As I type this I'm sitting in a room at Commerce Casino with my boy Jon Little. Later today we'll play day 1b of WPT Legends of Poker at The Bicycle Casino. This will be my 32nd career WPT, my first of season 9 on the World Poker tour, and the first one I've had time to play since January of 2010. They've dropped the buy-in for this one down to $5000 from $10,000 which I actually think is a good idea as far as drawing numbers.

Since I last posted I'm still not in my condo. There was a hold up with some of the paperwork, but I can now officially move in when I get back to Birmingham next week. Hopefully I'll return as a WPT champion. Other then that, I spent a week up in Virginia helping my mom pack to move back to Birmingham. I have a new respect for people in the moving business. I then drove the 26 foot Penske truck 12 hours which was an interesting experience. I've also gotten some time to hang out with my sisters the last couple of weeks which was nice. I know they're ready to get me off their couches and out of their hair now :)

I've been playing a little bit of poker too. I made some FTOPS noise by final tabling the PLHE/PLO event and finishing 6th or something. I also finished 21st in the $150 rebuy rush tournament where first paid over $200k :( I posted back to back good Sundays after one week final tabling the $100 rebuy on Stars for $24k. This past Sunday was big as I snagged both a $15,700 PCA package and an EPT London package that is worth around $12,800 in addition to final tabling the PS $500 for $17,000ish. All told, the year has been solid so far. 

Since I last posted I played my heat in the Poker Lounge in Wales. Things pretty much went exactly as I expected, as the structure wasn't great. I fully intended on getting all the money in on a flip, and I did just that when my AT fell to Annette Obrestad's QJss 3 handed for 70% of the tournament chips. I enjoyed the experience and look forward to seeing how the broadcast turns out. Wales was also a pretty cool country. The people were very nice and it was definitely a quaint little place. I would've liked to see a little more of the country but didn't quite have time.

The last week I've been in Birmingham. My lease ended in Tuscaloosa and I've been looking for a place to live in Alabama's largest city. Basically, my quality of life is better when I'm in the south as compared to the time I've spent in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and I could see myself living here the rest of my life, really. I kind of wanted to make sure of that though, so I spent the week looking at condos that were open to the idea of me leasing for 6 months with the option to buy at the end of the lease period. I struck what I think is a very good deal and found some very good value by locking in a purchase price at a bad ass place called Hallman Hill in Homewood's (a suburb of Birmingham) SoHo district. I look forward to getting into the place this weekend and seeing if condo living is the way I wanna go.

Aside from that, its just nice being back in Birmingham. I went out with friends a couple of times this week and enjoyed myself. I've also played online the last 2 Sundays. Last Sunday was just miserable as I got blanked, but last night I found a 5th place finish in the $100 rebuy on Stars for $24,000 or so, which was enough to turn a decent winner over the two combined weeks.

As I type this entry I'm sitting on my balcony at Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales overlooking the golf course on which the Ryder Cup is played. I traveled 17.5 hours to get here, arrived yesterday at 10 am local time, and promptly slept 8 hours. Later tonight I'll play a $20,000 6 player winner take all sit-n-go tournament 40 minutes down the road in Cardiff. I'm actually still unsure with whom I'll be playing. I've been told that as the online qualifier I'll be playing with 3 Full Tilt red pros and 2 other people who will buy in. The structure won't be great, and I fully anticipate having to flip it all off at some point. The tournament will be filmed and shown on British television's channel 4. I'll also make the youtube link available when it comes out in a couple months.

Truth be told, I won this satellite on Full Tilt quite accidentally. I bought into the $600 satellite a couple months ago thinking it was their standard WSOP satellite, and realized an hour into the tournament that it was a package to this sit-n-go. Hopefully I can win tonight and be $120,000 richer. Last night I had a great seafood dinner consisting of Fish Soup and a Swordfish entree at a place called Priory here in town. I did a little walking around then headed down to the more "posh" (as the Brits call it) Cardiff Bay area for some drinks.

Some observations: