I’m finishing up my last few days here in Nairobi. It’s Saturday and I’m off from school until Monday and then leave for Dubai on Wednesday. I know at least one person messaged me about hanging out in Dubai a few months back but I can’t find it anymore, so I thought I’d mention it in the blog for him or anyone else who lives there and would like to meet up and cause trouble. If not I imagine I’ll roll around the crowded areas and try to find a date as I tend to do.

Meanwhile, I was reading Doyle’s blog (which is consistently good in my opinion) today about the poker hall of fame nominations and his thoughts on the matter. He posted the criteria, which I will quote him on
“(1) Must have played against top competition.
(2) Played for high stakes.
(3) Played consistently well, gaining respect of their peers.
(4) Stood the test of time.
(5) Contributed to the overall growth and success of poker with positive and lasting results.”

Certainly seems like a reasonable list of expectations to me. Assuming I had the two votes he does I would use them towards:
A. Barry Greenstein: Barry is the fucking man, plain and simple. He has enormous tournament accomplishments, has played in the biggest cash games for years, has donated a ton of money to charity, is one of the most congenial and approachable pros in the business, and is quite popular with the ladies. Despite all of this, he manages to maintain a nice balance of honesty and modesty and is well liked by old school and young pros all around. I’d be surprised if Barry wasn’t voted in this time around, but if not he’s a lock in the future.

B. Eric Seidel: I’ve played with Eric a few times and much like Doyle said his demeanor is incredibly impressive. I don’t think the guy would react negatively if you reached across the table and stabbed him. He’s got a shit ton of bracelets (seven I think?) in a number of games plus a runner up finish in the main, and he’s been doing it consistently for over 20 years now. It seems year after year he’s near the top of the Cardplayer leader board and when I played with him I thought he had a really solid gear changing hold’em game. I’d be surprised if anyone in the industry had a legitimate bad word to say about Seidel.

And then there were the names I was surprised to see on the ballot:
A. Tom Dwan: Very surprising to see him there considering his age. That said, the guy’s poker abilities are incredibly sick verging on creepy. He makes for great TV and in my interactions with him he’s a really nice and modest guy. I’m confident one day we’ll see his name on the ballot with a legitimate shot at getting in.

B. Men Nguyen: Words cannot describe my thoughts on Men being here as accurately as a simple “LOL”. The guys been accused of cheating more than Bill Clinton, probably has a who can angle shoot more prop bet with Doug Lee, and I’d be pretty shocked if I found out he was crushing any cash games (though who knows, maybe mixed, I don’t keep track.)

C. Scotty Nguyen: So, I guess we’re all just pretending that whole 50k HORSE final table thing never happened? Scotty was the first big name pro I met when I was more poker fan boy than player and he was the nicest guy in the world. To this day I kind of have a soft spot for him as a result of that and numerous other interactions but damn, that final table was the poker TV fiasco equivalent to the Bay of Pigs.

It seems Doyle believes Mike Sexton will get the nod, which is fine by me because Mike has been a suburb ambassador for poker and is nice to everyone despite how much he gets approached about random stuff. I don’t know too much about his playing days as he seems to be more interested in the business side of poker since the boom, but he has a nice collection of accomplishments and the respect of his peers, which is a pretty good indicator.

I am currently sitting in an internet cafe near central Nairobi. It has been one week since I've arrived now, and it has not been without incident. I have a couple hours to kill today because I'm supposed to go to a bank in the city to retrieve the credit-debit card an ATM at the mall ate yesterday. The volunteer program I've gone through had required their final payment and their online processor didn't except either of my otherwise fully functional credit cards for some inexplicable reason (probably because of my lateness, which was my fault) so I was told I needed to get cash or would have to leave the program. I went to the ATM to get out 51,000 Kenyan shillings (about ~650 USD) and after getting 20,000 out and attempting a number of other transactions the machine elected to eat my card and give me a slip of paper to present to the bank to retrieve it.

When I arrived I was originally supposed to go from Nairobi to Mombasa but they were apparently not expecting me down there and I was tired of travel so I decided to simply stay in Nairobi. I'm living in a compound with a number of other volunteers that functions a bit like a hostel. At one point there were around 15 of us, though currently there are only five left.

