There are no off days: Days 11-13
Thursday March 17th-Saturday March 19th: I spent Thursday helping Heika get acclimated to Las Vegas. We went out to pick up things we'd need for the room as after nearly a year of living at the Chewy manor I have yet to furnish my adobe. I told her a while ago that I realized I no longer had any interest in accumulating "things" as I assume they will just be left behind in storage boxes whose contents I cannot possibly keep count of. I imagine many people who live a lifestyle of near constant travel have adapted this mindset as well.
I did a 35 minute cardio work out in the morning on an empty stomach then practiced tennis by hitting around with Heika in the afternoon. No issues with the diet that day. In the evening I found that Mike Sexton was still in the Baby 101 Shooting Star event and if he final tabled I would be asked to fill in hosting for that episode alongside Vince. A little after 11pm I got the text that he'd made the final six after Ty Reiman busted to Mike Matusow and I would need to catch a 7:50am flight back to San Jose. The car would arrive at 6:30am. I set an alarm for 6:10, took a sleeping pill, and got my ass to bed.
I felt good enough for 6:30am Friday morning. The flight was on time and I was back in San Jose 90 minutes later. I'd made make up in what had previously been my hotel room at 9:00am and then reported to the set. I had to order a little food as I felt famished and depleted and the menu didn't have a lot of low carb options, so I ordered chicken pasta and picked around most of the pasta. Most anyway. Vince and Kimberly were there early as well and we began discussing what we'd be taping together that day before play began. Vince and I worked on our script together to make it more natural between us and he helped me get a sense of what kind of information they were looking to be presented. The three of us did some pre-game taping and then took pause for lunch.
The final table began a little past 4pm. It featured not only Mike Sexton Mike Matusow but also Vivek 'Psyduck' Rajkumar making his second WPT final table in a row after getting second in the LAPC. Despite coming in forth in chips he was my pick to take it down.
Vince and I developed a pretty natural flow together. He's a really easy guy to talk to and loves to joke around so it was pretty easy to just have fun with it all. As normal, I did what I could to be a combination of high content and strategy combined with a sarcastic and hopefully humorous approach to talking about poker. Even though Mike Sexton unfortunately busted in 6th in the second level of play it had been decided that I would be sitting in for the whole episode and so we talked on well into the night. Everyone on the set jams themselves full of coffee to push on into the night and there can be periods of hours where very little happens in live poker that doesn't leave you a ton to talk about. When it was all said and done it was 2:20am and Alan Sternberg had triumphed over Steven Kelly to win $1,039,000 plus a seat in the WPT Championship. My body felt shot but my brain was buzzing from all the caffeine and new experience. I didn't get to sleep until four.
Kristen at the WPT was nice enough to change my flight into the mid afternoon so I slept in well at the hotel. I got back home at 6pm this afternoon and immediately reached for the gym clothes. There had been no possible time to do it on Friday, the first that accidentally been off in the project. Shon had no times available on Saturday so I went in and did a toned down complete body workout that involved 15 varied large movement sets plus extensive ab work.
In the evening I watched UFC phenom Jon Jones absolutely shatter Shogun Rua with my roommates. I have never seen a more exciting and dynamic across any fighting sport in my whole life, that guy is absurd and finds a way to use every angle of every appendage on his body as a weapon then crushes people when he gets them on the ground. I can't remember the last time I was that enthralled watching a fight and there wasn't a scratch on him by the end of it.
Tomorrow is a very large Sunday, followed by the Wynn Classic $5000 main event on Monday, so plenty of chances to make something happen at work this week. Going to wake up nice and early tomorrow so I can play a huge session then hopefully I don't fucking botch it again over at the Wynn.
