Without getting into too many cliches, live poker is an interesting novelty. It's a little fun for a while-- you get to play with chips, stare at people while you bluff 'em, see the look on their face when and their desperate words when you make a play on them-- but, ultimately, it is draining and miserable. It's a lot of sitting with your muscles and brain being inactive, for the most part. I tried reading a bit, but then you're giving up a bit of an edge by gaining less information. I tried listening to music, but ultimately I'm just not really that big into listening to music-- it's cool that it's there, but it's just background noise (and it prevents you from hearing the action at the table). At my first table in the 10k 6m we actually had a pretty good time: junglefish was there and we were playing 'show 1,' where you have to show one of your hole cards everytime you drag a pot without showdown. It's fun guessing the person's other card and seeing if you may be getting bluffed (among the highlights: I squeeze a raise and 4 callers with A2o, but someone picks the A of spades from my hand, junglefish gets bluffed by live pro, goes on rampage berating live pro's river checkraise ).

I did wind up cashing 31st in that tournament for 2.5x my buy in. Bleh. I was short all of day2, never getting to average after losing a bunch of small pots in standard c-bet spots where I happened to have the bottom of my range or losing with top pair due to bad board runouts. Bad board runouts are probably the most tilting thing in poker the King and I decided. It's just annoying to have top pair or two pair turn into a bluff catcher of relative hand strength when there's a four flush on board. ZzzZzzz. Then you have to decide if this is a good time to bluff catch or you're being emotionally pulled into making a call because you're so angry you definitely had the best hand on the previous street!

So in the tournament I wound up losing a bunch without showdown (to my recollection I got AK once and queens a few times over the course of the tournament... in all, I could have just used AQ or AJ in some spots where I wanted to have a wide value range. Alas, I did not get very good cards and I played exceedingly tight in spots that I would prefer not to play tight in, but everyone was playing pretty hood and I never had above average chips after the first break on day2). I did win some all ins though, flips mostly (and 56s to KJo), and wound up losing most of my chips with AQ to QT in a pot that would have actually given me ~average chips in the money. I lost the rest of them in a bvb battle with second pair to top pair.

I am not particularly happy about my cash, but at least I put one on the books. It's cool to cash and have 105% of yourself because you crossbook with fish who think they are better than you but they aren't. The summer is basically over now, and counting the Main as sunk cost, let's say I'm going to wind up losing 30k or something. I'm not particularly happy about it, but it's less than I've lost in previous summers! Overall, I played pretty well, I'd say I played my B game.

Word on the street is that FTP is donezo (someone can link an article in the comments section if they want, cliffs are they FTP is unable to operate, likely busto and was trying to make the money to pay out US players, but will now likely be unable to make the money to pay US players). I am not particularly surprised by this, although I do wish I would have sold the substantial amount of money I had on there for 70% or whatever it was going for a few days ago. The one thing that is interesting is that this basically ensures that none of the big name FTP pros will be able to show their face in the live poker scene ever again without getting relentlessly abused. It also calls out all the clowns who were still wearing their patches or supporting them in any way. Who knows, maybe I will get my money from Tom or Phil? I hope I'm high on the list!