Making a groove out of a rut

I'm in a bit of a rut.

I've had a few minor injuries that have prevented me from training as much I've I'd like to this week, which has in turn pushed me into this minor rut. When I'm training hard, twice a day, I feel great. I feel purpose-driven, I am chock full of good hormones, food tastes great, and I sleep like a baby. When I'm not training, I am stir-crazy, bored, and don't really know what to do with myself. I mostly read books, play video games and mess around a bunch online, all while wishing I were training. This has been one of those weeks.

Fight addiction > gambling addiction

Last week, I was chatting with my cousin Calvin, who is one of the people responsible for getting me into the sport. He is turning 35 in July and has unfortunately had to scale back a lot of his training (especially standup) due to injuries. I mentioned that when I am his age (I'm 31) I might be done with this fighting stuff. In his words, "you won't [be]. Unless you have some medical issue. It's like crack."

I thought that was an overstatement (well, I suppose the crack part actually is), but then I was kept off the mats for a few days and I fell right into this rut. Also, when I have too much time on my hands, I tend to get way too introspective and spend too much time wondering what I'm doing with my life.

I have scarcely played any poker since coming back from the Aussie Millions. I haven't been motivated to grind online cash and I've never been one for online tourneys (and all the good ones start at terrible hours here in Hong Kong anyway). I'm still beating online cash and when I play I still feel like I play well, and I want to stay sharp with the WSOP around the corner, but I often just can't be bothered. I'll play for an hour and be bored out of my mind. It just seems like menial, boring work now. I do still enjoy playing live tournaments. There is that great vibe, there is the thrill of competition, there's the social interaction, and there is a start and a finish. Is it strange that as a young poker player I was a Joey Knish and now, into my thirties, I am more Mike McD?

The Macau Poker Cup is going on this weekend. It's a large-field, medium buy-in (US ~$1100) tournament that's just an hour ferry ride away from me, so it should have been a slam dunk for me. But I skipped it, because the tournament organizers changed the Day 1 start time to 8pm which means play wouldn't wrap up until 4am. In my prime poker days, I wouldn't have batted an eye at that, but lately I have optimized nearly my entire life around my physical health and fitness. In the past that just meant exercise and nutrition being dialed in, but the more I read the more I realize that sleep quality plays a huge role in both health and sports performance. So I skipped a high-ev tournament right in my backyard that many of my friends were attending.

This would be a reasonable thing to do if I were a professional athlete, but as we know, I'm just a scrub. Since Black Friday, I've basically just been spending money and living off of savings and investments. Mostly the former because other than real estate, I don't have much of the latter. Financially, I am still in very good shape, but eventually I will have to do something for money -- and to keep myself sane. There's zero chance I will fight for a living, and even doing something like coaching is a long way off given my current skill level.

Options, options

One possibility I've been considering is getting into the finance world. It's not one that remotely interested me at all when I was a young adult, even as someone who graduated with a business degree and enjoyed the requisite undergrad finance courses. But I've been reading some interesting books and some of it seems kind of fun. Everyone says that being a poker player is great prep for being a trader (and vice versa), and that the markets are just like a big casino. Yet I feel like I would nevertheless be starting at a knowledge deficit. I honestly know so little about this world. I don't know how it is that individual people or even small firms can beat the market when there are these giant firms with their supercomputers and tremendous access to information.

On top of that, I wouldn't know where to begin. I've never been a person who was really capable of learning anything in any sort of traditional path. Despite being a reasonably smart person, I was a below-average elementary and high school student, a so-so university student, and I've definitely improved slower than average at MMA, so typical learning environments clearly aren't my thing. Besides, I've always felt that typical learning begets typical results, and I have no desire for that. Luckily I do have friends who are smart in such things -- my smart friends are the only reason I have ever been successful at poker -- and so I do have a valuable resource if I choose to go down that road.

That's just a sidebar to my life at this time, though. MMA is still my priority, and despite my bitching, I still love the training and the sport. If I can stay healthy, I think I can stay happy.

Coming Up

APPT Seoul March 7-11. This is an exciting one for me for a number of reasons. I've never been to Korea, and I've always wanted to go. That's a big one. But I also found out that there is are MMA tryouts (link in Korean) in Suncheon, Korea, the same day as the APPT final table. The winners get to compete in the "Young Guns" portion of a future Road FC card, which is the biggest MMA promotion in Korea. It wouldn't be ideal from a preparation standpoint, but if I were to bust Day 1A of the APPT main event, I would have enough time to cut weight, take a 4.5 hour bus ride from Seoul to Suncheon and compete in the tryouts.

Alternatively (or additionally), there is also an amateur MMA event in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on March 31. It is "D-class", meaning really watered-down MMA rules, but the idea is that you win your way up to C-class, B-class and A-class where the rules are progressively less restrictive. I wish they had stuff like that in Hong Kong, or even Vancouver, but Taiwan is only a 1.5 hour flight away, so it's not unreasonable.

