the table, then places said amount into the pot, it is assumed he/she is accepting the action and will be subject to the correct wager and/or all-in amount.

A couple points. Firstly, I think that a good rule to follow with respect to rules in poker is that you should make rules to minimize the incentive to angle-shoot those rules. This fails that test in one important way. If I go all-in for my stack of 350,000 and the dealer announces that my stack is 250,000, and I have the nuts, I am incentivized to angle-shoot by not correcting the dealer, and speaking up only once I get called. If some third-party (dealer or otherwise) points out that I actually have 350,000, I can simply go, "oh, he's right", and the person contemplating the call has no idea whether I knew that to begin with, or am now faking it. The rule also potentially awards angle-shooters who hide large-denomination chips (and yes, I'm aware there's already a rule against this, but still, why give another reason to do it).

More importantly though, is that in order for a poker game to run with order, players have to be able to trust the dealer. Now, I don't want this to be misinterpreted. Dealers make mistakes all the time; they say "straight" when there's no straight, or mis-call low hands at the showdown, miss actions, etc. They're human. I'm not saying you don't have to pay attention. But for something like when a player specifically asks for a count from the dealer and the dealer goes to the opponent and counts down his stack, the player *has* to assume that this is the correct count. I mean, what is the meticulous player supposed to do, walk across the table and start cutting the other guy's chips himself? If the dealer makes the mistake of overlooking a 100k chip because it is hiding in a player's dirty stack (for example), I don't see how you can make this the responsibility of the player who has been misinformed by the dealer and tell him, "sorry, tough shit; you owe another 100k."

Another way to think of this is to reduce it to a more common and less dramatic situation. Suppose we are on the flop, someone tosses out a 5k chip and says "eighteen hundred". The dealer mis-hears this and declares to the other players, "eight hundred". Now, if some time goes by, and no one corrects the dealer (including the bettor), and there is a bunch of action behind, no reasonable person can argue "well, actually, the bet was 1800, the dealer just called it wrong." The bettor had ample time to correct the dealer's mistake, and didn't. To me, you can't penalize the players who acted on the dealer's declaration when it is specifically part of the dealer's job description to make sure that the action is clear to all players.

I am not 100% convinced of my position on this, and I am open to having my mind changed, but at the moment I don't see how this can be a good rule change.

View Poll: WSOP Rule 89

how I learned to stop worrying and tolerate teh Twitter

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:04:38 GMT

A very long time ago, at least in internet-time, I ranted about the rise of Twitter. In that post I expressed my lamentations that Twitter would replace actual intelligent thought on the internet and was mind-numbingly narcissistic and banal. I also claimed that I would never use Twitter to post my own personal banalities but instead use it only for poker tournament updates. Skip ahead to today, where if you follow me on Twitter, you realize now that I've managed to make myself look like a complete and total hypocrite in less than two years.

My intentions were pure. I was, as I stated at the time, reluctantly climbing on the bandwagon. The stats bear this out; I joined Twitter kicking and screaming. Late adopter would almost be an understatement as despite being a person who ~~spends all fucking day online~~ is reasonably internet-savvy, I joined Twitter in May 2009, at the crest of its second major sign-up boom:

For a very long time, I stuck to my principle of only tweeting tournament hands, updates, and chip counts. I followed very few people; mostly people I had bought pieces of, just to find out how they were doing. Twitter was a tool, goddamnit, not a source of entertainment.

But Twitter is insidious. I may have only followed a dozen people, but those people would retweet things from others, and I'd follow them. A useful article here, a witticism there. People would pimp their own Twitter accounts or those of others, and damned if some of them weren't fairly cute or interesting. I held out longer than most, but the two twin monsters of the internet -- narcissism and boredom -- have devoured greater men than I. I was becoming one of them, and I was powerless to stop it. It was no longer poker. It was MMA, hockey games, travel reports, and oh, dear god, no: my observations about the everyday world around me!

