I have been pretty happy lately in general after taking down a tournament finally. However, there is something lurking that may be positive but not really anything I would want anybody to endure. My sister, Tiffany, is going to have brain surgery in a few days. She has been in extreme head and face pain after many sinus surgeries for a few years now. The problem she has is very uncommon so there are not many brain surgeons who are able to do the “experimental” surgery she has figured out is best for her. She recently attended a convention for this type of stuff and found a great doctor in Michigan who has performed this surgery on 150 people with a 75% success rate, so she is going to gamble with 3-1 odds. She is in excruciating pain every day and has taken probably over a dozen different types of pills over the past few years, while somehow managing to graduate from Ohio State Law School and landing a big job at a large and prestigious white-collar international law firm in Washington D.C. To be honest, I haven’t seen her very much over the past few years, so I haven’t been able to witness some of the pain she has endured. At least she was able to visit me last month for a week in L.A. while she took medical leave from work and had the “best” (pain-wise) week in at least a year as she described it while having a care-free vacation of relaxation and cool things to do. I bought her some nice silk scarves from Hermes in Paris on the way home from my Monte Carlo trip earlier this year in anticipation for when she loses her hair from this surgery. Anyways, I would like to promote The Facial Pain Association (http://www.fpa-support.org/index.html) (formerly The Trigeminal Neuralgia Association), which is a program to serve as an advocate for patients living with neuropathic facial pain, including trigeminal neuralgia, by providing information, encouraging research and offering support. A lot of people are misdiagnosed and unaware of what is really going on with their illness, as there is a lot of conflicting symptoms and ambiguity as to what the actual diagnosis usually is. This leaves people like my sister, who had her diagnosis changed many times, in limbo, not knowing what to do, or how to fix the problem, undergoing unneccessary operations and procedures, or taking wrong medicines. I would really not like it if my head and/or face hurt 24/7 and didn’t know how to fix it because I didn’t know how to help myself. If you’d like to make a donation, that would be great. If you would like to tell people about it, that’s cool too. Sometimes it’s easy to forget about all the people that aren’t quite as fortunate as people like you and whoever is reading this as at least we are breathing and even have access to a computer and know how to write and read. I plan on undertaking a lot of charity work over the next year, more will come on that at a later time though.

A few of us went to Gaucho, the Argentinian steak restaurant for dinner about a week ago. The waiter knocked a glass over and it shattered right in front of me where my food would have been if it had been brought out yet, and glass flew all over me. If the whole thing just happened a little bit different, it could have made me blind, cut my jugular, or do something else crazy. Times like those make me think twice about how life can be so different if little things are changed. The waiter hardly apologized and didn’t really understand how close it was to being a major accident, and really his attitude just seemed very aloof and nonchalant about it. I almost never complain in restaurants….very rarely. However, when I noticed the stem of the glass was still laying on the floor right next to the booth and I almost stepped on the jagged edges facing upwards 5 minutes later when I went to the restroom, I had to say something to the manager. Other than that, the food was really good as expected.

Also this past week, I played the Full Tilt Poker Million Dollar cash game for the first time. I played two out of the three days with some of the other really top poker players and it was a great experience. I’m very excited I was able to play on the show, and can’t wait till it airs as I’m involved in some interesting pots! Sorry, I can’t say much more than that until after the show airs!

A few nights ago, Tom Dwan, Peter Jetten, Viffer, and I headed out to Nobu(my favorite location for Nobu in the world is on Berkeley Street here in London) to celebrate Viffer’s birthday with some of the girls. It was a great time and we met up with Andrew Robl, Dan Fleyshman, Keith Gipson, Tatjana the poker interviewer girl, and Mathew Parvis from Pokernews to hit up Club Jalouse which won best club in London for 2010. We made a short appearance at the Movida club and another pub as well beforehand waiting for Jalouse to open, and they actually opened thirty minutes early for us. It was a good time, and they played pretty good music as well.

GL Tiffany!(just like you tell me when I’m in a big tournament!)