On the non-poker, non-MMA front, I have a number of friends either visiting or possibly visiting Hong Kong within the next month or so. Having some real-world interaction with people I like always makes me happy, and so even if I am not at the gym twice daily, I should manage to keep the ennui at bay.

Aussie Millions wrap-up

After my previous entry, I decided to skip the $2500 HORSE, $2500 PLO and $5000 heads-up, all of which were marked as "possible" on my schedule. But I did play one event which I figured I probably wouldn't play, the $2500 6-max NL. 6-max NL tournaments are awesome but it was a 2-day event, the second day being the day I was scheduled to fly home to Hong Kong. I felt reasonably assured that I wouldn't make Day 2 without making the money (with an outside chance of even the final table) so I decided that I'd play it and change my flight later if necessary.

The tournament started out with an annoyance: I ended up being seated at a late registration table with all the other people in the registration line, which included Jamie Rosen, Salman Behbehani and Joseph Cheong, the latter on my immediate left. The other late registration table (the one which opened right after us) was much, much softer, and it tilted me every time I looked over in that direction knowing that I had I registered just a couple minutes later I could have had that table. My HeroPoker teammate Aaron Benton knew the score and intentionally went back in the registration line so he would be seated at the softer table. While I think in general the Aussie Millions is a well-run tournament (and it was universally agreed that the structures were fantastic), this is the kind of stuff that is inexcusable in tournament poker and is really, really dumb. At least at the WSOP when they are forced into late reg tables, they break the table immediately, but at the Aussie Millions they do not break the tables nearly as quickly. As a result I ended up playing a couple of hours at this table, more than enough time for me to foolishly bluff off half my stack to Joseph.

I grinded back to the starting stack of 10k, then proceeded on a big heater. I coolered a guy holding Ah5h to his Jh9h, getting a ridiculous runout of Jc5s2h-4h-3h to get it in on the river. Then I made a set against a flush draw and held, won two flips, and was probably chip leader five hours into the tournament. It was a nice heater and once again, the kind of thing that potentially keeps people coming back to tournaments. But it wasn't to be. After the dinner break I ran ice cold and made a couple of questionable decisions that cost me some chips. I ended up busting less than 10 off the money when my JJ failed to hold against Jonathan Karamalikis' 99.

Despite bricking the Aussie Millions -- and actually not doing that much outside of it -- I enjoyed my time in Melbourne. Last year with Gavin and Amy Griffin was great because I got to explore with two of my best friends, but meeting and spending time with the newest HeroPoker pros, Aaron and Grant Levy, was also good times. And at the risk of sounding like I'm sucking up to the boss, HeroPoker CEO David Jung was awesome in taking care of the three of us. He drove us around, not just to and from Crown Casino, but even if I wanted to go train at the MMA gym. If we were hungry he threw steaks and pork bellies on the barbecue. It was first-class treatment and I feel like I was treated as well as any sponsored pro could be. (Well, without a gross misappropriation of player funds diverted towards obscene player salaries, at least. But who would do that?) HeroPoker itself is also starting to do well in terms of traffic and player base, and our presence was clearly noted at the Aussie Millions when a young kid in the 6-max looked at my patch and said, "wow, you HeroPoker guys are everywhere!"

No real plans going forward for me, but I foresee spending most of February in Hong Kong, playing cash games on Hero and mostly training MMA/BJJ/Muay Thai. I may run off to Thailand for a training trip as well, but it seems like a number of friends will be visiting Hong Kong within the next couple months, so I may well be hanging out for a bit. There's an outside shot I will get to fight MMA on a card in China in late March, and that would be very exciting. Other than that, a short jaunt to APPT Seoul (never been to Korea!) is the only thing marked on the calendar before WSOP time.

to play or not to play, my Aussie Millions so far

It's another beautiful, partly cloudy, 21-degree day in Melbourne, so I'm typing this while sitting outdoors on the front lawn of the HeroPoker house, where CEO David Jung has put up three of his pros -- Grant Levy, Aaron Benton, and me -- for the week while we play the Aussie Millions. David is chauferring Grant and Aaron to Day 2 of the main event, leaving me to sit at home for a while with a little downtime. I've spent most of the morning deciding whether I want to play the $2500 HORSE in the evening or going to train Muay Thai and no-gi jiujitsu tonight. If you're a regular reader of this blog you've probably figured that I'm leaning towards the latter.

I was really excited to come out here for the Aussie Millions. In Thailand while training every day, twice a day, I allowed myself the fantasy of taking down the thing, as I do for every major that I play. I looked forward to it, and I stayed sharp by trying to grind a few hours daily online. Those fantasies were quickly put to an end on Day 1A of the main. I raised with Ad3d, got called in the BB by 88, the flop came 2d2h4d, he check-called, and the magical 8d peeled right off on the turn. Obviously all the money went in and shortly thereafter I shipped what remained of my stack on a flip and lost that as well.

