Back from The Battle - Now Battlin' in AC

Last Sunday we returned from the best poker trip of the year - the WPT Boot Camp Battle for the Season Pass. This year it was held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic at the Bavaro Princess Hotel. We had an uneventful trip down, other than the silly connection through Philly. Now, don't get me wrong, going from Reagan National through Philly to get to the D.R. pales in comparison to one of the Boot Camp students (Ben) who I talked to on the plane home who was flying from D.R. to Philly - then enjoying an 11 hour layover before flying to San Francisco to Portland THEN home to Eugene, OR! Ummmm. Wow. No, thank you. I think I would rather try to Forrest Gump it and just run home.

So, the entire week was really great. First of all, Jenny got to go with me, so its nice to not have to be gone for a long time without her like usual. Secondly, my Dad and his buddy Charlie came down for the week and trips are always better and fun for me and everyone else when Dad's around. I got to meet a ton of new students/attendees and got to see LOTS of familiar faces from other camps that I have done. I get pretty pumped up about the people that come to multiple camps and get the fact that they are investing in their poker education. There are also quite a number of attendees that are just there for the big tournaments and juicy cash games and some of them skip the hands-on labs with the pros. HUGE mistake in my opinion. No one knows it all and you never know when another poker player (student or pro) is going to tell you his or her line of thought about something and BAM, you have another tool in your arsenal to use at the tables.

I spent most of my evenings after dinner in the casino hanging out with the attendees and playing the occasional sit-n-go or cash game. I had a blast and made a few bucks along the way too. OK. I can tell that this has the potential to get really long with all the details of the trip, and I need to get ready to play a tournament today, so let me try to summarize and wrap this up.

• Weather was beautiful.
• Food kinda crappy (no pun intended, but don't ask for details from 99% of the attendees).
• Attendees awesome.
• My poker play - great in cash games, ok in the tourneys, great in the final tourney of the trip - The Lee Childs and "Nicky Numbers" Brancato Invitational, where I chopped first/second and then finished 2nd after we played it out.
• Got to know Nick Binger and his girlfriend Beth and Bernard Lee and his wife Katie a lot better with all the dinners we had together. Awesome people and Jenny and the girls have unofficially started the "Poker Players Partners Support Group" which mainly consisted of hanging out on the beach. I am glad that we are friends with all of them and look forward to more good times to come.
• Got lots of quality time with all the guys from All In Free Poker. We hung out a lot after the casino closed and talked poker. Props to Bryan and Sandy for running a top-notch operation. I can't wait for the Poker Cruise in January.
  
  

I know I am probably leaving lots of details out, but I need to wrap this up. If Jenny or anyone else reminds me of other important stuff, I will do another post about it. It was a fantastic trip with some of the best-known pros around and I have to especially thank the attendees for the great times.

I came up to Atlantic City yesterday and will be here through the main event of the WSOP Circuit events at Harrah's. So far, its been a good trip. Had a nice dinner last night. Got up and hit the gym this morning. Just finished a good, healthy egg-white omelet and now its time to go get ready for the $1K tournament that starts at noon. I am planning to start sending text updates from tournaments using Twitter - http://twitter.com/leechilds so that I don't have to keep track of everyone that I am sending them to, so if you want to get updates, you can follow me on there. You can also set it up to text you when I post updates if you want.

Decide to Win!