Since I last posted 17 days ago I haven't had the time to play a single hand of poker. I spent the last weekend in February down in Mardi Gras celebrating the bachelor party of my high school friend Brandon alongside some other high school friends. It was a blast catching up and ridiculously good time as we were pretty much on the drinks on Bourbon Street for all but a few of 48 straight hours.

This past weekend I went up to Williamsburg, VA to visit my mom for her birthday. My sister Heather and my brother-in-law Ben made the trip as well. We had a good time checking out some of the local restaurants and bars and got a chance to check out Scorcese's Shutter Island on Sunday night. 

I've been grinding hard in classes all week trying to put together this long typed paper on Skype and the rest of the VoIP industry. Somewhat interesting stuff, but I'm glad it's over as it's one of the last couple of major projects I have before I graduate 58 days from now. Classes as a whole are going just fine, and I'm anxiously awaiting May 8th as it will obviously be one of the most exciting days of my life.

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.