The Emotional Fallout: another bustout, but this one feels different

It was pretty frustrating. Insert here the standard bitching about how I played well the whole day; how earlier I had trapped a guy into floating me with overs and getting him to lose much more than he should have, only for that cooler to happen. Blah blah blah; no one cares. The fact remains that while a the hand was a cooler, I've certainly experienced far worse, as has anyone with a lot of poker tournament experience. It is part of the nature of the game. Nothing has changed except my attitude towards it all. The first thing I tweeted after the hand happened was, "I can't wait to quit poker," and many days I really do feel this way. I feel like I'm waiting for something. That something could be anything: a great professional opportunity, a lightbulb moment for personal development, a big score to go out on a high note. But it certainly seems that I'm rolling through the twilight of my poker career on inertia with no real exit strategy.

They say that no one ever says on their deathbed that they wish they had worked more. Of course, poker has always straddled the line for me, and for most pros, between work and pleasure. We got into it because it was fun, and often it still is. It's a great feeling to be playing well and running well. Those days in the sun in tournament poker are great moments and I relish going deep in tournaments. Those rare deep runs and even rarer wins are what keeps people coming back to tournament poker. But clearly most players have a love-hate relationship with tournament poker, and I wonder these days how that balance looks for me.

The bad days I have in the gym are rarely that bad. When I get tapped out, punched in the liver or kicked in the face, it's usually with a smile. But when I turn the nut flush against the nut boat, the feeling is so different. I want to get the fuck out of the room as soon as possible. I want to be anywhere but at the poker table, waiting for an opportunity to ship an 11 BB stack in the middle, sitting there and steaming about the fact that my chances of winning this tournament have gone from small-to-begin-with to now absolutely dismal. I have made a point of never, ever using the phrase "FML" because I think considering how good my life is that it's ridiculous for me to say it, but in that moment, I felt it.

So, where do I go from here?

And yet I say all of the above, I do so while thinking that I might still register for the $5k HU NL or the $2500 HORSE today, or the $2500 PLO tomorrow. Part of this is that I came to the Aussie Millions to represent HeroPoker and I feel like with a total of 12 hours of table time I haven't done a particularly good job of that. I haven't felt pressured in the slightest way to play more poker but I've been treated very well here by Dave and feel somewhat bad that I haven't done more to generate exposure for the brand. On the other hand, I just don't feel like I'm in that great a state of mind, my limit/mixed games are a bit rusty and I know that I'll be in a pissy mood if the most probable result (i.e. not winning or cashing big) occurs. On the gripping hand, there is always the off-chance I catch a heater, run deep, and feel better about everything again.

There is also the fact that, as I mentioned, while training in Thailand that I was looking forward to playing poker. And now that I'm in the midst of a poker tournament, I want to go train. That's kind of messed up and I wonder if it says something about me as a person. I've never thought of myself as the type of person who sees the other side's grass as perpetually greener, but maybe this is evidence that I am. I think I would also miss the social side of poker, as bizarre as that might sound. For as weird a group as poker players can be, almost all my best friends are poker players. There are exceptions, but I don't really get along with most of the fighters I meet and I can't have a real conversation with most of them, nor do we share much common ground outside fighting. It is bizarre to say, but I feel like walking away from poker tournaments would mean having a substantially less fulfilling social network. I crave real-life social interaction and I would actually miss getting it from poker players.

So, I'm torn.

I wish I could talk to the deathbed me, and ask him for advice. What say you, old man?

a funny hand history / wrapping up in Phuket; Australia soon

So, this was fun:

Starting Game #46658088-2182
gtownhustla22 is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
TerrenceChan posted Small Blind $2
Albuquerquefreakout posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (Ks,Kd)
ghstface1 folds
Cogitus folds
gtownhustla22 raised to $113 (wtf?)
TerrenceChan is All In
Albuquerquefreakout folds
gtownhustla22 calls $396.39
gtownhustla22 shows (Qd,Qh)
TerrenceChan shows (Ks,Kd)
Dealing Flop (8h,Ac,8d)
Dealing Turn (5c)
Dealing River (Ad)
TerrenceChan wins $794.28 from Pot 1 with : Two Pair Aces and Kings
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2183
TerrenceChan is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
Albuquerquefreakout posted Small Blind $2
ghstface1 posted Big Blind $4
gtownhustla22> website is such a jjoike
You Were Dealt (Qh,Th)
Cogitus folds
gtownhustla22> \CHEATING ***** SLANTY EYD ****
gtownhustla22> HONG KONG USELES FU CK
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan raised to $10.66
Albuquerquefreakout folds
gtownhustla22> did we drop a few bombs on you
ghstface1 folds
TerrenceChan wins $16.66 from Pot 1
TerrenceChan mucks
gtownhustla22> piece of sh it
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2184
Albuquerquefreakout is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
ghstface1 posted Small Blind $2
Cogitus posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (6c,2s)
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan folds
Albuquerquefreakout folds
TerrenceChan> sorry, no speak english
ghstface1 calls $4
Cogitus checks
Dealing Flop (6h,3h,4d)
ghstface1 checks
Cogitus bets $8
ghstface1 folds
Cogitus wins $15.10 from Pot 1
Cogitus mucks
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2185
ghstface1 is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
Cogitus posted Small Blind $2
BumHunter357 posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (5c,Qh)
gtownhustla22> shu t th e fuc k up u idiot
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan> only speak us dollar
TerrenceChan folds
Albuquerquefreakout folds
ghstface1 raised to $8
gtownhustla22> only speak my co ck in your girl s as s
Cogitus folds
BumHunter357 folds
ghstface1 wins $14 from Pot 1
gtownhustla22> ****
ghstface1 mucks
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2186
Cogitus is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
gtownhustla22> G O O K
BumHunter357 posted Small Blind $2
gtownhustla22 posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (Qs,9s)
TerrenceChan> sorry no understan, you have more us dollar or no more?
TerrenceChan folds