There are no off days: Days 8-10
Monday March 14th-Wednesday March 16th: I arrived on time for the 10am start of the Bay 101 main event. Vince made the shuffle up and deal announcement and we were underway. My table was mostly unfamiliar to me outside of bounty Hoyt Corkins on my direct right and an online player I'd seen around a few seats over. Hoyt really seems like one of the true gentleman of our game and was a pleasure to speak to for the short period I lasted in the tournament.
A few hours later I had become the first Shooting Star eliminated. I awkwardly made my way over to sign the bounty shirt that is awarded with the $5,000 in prize money. As to how this happened can be explained by copy/pasting the post I later made in HSMTT on 2+2:
Level 3 at the Bay 101 10k. I am one of the bounty players and they go to great lengths to make sure that everyone knows it, so if anyone busts me they get $5,000 (plus a T-shirt!)
I have been by far the most active player at the table, especially this level. I haven't really had to show any hands down because people keep folding to my barrels. I haven't been psycho or anything, but I've raised a lot of pots and fired multiple barrels in numerous of them. I have a moderate amount of history with villain for how early it is, and he's been one of the more active players but hasn't been crazy aggro or anything like that. Villain is a perhaps mid 30's Asian dude that I don't recognize. We have one main hand of history from the 50-100 level, and played some other smaller pots since then:
We both had about 30k to start the hand at 50-100. I had black Kings in EP, he was SB. Preflop I made it 300, he called in the SB, everyone else folded.
Flop: 9 8 6 (Pot 700)
He checked, I bet 500, he made it 1500, I called.
Turn: 6 (Pot 3700)
He checks, I bet 2700, he calls
River: Q (Pot 9100)
He thinks a bit and donks 3000, I folded (standard?)
On to the hand in question:
My stack: ~27,000
Button: ~45,000
I hold 8 7 UTG+1 at 100-200 blinds.
Preflop: UTG folds, I go to 500, folds to the button, button calls, SB folds, BB calls.
Flop: T T 9 (Pot 1600)
BB checks, I bet 1000, button calls, BB folds.
Turn: 6 (Pot 3600)
I bet 2700, button thinks for quite some time, counts down some chips, seems to consider raising, then decides on a call.
River: 2 (Pot 9000)
I bet 8200, button thinks a little bit then announces allin, I...
I had told myself on the river that if I bet that large, I thought the combination of my being a bounty, his well covering me and my image would cause him to shove AT some percent of the time, which was all I needed when getting nearly 2.7 to 1 on the river. However, it seems very few other people think that an unknown will shove AT there, and near all were in agreement that they would fold, so it seems I am a donk. I hate when I do that shit. Also interesting to point out is that many people said they would call the river in the first hand, so it's good to see I'm folding when I should call and calling when I should fold.
I spent the next day in San Francisco with Matt Affleck and Heika. She'd never been and I hadn't seen it in years, so we spent the afternoon and early afternoon walking the city getting occasionally drenched as the rain alternated between drizzle and downpour. It's a damned good looking city though.
I had no problems with getting to the gym during the period. On Monday I go in and did an ab routine then 18 sets on my back. Tuesday I got 15 sets in on my legs after having exhausted them walking the city all day. There were no problems maintaining the diet in San Jose and I haven't had any difficulties with cravings.
We flew back to Vegas this afternoon. It was a quick 90 minute direct flight from San Jose that arrived at 2:30, allowing me time to get to the gym for nearly an hour before starting a large Wednesday just on time. I accumulated stacks in a few of the larger tournaments of the day but took only one of those deep, the $100 rebuy six-max on Stars. Unfortunately, I became the final table bubble boy but the approximately $3000 score would have approximately covered the buy ins of the day. Hours:
Session start: 4:00pm
Registration end: 8:30pm
Session end: 11:04pm
There are no off days, Days 6-7
Saturday March 12th-Sunday March 13th: I began Saturday at the gym with Shon. He had me doing the Spartacus work out, which is a form of training that incorporates a number of full body exercises that is more about keeping your heart rate accelerated than reaching failure in any set. You do each exercise for a minute then take 15 seconds rest. There are 10 exercises in the circuit, and Shon made me go through it twice. Our goal is to get me up to being able to do a third, but by the end of the second by body was shot. We spent the last 15 minutes of the hour doing ab work.
