Every year I get very excited for the World Championship of Online Poker at Pokerstars. It feels just like the WSOP, but for online players. One of the first few events, I managed to get 8’th place. I was chip leader with 40 people left all the way down to about 12 people left. To be quite honest with you, with about 15 people left, I started playing very antsy. I wasn’t patient at all, and aborted the initial general game plan that had got me that far. That said, I didn’t necessarily play bad, I just got blind steal crazy and was playing much higher variance, hence with 12 people left, I was chip leader and did a coin flip on the flop for a 1.2 million chip pot against the second chip leader. Shortly thereafter, I got knocked out of the tournament on a bad beat.

Anita and I have done a lot of things in London so far, as London has a lot of stuff to do. We went to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Regents Park and rented a romantic row boat, took a day trip by train to the royal residence of the Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, took an informative tour of the Houses of Parliament, saw the mighty clock - Big Ben, and took a tour of the Tower of London where King Henry VIII murdered his wives. We still have to see Buckingham Palace which we will do the day after tomorrow.

The day before Day 1A, Anita, Action Jeff, and myself headed to the Pokerstars Pre-Party for the EPT Event. It was a cruise down the river with a free bar and all the players, so of course we’re in! lol. As soon as I got on the boat, Daniel Negreanu spotted me and we sparked up a conversation. We ended up talking almost the entire time. After the party, Action Jeff, Daniel Negreanu, Anita, and I caught a cab back to the hotel. We decided to hit up the bar and lounge in the lobby of the hotel for drinks and ended up hanging out most of the rest of the night while engaged in very deep level/deep thought poker talk. Daniel, Jeff, and I all have very different ways of playing and I’m sure all of us learned a lot from each other throughout the conversation.

I busted out of EPT London yesterday. I just can’t seem to even make Day 2 of these large buy-in live tournaments. I don’t believe it’s my fault either really. Yesterday I played six out of the eight levels in the day, and each level was an hour. I had AA once, KK twice, JJ twice, AK three times, AQ two times, and TT once. I won with KK and JJ once each stealing the blinds, every other premium hand found some way for me to lose the pot. The final blow came with my KK vs. 77 all in preflop and he hit the flop with 997 board.

I’m playing the 6 max No Limit WCOOP Event as I’m writing this and hopefully I can win one of the WCOOPs by the end of the series. Something just as good as that would be to get deep in EPT Baden in three weeks. Other than all these tournaments, I’ve been putting in about 2,000 hands a day and definitely putting down some strong results.