****

(He would go on to busto his remaining $50 or so shortly after, then quit.)

I've been playing poker for so many years and yet I still never tire of this type of amazing immaturity. Suppose that doesn't make me too much more mature than them.

I have less than 48 hours left in Thailand. It's been fairly good, my standup has improved, my cardio has improved. But the last 10 days were a total write-off. I went to the beach for New Year's Eve on December 30-January 1, and that's when my first symptoms of a mystery illness showed up. On the evening of January 1, I suddenly got really bad chills; bundling up under the covers in a hoodie and sweatpants in 31-degree heat kinda bad. I had the hotel call me a doctor who in all honesty was probably pretty terrible. He diagnosed me with gastroenteritis and prescribed antibiotics. He actually didn't give me the standard spiel about taking the whole course of antibiotics, which I found odd. Anyway, I took the first one without thinking about it, then realized that antibiotics for a stomach flu is a terrible idea and decided not to take any more. I continued on acetaminophen instead.

On January 3, I felt okay enough to train, but hurt my ankle slightly. The next day instead of training I went swimming in the pool. I'm a terrible swimmer (which means I drink a lot of water) and the pool is not well-maintained here, so I suspect that I got sick from the pool water. I had a fever ranging from a mild 38 to a nasty 38.7 at its peak from the 4th-7th. Today, the 10th, was my first day back at training.

It sucks that I've been sick in Thailand twice in my three trips here, because it's such a great place for high-quality training at a very low price. My immune system is very robust when I'm in either Hong Kong or Vancouver but it seems to have trouble keeping up here in Thailand, whether it's from bug bites, pool water, food poisoning, heatstroke, or whatever. The veterans say basically everyone gets sick here, so I guess it's just something you have to deal with.

As somewhat of an aside, a follower on Twitter directed me to this excellent read about training Muay Thai in Thailand. I felt that while the tone of the author was startlingly negative and fatalistic that it still captured a lot of what it's like to be here.

****

So, in a couple days time I'll be back in Hong Kong for a week, then off to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions, one of my favourite poker destinations. After that ... who knows? Maybe I'll even be right back here, punching and kicking stuff under a corrugated roof now shielding against an even hotter southern Thailand sun.

some padwork at PTT

I'm now nearly three full weeks of doing nothing but training (other than a brief getaway for New Year's) here in Phuket. Last Friday I took a private class with one of the Muay Thai instructors. It was a very technical, low-intensity 60 minutes of padwork. Which is perfect because I wasn't feeling well that morning and as it turns out would end up being sick (stomach flu) the rest of the weekend. Nevertheless I think I was able to focus enough on technique for the class. I made the following video to give a glimpse of what this lesson was like:

I've got one more week to go. I think I've learned a lot here and definitely improved my conditioning! If only I could keep myself healthy in Thailand. Oh well, at least I didn't get dengue fever, like I did last time I was here.

Why I do not, cannot, and likely will never support the PPA

Apparently poker got some good news today, as the Wire Act was deemed by the US Department of Justice to not apply to poker. I am not a legal expert and so I defer to those who are for an in-depth examination of this news. That's not what this post is about. This post is about the following quote from John Pappas of the Poker Player's Alliance, which jumped out and hit me square between the eyes with as much force and surprise as any left jab I've seen this week:

“The PPA commends Assistant Attorney General Seitz for recognizing this. However, this ruling makes it even more important that Congress acts now to clarify federal law, and to create a licensing and regulation regime for Internet poker, coupled with clear laws and strong enforcement against other forms of gambling deemed to be illegal.” (Emphasis mine.)

And this, very simply, is why I cannot in good conscience support the PPA. "My gambling is okay, but your gambling is illegal and should be punished," is the height of hypocrisy. It is indefensible. It is, morally speaking, little better than if the civil rights movement were to have argued for equal rights for blacks but continued oppression of Hispanics and Jews.

