and any and all who may or may not have been a part of that.

That is all.

I'm currently in the process of trying to secure a house for this year's WSOP. Early I know...

Wanted to get a list of guys that are interested. Price will be somewhere between $1300 and $1900 per room per month. If you want to share a room, that's obviously fine too but the price will be about 25% more per room due the sharing of common areas as well.

One of the properties I am trying to get comes with a min-van which, as you may or may not know, would be SUPER clutch.

Both properties I am currently looking at seem great.

Obviously, all my Leggo bros from last year have dibs (side note: awesome house from last year NOT available).

Dates will be May 29th - July 28th. Want to do 2 weeks min bookings and preferably 1 or both months.

PM me please.

As my facebook friends may or may not know, I played 5/10 with Phil Hellmuth and David Lee of the Warriors last weekend. The game was as soft as they come.

Phil crushed it and was up about 5 BI when the game was 3.5 and lost a little bit (to me) when it went up to 5/10 when he triple barreled his top pair hand when I made a shitty two pair on the river. The board was 3 flushed and 4 straighted with a gap and he clearly should have checked back but he decided to value town himself.

Anyhow...

On the man himself. He was clearly there with David Lee as a friend to play some poker and have a drink and have a good time. I thought he was incredibly nice, willing to talk with anyone about anything, and generally great to have at the table. There were absolute idiots approaching the table and saying the stupidest shit imaginable and Phil handled each one with grace and manners. I was impressed.

At the end of the night, a new player who was a total fuckin douche bag told phil that he wanted to buy his Aria hat off of him to give to a friend who was a huge fan. Immediately I thought, "no don't do that man, your DNA is in there and what not...". Phil initially said no because he auctions them off at various charity poker tournaments he does and the proceeds go to different causes. It was the perfect cover story. They guy just looks at the table and says, "okay! I get it, the answer is NO. Phil won't sell the hat" in a manner confirming to us that Phil is an asshole and he just proved it.

Phil tells the guy, "I'll tell you what. Make a donation to charity and I'll give you the hat." The guy thinks for a second and then reluctantly agrees. Phil asks him, "how much are you going to donate?" Guy says, "$100". Phil says, make it "$200". The guy asks what charity?. Phil says Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the guy agrees. Phil gives him the hat and leaves with David Lee.

I thought it was a cool move. He posed for plenty of pictures and then left.

Get updated blog.

So I've been in the states since Thanksgiving. After Turducken Tuesday and Disneyland, Vince and I headed to Vegas for a few days. We played some poker, saw Blue Man Group and hung out with Jaymebond.

Vinztento aggro tarding live fish:


Jaymes' spot in Veer and on the roof with jacuuzi



Vegas was pretty fun. We packed out bags and headed straight for the Bay Area. We saw some guys cartsailing and thought it was picture worthy. Expert timing by Vinny here:



I got my iphone 4s as I mentioned in the last blog. I got the wifi-hotspot feature with it and I am extremely happy with the speed. I'm getting like 3 mbps down and 1 mbps up with 3g which is more than enough to grind on. Here is Vince passing time grinding on the way to the bay:



Day one: Watched the 49ers crush.



I thought this sign in the stadium was funny. You may have to enlarge it to see it. I



If you can't see it, it says: TO REPORT UNRULY FANS, TEXT "BADFAN" (SPACE) ISSUE AND LOCATION TO 69050

We did the North Bay and SF on the first day. Still convinced there is no better place on Earth. I can't think of a single weakness this place has except for cost of living. Of course this is completely subjective but for me, it's the best.

Dinner at OSHA Thai. Easily the best soup of all time. Coconut curry with shrimp and mushrooms:



Bacon wrapped scallops and Singha Beer:



My former residence - Sausalito:



Shores of Tiburon (holla Rob). GG in background (Golden Gate)



Standard SF streets






The next day I went to my Grandpa's retirement ceremony. He was on the city council of San Mateo, CA and was the mayor 3 times. Was a very cool ceremony and you can tell he was a true boss by all the people that had farewell messages and gifts for him.

