day 1 is just a boring trip report of my flights and what not, day 2 is more about partying/thailand

day 1

Typically I don't sweat traveling at all, but I was way much anxious that normal before this trip. My itinerary: 14+ hour flight to to India + layover , 4 hours to Bangkok, hall ass through customs get my bag and jump on a flight with a different airline to Koh Samui. From there my plan was to cab to the pier and try to find someone with a speedboat (!) to take me to Haad Rin.

Obviously there's a ton that could go wrong, but fortunately, everything went about as smoothly as it could have. I get to the airport, deciding that I am willing to spend up to $2400 on an upgrade to business. It turns out to be $600 (booya!), and maybe I could have even negotiated that down since less than 1/3rd of the business seats were taken! I managed to get like 7 hours of sleep and also crushed a bunch of Season 3 of the Wire (which I embarrassingly had not seen yet) so that was a complete breeze.

The four hour flight to Bangkok was actually significantly worse than the first part of the trip; I didn't have enough personal space and too many crying babies for my liking but w/e. Then was an easy one hour flight to Koh Samui. I was a bit uneasy about the idea of taking a speedboat, given what an easy target I would be, so when a few airline employees told me it was unsafe because of high tides, I decided to spend the night in a hotel.

I've been working out quite a bit (4-5x per week, mostly compound lifts) and don't want to lose all my progress, so I am going to try to do some bodyweight exercises every day. This morning I did 3 sets of 20 pushups, 20 air squats, 20 sit-ups and 50 jumping jacks then went for a swim. Now after a nice (and super cheap, gotta love the exchange rate!) breakfast I am off to catch a ferry and head to the Full Moon Party!


day 2

I knew that the FMP was on a a beach but wow it's really amazing how gorgeous it is… it really is paradise. The first thing we did when I got here was go jet-skiing. Jet skiing is obviously sweet, but it was particularly awesome here. The jet ski guys didn't try to hustle us even though we were 3 white guys, the jet skis went fast as fuck, and instead of having a small area where we could jet ski we actually were able to go all over the island. I ended up staying out a bit longer than I was supposed to (I was out there for 42 minutes but only paid for 30) but the workers ended up not making a stink about it. Even though it would have only been 200-300 baht ($8-12 ) it's nice to just not have to worry about getting hustled all the time.

Another nice surprise is there is a decent (they have a squat rack!! ) gym 5 minutes away. I lifted yesterday with Ben's roommate Jeremy who was doing back. We deadlifted (1/5/200), rowed (3/5/120), and did some chinups and curls. I will definitely have enough time consuming enough calories/protein; despite being tasty, the food is significantly less meat heavy than I am used to.

After some eating, a few trips to the pool/ocean, and a crucial nap, it was time for us to get our bucket on. We head to the beach, and since Ben/Jeremy have been here since Christmas (Ben's gone out every night besides one, what a champion), they have a go to bucket guy. It was really unlike anything I've ever seen, he was maybe pouring 40% of the bottle into each 'drink.' I'm not going to pretend to know how many shots I consumed but I do know that after 1 bucket I was drunk and after 2 I was shitfucked.

Partying here is unlike anything I've seen. On the left side of the beach there's mushroom mountain… which is as it sounds, on the top of the hill there are bars that make drinks with shrooms in them. Throughout the rest of the beach are various types of music playing and everyone just going nuts. I really like party environments where people are not self conscious, everyone is just trying to have a good time. There's also a variety of fire-related entertainment,which is as it sounds… guys juggling stuff that is on fire, fire limbo, FIRE JUMP ROPE (this is no joke, a ton of people get pretty burned trying to do this). I asked if someone were too drunk, if they would still let them try it and everyone just laughed at me "Dan, we're not in America anymore."

Something that surprised me is how few Thai people were here… it's pretty much all tourist though on the night of the actual full moon that is supposed to change. Far and away the most common nationalities I ran into last night were Australians, Swedes, and Israelis in that order. That said, I've been really impressed at how attractive most of the girls were.

I have some other things I probably should write down, but I am hungry and the beach is a bit more tempting than the computer screen.

-Dan.

Hey guys,

Currently staying up all night so that I try to catch some sleep on the flight tomorrow. Tomorrow I head to Thailand until the 16th for the full moon party. One of my buddies guaranteed me that it would be the best week of my life... how can I say no to that? I really enjoy seeing new cultures, especially ones that are warm towards Americans. I don't have set dates yet, but I also will be spending some time in Bangkok.

After Thailand I'm off to Melbourne for Aussie Millions. Melbourne is my favorite city in the world, I could not say enough good things about it. It'll be summer time, the people are friendly, great night life, the food is tasty (nomnomnom rockpool), watching the tennis will be awesome, plus the tournaments are tremendous value. Anyone who's on the fence should definitely do it.

Pokerwise this has been a real interesting year. I started off getting a bit punished in Melbourne (UPS) followed by one of of my bigger online downswings, followed by Black Friday, followed by a rough WSOP (10th and 11th in back to back events, SIGH). I came to toronto before WCOOP and started a nice upswing (2nd in Parx, a few results in EPT London side events, won 2 majors!). Also managed to win at midstakes I actually have no idea how I finished on the year, I had kind of given up on the idea of getting unstuck some point and stopped tracking

Hopefully the heater continues onto 2012!