I had a decent sized session on Saturday. I won the Stars $109 6 max tournament for $8,400 to continue my hot streak which now consists of three wins in six days, which is way above expectation. Hours:
Session start: 1:52pm
Registration end: 6:00pm
Session end: 9:57pm
I knew I had a flight the next morning so I made sure my session ended early. I came to the conclusion that most of Saturday's value is on the earlier side, so in future weeks I'm going to look to get my Saturday session in starting in the morning. My Spartacus workout will be on Friday in coming weeks, so Saturday will have some mobility. I think I'll aim to do a tennis match or lesson in the evening as a form of exercise for that day.
I woke up this morning at 8:10am, got showered, and ordered a taxi to the airport. I took a flight to San Jose for the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star event that's beginning tomorrow. My girlfriend Heika has flown up from Australia to visit for a few months, so I met her in San Jose and introduced her around during the charity event that I worked in the evening.
Lucky for me there is a 24 hour fitness directly next to our hotel and casino, and the hotel is comprised of suites so I have enough of a kitchen to prepare what I'll need in the coming days. Everything is going smooth thus far, now I just need to translate my online run-good on to the live felt tomorrow.
There are no off days, Day 5
Friday, March 11th: I know I'm doing the Spartacus work out with Shon tomorrow and I don't have any tennis matches set up, so I decide to take a more low key day. I go to the gym straight when I wake up on an empty stomach and sit on a bike for 30 minutes at medium pace, then grab breakfast and take my racket to the court to practice at a calm pace. I'm going to need my legs for tomorrow.
I spoke to our chef today. I increased my order to the point that every meal of every week will be accounted for ahead of time, that is, I need to put 0% thought into any meal for the rest of my time in Vegas until late May. It is all accounted for already.
Last night I felt a bit too hungry to fall asleep, despite numerous attempts to read myself unconscious. I went back to the kitchen and heated up a little chicken and whole wheat pasta to just hold me over until morning. I think especially after coming off a period in which I was eating such a huge amount of calories per day my body is starting to really notice the difference.
I played a pretty small session last night. I actually made plans to go out with some of the boys so I stopped registering early. I made a fairly deep run in the $100 rebuy six max on Stars but unfortunately busted 13th. I was going to go out and be the sober guy who goes home at 2am because he has a training session, but figured I could still try to tear it up a bit. Our venue changed as a result of last minute drop outs, and by the time we'd collected everyone in front of the club it was midnight and I was fading. Truck Dan gave me the keys to his car in full knowledge that there was no way he was driving home that night.
I went home and sat at my computer looking over my accumulated interesting spots from the week. I filtered out the more mundane ones, then set reads, history, and questions above each hand. Then I messaged a couple players I respected and asked if they'd look it over for me, and told Chewy he'd have to as well when he was done grinding. Neither of us are ever done grinding these days, we just waste away in the office listening to hip-hop on Pandora, occasionally flicking on the volcano, perennially obsessed with getting all the money. I take notes on people all day. I think within three weeks I'll have a huge amount of notes on the current batch of regs that populate the fields. Hours:
Session start: 4:00pm
Registration end: 6:00pm
Session end: 9:39pm
Once I get feedback from the guys on the hands I'll post some of them and include peoples thoughts.
There are no off days: Day 4
Thursday, March 10th: Thursday is my off day from lifting during the week, so it's my goal to set up a tennis match every week to provide the necessary work out. This week I had a noon match against Erik Fast of Cardplayer magazine. We're both about the 4.0 level and he's a bit more consistent than I am. I played some pretty poor tennis and could feel the lack of mobility and speed in my legs as a result of working with Shon. We played a three set match and he won fairly comfortably in the third.
