Since the last update

Alright, last Sunday went pretty well, won the UB 530 and got 5th in the Party 530 with a pile of other cashes. I more or less decided not to do too much drinking/general bad decision making until after the 1/2 Marathon which was this Saturday. I got kind of sick around ~Tuesday and was concerned that it would continue until the race. By Thursday night I was trying to fix my sleep schedule to wake up for my 8:40am flight the next day(I only booked a flight this early since the race was at 630am)

A friend of mine asked if I was playing Thursday night and I didn't really have anything to do besides laundry so I said I'd play early tournament and try not to play anything thats either semi-major or will end by like 11. I ended up playing a lot of the random like 30r's and whatnot, and ended up playing the FTP 109r and Stars 109r as my latest
tournaments just since the fields are tiny. I ended up bubbling Stars and got 3rd in FTP so I was up until past 1, so that didn't really go according to plan. I then had to finish laundry and had trouble finding my socks and ended up not sleeping until far too late(think like 3:15).

I woke up at 5:15, finished packing, and went to the airport. I flew Toronto to Minneapolis, then made the 30 minute flight to Duluth. On my flight everyone was either a runner or a volunteer, I met up with MPHL(Michael) at the airport and headed down to our hotel.

It was pretty sweet since he's run a bunch of 1/2's and a couple full marathon's before so he was pretty competent with regard to nutrition, water, sleep, gear etc, and more or less was able to answer any obscure questions I had.

Its pretty impressive how big this race was in a down this small. Theres like under 100,000 people here, over 15,000 runners and over 5,000 volunteers. I have no idea how many people came to cheer the race on, but there were people along the whole 13 mile course and there were about 3-5 miles of it being PACKED, I'd guess probably close to half the town came out to watch.

We went and got our race packages, had a big pasta dinner and went to bed at like 7:30 the night before the race planning to wake up at 4am. I woke up at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, eventually Michael got up too, we had energy bars, and headed down to wear the shuttles take off(around 4:50).

I was feeling pretty good and the weather was nice and cool, we stopped drinking around an hour before the race to try to make it such that we wouldn't have to piss, but I failed at that. As we were about 15 minutes from the race starting and the starting area was packed I had to go to the washroom. I decided I'd just stay where I am since there was a pretty good chance I couldn't get back to the porti-potty's and back in 15 minutes.

Eventually the gun went off and the race was started. We were planning to run around 9 minute miles, and the first mile we went about that pace but it felt really slow. It was ridiculous how fast the race went by, the second mile took like 8:20 and it felt as if we had only been running a few minutes. I can't stress enough how awesome it is to have people cheering every step of the way.

We kept having miles that were a little quicker than 9 minutes and it wasn't tiring at all. We were slightly ahead of pace and the weather was starting to heat up quite a bit. I was running in a jersey that was made of a different material than I normally run in and started to feel some irritation about half way in. Shortly after this Michael started having knee pain(he had a knee injury last year and hadn't run this far since). He said it was bad enough that he had to go to one of the medical tents but gave me his watch and told me if he gets fixed up he'll try to catch up.

I had no idea how to use his watch(it has a lot of pacing/GPS related functionality but I wasn't sure what the numbers meant, and I wasn't going to slow down to read the tiny print on the screen) so I basically decided to try kicking up the pace a little bit and just see how things go.

6.9 miles in I had taken 1:00:22 which was a pace of 8:45/mile and about what I was hoping to sustain for the race. A combination of my picking up speed, other people slowing down because of poor planning/heat(I have no idea what temperature it was now, but by 9 am it was 88 fahrenheit) I passed a TON of people. Like as soon as I could see someone ahead of me, within a couple minutes I was ahead of them. About 8 miles in I hit the low point of the trip(but it wasn't that bad).

I have porcelain veneers on my top front teeth since I have really bad enamel and they allow me to at least pretend to have nice teeth. At 8 miles I decided to eat the energy gel that I brought and since my hands were sweaty I couldn't rip it open.

