Charity, Writing, Planning, Battling, Thanks and Celebration

So this past weekend, I attended the Sunflower Children's Charity Poker Tournament in New York City. I blogged about it in the last post, so I won't put all of the details about the event here, but the event was a blast. Russell Simmons and Jamie Gold were two of the biggest celebs there and Jamie served as the MC and play-by-play commentator for the tournament. The structure for the tournament was extremely fast, as most charity tourneys are, but I was able to make a deep run and finished 4th out of about 225 players. First place was a 2009 WSOP Main Event seat and the rest of the final table won a nice chip set. The blinds really ate us up at the end as they had to speed them up to get the tourney done in time because of city regulations (the final 9 players had to be done in 15 minutes!!!), but I think I played really well and had a good shot to win it if we could have slowed it down a bit. I had a great time, met some really great people and was really honored to be a part of such a fantastic event.

Since I have been back, I have been doing some writing for my Ante Up Magazine column and doing a lot of work planning my next training session. I am updating all of my material to include new things I have incorporated in my game in the last few months and also a lot of things that I have discovered while working with my students that really seem to help the intermediate players take their game to a new level.

I am tentatively planning a group training session in Alexandria, VA for January 10th, so I will post here and/or update the Web site when that gets finalized. If anyone is interested in attending that session, please shoot us an e-mail at info@acumenpoker.net. I really think this is going to be the best training session yet.

Next up for me is the WPT Boot Camp Battle for the Season Pass in the Dominican Republic. Jenny and I head south on Saturday and will be there for just over a week where I will be teaching and then competing against about 20 other pros and over 200 students for a prize package worth $110,000 - 10 WPT Main Event buy-ins and $10,000 in cash for travel! Man, this will be a sweet one to win. This event took place in the Bahamas last year and I really don't think there's a more fun poker event around. We have lots of free time to enjoy the all-inclusive resort and get to know the students. Some of my best poker friends will be there and I'm really excited about the trip.

Well, that's about it for now. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I will. Yesterday, I celebrated 3 incredible years of marriage with the coolest, smartest, funniest, most wonderful, caring, loving, supportive, beautiful, awesome girl I have ever known. Jenny, you rock and I am very lucky and blessed to have you.

Good luck at the tables everyone and I hope you all get the chance to spend some time with family and loved ones on Thanksgiving.

Decide to Win!