I played another medium sized session last night. I didn't realize it up until tonight, but Thursday is by far the worst night of the week for tournaments. There's not a single special tournament of interest on any of the major American sites, no fun satellites, no large fields, and sometimes an event has so few pre-registered that it gets voided, as happened with the $100 rebuy-addon on Full Tilt last night, which was rather annoying. I've decided that in the future instead of taking Saturday off from poker I should take off Thursday. Saturday has numerous larger tournaments, particularly during the day, and it'd get me into the habit of waking up at 10am for a Sunday.
Results were mediocre and it was definitely a losing session, though not largely so due to the lack of tournaments. I made one final table on UB and immediately ran TT into JJ for 9th and some amount of money I didn't bother to check. Hours:
Start time: 3:08pm
Registration end: 8:30pm
Session end: 10:34pm
By the time poker finishes most nights I'm spent. My body is aching and my brain is shot. The idea of social activity is laughable. My evening activities consist of playing Xbox with the boys, sitting in the hot tub, watching a movie, or reading. Currently I'm enveloped in Andre Agassi's memoir, Open. It's a very candid account of the ups and downs of his career, personal life, and serves as his confession of not only using meth, but lying about it after it showed up in his urine in trace samples during a drug test. I only put it down when I can tell I'm about to pass out.
There are no off days: Day 3
Wednesday, March 9th: Woke up with a little more time to get ready. Scarfed down breakfast and got there a few minutes early to warm up. Shon had me doing a split of biceps, triceps, pecs that involved a number of super-sets and a couple burn out sets. I think it was around 30 all said it done, perhaps a little more. Everything burns.
We ran out of prepared meals from the chef; I need to ask her to up the order to six per delivery to last me through those periods. In spots like those where you know you won't have time to prepare food Whole Foods is good. They have a few options where they can fairly quickly and freshly cook you up something fresh and clean. In my case, I make sure to buy enough of them to last me through the day, in this case steak with brown rice and vegetables.
It only takes a few days into it before you start to become conscious of going to bed a little bit hungry every night. It's not uncomfortable or feels like I'm starving myself, but you can tell you're never full, never quite content. Meals are small and spanned out so they accelerate the metabolism along with the exercise. Adding some clean carbs throughout the day has done a lot to alleviate cravings though, and if I need something with flavor I chew sugarless gum.
I played a medium sized session today. Wednesday is the second best day of the week for tournaments and gives you a lot of opportunities to keep a binking hot streak going. Unfortunately, nothing really materialized despite accumulating stacks in a number of the larger tournaments, and I failed to reach any final tables. Definitely a losing day considering the cost of the buy ins. Hours:
Start time: 4:00pm
End of registration: 8:30pm
End of session: 11:09pm
I made a pretty bad checkraise river bluff against a smart reg deep in the $100 rebuy add on to spew off one of my better stacks. There were a few other good spots from the day. I'm going to force myself to do a strategy blog update tomorrow in these entries so not too many of these hands build up. There's a few I've played real bad, so I can berate myself and what not.
Back to work for now...
There are no off days: Day 2
Tuesday March 8th, Day 2: Woke up at 11:30am needing every last minute of sleep. I crawled out of bed immediately to make breakfast so I would have a little time to digest before the gym.
Shon and I did 21 sets of legs today. I anticipate not being able to walk well in the future. All is well with the diet, it's so easy when all the meals are prepared ahead of time and simply need to be heated up.
Played a medium sized session in the evening. Stats are:
Start time: 3:20pm
Registration end: 8:30pm
Session end: 11:04pm
I made a few runs and one final table in my last tournament, the $50 rebuy turbo on Tilt. I wound up taking 5th for what was approximately the cost of the day, so it was break even-ish one.