Twitter became the new Facebook status update. Hell, the two social media giants made it incredibly easy to merge the two, so that Twitter updates would *become* Facebook updates. I fretted for a long time about whether to connect the two. Almost everyone who follows me on Twitter is a poker fan, but I have many Facebook friends who don't know the difference between a straight and a flush. I worried whether my high school buddies, MMA teammates and potential future ex-girlfriends would be annoyed by incomprehensible tweets like, "just dbld up c/r jam with JJ on KT73 turn and held vs 98, 172k now."

But hey, there's that narcissism again. Making a deep run at the WSOP? Of course everyone wants to know about that! Competing in a grappling tournament? How else will know how badass I am? Lying on a beach in Brazil? People need to know that. And hell, they can unfollow me if they don't.

I remember feeling the pangs of guilt when I crossed over from poker tweeting to tweeting about everyday bullshit. But these days, I say things like "oh, that's going on Twitter" without a second thought. More notably, I write in this space significantly less. It's something that I never thought I'd do, or at least not because of Twitter. But it has. It was pointed out to me today that I'd gone two weeks without blogging. Last month, when I busted out of the 10k heads-up in Melbourne, I was unhappy with the way I played the third match. I had a lot of thoughts in my head to write down about how I had trouble focusing and wanting to win the third match because I'd have to play another long tough one against Alex Kostritsyn who was fresh and waiting in the wings. Instead, I tweeted: "Played like crap in the 3rd game." And that was it.

It's sad, but even being consciously aware of this, I'm not going to do anything about it. I'll keep on tweeting. 140 characters to communicate to the world is just too easy. Twitter is a world where no one cares whether you are a thoughtful person. It's pretty much the only medium where smart people don't care if other smart people use atrocious grammar and abbreviate everything. On a good day, one that doesn't involve the Playboy mansion, the U.S. border or winning simultaneous online majors, this blog gets maybe 300-500 unique visitors. I have 1400 followers on Twitter. If I want to reach people, it's clear that tweeting is at least a numerically superior method to blogging.

To me, one cannot celebrate Twitter's victory, because it is the triumph of breadth over depth. Aside from its role in the occasional deposing of a horrible dictator, I continue to lament its existence. The internet age brought us the "tl;dr" generation. Now, I've become part of the "tl;dw" one.

barefoot in an urban jungle: a 3-hour review of Vibram Five Fingers

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:15:34 GMT

We're meant to run barefoot, so they say. And it's hard to argue. Our ancestors ran barefoot to hunt down mammoths. Or something. (Yeah, they also tended to die in their 30s, but one probably wouldn't postulate that too many of those deaths were attributable to foot abrasions.) It is probably not a coincidence that barefoot shoes like the Vibram Five Fingers are becoming popular at the same time as paleo dieting. If we are supposed to eat what we ate as prehistoric hunter-gatherers, maybe we are supposed to move like them as well.

In Brazil, everyone wears sandals. To be specific, they wear Havaianas. Everyone -- rich or poor, fashionable or clueless -- wears Havaianas. So I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when I got to the airport on my last day in Brazil, wearing my Havaianas, that I realized I'd forgotten to pack home my only pair of real shoes, my beloved New Balance 420s. I posted on Twitter asking what new shoes I should buy, and the overwhelming recommendation was that I go to a running shoe specialist and have them assess my gait. Sounds reasonable; after all, that's what specialists are for.

I went to a running store in Vancouver and was recommended these Adidas Supernova Sequence running shoes. The last question I asked the sales guy is whether I could cross train in them, for example, in boxing. He said that I probably shouldn't, as they weren't designed to support the lateral movement required in such a sport.

I bought them anyway (I didn't much fancy spending a winter day in Vancouver wearing sandals), and while they seemed fine for running, the thicker sole on the shoe (or so I speculate; it could be anything) led me to frequently roll my ankle ever-so-slightly in regular everyday activities. Nothing ever serious, but many little imbalances in the road would lead me to invert my ankle. As someone who has suffered four ankle sprains, each one left me with the feeling of "whoa, that was a close call." So today I decided to heed the warning signs and pick up some shoes more suitable to everyday life.