I've been doing my volunteer time at a school I walk to everyday. I teach social studies there; mostly dealing with Kenyan politics or physical geography. The majority of children are eager to learn, though the younger ones have a shorter attention span. At recess they run up to me, grab my hand, and ask me to join in their games of soccer and volleyball. The younger kids like to come up to the white volunteers to shake hands, stroke their skin, and pet their hair. They are friendly, outgoing, enthusiastic, and full of questions. The teachers there are mostly nice and accommodating except for that one moron who thinks it's a great idea to spike the ball into the children’s head during volleyball games, or yell at them when they fail to hit it correctly. A couple days ago one boy, an 8th grader who is an amazing kid with so much potential, hit his head and had what appeared to be a seizure on the playing field. All the teachers and volunteers gave the money we had on us so that he could be taken to the hospital and there would be money for treatment. The teacher who drove, teacher Margeret (who is a lovely woman who seems to care enormously for the children) went to pick up his mother who refused to come because she had no money and was afraid she'd have to pay something. It turns out the boy's problems stemmed from hunger; namely that he hadn't eaten in over a day because what little food there was at home he'd given to his mother and brother. Katie discretely took him and his brother to a cafe for lunch the next day; I told her I'd split the cost. I taught his class that day and played volleyball with him, he seemed much better.

The headmaster however, is Idi Amin Jr. During a parent-teacher assembly he announced to the crowd that "The Americans have promised to bring us 10 computers next year!" which was something nobody promised or even mentioned in any form during conversation. Two of the teachers that Katie (the other volunteer at the school who is a nice girl from New York) and I are friendly with have told us he shorts their pay and pockets the money. He told some other volunteers that for 5,000 shillings he would organize a brand new bus and great trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro. They paid him and rocked up to find an old, piece of shit bus that broke down on the way. He attempted to convince them to keep going to the mountain in the middle of the night, as pointless as it is dangerous, knowing if he got them there they couldn't demand a refund. The volunteers refused and demanded to go back home. When they got there they naturally wanted their money back and he refused saying that it had already all been spent. One of the girls, Shrea, flipped out on him and he eventually refunded them each 4000. Already been spent indeed. Shrea has not been back to the school to volunteer since and is now working in an orphanage.

Corruption like this is everywhere, and as far as I can tell, is the largest problem a country like Kenya will have in moving forward. The stories of this kind of angle shooting are absolutely endless and while years in the poker world have made me well prepared for picking up on bullshit many of the other volunteers are not as paranoid or suspicious of people’s motivations. The corruption is on all levels of government and daily life, and while picking up a newspaper in the US normally depresses me, picking up one here makes me suicidal. Many other volunteers have questioned the volunteer company's validity itself; as they have spent weeks of time and considerable money attempting to get placement in programs only to have the people organizing them not show up or horrendous delays in communication make their efforts pointless and infuriating.

Walking around outside at night as a white person is basically asking to get mugged. If you go somewhere at night you go by taxi and go straight from the door to the guarded entrance of wherever it is you're headed. We've also been told not to take side streets in the city during the day as again, you'll get mugged. Anyone with money lives in a compound with a large wall around it and barb wire at the top because there are so many robbers. The nice mall is walled off in this way with a dozen or so guards with batons patrolling it at all hours. I carry large denomination bills and anything else of importance in my socks. During the day you take what's known as a matatu, which is a sort of large van that functions something like a bus. Most of the rides cost roughly 50 shillings, less than a dollar US. A ride in a taxi is normally 10-15 dollars US no matter where you're going. When you blow your nose it comes out black.

I am going to Mombasa tomorrow, the second largest city in Kenya known for its beaches. The school begins its exams tomorrow and then is on break for a few weeks so they no longer have use for me. When I come back I intend to go work at an orphanage that Shrea has been volunteering at and says good things about.

I have still been recording the events and interactions of each day in my computer, which I hide deep in my suitcase and never take out in front of anyone. When I get home I'll set aside a week to go to a cafe and just write it, as I have hundreds of pages of material at this point. I don't like writing around the house for a number of reasons, for example apparently the house guard and handyman, Alan, used to steal things, though I'm fairly sure he was fired after attempting to convince the girls in the house that the organization hadn't paid him in months and he had to drop out of school after his auntie died and blah blah fuck you, you conniving thief-ass mother fucker. Either way, the head lady at the house caught wind of his con attempt on the girls and I think he's been fired within the last couple of days.

I leave Nairobi for Dubai on August 12th where I'll be staying until the 15th before moving on to Hong-Kong Macau for the APT and APPT poker tournaments. When that's all over I'll be returning to Melbourne Australia and grinding my ass off online eight hours a day, six days a week. I miss online grinding horribly and really look forward to being productive again. It's been a great trip so far, but I haven't exactly made any money and I've spent plenty plus spending a ton of time away from poker has made me truly appreciative of what an amazing opportunity and lifestyle it is. It's an odd thing to say, but I miss my job. I've spent a lot of time living an outrageous but unproductive lifestyle the last few months, and it's been fun, but I miss the days when I considered myself an ambitious and profitable poker player first and a drunken, sex crazed, weed smoking spastic second.

I busted out of the Bellagio Cup main event yesterday, which was my last event of the summer in Las Vegas. Early this morning I took a flight from Las Vegas to New York and slept the entire way there. I now sit in my hotel room in Manhatten doing some video work for pokersavvyplus.

