A bit later than I wanted to post, but you’ll hear why soon enough.

My 1st WSOP tournament was Event #3 $1000 NLH. I played day 1a and it went very well. Early on I was constantly crushing people. People kept trying to make moves on me but I just seemed to know every time and played back at them and kept winning. I was very focused and had a pretty easy starting table with good reads on my opponents. There were 2 times in the early levels where I 4bet over a 20BB stack’s 3bet and got folds. I only had AJ and AT too when I did it, the way they bet just seemed so obvious that they didn’t have it. Anyways, I ran pretty good throughout the day and on the final hand of the day I picked up AA and ran into AK to finish that day with 75.5k. After day 1b had finished, I was about 15th in chips going into day 2.

I lasted a while in day 2, but my luck had pretty much vanished going into the later part of the day. An old guy rivered a set vs me, lost 77<66, 44

I have also played 2 more events now, which were 2 $1500 NLH events. Both of them I did not last too long. It’s tough to get it going a lot of the time since the starting stacks are so small.

Tuesday I played a few turbos online, and won a $10r 3x deep turbo to the WSOP ME. That was nice, made up for an awful Sunday.

Wednesday I also played online after busting the $1500 event early. It’s SO NICE to play on west coast time since the latest the big tournaments start is 6pm (9pm EST). Which means I can play a full night and not be up forever. I’m really starting to wonder if I should move to British Columbia, Canada. It would make me play many more tournaments on weekdays, and be able to put in much more volume.

Anyways, Wednesday was when I had planned to do an update, but during my play I started to feel sick, and it kept getting worse. I was hungry and convinced others to order pizza with me, I lost the credit card roulette and had to pay, and by the time it arrive I couldn’t really eat it. At one point a little bit later I had to quickly fold all my hands, run to the bathroom, throw up, then run back to keep playing. This happened a few times until I finally busted everything. That night I had to go to the bathroom over 7 times to throw up, it was almost certainly food poisoning. The quality of food in the US is so awful compared to other places in the world, it’s really frustrating to try and keep up a healthy lifestyle while I’m out here, in fact it’s just not possible with how often I’m playing, and the available food I can get. The next day I started to improve gradually throughout the day. Right now I have a shortness of breath, but nothing that major. I tried to lift weights today but just had no energy to do so. I hope to be 100% again soon.

I skipped the PLH $1500 event yesterday since I was still recovering from food poisoning, I decided to go to bed at 10:30pm since I was very sleep deprived from the previous night. Now, I’m in Vegas to work. I want to win a WSOP bracelet and play my best everyday, and be focused each day. Most people in my house feel the same way. However two of them like to party excessively instead, which I have no problem with, to each his own, I’ll be going out some nights as well. However if they are loud coming back, then I have a problem. That night at 5:00am, two people (don’t really want to use real names) came home and were drunk and shouting. I angrily got up, opened my door, and yelled at them to shut up. I don’t think they heard me, and it kept on getting louder, and then they turned on one of the hallway lights that shines directly into my room, making my room as bright as day. So I got up, went outside my door, and they heard me this time. However instead of apologizing, and turning off the light, they were assholes about it and said I had to come downstairs to turn off the light myself and told me to chill out. They were completely unaware of how they were acting. This was absolutely ridiculous, they wake me up and show absolutely no respect for others in the house as well. I got so little sleep the night before, I’m still recovering from food poisoning and here they are being assholes at 5am making a ton of noise. I go down and turn off the light, and call one of them an asshole as I go upstairs. He tells me to say it to his face. Now, the smart thing for me to do would’ve have been to just continue walking up the stairs, I mean, even if they had been a little bit nicer I probably would have, but they were complete assholes and showed no respect at all, and I won’t take that. It just hit a breaking point with me, I turned around and said it to his face, aware of what might ensue, but hoped it wouldn’t. Shortly afterward he throws 2 punches at my face. The other one then comes in and tries to break it up (trying to keep me off of him, while the initiator gets more cheap shots at my head). I managed to get him away and push the one who hit me to the floor in a headlock before other people that were awake at this point had come down to break it up. I think I got a few in, since he threw up shortly afterward and appeared to be in rough shape. He was out of control, I’ve never seen anyone with such a huge lack of self control. Some drama ensued afterward, but nothing that interesting besides him breaking a glass, and the other one telling me I should apologize and I was out of line. I lost a ton of respect for him since he was just so stupid to not realize what had happened even though he was there, in fact he even claimed I threw the first punch.

Before this, I had never really been in a real fight (way back in grade school, but that doesn’t really count), however I’m strong and have basic karate training, and have sparred with friends before, so I’m not afraid. Despite him landing so many hits to my head, I was relatively fine. I’m usually very calm, very logical, and think out my decisions carefully. I wasn’t the only one that was woken up also, and other people were angry about it too. They had been loud before (around 8-9am last time) and we were worried there might be issues. They know me fairly well though and know that I wouldn’t start anything like that, but of course I have to defend myself. Things were a bit awkward today, but he seems to not want to start anything today. They said they were going to move out last night, but who knows if that will actually happen. I guess this should be a lesson to choose your roommates carefully on these trips. A happy home will make for a happier me which will lead to better results.

I play another $1000 event tomorrow, hopefully I can go deeper than the last time, and keep my hopes high.

Matt.