I decided to at least check out the Vibram Five Fingers. I've been unsure about them for a while, despite one of my best friends giving them very strong reviews. I'd also tried them previously (in Melbourne) but was still skeptical. But after my knee injury last week, I got to thinking that perhaps barefoot would be best for me. The majority of my injuries have been to my ankle, and I've never once rolled my ankle while barefoot, on any surface -- might that be significant?

So I got to the store, tried on my size in the Vibram KSO, bounced around a bit. A British lady in her 50s who saw me doing mini-runs in the store told me that her friend had said to her that the Five Fingers were "life-changing". After a bit of this bouncing around the store, I was ready to purchase them, but twice the sales lady encouraged me to try them on a bit more. On the third time, I simply responded, "I think they're good; I'll take them." I mean, if renting them for a week were an option, I would have done that, but the bottom line is that I'm not going to know how much I like them without putting some actual miles on them.

That was about three hours ago. I decided to put my pair of Adidas in the bag and get going on these right away. The first thing I notice out on the streets is how hard the ground actually is. The reason these are supposed to be good for running is that when you run, you want to avoid heel-striking (which most modern shoe-wearing runners do, because of the lack of negative feedback). As it turns out though, striking with the ball of the foot is no picnic either at this stage. The balls of my feet are weak and wimpy -- as of course, are those of everyone who has spent their lives in shoes -- and it does feel a little uncomfortable to do so. I'm sure this will pass with time.

The other thing that was mentioned frequently is that at first, your calves will get tired more quickly. I didn't really notice this -- I probably have somewhat stronger than average calves -- but I can certainly understand how this would be the case. I was pleasantly surprised that my feet did not get cold, even though I expected them to. Hong Kong was a brisk 10 degrees today, and I suspected that might feet would complain about not having the insulation that they had become accustomed to, but there was no noticeable difference. One really unexpected consequence is that my jeans -- which fit perfectly fine when I've got shoes on -- now had to be rolled up. I'd only taken a few steps when I noticed I was trampling my seams.

For walking around, I began my trip out of the store and towards the train station on high alert. Hong Kong is a busy, congested, and very urban place. So I spent the first 15 minutes carefully looking down at the ground, worried about debris, cracks in the road, other people's feet, puddles, chewing gum, cigarettes, dog poop -- whatever. I started irrationally worrying about people stepping on my feet, until I realized that I can't remember the last time anyone ever stepped on my foot when I was wearing shoes, so why would it happen now that I'm not? After a while, I started to enjoy the sensitivity and feeling of -- well, if not exactly earth, then urban surface -- underneath me. I noticed those raised circles for blind people and what it felt like to step on them, and would step on them intentionally. Stepping on an escalator was an interesting experience. Every surface and contour was something I had to try. Well, I think I have an idea of what it feels like to step on this thing, but let's just make sure. But after a while, I stopped paying attention at all to where I was walking, only taking note when a new sensation was underfoot.

I had a silent smile to myself every time someone noticed them, which when you've got 42,000 people per square mile, is relatively often. I took a small bit of devilish pride in my slightly iconoclastic and rebellious choice of footwear: everyone around me is wearing shoes, but I'm barefoot! Teehee! Make no mistake though, these things are not a fashion statement. I have probably the most discreet-looking model, but they're still ugly. And I don't think they're going to be the sort of ugly that becomes fashionable; I think they're going to stay plain ugly.

It's only been a few hours, but so far I'm inclined to give the thumbs-up. Will this be a game-changer for me like it has for others? When it comes to new technologies, the most daring pseudo-alternative choices I've made have been PRK laser eye surgery, and switching to Mac computers. I have been pretty religious about both once given enough time. Time will tell whether I end up like the friend of the British lady in the store.

