I had a great time at the WSOP this summer and capped it off with a sweet 2′nd place at WPT Bellagio Cup, final tabling the same event two years in a row. There were noticeable differences in the atmosphere this season at the WPT besides just the beautiful Royal Flush girls. At Bellagio WPT’s, the final table is held in the Fontana Lounge which draws quite the crowd, as opposed to a convention center room in the back of Bellagio. The atmosphere was really electric and was a ton of fun to play that final table. It should be a great episode for TV.

I came home to L.A. and played a lot of online poker and did really well for a week. I was happy to be back hiking Runyon Canyon, hitting up clubs and good restaurants as always, and just taking a nice breather and relaxing at home. I also had a small little cameo in the “I Love the Way You Lie” music video by Eminem and Rihanna. In the bar scene I have a green hat on sitting next to Dominic who plays the male lead role in the video. You can only see the side of my face a few times, but it was still cool to be a part of a music video which will undoubtedly have hundreds of millions of hits on youtube and will be up for best video of the year next year. Unfortunately, it only lasted about a week. My sister came and stayed with me for a few days. We hit up Il Sole which is a great Italian spot and also did the My Studio thing on Saturday night. We also did some shopping at Beverly Center and had lunch at Pizzeria Mozza which is some of the best pizza ever. My sister, Anita, and I went on our yearly summer vacation for a week and a half to visit family in Connecticut. While there, my 100 year old great grandmother started not feeling so great, so the paramedics came and took her to the hospital. They ran a battery of tests on her and sent her home a few hours later thankfully. The next day she was perfectly normal and you wouldn’t have even known anything happened…she is one tough lady! Besides that incident, a little bit of sailing, low key hanging out with the family, and just chillin on the beach is what it usually is, and this year was no exception. My dad came up and visited a few days and we took two sailboats out and raced him. Anita and I won of course While there, Anita and I celebrated our third year wedding anniversary too, which was really nice. We did a low key dinner and just hung out, which sounds pretty simple, but it doesn’t happen all that often, so when it does, it is in fact really nice and sort of special. The entire family went out one night for dinner and for the first time ever I had cannolli pie, which was even better than it sounds! It may seem like I talk about food a lot in my columns and blogs here at Bluff, but that’s probably because I do! I love food, good quality tasting food can only be beat by a few things! We headed over to NYC for a night and saw a few friends and flew home.

Today I’m going to XIV for the first time, which is a really good Michael Mina restaurant on Sunset Blvd. HOWEVER, on Sundays from 5 to 10 p.m. is the most insane party day-club experience ever. There are many videos on youtube of this place and it’s completely packed and insane. It only goes on in the summer time and I’m looking to get one Sunday in before I head off. I can’t wait to go and experience all the hype everyone makes this place out to be. I’m hosting a Deepstacks Live camp in San Diego on the 20′th at Pala Casino. I’ve done one there before and the people are great. I’ll be going home right after that to get a good sleep for Day 1B of the WPT Legends Main Event. I’m going to make some sort of attempt at WPT Player of the Year I guess. I won’t play all of the WPT’s, but I will be trying a little “extra” hard to do well this season I suppose. Unfortunately yet again, it’s only for a week and a half until I go to London for 7 weeks. However, I’m enthusiastic about going as I’ll be playing all the WPT, WSOP-E, and EPT tournaments…lots of events and chances for a win, including two high roller events!