As I opened it with my teeth something didn't feel right and I ended up spitting out half of one of the veneers, my tooth looks/feels super weird now. I didn't really let that affect me and continued going faster expecting to get a cramp at some point and have to slown down. Eventually we moved from the pavement roads beside Lake Superior to cobblestone roads through the city center where the sidewalks were packed with supporters. I kept going pretty quick and about 10.5 miles in I got the closest thing to a cramp I had all race. After like a minute it had gone away.

After 11.9 miles I had taken 1:40:06 so my last 5 miles average 7:57/mile, and although the last mile seemed to drag on forever, I ended up finishing with a total time of 1:50:30.

After the race I got a quick massage, drank 4 bottles of water and had the piss I had been holding in for 2 hours. I was super happy with my time, I think I could have probably gone a little faster, but I also could have gone a lot slower, so it was a pretty good result. This whole event was really motivating for running, I'm pretty excited to up my mileage and start running longer and longer distances. I'm probably running a marathon in Waterloo in mid-August and it should be pretty sweet.

After the run I went back towards the finish line for a bit to watch the Kenyans win the marathon. Shockingly a white American won it for the first time in like a large numbers of years and he killed it. Its pretty sick to see people run 26 miles at a pace that is tough to keep up with for 1 mile.

Alright, this report is getting super long, not gonna write everything that happened, will summarize since the race.

-Got back to the hotel, went to the pool/hot tub, it was sweet
-Took a nap for a couple hours, woke up and felt pretty good
-Had maybe the tastiest ribs I've ever had, got hit on by a 40 year old woman on the way there
-Realized that not being able to drink when you're under 21 is ridiculous
-Drank
-Went to visit a friend of Michael's from highschool before going to a house party that some friends of hers were having
-Was disappointed that American house parties(or at least this American house party) aren't like in the movies
-We ran the streets at beer pong
-Almost got in a fight while trying to find beer pong opposition
-Michael pointed out that the guy was serious, not just taking trash-talking really far
-Got out of there and went back and crashed
-Woke up and we drove to St. Cloud
-Had Chipotle... they really need to open a franchise in Waterloo
-Got to Jeff(JSchnett)'s house to grind Sundays before flying home tomorrow night.
-Currently regretting grinding Sundays

Actually I haven't booked my flights yet so I don't really know for sure whether it will be 8 or 9. Pretty excited about the run and hope everything goes well. Jschnett apparently got a new place so I'll be hanging out at his place for like a week and then seeing Rise Against on the 26th. After that I'm undecided about whether to head to Vegas for a couple days or to head back to Waterloo, I've been enjoying my time at home a lot but at the same time it would be nice to see everyone for a few days. Last year was ridiculous, I remember walking into the Rio planning to try to keep like a "low profile" and just rail my friends without being noticed(had like a hoodie and hat on, kept my head down mostly) and about 2-3 people from each table came by to say hi. I guess the fact it was the day of the 1k rebuy was probably pretty bad timing since everyone I know ended up playing that tournament and not that many randoms play it.

Other than that I've played a couple days since my last update, nothing great, I played like Sunday, and 2-3 wanna-be tourney sessions for a loss of like ~10k. This Sunday was super lame, I got a really bad headache part way through the day and had to stop registering for tournaments and just prayed to bust out of all my tournaments as soon as possible while still trying not to play terribly. I think next session I play(errr next session where something goes well) I'll try making a couple videos out of it. I haven't made a video series in a little while(although there are some videos that I was a part of coming out in the next couple weeks I think) and should probably get on that.

I got my rakeback from Full Tilt this month and for how little I played, it was pretty shocking how quickly it adds up. I guess I played every or almost every Sunday + like 20 hours of midstakes cash but it was about double what I was expecting.

In the last week I've seen the movies "The Hangover" and "Up" and thought both were pretty awesome, I definitely recommend seeing them both. I usually don't find comedies as funny as most people but I was laughing the whole way through the hangover, and Up did a surprisingly good job of making the 3D aspect add to the movie rather than make it gimmicky.