I thought his cake was cool:



We then hit the southbay for a day. We went hiking in the hills. As Viciente pointed out, it's really amazing to have a huge, urban city scape of like 4 million people starting less than 1 mile from this:




There is very large city living and experiences to be had in the Bay Area, but a lot of the charm is in the small surrounding cities as well. Here is Saratoga:



I went to visit my mom as she had surgery. It all went well and I decided to bring her donuts as a gift. We went to this spot called Psycho Donut in San Jose. They had a pretty eclectic range of donuts. Each one has a description of a mental patient with the symptoms being the ingredients.

PB & J and Bacon:



Oreo



Cereal Killer



We liked SF so much we went back and just walked the streets. I took Vinsteezy to this spot called "top of the mark". Ultra cool spot with a classic feel and amazing view:



More night views of the City:



One of my favorite things to do is to order beer samplers at breweries. This one was decent at the Marin Brewing Company.



The Neighborhood Restaurant in San Diego has one of the best one's I've ever had as well.

Some small but useful travel tips I've come to appreciate are:

1) Always carry an extension chord/power strip. You and your friends will have to charge laptops, phones, GPS devices etc and you may only have 1 accessible spot for electricity.

2) Charging your phone at night is a must

3) Hotwire sucks for booking if you need 2 beds.

4) Become a VIP member of Travel sites such as Hotwire, Orbitz, etc. It's free and the benefits can be awesome. For instance, I've had to change my hotel plans twice and Hotwire will NOT issue a refund unless you booked it as an "Express" (VIP) member.

5) Take pictures of everything. Don't be lazy about it.

Make sure everyone coming has their own money. I said this in a blog before. I've had to be the guy loaning money out because monies were tied up in currencies or online financial institutions. I'm 100% positive I'm at least 300-500 short because of this. Not that I was taken advantage of or anything like that, but simply because I forgot to collect. Since I got my iphone, I've asked Siri to remind me of several times that I loaned monies out. Today I got one saying someone owed me $120 and I have no idea what it was for or when I loaned it out. So the problem is that every time I loan out, I am freerolling the person that I will forget. On top of all the other stuff I am doing, it is very likely that I have forgotten about a decent amount of loans out.

I am just going to have a strict no loaning policy from now on and conversely will have to make sure that I have my own funds available at all times. Hate to sound like such a nit, but times is hard on the streets.

I got a free 7 day membership at one of the sickest gyms I've ever been too. I'll be making use of that for sure. Also gonna visit some more friends and spend the next two weeks trying new restaurants and seeking out new life and new civilizations.

To boldly go where I've been plenty of times before.

Peaced out of Mexico for Thanksgiving and the entire month of December. I went with my girlfriend and Vincienzo. We stopped in San Diego first just for one night before heading to Arizona to have Thanksgiving with family. We stopped at this restaurant called Stackers that uses Ipads for their menus. I thought it was pretty cool.





We also went to Cheesecake factory where we uncovered their covert racism:



Top signs warns that the area has asbestos or something and how shell fish can be dangerous.

Bottom sign (in spanish) warns people about heavy alcohol consumption.

Thought that was really funny. Don't warn the Mexicans about the cancer causing materials, just make sure they know to moderate their drinking.


Then headed out to Arizona where I subjected girlfriend and Vince to very awkward social moments with my family. It got a bit better when we all started drinking and my grandpa started telling his war stories from Nam. His stories were actually the highlight of the trip. My brother got too drunk and started talking shit and it was all very uncomfortable for everyone for a good hour. Gotta love family.

Headed back to San Diego where I shipped the GF back to Mexico and Vince and I stayed with Teejay and Craig. It was totally cool of them to let us crash there for 2 days. They have a really sick pad in downtown SD across from Petco Park. You can see the games from their roof. We went to Coronado island and had some beers the first night.



Heading back to the mainland, Vinciente decided he doesn't need stairs, he'll just float into the boat. End result was failure, bloody leg and wet shoes.