I'm definitely excited for the idea and I do hope that they're a winner. Chances are though that I will still have to keep around a regular pair of cross-trainers. There are bound to be situations where it's just not socially acceptable to wear barefoot shoes, though it's unclear what the intersection of "Adidas are okay but Vibrams are not okay" actually is. And I do worry about whether I will have proprioceptive issues after heavy use of the Vibrams. The VFFs are supposed to improve proprioception, but presumably only while actually wearing them (or being barefoot). It seems at least plausible that by whether by wearing them I make myself more likely to roll my ankle at those times when I *do* wear normal shoes. And that would suck.

In the meantime, I will just be that weirdo and get lots of stares from the middle-aged Chinese men who wonder what is wrong with foreign-born kids these days.

Ah well. In an hour I'm off to see a physiotherapist about my knee. Certainly, she will like them, right?

Vegas hotel/casino meme

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:08:35 GMT

Great trip down memory lane into my old grinder past. I'm almost certain I'm missing a few trips here, but I've done my best.

Circus Circus (1999): My first trip to Vegas, taken when I was 18, with my dad and my cousin. My goal was to go and count cards at as many casinos with good rules and low stakes as possible. It was successful, and I only got carded once the entire trip. I hit up tons of low-roller joints; CC, Slots-O-Fun, even the old El Cortez.

Imperial Palace (1999): Went with my cousin for New Year's. I'd just learned to play poker and spent a ton of time playing 3/6 at the Mirage and 4/8 at the Bellagio. Moved up to 6/12 at the Mirage and nearly had a heart attack because I mucked the winner. Won my first ever poker tournament, a $22 noon at the Luxor, on January 1, 2000.

Gold Spike (2000): I stayed here. No really, I really did. It was $22/night and I was a poor up-and-coming gambler. You had to step over bums and crack addicts to get in the front door but the rooms were actually decent.

Stratosphere (2001): I remember specifically staying here because they had the only 1-2 NL cash game in town. There was no NL in Vancouver or on the internet in those days, so I'd never played before. At that time, this was literally the only NL cash game in town that wasn't at nosebleed stakes. I really wanted to play NL, so I stayed here. Would end up meeting a future roommate and good friend named Thomas on this trip.

Monte Carlo (2001): Stayed here shortly after 9/11, and Vegas was dead. Did absolutely nothing the entire time but play 8/16 at the Bellagio.

<--- Terrence becomes legally old enough to play poker in Las Vegas --->

Barbary Coast (2002): Did absolutely nothing the entire time but play 15/30 at the Bellagio.

Boardwalk (2002): Went on a fun road trip with Thomas to California and Vegas and stayed here. God this place was a shithole, but an amazing location for $50/night or whatever it was. We pondered regularly when they were going to bulldoze it and put up an actual nice property in that spot (the answer, as it turns out, was 2006).

Binion's (2004): Stayed here a couple nights to play the WSOP (main, plus four prelim events) for the first time in my life. Glad I did, since of course it would be the last time the WSOP was held there. By now I had a real job and was also devastating $100 SNGs on Party, so I had real money. Highlights include Thomas waking me up at 6am to buy his soon-to-be-expiring lammers on the day of the main event, and having a nice chat with the man who would end up becoming World Champion that year.

Gold Coast (2005): Stayed here for about a week during the WSOP due to its Rio proximity. 2005 was the first real WSOP (though still only 9 events) and I decided pretty quickly that I hated living long-term in a hotel, and quickly took up an offer from friends to crash with them. From 2006 onwards it would be only poker-house living for me.

Golden Nugget (2005, 2006): BARGE in '05, and with an ex-girlfriend for a couple nights in '06. Best value in Vegas, when you have a car.

Caesar's (2007): Had a comped room due to making Diamond in a Day in 2006, so I used it before the rental began on our WSOP house.