I've, at times, wanted to support the PPA. After the passage of the UIGEA, I actually got as far as the signup page on their website. But the John Pappases of the world do not represent me and can never represent me as long as this is their position. This, in my view, is the worst type of special interest group; the ones that are willing to actively throw others under the bus so that they can emerge from the wreck.

These people are no friends of liberty. In the end, what matters is not the freedom to play poker. It is freedom, period.

Three days in at Phuket Top Team

I'm three full training days into my retreat here in Phuket, training this time at Phuket Top Team. I've been enjoying it quite a bit. The last time I was here, at Tiger Muay Thai in April was enjoyable, but somehow less so. It wasn't really the training at TMT, which was good, but I think this time I'm just more acclimated to both the training and the lifestyle.

First the lifestyle. I've always been a city boy who loves his big city, first-world distractions. And here it's quiet, the internet is terrible, I know almost no one, the food is pretty much the same every day, and I can't get a decent cup of coffee to save my life. And yet in spite of all that I'm happy here. I wake up and train while in a fasted state, and so I'm pretty much down to eat anything when I'm done. Then I'm tired and it's time for a noon nap. Then it's time for the afternoon training session and the process repeats. I'm in bed well before 11pm and I don't really have time to think about not having my industrialized-world comforts.

As for the training, I think it helps I'm a little more fit than I was last time. When I came to TMT last time, I had been training consistently for a few months in Hong Kong, but certainly not as hard as I was this summer/fall in Vancouver. Maybe it's the pollution or that I get less sleep but I definitely train harder in Vancouver. That fitness level leads to an increased ability for me to do multiple sessions daily without too much fatigue, whereas in April I felt I was truly crawling out of the gym after every session. And I think most of the classes are a 7/10 in terms of difficulty as opposed to a 9/10 where I wouldn't be able to do multiple sessions daily. Doing more sessions also means I sleep more and have less downtime in which to get bored.

I have met a few interesting people while down here. A lot of the long-term students I've met here are actually pretty cool people and not typical bro/meathead fighters at all. I don't know how social I'll be here -- after all, I don't go out and party back home so I'm certainly not going to do it now when I'm wiped from twice-daily training -- but it's nice to at least be able to have a decent conversation over dinner.

Training is definitely good. Muay Thai is great, especially for the 7am class, because so few people show up for it that the trainer/fighter ratio is often close to 1:1. Thus you practically get a private lesson and many rounds of padwork, which is great. They also seem personally invested. I've had the same Thai trainer holding pads and coaching me every day, so he is quickly learning my strengths and weaknesses. Without question this is the biggest advantage of doing this second trip here at Phuket Top Team as opposed to the gargantuan Tiger Muay Thai.

The no-gi/BJJ training situation is a little different. Classes are similarly small; there are a lot of people who are complete newbs but there also appear to be some real studs and pro fighters. I don't think I have a large enough sample size to see what's going on there yet but I haven't encountered anyone like me who is just sort of intermediate level. The instructor is a former instructor of mine from Hong Kong, Silvio Braga, whom I like and have learned a great deal from in the past, so I'm sure I'll end up getting better no matter what the sparring partner situation ends up being. I haven't trained with the MMA instructor yet but I look forward to doing that on Monday or Tuesday.

This feels like kind of a boring blog entry, but that's because to most people this trip would be pretty boring: wake up, train, eat, sleep, wake up, train, eat, sleep. It's not what exciting blogs are made of, but it's keeping me happy. And it had better, because I still have 26 more days of it!

off to train in Phuket

It's been a while since I posted, mostly because not much exciting has happened. I cashed small in the APPT Macau main event but failed to cash in the high roller event, so it was a trip that ended up in the red. Since then I've just been in Hong Kong training BJJ and MMA at my home gym here.

One thing that did transpire was my 31st birthday. As my cousin was quick to point out, that means I'm not just 30, I'm now in my thirties. Coincidentally, I happened to watch the MMA movie "Warrior" on my birthday. The movie contains a scene where the main character, a career journeyman, is told by his trainer, "c'mon, you were barely a .500 fighter when you were on the right side of 30!"

"The right side of 30" clearly implies that I'm now on the wrong side. Ouch. Just like that, I'm officially old? Hey, if Hollywood says it, it must be true. And I suppose there is also that wealth of anecdotal evidence and scientific study that indicates explosiveness, power, and so forth are now on the downswing at my age too.

Nevertheless, I am off to continue my quest for self-improvement in the MMA game by heading off to Phuket, Thailand on Tuesday. Once there, I feel like I'll be able to isolate myself and do nothing but train for a month, ideally working my way up to twice-daily, 6-day-per-week training, as a pro would.

It will be an interesting experience for me. Obviously I have already once set aside a long block where I did essentially nothing but train (the 8 weeks leading up to my fight) but this will be different as I will have no real support network and no tangible goal at the end. This time, the goal is the process itself. If an appropriate MMA or Muay Thai fight does come up during my time there, I will happily take it, but I won't put pressure on myself to do it. I'm fine waiting until spring time in Vancouver to fight again.