I really like the way the game plays these days. I like the Russian roulette battles of 3 bet meets 4 bet meets 5 bet (and not so uncommonly up to 6.) Because people are opening for the min or just a little more you can reasonably flat more hands as well as play more out of both blinds. In a way, I feel like we're getting to play more thorough poker.
I've had hold'em manager running through the duration of my recent grinding and it makes me wonder what the fuck I was thinking going that couple year period without regularly using a HUD. It's just so enormously useful when you're at the peak of your day and can't concentrate that hard on any one table and the amount of detailed information it allows you to pull up on the table is excellent.
Relaxed in the evening and watched half of Get Him to the Greek in bed. Russel Brand will always have me in stitches.
There are no off days: Day 1
March 7th, Day 1: I began the day with breakfast then walked to the gym for my first session with Shon. I explained the project to him a bit more in detail and we did our second work out together. We've split things up as:
Monday: Back and shoulders
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Biceps, triceps, pecs
Friday: Spartacus workout, which is cycles of various full body work that burns out your core.
On Monday, Wednesday, Friday I'll also look to do about 20 minutes of repetitive ab work before the session with Shon.
The exercise today was a total of 30 exhausting sets, 15 for each muscle group. For now we're doing 6-10 reps per a set, normally 6-8, and adding some weight as we go with about 90 seconds between sets but occasionally a little more if we're doing something exceptionally intense. My starting weight is somewhere between 190-195, I think about 192 but it fluctuates a bit and I don't have a scale at home. To be honest, I don't really care what the number on the scale says, it's not that relevant here.
With the help of this chef we've hired sticking to the diet should be pretty easy. On Monday and Thursday I'm delivered several packages that contain a large baked chicken, steamed broccoli and brown rice. I break the meals into half and eat two a day along with the oatmeal in the morning and vegetables through the day. I cut the rice out on the last meal of the day, and the rice servings are small enough that it shouldn't be an issue. I'm going to need more carbs than the last time I attempted this because I'm playing so much poker and can't be low energy. I'm also working harder in the gym.
I never got to the blog last night because I stayed up late playing. With two tables left in my session I decided to fire up Camtasia and make a Savvy video. One of those tables was the UB $500 75k which was one table away from the money. Four hours of recording later I'd won for just over $20,000 but when I woke up this morning the video seemed to have not been fully produced. Either way, the hand history was interesting enough that even if the video is lost I'll reproduce it in post while I still remember my reads.
I've hit something of an instant upswing with this project. I played a long session on Sunday and won the $500 6 max tournament on UB that day too for a bit over $18,000. It's obviously pretty encouraging going forward, and hopefully a sign of things to come consider the sheer quantity of poker I'll be playing. I'm recording my hours so:
Start time: 3:30pm
End of registration: 8:30pm
End of session: 3:00am
I've got a few hands from the day, but I'm going to let them build up so I can edit out some of the more pointless or read oriented spots and boil it down to the ones that are really worth writing about. As for now, it's back to work...
“There are no off days” overview
As is obvious, I've been very lazy about getting writing done lately. I reached a point where I was constantly traveling and concentrating on a number of obligations like playing poker, my social life, the WPT, and a few new things. Still, I told myself that come March 7th I was going to begin a project of spring season workaholism much as I did last year where my combined goals are to get myself to single digit body fat and to grind a mixture of studying and playing poker over a huge volume leading up to the WSOP.
Today was my last day of freedom. I ate heavily, drank well after my session finished, and began visualizing what I would have to get done tomorrow to kick things off. I've decided to call the project "There are no off days" because of the scheduling of everything. My intention is this:
Sunday through Friday I'll play poker around 8-12 hours a day. I've lined up my personal training at noon every day so I'll be able to get a session started by about 2pm every day, sometimes even earlier. I intend to register through around 8:30pm every night and have about 6 hours of registration most days. Naturally, I'm willing to be flexible about moving the off day around based on what comes up professionally and socially, and if something enormously important unexpectedly materializes I can give myself more days off, but I will always be passing up casual invites in favor of work during this period. When I attend a live poker tournament I do not intend to make myself play any online poker except a Sunday where I'm at the venue but don't have to play or have responsibilities. I'm giving myself one day a week entirely off from poker and won't force myself to go near it, but if I decide to grind because I'm in a good flow and enjoy it then I'll just go to seven day weeks. I've spoken to a number of other players, told them about my project, and lined up HH review swaps so I can constantly be thinking about how to change and evolve my game.