Vincientizo:



Vinceintizo reconsidering his walking abilities:



Back to TJs house:



They invited us to their Turducken Tuesday (please see Craig's blog). It was awesome! First we played beer pong with paddles which I, ahem, crushed with my teammate. I think we went like 15 and 1. We then went and played flag football. My ankle is still faded so I had to play perm quarter back and perm rusher. I slow rolled them a couple of times when I had a long run against a blitz then a deep route and perfect pass from TJ for a score. My ankle was very swolen and I was limping again the next day.



Anyhow, all the guys we met there were way cool. During dinner, a SUPER degen black-jack game broke out.

There were HUGE swings in this game and I had a percentage of the house and wound up profiting a bit.




The next day, Teejay promised his GF that is she quit her job, he would take her to Disneyland. She re-shipped on him and snap quit her job so we headed to Anaheim for the day.






At disneyland, they sell a HUGE turkey leg for 10 bucks. It was like the last thing I thought I'd find at Disneyland. This thing is big enough for like 3 people so Vince and I worked on it.



Anyhow, trip has been fun. I've done so much damn driving though. I got my Iphone4s which I love. Downloaded some sick games including Temple Run that Jaymesbond recommended.

Anyhow, currenty in Vegas with Vinstanzito and about to head to Yosemite via Death Valley. Still taking lots of pics so I will have a second blog post about this trip later.

Looking forward to the Bay Area where I may meet up with Kay who I met last summer in vegas. That should be fun....

Till then...

It's been a long time since I've updated my blog. I really enjoy reading my blog months and even years later so I value my own quality blog posts with pictures and lots of detail - good and bad.

So here we go.

Poker: Haven't been playing much since coming back from Vegas. The times I have been playing have not been great. My tilt is on full blast and it is unwarranted. Small losses tilt me to the point that I can't even continue playing. I have tried various things to improve my play but getting tilt under control has to be my top priority. I have been playing on quite a few different sites which has been good for game selection. Rakeback deals are really good at some of them and I think if I can get my tilt factor under control I could make some decent money again.

TV/Movies: I finally broke down and started watching Breaking Bad. Excellent show. Probably top 5 or 10 for me all time. I'm on episode 2 of season 3 and it has been fantastic so far.

I got caught up with Community but wont be continuing. I think they got all they could out of that show. The original episodes were great. The "Modern Warfare" episode of season 1 was just epic television and I'm not sure why, but an old dude being extremely racist is still extremely funny.

Homeland is good although there are some things that just don't seem to be natural. It almost seems scripted. JK. TOO scripted is probably a better way to describe it.

Saw Moneyball this weekend and thought it was good. Being from the Bay, I remember all that stuff happening and reading about Billy Beane and wondering what exactly was "moneyball". Now I know.

Haven't seen a decent movie other than that in quite some time and it doesn't look like anything decent is coming out in the near future.

Recent Visitors

Had a roomate for about 5 weeks named TJ who is a fairly well known 2+2er from San Diego. I helped him get set up here in Mexico with his bank accounts, FM3, Neteller, Moneybookers and the whole 9. We had a good time here. He was surprisingly fun in the club once a few drinks got in him. TJ was a heads up beast playing around 6-8 hours per day and sometimes epic 12-14 hour sessions...all with the track pad. Not sure how anyone doesn't use a mouse these days.

TJ in beast mode cooking a steak while trackpadding HU on his lappy.



Matt, Vince, TJ and I booked a fishing trip. It was a pretty epic sweat as we caught nothing for 5 or 6 hours then crushed the very end of the day pulling in 2 decent sized Dorado (i think they are known as mahi-mahi in the states) in the last 15 minutes.

Some pics of that:






We brought them to a restaurant and watched MNF and had them prepare our fish 3 different ways. It was god damn delicious.

Reefy, Matt, Vince and I booked a trip to Guadalajara. We met Austin there and Austin was going to come back to La Paz to stay with me when TJ left.

At dinner on night one. Love this restaurant called La Tequila:



Typical Austin:



This dinner was epic because I bet Austin and TJ that Barry Bonds was the all-time home run leader. Both insta booked action that he was not. They were both so confident that Reefy and Matt booked against me and they know nothing about baseball. Austin offered any amount I wanted. This is a tough call because it is almost like stealing for me. We booked a decent amount though and of course I won the bet from all 4. I then flipped Austin for his winnings. I won 3 flips in a row
against him and he wound up owing me a lot of money after dinner. My Neteller Card finally lost CCR though and I owed a lot for this bill so it evened out in the end.