Oh ya, I recently signed up for twitter, I don't know how much I'll use it this Summer, but I'll basically use it any time I'm playing live tournaments, and maybe even for big online tournaments like WCOOP etc. Heres the link:

twitter.com/mikemcdonald89

I played tournaments Friday and Sunday and did reasonably well, Friday I had like 13k in cashes across 3k in buyins(won a WSOP satelite and got 2nd in another), and Sunday I had like 17.5k in cashes across 11.5k in buyins.

On Sunday I had my friend over to play tournaments and when his tournaments were on break he saw my Dortmund trophy(thinly veiled brag) and was asking the inevitable question about whether I've ever drank from it(probably been asked this 2 dozen times since its like a vase). I keep a bunch of random stuff on the same shelf(shoe boxes, unopened mail, a champagne glass, my old Timex watch, and a bunch of other random stuff) and he assumed they were all awards of one sort or another. He asked about this one thing which I got as a gift which basically contains a message from someone and is supposed to be lucky so long as you keep it in plain site and never look at the message. If you get rid of it, look at the message, put it in a drawer etc its supposed to be unlucky. I forgot about this thing and obviously opened the message when I was part way through the 59 Super Turbo on full tilt. Within about 6 hands I 30/70's my way from below average to a top 10 stack. I kept running stupidly hot and eventually cashed it, got aces a ton and eventually went through the 1200 player field(probably one of the biggest field tournaments I've won) for 11k. Not to say that I believe in things that are/aren't lucky, but after looking, I was more or less thinking it would be nice to have an excuse as to why I ran bad on Sunday, but after running good I'm just confused.

The last couple days I've been grinding watching episodes of "Breaking Bad", its a TV show about a chemistry teacher who gets cancer and to pay for his bills/leave money for his family after he dies and decides he wants to live a little, so he starts making and selling meth. Its been pretty good so far but a little more serious than I expected(was expecting an Entourage type show that is all glamour and not that intense, but this is kind of the opposite, but still good)

Also congrats to practically everyone who got deep in the 40k, I was cheering for like 1/2 of the field. Was hoping for the Brian v Dani HU match, but no one could close, and I ended up knowing 6 of the final 7 but not the winner. I hope that the sweats continue this WSOP, good luck everyone.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Mike McDonald (Timex) is a guest pro at Cardrunners.com. Visit cardrunners and sign up for their industry-leading coaching videos.

Been back in Waterloo for a week and a half and have been a lot more active than I usually am and enjoying myself quite a bit. One way or another I've ended up playing pickup sports with people every day(soccer, ultimate frisbee, basketball, beach volleyball), sometimes twice a day, and am playing on a soccer team, as well as 2 beach volleyball teams starting this week. Our last soccer match was probably one of the most disappointing athletic games I've played in my life(considering how unimportant it was).

There are 4 soccer leagues at our school(beginner, intermediate, advanced and allstar), we're in the intermediate league since and we're pretty certain its the right league for us. Anyways, we played against a team last week where only 7 players showed up so we played them 11 on 7, and we lost 3-1. If you had have told me that 2-3 of their players were on the varsity team, I would have thought nothing of it. It was a ridiculous miss match and a team like that definitely should not be in the same league as us.

Otherwise in the last week, I've ran into and hung out with a ton of people from my highschool/university and its been pretty good to see everyone. This summer I'm gonna try to continue to keep busy and basically not get into any of my lethargic habbits. Alright, thats it for now, playing Sundays today, hopefully I do better than my 0/43 cashes from last week.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Mike McDonald (Timex) is a guest pro at Cardrunners.com. Visit cardrunners and sign up for their industry-leading coaching videos.

Alright, once we got moved to the final table average stack was like 65BB(blinds were 5k/10k/1k) which is far deeper than most live final tables.