I’ll be leaving the country on Sunday, and a couple days after that I’ll be in Mombasa Kenya for a month. After that I’ll be in Dubai for a few days and then Macau for a couple weeks playing poker before finally returning to Melbourne.

It has now become very clear that attempting to write a long blog entry every day of this trip while trying to stay current is near impossible. That’s not to say I don’t want to write it at some point; in fact I take notes at the end of each day about what occurred so I can write it in the future if I feel so inclined. However, I was much more busy in Las Vegas than I’d anticipated and I can’t imagine things will get any better with all the travel I’m about to do.

Writing this blog has had a series of both positive and negative consequences. It’s caused major damage to some personal/dating/familial relationships but conversely created valuable new ones and afforded me a bunch of fun opportunities, not to mention gotten me offers to get smoked up all around the world. I’ve learned a lot attempting this, and I’m glad that I took the shot. Not that this writing experiment is over, but it seems pretty clear for now that it’s delayed. I may be able to get stories up now and then, but the truth is I have no idea what my computer/internet access will be like and how much free time I’ll have and I don’t anticipate having serious time to do writing until I return home to Melbourne in September. If I can get stuff up I will, if not, oh well.

A lot has been made about my decision to write about drug use and sex. At the start of this trip I told myself I’d write whatever happened to me over the course of the day no matter how embarrassing, ridiculous, incriminating, or even mundane. Hell, plenty of entries have been me having a straight forward day of hanging out with friends and wasting time. I’ve talked to many other people in the industry who (understandably) don’t want to be named in any relation to my stories, particularly when it comes to smoking pot. Most serious poker players have the aspiration of legitimate sponsorship at some point, which is an entirely reasonable goal and I wish them the best of luck with it. Clearly, I have given up on that aspiration and find the idea of being unapologetically candid far more creatively satisfying. I’ve already done straight forward tournament blogging, strategy writing, and PC travel writing. I felt like this year it’d be interesting to try something new, particularly as I was in a situation with no relationship and no potential legitimate business opportunities and the only guaranteed draw back would be some occasional internet hate. I guess I just find the idea of writing tournament report after tournament report with no color boring. If you feel that such extracurricular activities don’t belong in a poker blog I would simply recommend reading someone else’s, because the content of mine will not be changing. Some have warned that there may be unforeseen long term consequences, and they may be right, but I’ll deal with those as they come.

So best of luck to everyone I got to know better this summer, and to those I didn’t get to say goodbye to. Hanging out with you all made it truly memorable for me and I hope we’ll get to do it again soon, even if soon means a year in my terms. If not, well then I’m sure we’ll see each other on the internet at some point, because these days there’s no such thing as truly going AWOL.

As anyone who has ever read this blog before knows, I can be a reckless person. The other day’s decision to write and post the Devilfish story was a continuation of that reckless streak, and upon being more sober and reflecting upon my writing of that story it’s a decision I regret. Seeing as I was not there for the events described in the story and was relating them as told by another there was no way to vouch for the validity or accuracy of what was described, and so my writing it was clearly irresponsible.

I spoke to Devilfish today and as was to be expected, he was not pleased with me. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that not only was the story inaccurate, but that he has never paid a woman for sex before and that if you apply logic to the situation then the story does not add up at all. Points that he made include that why would he bother inviting a girl back to the room and potentially hanging around for the month if he has another coming the very next day, and why would he risk giving away his room key to a woman he barely knows when he no doubt keeps a considerable amount of cash present in the room.

I can say for certain that from now on anything that shows up in this blog in terms of a story will be something I was there first hand to witness and I will be deleting the one in question. My time can be better spent writing some constructive and productive.

June 8th, Las Vegas: I wake up in the Vegas house a little before 11am. I jump in the shower then throw on a suit and eat breakfast. A number of guys in the house are playing the $2,500 six max event today and we car pool over to the Rio once everyone is ready.

This year at the WSOP the registration booth has been very efficient and today is no different. It is a far cry from two and three years ago when showing up 15 minutes before an event started was a death sentence to your first hour of play because they were trying to get everyone bought in at just a few windows in the Amazon room. Things really started turning around last year and have continued to improve through to this one and so far this year I have yet to wait more than maybe 10 to 15 minutes in line to get into a tournament.

I arrive at my table and find mostly unknowns though one familiar looking face. I glance around the room and realize that there are quite a few tables with a high amount of good players, though I seem fortunate enough to not have a table packed with them. We start play with 7,500 in chips and 25/50 blinds. I am involved in a decent sized pot in one of the first few orbits:
Effective stacks: ~7,500, blinds 25/50, I hold KcKs in the SB.
Preflop: UTG raises to 150, HJ calls, folds to me in the SB, I reraise to 600, BB folds, UTG folds, HJ calls. HJ is a fairly loose guy who I also attempt a bluff on a previous hand in a fairly hopeless way.
Flop: Ac 8c 6c
I check, HJ bets 600, I call.
Turn: 7c
I check, HJ bets 800, I call.
River: 3c
I check (something I never do and really don’t like looking at it now even though I thought he was kind of spewy) and he checks behind. I table the nut flush and take the pot.

