I imagine that title will apply to the content of this blog entry as well as it does to what I've been doing the last week or so. I still haven't played a whole lot of poker since Bellagio, though I finally put in the typical huge Sunday session today. Before I get into that though I have to give a shoutout to Joe Atanas for winning the first annual Olympafalloza or some such spelling last weekend. Basically, a bunch of my university buddies got together in Brantford and played a series of sporting events to determine an overall champion. While it became clear that the poker:sports ratio in my life has gotten a bit high which was apparent in my performance, Joe was solid throughout. And of course there were celebrations afterwards, the whole thing was a great idea and lots of fun.

So then I took care of a few odd tasks this week, while also just being lazy and relaxing in general. Surprisingly there wasn't all that much playing poker involved though. I did my "well" on 2+2 which took a decent amount of time but I think turned out pretty well and hopefully some people learned a lot from it. It definitely seemed like a great way to give back to the forums where I learned so much. So while I wasn't playing much I was definitely back to reading and thinking and poker all the time, not that I ever really take much of a break from that. Then this weekend was Steve Paul-Ambrose's wedding in Picton, near Kingston. First however, another aside.

Meeting Steve and through him Aaron and Mike (PacMann and timex) was probably a key point in my development as a player. While posting on forums was great, I had never really had friends at/above my level to bounce ideas and hands off of all the time. It quickly became a routine for us to get together on Sundays and grind our tournaments in the same room, and that was so much more fun than grinding in my room by myself, and much more educational. I think we all learned so much from each other and were such talented people to begin with that the group having great success was inevitable, though I'm sure none of us could have imagined how quickly and to what extent it would come. Anyways, the point is that Steve luckboxing a donkament and being such a friendly guy to meet complete strangers like me and timex probably changed our lives as much as it changed his. In short, stevepa is the fucking man.

So back on topic, Steve and his wife Nathalie were high school sweethearts in Kingston and went to Waterloo together. Both are super nice, intelligent, talented and caring people who completely deserve each other. I couldn't be happier for them. The wedding was really nice and a lot of fun. The venue was perfect and thankfully the rain held off. Aaron delivered a hilarious speech after we had been needling him for about an hour straight about how he couldn't possibly compete with the previous speeches. He came through huge though and knocked it out of the park, and even the one mistake he made was accidental comedic gold and had us in tears. Steve had way more moves on the dance floor than anyone could have predicted :P. Aaron and Mike were both groomsmen and since I hadn't seen them much all summer I suggested we hang out Saturday night and watch the UFC card, and then grind Sundays together like the good ol days. So I drove back to Waterloo with them Saturday morning and I've been hanging at Aaron's place here since. The UFC card was very good and Sundays weren't bad either.

OK so on to some poker. I played the full noon to 9pm Sunday schedule today and had a pretty good day. I went deep in a bunch of tournaments as I was running exceptionally well all day in the early-mid stages, just winning every race whether I got it in ahead or behind. Unfortunately I lost a few key hands deep and missed out on the really big scores. I had a 21st place finish in the OnGame big deal and 22nd in the 2pm huge $100 rebuy on Stars. I won a WCOOP main event satellite which paid the $5200 seat for my biggest win of the day. I also cashed the $200 rebuy on Stars and I think I had one other small cash as well. All-in-all my cashes must have added up to around $10K, so I made a nice little profit on the day. I'm definitely planning to play a lot more FTOPS events this week, but I have softball games a few nights so I'll likely end up missing a few. I may end up playing a bunch of PLO cash instead to keep my hours more flexible. Speaking of PLO I took one brief shot at 200/400 this week when I was bored and felt like gambling. I ran my 8K buyin up to 30K pretty quickly winning a flip against Gus to double to around 15K and then getting him in drawing dead to double again. Still not planning to play that game much though at least until I get a bunch more hands in grinding midstakes.

My next live events will be WSOP Europe and EPT London, which both take place in London from late September to early October. I've got all my flights and hotel booked now and I'm looking forward to it. As much as I would love to do EPT Barcelona again, WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars) is so big this year that I think it makes more sense to relax at home and just concentrate on online during that period. London should be a lot of fun though as I'm playing the 10K PLO (5K pound), and 20K NLHE main event (10K pound) of WSOP Europe, and then the 10K EPT London main event, and possibly even the 40K buy-in high roller event after that. I may play a few more live events this fall than I did last year but I still don't feel like I want to be following the circuit and traveling all the time, especially during the summer when it's so nice here anyways. Shortly after that is WPT Niagara, my home event so to speak, and then I'll probably do Festa al Lago at Bellagio after that since they seem to like me there now :-).