People frequently ask how much longer I plan to do the MMA thing, and I think until I am 35 or so seems quite reasonable. The other thing people ask is what I want to achieve. I'm not a big believer in setting very specific goals myself, but I do want to challenge myself, develop the best possible version of me, and see how far I can get in that time. The ultimate goal is to have no regrets and to never wonder what might have been.

Of course, the UFC did today announce it would be opening the 125-pound weight class starting in March. Which of course makes me think thoughts like, "my walking weight is about 137-140 these days, the division isn't so well-developed, and while I utterly lack experience the one upside is that I haven't taken much damage..." And then I realize there's also the part where I'm a 31-year-old with exactly one fight on his record and who still gets tapped out by blue belts. Well, dare to dream, I suppose.

But ultimately it doesn't really matter. All that matters is a little self-improvement, every day. And for my next little dose of self-improvement, I find myself packing my bags for Phuket.

by popular request: handicapping (sorta) ElkY vs RaSZi

I guess since I am now perceived as some sort of fight expert by the poker community (spoiler: I'm not), people keep asking me my opinion about the ElkY vs RaSZi* kickboxing match next week. So in this post I'll concede to trying to break down a fight with very incomplete knowledge. I've trained with ElkY, but I've never seen Lex train, fight, or do anything more physically active than reaching for chips. Moreover, because I trained with ElkY, I'm biased; I want him to win.

But ElkY has been training hard. I sparred with him a little bit at EPT Madrid in April when he first started out with his Lincon, his current trainer, and I also sparred with him a little last month in Cannes. Unsurprisingly, the difference was very significant. He's able to put strikes together, move forward, and counterpunch now. More importantly, he never seemed to mind getting hit. In Madrid he was very inexperienced and we were going light, but even then he didn't mind being hit and kept coming forward. But in Cannes, I definitely cracked him a couple of times and he had no problem with it. Amongst novice fighters, the willingness to be hit and keep moving forward makes a big difference.

According to Lex's blog, Lex had 18 months of boxing training when he was a teenager. That's of some value but not a lot, since he's now 27. It seems like his training has also been hampered by injuries up until a few months ago when he finally got healthy two months ago. Since then, he has been training "a few times a week."

If one could be assured that Lex is telling the full truth and not underselling himself, I definitely like ElkY's side given this information. Lincon has ElkY training virtually every morning and has him eating well. Over a 5-round fight, I really have to think ElkY has a major cardio advantage, although Lex being more experienced in fights means he'll be a little less likely to adrenaline dump. But as far as I can tell, ElkY has been training consistently for six months and Lex has been training off and on for two months.

Lex points out in the blog that Elky's "coordination seems a bit bad and I don't think he is a natural athlete." To this, I will admit that yes, I've seen him in the ring and he's not going to dazzle with Muhammad Ali footwork. But he is very well trained. Lincon is a very good, technical trainer with a great attitude. So I know ElkY knows his fundamentals. He doesn't have to look great. All he really has to do is tuck his chin, keep his hands up, and throw strikes, and I think he's going to do that. Athleticism is often what separates guys at the elite level, but we're talking about two very raw guys. And when we're talking about two such guys, I favour the guy who has been working harder and has gotten consistent, professional training. Maybe Lex is a better natural athlete. Maybe if he weren't playing Starcraft and poker he'd be greater than Ernesto Hoost and Peter Aerts combined. I'm not denying the importance of athleticism, and maybe I'm biased because I'm not athletically gifted myself, but I'll favour the uncoordinated guy with six months of training over the athletic guy with two.

I feel there's one last advantage that ElkY has, and that is surprising toughness. As I said, even when he was very unskilled, he didn't mind getting hit and continued staying aggressive. The rules of the fight dictate that if no one is KOd or TKOd or quits, then the fight is a draw. I think ElkY is tough enough that this makes it a partial freeroll. Neither guy likely has enough power at this stage to KO the other unless someone really gets their hands low and chin up. And I don't think ElkY will quit because of the toughness I've mentioned. So his only path to losing is that he is taking so much damage that the ref is forced to stop the fight. And unless Lex lands some serious bombs early, it seems unlikely he has the gas tank to accrue that level of damage.

I'd be very surprised if Lex hasn't undersold himself just a little bit and he's probably a bit more trained than he's let on. Not because he wants to hustle bettors (the bet with ElkY is already very big), but just to manage expectations. Normally I don't buy into anything fighters say about how their training is going, but with less experienced guys and guys who aren't super-serious fighters, I think there is less bravado, posturing, and "I'm in the best shape of my life!!!!111" talk.

So yeah, I've put down my $1000 down on ElkY. Mostly just a bet for fun, and to show a bit of support, but I do think there's some edge. In any case I just hope it's a good fight and that they'll continue to train, improve themselves and find as much joy as I've found in the combat sports.