Austin, Vince and I caught an Atlas game. That was fun:



Had some really good clubbing times there too:




I had a blast in Guadalajara. It was difficult though with 5 guys to plan stuff and then acually do it. You can only move as fast as the slowest guy and it took a while to get everyone in agreement on what to do, where to eat, which club, when to start drinking, etc.


Back to Life: Austin and I returned to La Paz. It has been fairly chill here over the last few weeks. I sprained my ankle extremely bad though. It was literally the last second of a game that I really went ballistic in. I was 6-7 on threes and one 2 pointer where my foot was on the line. I had 20 of our 56 points and I just couldnt miss. On the last play though I jumped for a rebound and landed on a foot and rolled it. I knew I would be out for at least 2 months right when I landed. I limped around and even had crutches for a few days but I'm not limping anymore and it feels better.



Austin and I went to my girl's restaurant (that she is interning at) and watched the Marquez v Pacman fight. Austin gave me 8 to 1 on Marquez so you can imagine my disappointing in the end. Rigged. Clearly.

We have had some pretty fun nights out these last couple of weeks. There is a bar that charges around 5 dollars for cover and then it is 20 cents per beer or shot. Pretty lol at the pricing scheme but whatever. We got hammered and had a real good time. An American also opened a restaurant here. He is from Texas and it is, I would say, a kind of BBQ based menu. It's so funny how different minded Americans are from Mexicans when it comes to business. The restaurant is called "The Shack" and it is already doing really well. The food is excellent and the pricing is right. They had a few problems one day getting our orders out on time and they more than made up for the hassle and we have been back 4 or 5 times since. There is literally zero thought on compensation for errors in every other restaurant I've been to here so it was nice to deal with someone who has the forsight to think, "hey, if we treat them right, they will return".

Halloween: Had a good time. I was in a weird spot because I wanted to go out with my boys and show them that Halloween is a really good time here in La Paz. However, I hate dressing up because I'm an adult. I did not, however, want to be the ONLY guy in the club not dressed up. I decided to go as a footballer. Easy, inexpensive and legit.

Here I am with Deadmau5




Sports: Extremely excited to watch the...

Still alive. Still kicking. Still playing poker. Still with girl. Still fucking hot. Still love the heat.

Just gonna put it down in whatever order/fashion I please...a-thank you. .

It’s been a while since I blogged and I’m not sure what came over me but I decided to put together a doozy. Vegas was awesome and it seems like it’s forever ago. Since returning to Mexico some pretty cool stuff has transpired. For one, Vince (aka Vinciento) came back to Mexico with me from Vegas. Vince is an adept world traveler with an impressive resume of places/cities/countries travelled. He does it my style - just hits the road on his own and finds that figuring out how to survive/adapt/communicate on your own is the most rewarding experience. Although he has me to help, he is also fine on his own and has learned the language very fast. He is naturally a very easy person to get along with and he has had no trouble making friends here. He got a super nice house (for a not so nice price) and we are all pretty jealous of his pad. By “we” I mean Reefypoopoo and I and my new housemate Matt.

Matt replied to my post on 2+2 about my room for rent. He had never flown before so I can imagine that a 3 city connecting flight to Mexico as your maiden voyage must have been pretty exciting for him. I think it has turned out to be as good as I made it sound. He has now been here 6 weeks or so and will be here through the end of Sept at least. We have had some real good times and I have planned more to come soon. Matt is a HU specialist and he puts in work on the tables. It was nice to get him all set up with his bank account, utility bills and new poker accounts on non-US sites so that he has plenty of options for games. It was also cool to see him start getting SOME of his Cereus money off now that he has a non-US Cereus account. If I had as much money stuck on that site as he does, I would probably have quit the game. To work that hard and have it all gone in an instant would soul crush me. He has had no choice but to start over really and build a new roll from scratch and he is putting in the time and volume to do so. Its pretty impressive. (edit) Kid brought no less than 3 (three) girls home from the club last night.