At the final table in order was
Seat 1: Vincent Pasdeloup - BWIN qualifier who got in through a freeroll, played extremely tight
Seat 2: Dario Minieri
Seat 3: Mario Adinolfi- Recreational italian player, sometimes defended blinds with 62o or called 10BB shoves with 63s, although his chances of winning were probably better than a couple people at the final table, hes one of the guys who I plan on getting a lot of value from.
Seat 4: Sven-Ragnar Arstrom - Qualified on a BWIN skin, plays online cash and is just learning tournies but plays very tight-solid(but in such a way that is pretty good against the all Italian field)
Seat 5: Me
Seat 6: Michele Slama-Saad - I hadn't played with him at all when we went into the final table, but he generally was playing all or nothing(pushbotted up to 28BB)
Seat 7: Martin Jacobson- swedish online tourney pro, plays as M. Nosbocaj, the only guy at the table anywhere near as active as Dario
Seat 8: Shawn Busse- JordanKickz online, I didn't play with him at all throughout the tournament but I expected him to be pretty tight since he looks like a nit
Seat 9: Surinder Sunar- British live pro whose been playing live tournaments since 1990, has 4m of cashes with only 1 cash over like 150k, hes a pretty big nit as is expected from anyone whose been playing tournies for 20 years

Pretty early at the final table, Dario opens HJ-2, Mario calls HJ-1, Martin squeezes the SB and Shawn shoves the BB giving like 1.8-1 odds to Martin

Martin tanks for a while before eventually calling JJ and beating Shawn's KJs. I never really 4bet in spots where I don't expect the 3bettor to be 3betting light, but with Shawn's image, its not unreasonable to get a lot of folds out of Martin's value range and KJs plays reasonably well against against any range. I'm still not sure whether I like it in this spot, but after thinking about it a little more its definitely not unreasonable.

Now for several hours I more or less didn't fluctuate while everyone elses stack went haywire. Dario was up to 1.4m, Martin was up to 2m, Mario was up to 1.6m, everyone was taking their turn at being the chipleader. I got very few decent hands but blind steals were able to keep me almost afloat.

Eventually (3.5hours after Shawn busted) Surinder was short and pushbotted KQs into AK and was out in 8th, so we were down to 7 with the chip counts being

Martin Jacobson - 1.5 million
Mario Adinolfi - 1.06 million
Michael McDonald - 1 million
Dario Minieri - 740,000
vincent586 - 695,000
Michele Slama - 440,000
Åström Sven Ragnar - 400,000

I then won 2 pots in a relatively short time span one where Mario opened and I 3bet the button with AKs, he called, the flop came Kxx and he checkfolded to a bet, and another where Mario opened, I called the CO, Martin called out of the SB

The flop came T76 rainbow(I had AJs with one of my suit), and we checked around. The turn was a 3 of my suit and Martin bet about 1/2 pot, Mario called, I called as well

River: J, check, check, I bet about 1/2 pot and Martin tanks for a bit before Mario clocks him(I'm thinking that I'm 100% getting called here given this action) Martin eventually folds and told me later with more time he'd have called. Mario folds as well, but blinds were high enough at this point that I was chip leader with about 1.5m now

I think those were the 2 biggest pots I won from 9 to 6, I really didn't get into any cool spots. Martin, Dario and Mario were the ones playing all the big pots, Martin had recently lost and 80/20 and a 30/70 and was down to like 600k from his high of 2 million.

Blinds went up to 12k/24k/3k and Martin opened HJ-1 to like 56k or something pretty small, I defended T9dd in the BB

Flop: KT3r with a diamond, check check
Turn: 7d, I bet like 80, he shoves, as an aside if you ever want to get me to hero call you, do this. I had a really strong hand this time, but this is the type of spot where no one ever has it.

Anyways, I call, he has AJdd, and rivers and A to double up.

Winning that would have been sweet since I feel like he and Dario are the 2 players who I would have the most difficulty against once the tournament got short-handed. Dario eventually busted to Sven and we were down to our final table of 6 with stack sizes of

Sven Ragnar Åström – 2,161,000
Per Martin Jacobson – 1,049,000
Michael McDonald – 1,022,000
vincent582 – 764,000
Mario Adinolfi – 487,000
Michele Slama – 459,000

After this I remembered ch0ppy and I had changed hotels to a city outside of Venice called Mestre which is a 10 minute train ride away and the train station would be closed(it was 2am or so and play resumes at noon)

The casino offers to find me a room, but Martin says I can just stay at his hotel since a friend of his had left but not checked out or something like that. I head to his hotel and get a text from ch0ppy saying there is a night bus from Mestre to Venice that goes every 30m.