-Dan

for those of you who haven't heard, there's been a ton of drama going on today on the interweb regarding José “Girah” Macedo. for those who want to read more, here's the 2p2 thread.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...xpost-1079436/

I'm going to throw in some background. Before turning 18, Haseeb played online as ipokeder. He had a reputation as someone who always cried about running bad and had massive tilt issues. After turning 18, he began playing as dogishead on pokerstars (and created a dog is head 2p2 account). Dogishead gathered a reputation as a very strong player and someone with a good mind for the game. I don't remember how it came out that he had a second online identity. I found this post http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9&postcount=26 where 'ipokeder' was asking about 'dogishead', but obviously this is nothing conclusive. If someone is more adapt at using the 2p2 search feature than I am, I'm interested in seeing dogishead's first ever 2p2 posts.

In early 2010, dogishead blogs about losing a ton of money at 100/200 bc his computer was hacked. While playing, he had SIGNIFICANTLY less than half the action. He may have been staked outright, I don't remember. Here is a link to his blog http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/internetpokers/2/, the post was made on January 10th 2008.

Dogishead takes an extended break from poker. He doesn't update his cardrunners blog until july 2010. Sometime along the line, Girah emerges on the scene and dogishead acts as his agent/mentor. Rapidly moves up, and starts crushing. (I've seen a handful of posts like these http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=368 . Apparently ran up a lot of money. Tries to accept the durrr challenge.


Obviously this is still developing, but I am going to make a prediction. Dogishead was very heavily involved in Girah. Pure speculation, but I imagine girah was a midstakes player who shared accounts with dogishead/jungleman., I'm envisioning DIH as a criminal mastermind/psychopath living with two of the literal biggest fish (ashton being the other)in the world. Got laid 900k-300k on a running bet (and lost, I imagine thinking he was a stone lock). I'm having a hard time envisioning jungleman being involved aside from some multiaccounting. I don't agree with multiaccounting, but it's not even close to anything "Girah" may have done.

I'm gonna be making a few tournament videos over the next couple of weeks. There will be at least 1 of my hands from this years WSOP, maybe 2 or 3 depending on how the video turns out.

I decided I also want to make a video where I break down hands from leggo members, so I'm asking for you guys to PM me MTT hand histories you guys have. Live hands are fine as well, just make sure to be thorough in explaining all the actions/positions in the hand. If you want to include your thoughts as well, I'm happy to break down your thought processes.

-Dan

unfortunately, I didn't win. holy fuck though, did I forget what a great tournament it was. I kept wanting to tell people "YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED AT MY TABLE" but they would believe it. because this shit was happening everywhere.

early on there was a big pot on a 9T99x board where a guy folded TT faceup and everyone went nuts about 9x. I convinced the table nines were lucky and people started playing even looser (limping 95o in mp and whatnot)

sample hand at my table.

utg opens, some older goofball ive been friendly with utg 1 calls and they go heads up. flop 974 utg check. utg 1 tells me "i got that pair" and bets. utg calls. turn 5 he whispers "now i got a straight draw. " and bets again.

river king check my brah bets kinda smallish. utg tanks for a bit and calls. utg 1 says 'nice call' and shows 69o. utg flopped a set of sevens.

4 of us in the house did a quick snake draft last night (but no one knew any day 1a results). aaron had the first pick, i had the second etc.



some thoughts: I think I definitely have the best team and Timex has the worst. This is fortunate because he and I bet the most versus each other.

-I wasn't planning on picking myself (or other people I had pieces of) for variance reasons, but felt like I was giving up way too much value by not grabbing myself with the 31st pick.

-i think we should have had more picks, giving some room for sleepers/creative picks. I definitely would have snagged up Kevin 'Phwap' Boudreaux, got a hunch he's going deep this year.

-biggest snubs I think are Vivek, Vanessa Selbst, John Juanda, and Bakes.

will be updating my nub shenanigans here

dansmithnubs.wordpress.com

1) If I cash more times than the rest of my house combined (Chewy, Maddog, Timex, Starkey, Bond18, and Aaron) I get to slap everyone in the face. Midsummer standings: Dan- 4 House-1

2)The leggo party is June 30th. There was some discussion of having midgets wearing sombreros filled with chips and dip (!!), but some leggo higher ups thought members woud view this as offensive. I on the other hand think it would be awesome. Thoughts?

Found out that getting 21st and 11th in big field tournaments wasnt very fun, so I decided to FT the 5k shootout.

436,000 and some nifty jewelry for first!

I've played two WSOP events thus far (25k heads up and 5k full ring) and have yet to win any bracelets. Assuming I don't get too soul crushed, I intend on playing roughly 20 of the following


may 31: 25k hu
June 2nd; 5k NL
June 3rd:10k PLH
Jue 4: 1k nl
june 6: 1500 6m
june 7: 1500 triple chance
wed june 8: 1500 shootout
june 9: 1500 plh
june 11: 1500 nlh
june 12; 1k nl
june 13: 1500 plo
june 14: 5k shootout
june 15: 2500 6m nl
june 16: 1500 nl
june 17: 3k plo
june 18: 1500 nlh
june 20th: 5k PLO 6m
june 21: 2500 nlh
June 22: noon 1500 nlh
june 22 5pm: 2500 half plo half plh
june 23: 5k 6max
june 25: 1500 nl
june 27: 10k 6max
june 28: 1500 nlh
june 29: 5k triple chance NL
july 5: 1500 nlh
july 7: 10k main
july 11: venetian 1k
july 13: venetian 5000
10k bellagio cup


In leggo news, I recently made two videos with my roommate and good friend Tony "Bond18" Dunst. We disected some of his more interesting hand histories from online mtts (RIP). I also intend to make a post-WSOP video where I go through my most interesting hands.

Today is one of the dumber tournies of the WSOP, the 10k PLHE. While I didn't cash it last year, I was chipleader midway through day 2(!!). I also had the pleasure of knocking out my mortal enemy Shaun Deeb