Bellagio (2007): I spent my first five years coming to Vegas mostly to play poker here, but in those years I was never able to afford it. So I never actually spent the night here until 2007, as an anniversary trip with an ex-girlfriend.

Rio (various): We often keep a room at the Rio during the WSOP; I've crashed in it maybe a total of 3 nights over the past few years but taken dinner break there quite a few times.

injured again/Copenhagen?

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 06:00:45 GMT

As too often happens when I come home from a poker trip all excited to get in a training routine, I've gotten injured again. I was doing jiujitsu and on top in a nice, high mounted position when the big 210 lb guy I was rolling with bridged and came awkwardly on top of me. Unlike when I hurt my elbow, this was not an instance of a big guy being overanxious and trying to hurt me. This was just a freak accident and a result of a big guy being big. Had it been a 150-pounder, I probably would have felt a bit of a tweak and some pain but nothing too bad. It's also the same knee I previously injured a little over a year ago.

It hurt really badly for about 10 minutes but then the pain subsided and I was even able to put some weight on it. Went to the orthopedist this morning (great thing about Hong Kong is that you can see a high-quality specialist an hour after phoning the office) and he said I probably have an MCL sprain but not a tear, and no probable damage to the meniscus. He said to give it a week and if it doesn't improve then we will MRI it, but that doesn't seem necessary for now.

Neverthelss, I'm still highly annoyed that I won't be training, and by the end of today I may well tilt-book a trip to Copenhagen for the EPT there. Airfare is only about $900, it's a place I haven't been before, so other than the cold, why not. It's either that or play Call of Duty all week anyway.

I have been playing on HeroPoker. After blowing through 10k at 50/100 HU LHE yesterday I decided that maybe I should play NL, and did quite well multi-tabling 2/4 to 5/10 NL. Copenhagen or no Copenhagen, I will probably be online quite a bit this week, so look for me at the tables!

busto on Day 1 of Aussie Millions

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:40:19 GMT

My debut as a Team Hero Poker Pro was inauspicious, as I flamed out towards the end of Day 1. I started the day in Seat 5 and Perry Friedman in Seat 7, James Akenhead in the 8, and one Phillip Jerome Ivey in the 9. It really wasn't the most horrendous table draw of all time, but on Day 1 of a major tournament with 700 players in Australia, one expects much better.

There were a few interesting hands, but only two were my major downfall. The first was against Ivey ,I was doing well and up to about 27k. At 100/200/25, I made it 500 with AcKc, Akenhead called, Ivey called, and the BB called. The flop came A77 with two diamonds, and we checked it around. The turn was a 3, I bet 850, Akenhead folded, Ivey made it 2400, BB folded and I called. The river was a K, I checked, and I was expecting to snap-call a 5k bet, but instead, Ivey shoved for his whole ~10k stack. I tanked for a long while (for me), but I couldn't find a fold and he showed me 33.

I rebuilt a bit, but then lost a big JJ/AK flip to a freeroll qualifier who, coincidentally enough, was seated next to me on the plane coming into Melbourne.

Doing a lot of interviews, photo shoots and lifestyle stuff for Hero this week so I'll stay busy. Might play the 10k heads-up tomorrow.

Melbourne, Aussie Millions, and my new deal

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:44:49 GMT

I'm in Melbourne, having completed the last leg of my four continents in six days journey. I'm here for the Aussie Millions, which might seem somewhat surprising since I've said here as recently as September that I planned to eschew poker travel in favour of training. However, I was asked to come here a while ago as part of Team Hero Poker. Yes, at long last I have signed a sponsorship deal with an online site. Hero Poker is a new boutique site on the Merge Poker network, and they've asked me to be one of their pros. Hero Poker's CEO is a guy named David Jung, whom I first met as a big PokerStars exec in the Asia market. He did big things there but wanted to branch out on his own, and he contacted me to be with him on this project, and it sounded fun. Hell, the last time I started on the ground floor of a poker startup, it worked out okay for me. :) Our official launch was the welcome party at the Aussie Millions last night, and many people asked me, David and the other pros about the site, so hopefully the word will continue to spread.