I've hired a trainer at the gym across the street and assigned him the task of getting me to 8% body fat. I've purchased 60 one hour sessions in advance and we've lined it up so we work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. The house hired a chef and I've requested that all she cook me is chicken, broccoli, and some brown rice. I'll be starting the morning with a bowl of plain oatmeal and a low calorie protein shake. I'll be aiming to hit around 2200 calories a day and based on Shon's advice may have to reduce that at some point. I've given myself between March 7th and May 20th to get it done. Besides the work outs I'm going to go for 30-40 minutes of jogging on an empty stomach every morning except for the days I don't wake up earlier enough to get it in before the work out with Shon. In many of those cases I'll put in a session of cardio or HIIT work at some point in the evening after my session. I'll be arranging tennis lessons for Thursday and Friday every week for perhaps a couple hours around 11am or noon so I can use that period to burn calories and build myself into a better tennis player leading up to the summer.
And just like last year, I intend to force myself to write an update every day. Even if I have zero time and I only throw up two sentences about not breaking the diet and how poker went that's fine, but I'm going to put an emphasis on getting it done again. I'm also going to make an effort to put more poker theory/analysis content in the blog since that will be my main focus over the coming months.
My live poker schedule during this period looks like:
March 13-18 Bay 101 Shooting Star San Jose, California
March 19-23 Wynn Poker Classic Las Vegas, Nevada
April 9-13 Hollywood Poker Open Lawrenceburg, Indiana
April 27-May 2 Seminole Hard Rock Showdown Hollywood, Florida
May 14-20 WPT World Championship Las Vegas
I might edit out the Florida trip if I'm getting killed online but will probably make it happen. Any day I have to play a live poker tournament I won't expect myself to get more than one work out in.
After all of this it's WSOP time, so the next four months are pretty much handled. I feel like the attempt at something similar last year has me better prepared for the attempt this time around, so let's do this thing. Also, I've launched a formal and professional website at www.tonydunstpokerplayer.com. I'll be putting the updates there too, as well as anything else I feel like writing during this period.
2010 meets 2011
Seems like the fashionable thing to do at the start of the new year is discuss how you intend to kick ass/not suck so much in the coming year and look back in the previous in review. Let's begin in review:
Overall I fell quite good about the degree of productivity, accomplishment, and experiences throughout 2010. For a few months at the beginning of the year I was pretty close to having everything I could ever ask for. After January I spent a few months in an intensive work period where I was playing five or six days a week, working out twice a day six days a week, dieting to cut weight, and maintaining a very active social life plus a relationship I was really excited about. Around February or March I went off to New Zealand to work on the book, and while it has yet to be released I'm told it's highly probable we see it this year. In April I found out my ability to live in Australia had ended and would have to make travel plans to return to the United States. I moved away in late April to a house in Las Vegas owned by Luckychewy and filled with phenomenal online poker playing friends. I felt somewhat exasperated watching the life I'd spent five years building down under get ripped away, but I did what I could to hit the ground running in Vegas, keep up my work ethic, and attempt to create a new social circle. The results were mixed; I reconnected with a lot of people in the industry I knew from my years spent at the WSOP and made some new friends around town, but Vegas has a sort of disconnected and transient vibe to it. I had a couple parties this summer that were a great time and I'm sure we'll do more in the future, but I've discovered I don't really care for the full blown "party scene" of Las Vegas. When I tell people I've moved there they always react with something like "What?! You live in Vegas? You can't live there, there's too much crazy going on!" or "Oh man, you must have the sickest party life style living there!" Nope, not really. From what I can tell the people who move to Vegas and become enamored with the never ending party that is the strip wind up wasting a great deal of their time being consumed by it. Most locals seem to despise the place, and in a surprising amount of cases, most other people around them. Everyone has a certain suspicion about each other, a concern that their motives are more than just friendly or sociable. Instead, Vegas has turned into the one place where I truly get work done. My office is upstairs, my gym/grocery store are across the street, my tennis courts are a five minute walk away, and every here and there I leave my Bermuda triangle of productivity to have dinner or meet a few friends for whatever on the strip. I believe that I have been out drinking and partying in Vegas just three or four times since the end of the WSOP.