Poker for me has been extremely tough lately. I was staked to play live in Vegas and I put in a lot of work without much reward. I ran so extremely bad in huge pots that even winning one of those would have made the entire trip worthwhile poker-wise. I did manage a tiny profit and I was happy to be shipping back a little bit of money to someone that trusted in me and staked me. I have since been grinding 100NL on Party and ipoker. I am down a bit over all (with rakeback) but I feel like my game is changing dramatically for the better. I was down about 20 BIs or so and have grinded back quite a bit of that with some great play with both my non-showdown and showdown winnings above 0. I feel like my aggression is fine tuned to the rights spots and I have been owning some regs pretty hard. I’ve been watching some videos lately and I have found that I can really enjoy them and learn from them again.

My girlfriend just graduated college (thinly veiled brag on my part) and we were invited to her graduation party. When we arrived to the place it was being held, we were extremely impressed with the setting and the job the students did setting it up. This was a party that the students planned, organized and even funded. The schools ceremony is just that, a ceremony, and this was dinner, music, speeches, alcohol, the whole nine. My girl looked stunning in her dress (that she had made just for this occasion). The rest of us felt a bit underdressed. She made little cupcakes with chocolate graduation caps (chocolate square on top of upside down reeses peanut butter cup with a thin strip of red fruit role-up as the tassel) and little candy diplomas. I thought they were awesome and extremely creative. The food was good and there was in fact an open bar so things got pretty live. I was forced to dance banda which always sucks cuz hey, big white guy dancing to this music is amusing to everyone accept said big white guy, amirite? But overall, great party and great experience.

My girl and I were so pumped for Premier League to start and it has been a blast. We didn’t really know what to expect from Man U. They lost Van der sar and replaced him with De Gea and that was a huge ? for us. Chicharito was out due to some phantom concussion in the preseason and enter some new names like Welbeck, Young, Cleverly. Welbeck looked hot to start this season so it was going to be interesting to see what Fergie would do when Hernandez was playable again. Was wondering what a 3 striker front of Rooney, Hernandez and Welbeck would be like. Anyhow, Welbeck is injured now and Chicharito had 2 goals in his first game back and Rooney followed with his 2nd consecutive hat trick. Rooney is firing on all cylinders atm and its very impressive to see this guy at top form. Man U is Man handling clubs right now but we’ll wait to see what happens vs. man city or chelsea coming up.

I have been doing well weight-wise. I have lost about 50 lbs since March and it is staying off. In fact I’ve lost about 8 or 10 more since vegas. I am eating small amounts and cutting down on sugar and exercising regularly and it feels good. I MUST give up Coke though. Probably the hardest thing of all to give up so far. I had my first men’s bball league game last night since returning from Vegas. I hadn’t played since Vegas so I was happy with how well my body took it. I had 11 points with 3 threes and we won by 10 or something. Was a total blast.

Planning some trips coming up including a Vegas/SF trip in a month or so. I think that could be extremely fun. I hope JaymesBond joins us on this. I look forward to the SF leg of the trip because it’s where I be from. I find it incredibly fun to show people around my home town and have them see and experience things they wouldn’t get to if they visited on their own. We will see how things transpire though because finances are tight atm.

I finished the 2nd book of the Game of Thrones series and it was great. Starting on the third now. It blows my mind to think that 1 person created this entire world. Every landmass, character, personality, animal, story line, etc. was created in George R.R. Martin’s mind and the entire story is phenomenal. Absolutely love it.

Just purchased NFL Season Ticket and watching Eagles v. Rams. I have been a Mike Vick supporter since he finished his set in the pen. I wanted nothing more than to see a guy with immense talent build himself back up. There are sooooo many stories of these athletes self-imploding and never making it back. It’s so great to see that it IS possible and even if you make mistakes, the door will be open for your return, even if it is just a crack.

I’ll end this ramble with some pics:

We went to Cabo for a few days when we got back to Mexico. Vince on his balcony


We've had some fine times in the club

...