Official Prediction: ElkY by 4th round TKO

And with that, I'm off to my own gym!

* Do any of these Starcraft guys capitalize properly?

Almost-Live Televised Poker and Play Clocks - A Match Made in Heaven?

There's been a lot of buzz about the "almost-live" WSOP final table and what came out of it. Personally, I was fascinated by it, and probably most hardcore fans and poker players were too. It did, however, go on for a very long time, and that led a lot of pundits to talk about the viability of such broadcasts going forward. In this week's 2+2 Pokercast, we talked about whether a casual fan of poker would have enjoyed the show or turned it off because they felt it was too long or slow-paced. Indeed it seems to be a common sentiment on Twitter that the broadcast was perhaps too dry for casual viewers, especially those used to seeing fast-paced, slickly-edited poker productions.

My aggressive, maybe even slightly insane solution? 60-second play clock on all postflop actions, and 30-second play clock on all preflop actions. The clock starts running from the time you're informed by the dealer of the bet size. Players would get one or more timeouts, maybe even as many as one per level, to tank on really monumental decisions or to draw out a read from an opponent.

Does it change the game quite dramatically? Yes, but obviously that ship has sailed long ago with both the creation of the November Nine a few years back and now every hand revealed on a 15-minute delay. This would be a less-significant strategy change than the revealed hole cards by a substantial margin.

And honestly, I think the majority of players -- and by this I mean across all players, not just pros -- would enjoy the pace of the game. Imagine if you never had to watch another guy tank for 4 minutes in a pot that doesn't involve you at all, ever again? I'd love it!

Let me hear your thoughts in the poll below or in the comments.

Would you support going to a play clock for major poker tournaments?

Mixed Emotions: Sweating the WSOP Final Table

I love watching championship moments. I'll watch the finals of a sport I don't even like, only to get bored and stop paying attention. But I'll always watch the last few seconds on the clock, or the game-winning score, or however it is the game ends. I love watching the absolute unbridled joy of the winner when he realizes his dream. He can't believe it's happening. It's not real...but it is! It's such a great moment and I always get a little bit choked up, even when I have no emotional investment in the player or the team (or even the sport).

Poker is no exception. From what I've heard, Pius Heinz is a really nice, humble kid who is a deserving winner, and so it was great to see him over the moon and jumping into his rail when the harmless river card fell. I love watching moments like that. But in some sense it's harder in poker. I've known for pretty much my entire life that I will never hoist the Stanley Cup or win an NBA title or a World Cup, or even a UFC title. But I am a poker player. I've been playing poker for over 12 years; it's been my entire adult life. It's what I do. I'm pretty good at it, I've achieved a lot of success in it, and made lots of money doing it. Yet I know that realistically, when it comes to the WSOP main event all I can really do is daydream about winning it. Even if I play great and run tremendously good, it almost certainly won't happen. I'll never know what that final river card hitting feels like; I can only imagine it.

And that kind of leaves me with a sad feeling inside. I think most of the time I'm at peace with the thought of never winning the main event (ever since the 2004 WSOP, this has been obvious to anyone who can do basic math). Maybe I'm a little extra emotionally vulnerable since I bricked yet another big buy-in live tournament today. Or maybe it was even the fact that I watched the Heinz-Martin Staszko heads-up battle with nine other top-notch, highly successful poker pros, analyzing their every move and talking about how much better we could have played those hands. To be sure, we have egos, and our comments were borne of a genuine belief that we could play certain hands better than they did. But not a single one of us wasn't at least a little bit jealous, hoping against hope that we'll have the chance to be there one day.

I guess that's what keeps people coming back to poker. It's what puts 6,865 people putting up $10,000 in the wake of both Black Friday and the big economic recession of the late 2000s. Because even the most cynical of poker pros who say we "have to play the main" because "it's sooooo much value" are, at least a little bit, dreamers too.

Congrats to Pius Heinz, the new world champion of our game. I hope you enjoy every bit of it, Pius, because 6,864 of us wish it were us.

Poker's 1% walks into a bar

The poker tournament is in town.

I feel like saying "the poker tournament" oversells the matter. The BC Poker Championships is the biggest tournament of the year in Western Canada. Its main event is a $3000 buy-in, certainly not an amount to sneeze at, but in an age where $10000+ main events are the norm, it's not the sort that attracts international attention from media or high-stakes pros.  Typically during the BCPC, I am among the short list of best-known or most successful players in the field. But something unique has happened to Vancouver's poker population in the post-Black Friday world.  Dozens of the best American poker players have come north in the past few months to continue earning a living.  And that is why at midnight on a Friday night, at a dive bar called the Atlantic Trap and Gill, I found myself flanked by five self-made poker millionaires: Brian Hastings, Mike McDonald, Mike Watson, Tom Marchese and a fifth guy named Matt that I'd not met before.

