Since I last posted I've played a significant amount of poker, believe it or not. The FTOPS series was going on, so I decided to put in some hours. While I did have a couple top 35 finishes, I failed to make any real noise in the FTOPS event. I did have a very successful weekend in the other simultaneously running tournaments this weekend. Namely, I outright won the morning edition of the $100 rebuy tournament on Pokerstars this past Saturday after beating 2009 WSOP main event 15th place finisher, Nick "FU_15" Maimone heads up for a gross of around $40,000. Later that evening, I finished 3rd in the evening (much smaller) edition of the $100 rebuy on Stars for around $6,000. I'd actually never won this tournament before Saturday despite playing it countless times. 

Yesterday I played the full slate of tournaments and found a couple insignificant cashes before final tabling some $500 6max tournament on UB. I ended up finishing 3rd for $8000ish which was good enough to turn a slight winner on the Sunday. It was nice to get things turned in the right direction for 2010, as the year was off to an awful start prior to this weekend. I'm now an overall loser of an insignificant $5200 on the year despite being down about $50,000 a few days ago.

I must say the win on Stars felt very good because by default I've been getting my ass kicked in tournaments on that site. As I type this, I'm down around $65,000 (-15% ROI) in tournaments on Stars lifetime. Despite the fact that I've played a seemingly meaningful 900 tournaments, I don't take those results TOO seriously because I blanked around $50,000 in very high buy-in tournaments during the SCOOP series last year and this greatly skews the results. Still, I'm open minded and realize that I'll have to continue to make adjustments to improve in the ever-changing business of tournament poker, especially when the fields I play are comprised of mostly outstanding tournament poker players.

In the two weeks since I've last posted there hasn't been too much going on. I spent the last weekend of January out in Las Vegas celebrating Justin Young's 30th birthday and then taking part in a surprise party for Eric Baldwin for his 2009 Cardplayer Player of the Year victory. On the Friday night Adam Geyer and I showed up and informed basebaldy that we flew in last minute just to celebrate Justin's birthday. Adam and I were 7th and 8th wheels as we joined Eric, Cody Slaubaugh, Justin and their respective girlfriend and wives Mary, Renee and Morgan for some partying at the M casino. We started off pregaming at Justin's place and playing some pool before eating an amazing dinner at the steakhouse at M. Later, we had a helluva good time in our own (close to) private 1/2 NL game at M. The highlight of the night had to be when Renee checkraise bluffed Adam out of a big pot and showed him king high.

I was down in Biloxi this weekend for the WPT event there. I drew a table with Carlos Mortensen, Nick Shulman and a kid named Chase Steely. There was another good young player that I don't know by name, too. Things went poorly as I busted as time expired in the second level. Level 1 went ok. I quickly slipped to like 27000 after I valuetowned myself in a pot against a guy with KQhh vs his AQ on QJJxx. I won a couple small pots to climb back to 30800 to finish the level above the starting stack. I came back from break and early in level 2 a guy opened to 550 from the button. I found AdKs in the SB and raised to 1800 and he called. Flop AcTd5c. I checked and he checked. Turn kind of ugly Qd. I decided to bet just 1400 and he quickcalled. River 5d. I block/value bet 3300 and was snapped and shown AQ for top two and down to about 22500. I lost another couple of pots including a pot I played poorly against Nick Shulman before the bustout hand came up as time expired and players were headed to break in level 2. A player who'd limped a ton did so for 200 and Nick raised behind him to 900. A guy called 900 cold and then I found AKo and had about 12500 left. I raised to 3500 knowing that Nick is gonna exploit this guy's limp very often. It was folded back to Nick and he instantly made it 8000. Other guy folded, and I don't have much of  a choice but to go with it. I'm gonna be shown something like two jacks just about everytime and be a 14:11 dog, but it is what it is. This time Nick had two black tens and I never came close on Q8659.

I watched the Saints game in my room and then Adam, Eric, Eric's girlfriend Mary and I headed over to the Hard Rock casino to drink/degen it up since both of them busted as well. We played some Pai Gow and prop bet the dealer's hand for several hours with the end result us all being stuck.

I talked Adam into riding up to Tuscaloosa with me to hang out for a couple days. Tonight we're gonna ride up to Birmingham to watch #25 UAB vs Tulsa basketball and then Adam flies out Wednesday afternoon. Not too much will be going on in my life for the next couple months, so blog entries will be infrequent.