Career opportunities seemingly came out of nowhere. I was scouted by Matt Palmer's agency in June after they'd asked around about sociable, presentable up and coming pros and kept coming up with my name. I'd long assumed that the business side of the poker world had no interest in me and whatever opportunities there had been I'd personally imploded, but Matt saw a different kind of potential in my outside the box thinking and blunt blogging. The assumption was it would take a while to build up towards anything and the onus was really on me to take my shit to the next level and get him the kind of results he could market. Things took an unexpected acceleration at the WSOP, where I cashed six times and ran deep in the main event. A few weeks later I was in my first job interview in nearly eight years and wound up walking with a position that put me on TV once a week in the 9th season of the WPT. A few weeks after that the WSOP episodes aired. It's a strange thing to spend so long in the industry then get a lot of exposure all at once, in the minds of people that don't spend their life in the industry they see it as far more establishing and credibility-lending than it is. All of a sudden those previous eight years you spent throwing your life away on a game weren't a throw away at all, why, we saw you on TV! Things must be great! Not that I'm complaining at all, the whole experience was a thrill and Norman Chad was most complimentary of my demeanor and antics.
On an every day level, nothing has changed. But every now and then, I get one of those surreal little experiences that wouldn't be possible without the exposure. Perhaps my favorite two happened within just a few days of each other and are on the opposite side of the people-reacting-to-your-image spectrum. When I arrived home from a trip to Asia and Los Angeles I was waiting for my luggage at the Las Vegas airport baggage claim wearing a suit and listening to my Ipod loud enough that I was serenely oblivious to the world around me. On the other side of the claim I noticed that a well dressed middle aged man was making eye contact with me and apparently trying to say something. I removed my headphones, excused myself, and asked him what he'd said.
"I was just saying that I wanted to tell you that I thought you brought a lot of class to the world series this year."
"Oh thanks man, I appreciate that…" I took a closer look at the man, noticed his familiarity, and continued with "Hey wait a minute, aren't you Bruce Buffer?"
"Yes, yes I am."
We chatted about poker, the upcoming Five Diamond WPT event, and his hosting a MMA awards show that weekend that would prevent him from playing the tournament at the Bellagio. He was quite flattering and charming, and once we'd grabbed our bags we wished each other luck with your respective responsibilities and went about our separate ways.
A few days later I was at the Bellagio for the Five Diamond series. We were on break from a tournament and I needed the bathroom, but never bother with the one right outside the Fontana room because it's always packed and there's one down by the shops that there's never any wait for, plus I enjoy a few minutes of getting away from the constant poker banter. While strolling through the hallway I was about to walk past an unknown short man of perhaps 35 when he made direct eye contact at me, stopped, pointed as I walked by and stated "You're a toolbag" then kept moving. I stood there for a few seconds soaking the moment in, then deliberated whether I should double back and politely explain to the man that Bruce Buffer had assured me of quite the opposite, but then decided to continue on to the bathroom and take a well needed crap.