Well I think that's about enough for now, I should get a little sleep. The only other thing I can say is I'm looking forward to some epic trip reports from the TwoRags guys that made it down to Fresno to visit Kyle at his casino this weekend.

Mike

I didn't get back home until around 2:30 so I missed most of the eurodonkaments, but I played most of the usual later Sunday tournaments on Stars and Full Tilt. It was my first real poker session since the WPT win but I feel like my play was still pretty solid. I only managed a couple min-cashes but that's hardly an atypical Sunday result. I did get a little bit bored at times today, but again I don't think that's really all that uncommon when I'm playing a long session and things aren't going great. Basically, I don't think the prospect of winning *only* 30K for first is boring to me now or anything like that. However, one of my goals post WSOP was always going to be to play a lot more cash games. In particular, I want to to play a lot of 5/10 and 10/20 PLO now that I can play on all the European sites again and get really good at that game, since I feel like there's a lot more money there right now and it's a new and exciting challenge. However, FTOPS is starting on Wednesday so that will undoubtedly sucker me back into the world of donkaments.

It seems like life is starting to move back towards normal now. Having seen timex win and talked to Steve about his win I had some idea what to expect, and it seems like the 2 weeks or so when things are pretty hectic before it dies back down a bit is fairly standard. It's been a great two weeks though, that's for sure. Doing interviews, signing autographs, and having 7-figures in my bank account before I turn 25.... 4 years ago I figured I'd probably be a moderately successful mathematician writing papers that half a dozen people in the world might ever read, and the only people asking for my signature would be students looking to drop my class. Being a poker player you quickly learn to just roll with whatever comes your way, and you become pretty desensitized to the value of money since you're constantly winning and losing so much of it. Even as I write this paragraph about how crazy this has been, it's clear to me that I still really lack the perspective to truly appreciate it. I can only imagine how I'll look back at this whole thing in 5 or 10 years when I probably won't be playing poker anymore and laugh.

In other news I am doing a "The Well" thread on the 2+2 MTT Community Forum this week. It's basically just a thread where people can ask me whatever the hell they want and hopefully I will respond with something that is fairly intelligent and everyone will learn something. Bed time,

Mike

The last few days have been really hectic. I got maybe 2 hours sleep before my flight and felt pretty terrible until I finally got a little extra sleep on the plane. When I got home I tried to quickly catch up a bit on reading all the congratulations from friends, family, and well, basically everyone. My phone was constantly vibrating alerting me of another text message or phone call I had missed, there were threads hundreds of posts long on all the poker forums I read, and countless e-mails and Facebook wall posts. It was really kind of overwhelming to hear from so many friends and family in such a short period all saying how happy they were for me. After that I went to a little party with my sister and some friends which was a lot of fun. As exhausted as I was I'm glad it wasn't anything too crazy. Still, I didn't get home until 4am and between talking to people online and reading some more of the threads i didn't get to sleep until 6.

At 1pm on Saturday I was awoken by my friend Cam informing me he was on his way to kidnap me. Before I was abducted I decided to check my account balance and see if the wire transfer had arrived yet. Sure enough, even with the 30% withholding because I`m Canadian that I can`t file to get back until next year, as well as a few other deductions like Bond`s 5%, I still had a 7-figure balance. I just felt like including that because I've got to get a solid brag in here somewhere. Anyways, again my phone was buzzing all day, and I did a few more phone interviews and talked to even more friends and family. Otherwise we had a fun relaxing day and then we partied pretty hard all night. Again I woke up still tired and got some brunch before making my way home. Today I`ve been making my best effort to send thank you`s to everyone who has sent me congratulations. I haven`t quite gotten through all of them but I`m getting there. If for whatever reason I haven`t gotten to you yet or somehow I missed you, just know that I really appreciate it. I also booked a flight back to St. John`s for Wednesday because I've got to go see my parents and all my friends there. I'm really looking forward to it because Newfoundlanders are always especially proud when one of our own accomplishes something big like this, apparently it's been huge news there and it's going to be great to get back and see everyone. Also we do kind of know how to party a little bit.