Adding to the incongruity of tens of millions of dollars in poker winnings hunkering down and squeezing on to a crowded bar bench over $13 pitchers of beer were the half-dozen or so non-poker players in our group.  Some were old friends of the poker pros, but the others were actually just randoms who were nice enough to share their table with us. By engaging us in conversation they suddenly found themselves knee-deep in a world they had not even considered or fathomed.

"I'll lay 8-to-1 that Brian left that on the table," declared Mike McDonald, upon returning from the washroom.

The EPT champion and 3-time final tablist pointed at the crisp $100 bill sitting by itself in the middle of the table.  No one had asked to settle the tab, but Brian was in fact the person who had left the C-note before heading out the door.  A couple minutes earlier, Brian, apparently having made progress with the attractive young woman who'd showed up just a few minutes earlier, had made the decision to move to a (presumably nicer) bar.  He'd only been around 20 minutes and had one, maybe two beers at best before casually tossing the $100 on the table.

I told Timex how I'd even offered to break the $100 for Brian, but that Brian simply shrugged his shoulders, said "it's fine", and casually left.  Timex found the situation hilarious and exuberantly started explaining to one of the puzzled non-poker randoms that even in this collection of highly successful poker players, Brian stood an echelon above us.

"So this guy that was here and left that $100 bill, well basically, all of us here have won a bunch of money playing poker, but he's won more money in one day than any of us have won in our careers. He holds the world record for most money won playing poker in a single day.  So basically he just bought us all drinks because he's baller like that."  (Tom Marchese then pointed out that his lifetime earnings are in fact greater than Brian's legendary $5 million walloping of Viktor Blom.)

After the hubbub of the $100 bill died down, the topic shifted to poker players and the public perception of how much they win playing poker versus their actual results.  Eventually the topic of Andy Beal came up and I wondered out loud at what limit I would be willing to play him if I had all of my action.

Timex, true to his nature, quickly jumped in with his opinion: that assuming I am worth about a million dollars, that I should definitely be willing to at least take a shot with $300,000 and play him at $3000/$6000, estimating that I have an 80% chance of losing those 50 big bets but a 20% chance of winning some obscene amount like $30,000,000 (assuming he would go that deep).  Mike then punctuated his story, drawing images of me in some Caribbean island with dozens of models on my arm, a sort of 30-year-old Hugh Hefner being waited on hand-and-foot on a tropical paradise.

It was at this point our random turned to his friends and said "I can't believe the conversations that are going on this end of the table."  I think that while there are certainly many groups of successful poker players who are incapable of judging when it is socially acceptable to discuss huge sums of money in varied company, that the social intelligence of this particular group in that respect is actually above average.  But here we were, clearly blowing minds simply by talking candidly amongst ourselves.  At one point I reached into my inside jacket pocket in search of my phone and instead grabbed a small wad of $100 bills. I turned to Timex and Tom and said, "Sweet! Found money; I love when that happens!"  Needless to say, I had not considered the potential reaction of Jess, the red-haired girl on my right whose bewildered expression seemed to indicate that she had not, in fact, experienced the feeling of randomly finding $600 that she'd forgotten she'd had.

Last call came and went, unnoticed by us since our party still had a completely full pitcher on the table.  Our waitress brought us the bill. Actually, she brought us several bills.  I suppose in a bar like this, waitresses are used to splitting bills among large parties of 20somethings, but when we added up all the pitchers, the sum of all the various bills was just $75 and thus well-covered by Mr. Hastings' gesture of generosity.  Jess suggested that we should figure out Brian's share and give him back the rest of the money tomorrow. I assured her that while this would indeed be the fairest thing to do, that it was beyond unnecessary.

One of the randoms, a very pleasant and sociable girl named Andrea, went to leave, but before doing so, made sure to get our attention to tell us how nice it was to have met us, and we returned the sentiment.  I do wonder whether she meant it was nice to meet us in the traditional sense, or in the "I feel like I've just witnessed things that I'll never see again" sense.  I still can't help but shake the feeling that a half-dozen regular folk encountering a half-dozen millionaire poker players simply being themselves was only slightly less strange than meeting an alien species which happened to speak English.

Timex received a text from Brian, and he and Tom decided to head for the bar where Brian had left some time earlier.  I decided it was best for me to head home.  We bid farewell to the remaining randoms, as well as Mike Watson, who seemed engaged with the young woman seated next to him.  The waitress was appreciative of her $25 tip.  We opened the door to find it was raining outside, hard.  Timex and Tom quickly flagged down a cab.  Living only two blocks away, I simply put my head down and ran for home.

The young kids, they can enjoy their late-night drinking and partying.  I'm an old man and even before I was even an old man I was an old soul, so I'll just tap away at the keys and make some words appear on the computer screen for an hour.  But despite where we differ, I am still clearly one of them.

And if you read this story and thought, "nothing about this seems that out of the ordinary," well, then you're one of us too.