My stack drains very slowly over the next few levels. For a tournament that lends itself to deep stacked heads up situations and multi level thinking I find myself in zero thinking situations. Most of the hands I get into have me raising preflop then getting a good board to fire a C-bet on but that misses me, then getting called or raised and having to give up the pot. Not too long into the day I get moved tables and find myself at a much tougher table with online player ‘Threatnasty’ and live pro Nam Le on my direct left. I’m soon in a hand against Threat:
My stack: 6475, Threat: ~10,000, blinds 100/200, I hold TsTh in the SB five handed.
Preflop: UTG folds, CO raises to 600, Threat reraises to 1650 on the button, I shove for 6475 in the SB, BB folds, UTG folds, Threat tanks for a while then elects to fold.

Again after the hand I find my stack dwindling hand after hand. My opens get three bet in situations where I have to fold and almost all of the hands where I get to the flop go the other way. By the time I get involved in a major pot again I’ve lost nearly 2000 in chips in just small pots:
My stack: 4675, CO: ~9,000, blinds 100/200 with 25 ante, I hold AKo in the BB five handed.
Preflop: UTG raises to 525, CO reraises to 1500, button folds, SB folds, I shove for 4675, UTG folds, CO surprisingly folds.

Just an orbit later I find myself involved again, this time against Nam Le:
My stack: 6,800, Nam: ~6,150, blinds 100/200 with a 25 ante, I hold AQo on the button.
Preflop: Folds to me on the button, I raise to 550, Nam throws all his yellow ‘1000’ chips into the pot, practically putting him all in, the BB folds, I shove, Nam obviously calls and then much to my relief tables AcJc.
Flop: A J 3 rainbow
Ah crap.
Turn: 7
River: 2

I am left with only about 600 chips and a couple hands later I toss it in the pot when I find a king and lose the hand to bust out. I wish everyone luck then walk away from the table and wander through the halls of the Rio. I run into ‘Charder30’ and ‘AvrilSharapova’ and we decide since we’re all bust we might as well get something to eat.

Charder drives us over to a well regarded Thai restaurant in the area. We spend dinner discussing what happened in our six max tournament and telling about our various adventures during the series. None of us have done particularly well in the tournaments yet though they’re both very talented so that will likely change for the two of them. After the meal Charder drives me home and drops me off.

I set up my laptop in the living room and spend the next few hours writing. At some point Watts comes into the room and I suggest we go to the gym nearby and get a membership. He drives us over to the fitness center down the street from us and we’re referred to a young dude there who will go through the sign up process with us. We sit down at the desk and start filling out the paperwork. I start talking to him
“How’s your day going dude?” I ask.
“Honestly man, I’m pretty much having the absolute worst day of my life.”
“Seriously?” says Watts.
“I’m sorry to hear that, what happened?” I pry
“Well first I found out from my bank that someone stole my identity and got access to all my information.”
“Ah shit.”
“And then that they managed to completely drain my bank account; took everything I had. I just moved here a few months ago and not sure what I’m going to do about rent now.”
Watts and I are both at a lack for comforting words, mostly muttering condolences.
“And then the girl I had been seeing for the last few months calls me up and ends it.”
“Jesus dude you run so bad!”
“Yea, it’s not been a good one.”
I lean in slightly and lower my voice “That really is one of the worst days I’ve ever heard dude. After I work out I’m gonna go home and blaze and it sounds like that’s something you could use so if it’s your scene, the invitation is open.”
He glances around and states loudly “Nah I don’t do that stuff” then leans in and in a hushed voice says “But between you and me I totally do. I really appreciate the offer, but I don’t have any money for that sort of thing.”
“Oh hell no dude fuck that shit, this is gratis. Consider it some karma coming around.”
“Thanks man.”
“No problem. I’m gonna work out for about 90 minutes or something, when you get out of here?”
“Ten” he says. I look at the clock; it’s nearly midnight. Christ this guy’s day sucks.
“Alright well I’ll let you know when I’m finished and bailing out.”
“Ya know thanks for the offer, but I think I’m gonna get out of here soon and probably just go home and sleep. I just want this day to be over. Some other time.”
“Cool man, better luck tomorrow.”

Watts and I hit the weight room for the next hour and a half and unleash our frustration over failing at the WSOP so much on our bodies. When we’re finished we walk downstairs and find the guy who was having the worst day after has gone home; hopefully things look up for him tomorrow. Does offering people drugs to make their day better count as charity?