At the risk of making this an exceptionally long post I do want to finish my write-up of the key hands of the tournament just for the sake of completeness and in case some of you just can't "wait to see it on TV". I'll start with day 4:

Hand 1: 12k/24k a3k Benyamine limps the SB and I raise 50K more in the BB with AJo. He calls and the flop comes JT3 all spades. He checks and I decide to check behind (I don't have a spade). Certainly betting here is the more standard and probably slightly better play but there's plenty of merit in playing it this way too. The turn pairs the 3, and he leads huge for 180K. This bet seems really strong to me but I have a huge hand considering the action so far so I'm obviously not folding. I call and the river is the 9c. He checks and I decide to go for a huge value bet that I`m hoping he will perceive as a bluff. I bet 450K and he quickly calls with JTo. Oops. I don`t think I like my big bet considering his bet size on the turn but I also can`t really imagine checking this hand behind.

Hand 2: Glen Chorny has the button in Seat 7 and Mike Watson raises to 66,000 from the cut off. Chorny reraises 180,000 total and Per Ummer asks how much he has left. Chorny informs him he has around 490,000 and Ummer folds. Watson thinks for a minute or two before moving all-in and Chorny quickly calls.

Chorny has AA and Watson is behind with 1010. The flop comes K53 and the aces are still ahead, but a 10 on the turn gives Watson his set and leaves Chorny drawing to two outs. The river is the 5 and Chorny is eliminated in 14th place. Watson is up to 2,350,000.

He had shoved on my button raise the hand before and I muttered something about how I should have known that was coming eventually as I folded. Most players are not reraising you light the 2nd time in a row because they don`t expect you to believe them as much when they`ve done it twice in a row and his bet-sizing also looks really strong. On the other hand I have TT in steal position against a 28xBB stack. Gross spot I think I probably should have folded but I executed the play bad run good system instead.

Hand 3: Mike Watson has the button in seat 6, Gabe Thaler raises to 70,000 from under the gun, Mike Watson reraises to 220,000, and Adam Geyer moves all in for 860,000. Thaler folds, and Watson calls. Watson shows AK and Geyer shows AQ. The board comes KJ254 and Geyer is eliminated in 13th place earning $64,640. Mike Watson runs his stack up to 3,500,000.

I`m not really sure why he moved in here. Gabe was playing very solid and it`s really unlikely I would reraise light here. I think he actually moved in for 860K more not total but anyways I just can`t fold because I know for sure he would never fold AK or QQ there and I`m getting the right price against that range, and while I didn`t know enough about him to really think he was shoving light I was at least aware that it was a possibility.

Hand 4: Hand #104 - David Benyamine has the button in seat 5, John Phan raises from the cutoff to 240,000, Mike Watson reraises from the big blind to 700,000, and Phan calls. The flop comes K42, Watson bets 1 million, and Phan tanks for nearly 10 minutes before Gabe Thaler calls the clock on him.

With about 10 seconds left, Phan reveals his cards and indicates a fold. Phan folded QQ face up. Mike Watson doesn't show his cards as he collects the pot.

I had Q3o. There was a hand shortly before this where Phan made a huge open raise to 400K (5xbb) in the SB and showed Benyamine QQ after David folded. I knew that meant for whatever reason he did not want to play a big pot before we got to the final TV table so I decided I was going to make a play on him preflop if I got the chance. He thought forever and then called which really surprised me. I thought he was just doing his usual routine and never really thought he`d actually call. I felt like he had a hand like JJ or TT a lot so when the king flops I think it`s pretty automatic to fire again and the longer he took the better I began to feel that he was going to fold.

At the final table I mostly just coolered the hell out of everyone. The only big pot I can remember where I didn`t show my hand was this one:

Hand 5: Mike Watson has the button, he raises to 400,000, and Benyamine calls. The flop comes 7d 4c 2c, and both players check. The turn card is the 10h, Benyamine bets 700,000, and Watson calls. The river card is the Jc, Benyamine bets 1.4 million, Watson thinks for a bit before he moves all in for a total of roughly 5.3 million, and Benyamine goes into the tank for more than a minute before he folds. Mike Watson takes the pot.

I had 98o here.

OK this has gotten pretty long and I should get a good sleep. I really have no idea what`s next for me. For the time being I`m just going to take things as they come and enjoy the moment.

Mike

Wow I run good. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'll write more about the final table later after I've slept or something. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the kind wishes and support. I'll try to thank everyone personally later but I have flight back to Toronto in 5 hours and I haven't slept yet. Just so sick it played out like it was scripted or something. It's like how you dream it would play out but that's never supposed to be how it actually happens. So crazy.