I like to think I am well prepared for being hated on. I've hung out on internet forums for six years posting on all matters of my thought process both in poker plus many other topics and have been all varying degrees of criticized, insulted, and trolled. It seems especially inevitable in our industry of choice as well as quite prevalent in a number of others, particularly hip-hop if I'm to believe what all these rappers are telling me. Seems to me if you're going to make a name of yourself for being an out-spoken eccentric, you'd better be prepared to know that not everyone is going to see shit your way and some are going to express it less politely than others. I think a lot of people are just generally much too reactive to this kind of thing and often exacerbate their problems by making some immediately tempered remark or forum post and wind up looking a bit foolish in the end. I know because I've been there. I think if people want to take the piss out of you best to just sit back and let them and not bother to get involved in all of it unless someone is spreading flat out lies that could really damage your reputation. If people are just shooting off their opinion your chances of convincing them of otherwise with anything you retort is pretty low, so just chill and go about your business. Don't worry, they'll get bored and go back to hating Doug Lee soon.
From a strictly poker perspective, 2010 was pretty excellent. It was the second most profitable year of my career behind 2008. It was especially relieving knowing that 2009 had been the first losing year of my career, which I predominately attribute to a lack of focus on the game. I closed out the year running hot on a Sunday and winning the Tilt 100r turbo for about $50,000 after having spent the months of September and October studying and working hard but steadily losing. I'm starting to feel like the work is paying off in my game but I can tell I still have a long way to go. Although the WSOP was good and I final tabled an Aussie Millions event, I didn't do much else in the way of live poker but I suppose that I also didn't play a ton of it. I think my live poker volume over the course of the year was about 40-50 tournaments but I'm certainly too lazy to actually figure out what it is until I have to do taxes or something.
Naturally, I'm looking forward to 2011. My travel schedule is pretty made up for the first six months: I'm currently in Australia and staying here until the 17th of February, then going to the LAPC from the 17th through early March, then I'm back in Vegas from all of March through July. I'll be at the WPT Shooting Star in San Jose in mid March, then the WPT Hollywood Poker Open in Indiana in early April, with it all finishing at the WPT Championship in late May. Not long after the WSOP begins and lasts for six weeks. After that things are a bit unknown, but that's half a year pretty much sorted.
I've decided between the time I get back from LA in early March and the beginning of the WSOP I'm putting myself through another multi-month period of massive poker grinding/study plus an attempt at getting down to 6-8% body fat area. I feel like both my poker game and my fitness need a few more months of intense work to really get them to that next level and I don't think I'll have an opportunity to pull something like that off for a while after. I've only got two mandatory travel destinations in that period but they aren't long trips that would ruin my routine. Although I never had troubles getting myself to put in the work during these periods I've hired a trainer at the gym and set him in charge of making sure I execute every last detail of diet and exercise in order to realize the end goal. I apologize if I decline your social invitations during that period or accept only to join you out "for drinks" then sit there and slowly sip a water while I droll on about how much I fucking hate you for being able to eat carbohydrates. I'll be normal again in June.
I don't have any formal poker goals for 2011. I have arbitrary ones that are generally outside my control like winning a Sunday major or a large live tournament but I know that much of whether those things happen is decided by variance. Principally I set my goals on the things I can control: I want to make increasingly excellent and thoughtful decisions, I want to continue putting an emphasis at sitting and watching live poker when I play in major tournaments, I want to keep working from home on staying current on poker logic and theory, I want to be responsible the night before a tournament and not show up recovering from a big night of drinking and carousing, I want to put in high volume during the periods I have designated to poker. If being ambitious and thorough about the things I can control winds up turning up roses then awesome, if not then I guess I'll just have to go back and keep working at it.
Of course, my final and clearly most important goal is to repeat as champions with Leo Murphy at the Doyle Brunson Beer Pong Classic. It is my only genuine and validating accomplishment within the industry, and if it is taken away from me they will find me in a dungy hotel room the next morning with the gun that painted my brains all over the wall still smoking in my hand.