As for me, I'll be playing Day 1A of the $10,000 AUD (which is damn near $10,000 USD these days) buy-in of the Aussie Millions tomorrow. I've played countless hands of live poker over the years and hundreds (really, hundreds?) of poker tournaments, but this will be a first for me as a real, contracted, long-term representative with a sponsorship deal. The Hero Poker cameras will be following us around, so hopefully I don't do anything too stupid. :)

e-money in Hong Kong

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 03:24:30 GMT

Those of you who have been to Hong Kong in the last decade certainly know of the Octopus card. For those who haven't, it is an e-money smart card that you can use for many, many transactions in Hong Kong. It operates like most touchless smart cards in most modern cities for subway and transit systems, but you can use it for way more things in Hong Kong, including all 7-11 and Circle K convenience stores, many chains of supermarkets, parking meters, vending machines, even Starbucks and McDonald's, and the place that does my laundry even takes Octopus. You can charge the card using cash or credit at anywhere that accepts the card. I impressed some South African friends the other day by buying them coffee and swiping my wallet to pay for it. Time from the cashier telling you the price of your order to you paying for it is typically about 1.5 seconds, no joke. You could easily go around Hong Kong carrying no cash if you wanted to, and of course the most awesome thing is that you never get change, nor have to carry, change. It really doesn't sound that impressive, but it has to be used to be believed.

I noticed today that the cafe that I'm writing this post from has started to establish their own e-money smart card. This is pretty brilliant from a business standpoint. Of course, they have to incentivize you to use their card, so they do so by making all card purchases 10% off. But because you have to pre-load the card, there is always the chance you end up not using the entire balance (whether you cease being a customer, you move away, or you simply lose the card), which is a win for them. But what is an even bigger win is that the card inspires customer loyalty to a far greater extent than any other similar program. It crushes their previous "buy 10 coffees and get the 11th free" loyalty program, even if the value to the customer is the same (10% off in either case). But because you almost always have a balance on the card, you're perpetually inclined to use it.

Of course, even though such schemes make perfect sense, it works better in Hong Kong -- where e-money cards have been in use for 13 years -- than it would in other cities. But it's interesting to see, right before my eyes and in brick-and-mortar stores, the latest transformation of money of being bills and coins to smart cards. Really, it's not a terribly dramatic change -- after all, money hasn't actually represented anything in my lifetime anyway -- but it's cool nonetheless.

4 continents in 6 days

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:54 GMT

Before I'd booked the Brazil trip, I knew I'd be going to Melbourne to play the Aussie Millions. You might think, why not just book a Vancouver-Rio-Melbourne open-jaw, but no, I had to make life difficult. Instead of one very long trip, I settled broke it up into three merely long trips. So after going Rio-Sao Paulo-Toronto-Vancouver yesterday, I'll be doing Vancouver-Hong Kong on Sunday/Monday and Hong Kong-Melbourne on Thursday. It made sense at the time. I ran really good in 2010 getting business-class upgrades on international Air Canada flights (I took like six long-haul flights in Executive First), so connecting back to Hong Kong through AC flights in order to sleep in the delightful little pods of the Boeing 777 widebody seemed attractive. (Sadly, AC is slashing benefits for its frequent fliers in 2011, so I'm probably going to cease being so loyal this year.)

Since I'm outta here tomorrow, today's a busy day: I need to go try and buy some new running shoes (since I left my old ones at the hostel), attend an MMA event where a couple of my teammates from Universal MMA are fighting, do a ton of laundry and re-pack my bags, and probably a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten. So why am I writing this instead of doing this? Because while it's well past noon in Rio and according to my body clock, it's still before 8 AM in Vancouver on a Saturday morning and nothing is open.

Next trans-continental flight in one day!