I wander around until I find the bus station, get on a bus and am on my way back home. I knew what the train station/our hotel looked like but it was a pretty foggy night. I also don't usually like approaching people and most people on this bus looked really sketchy so I just looked out the windows waiting for my stop. Sooner or later the bus is heading back to Venice and I missed my stop(its like 330 or so now). I get off the bus, get in touch with Matt and he tells me which bus stop to get off of. I go to get back on the bus right as the doors close and don't really want to wait another 30 minutes. I wander back to the area of hotels where Martin was staying, his hotel is full, as are the 6 or 7 in the vascinity.

I end up finding some chairs outside and sit down to think about my options and eventually decide to just try to call people I know in Venice and ask how to get to their hotels. Just then a guy steps outside and says "sorry these chairs are for customers only" I say "customers of what?" hes says "our hotel". I ask if there are openings, he says "of course" I ask how much "30 euros" (to give you an idea our other shit hotel room was 140 euros a night), I feel like I'm gonna get killed but accept. I sleep for like 5 hours before waking up to a band playing in the morning. Apparently there was some sort of festival going on just outside and I wasn't getting back to sleep.

I head to the train station and get on a train. It doesn't go off at the scheduled time, or 5 minutes later, or 10 minutes later. I have no idea how long I should wait it out but eventually realize that its possible even if the train were to take off immediately and I run into any other complication I might not get back in time. I get off the train, head back to Venice, buy a new shirt so I don't look like I'm wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

I get to the casino on time and am ready to own some fools.

They reset the blinds one level(they were up to 15k/30k IIRC) so we started at 12k/24k/3k

First hand Mario shoves, Martin calls, and KK>QQ so we are down to 5.

A couple hands later, I open 8s6s to 56k in the CO, Martin defends the SB

Flop: JT3r with 1 spade, check I bet 70k, he calls
Turn: 4s or some other small spade, check check
River: Ks, he bets 165 at around 300, I make it 465 with about the same amount behind. He calls with T9ss and I'm down to tied for 4th/5

A couple hands later(this is only like 10 hands in) Michele shoves the button, Martin calls with TT to beat Michele's 66 and we are down to 4.

Stack sizes at this point are like 2.7m for martin, 2.2m for Sven, 400k for me, 600k for Vincent

Vincent basically is going to try to outlast me and the other 2 aren't very likely to play a 5m chip pot, so I'm basically playing for CEV at this point. I resteal twice and am up to like 600k

I open KTo in the CO, Martin thinks a while before calling the SB

Flop: K86r, check, I bet 1/2 pot, Martin calls
Turn: Qh putting out 2 hearts, Martin shoves like 450 effective at 300k. Theres a chance he has KQ or AA I guess, but other than that I think hes gonna have some sort of draw a ton, again this is one of those spots where I'd like calling absurdly light, but he had 76hh so some of my hero calls would have been bad.
River: 7 and I was out in 4th for 110k euros

Vincent busted a few hands later and then they got it in AK against AQ HU but chopped. If AK held, it would have been one of the fastest final tables ever(under an hour) but they played it out for a couple more hours before Sven got boat against nut flush to eliminate Martin

After busting this I wasn't nearly as disappointed as in Dortmund. I guess it could just be now that I have more experience in these final tables that I don't get as emotionally involved, or it could just be that this tournament meant a lot less than Dortmund this year(much smaller + no repeat equity).

Regardless, it was pretty sweet to make a major final table so recently after my last big final table and pretty sweet to do so so shortly after joining FTP. Hopefully I get some more red pro run good in the near future

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Mike McDonald (Timex) is a guest pro at Cardrunners.com. Visit cardrunners and sign up for their industry-leading coaching videos.