BigGuyOnFoot.com

I just got back from Cancun, Mexico for spring break and had an amazing time. It was my first trip to Mexico and I got to go with some great people. Grace and I were invited by one of my friends from home, Jeff. His girlfriend, Kat, also came along with some of his friends from school, Mark, Manny, and Dougie. Manny’s family got us this great deal on the presidential suite at the Cancun Caribi which we shared with Jeff and Kat. The room was nuts we had 2 floors with beach views and then our own private patio with a mini pool.

We were lucky to have Manny as our travel guide for the week, and use his Spanish skills to work us deals around Mexico. We tried to do something different each day, but we obviously had to start with tequila and fajitas. After growing up on Taco Bell, this was quite an upgrade. One of the coolest things we got to do was go on the “spinnaker” during a snorkeling trip. The spinnaker is basically a parasailing death trap for one person to get thrown up in the air by the wind and just hope you come back close enough to the water to jump. Manny, Dougie, and I were the brave ones and we got thrown up probably 30 feet on this thing.

The number one adventure I was looking forward to was checking out the Mayan Ruins. The temples were incredible and it was a little eerie walking around in what used to be such a large city, now a quiet museum of history and glory. I was expecting to see just one or two structures, but instead there were many different sections of the city, all with their own story behind them. I wanted to challenge Jeff to Poke de Poke, the ancient game of kicking a 3-5 pound ball through a hole about 25-30 feet up on a wall. Jeff is definitely a fun person to beat when it comes to anything competitive, but I’d let him win this one since the victor is sacrificed to the gods. COCO BONGO JEFF!

This was my 3rd summer in Vegas, but the first one I really felt confident about playing some of the live events. I got a suite at the RIO and set up shop there for about a month. It had a master bedroom/bathroom, living room, dining area, perfect size for visitors. Obviously I played a ton of poker, but we did some other fun stuff to. Shawn and Jake came to visit from home and we got a table at Mandalay Bay with some other Vegas friends and that was an awesome time. The table was actually a couch outside on the balcony that overlooked the strip. We ended up getting two couches, one was for bottle service and lounging, and the other Jake designated for trying to pick up 50 year old women.

Cirque De Soleil is the best show on the planet. I’ve seen four or five of their shows and every time I come away more impressed than the last one. This trip Grace and I saw KA which was a rotating stage with people roping swinging from the balconies and shooting arrows from the back row. I still think the Beatles Love was my favorite, but KA was the most entertaining/dangerous. We also saw David Copperfield, who was surprisingly entertaining. Pretty sure the seating is random but we somehow ended up with front row seats from which it was obvious he hadn’t changed the picture on his advertisement posters in about 30 years. But with age comes experience right? The show was amazing and for all the David Blaine fans out there this is a must see. The most relaxing day we had was getting a cabana at the pool and meeting up with Drenzick, one of my friends from home. It’s a half day special after noon, so since I didn’t wake up ever until the PM it was a great deal for me; drinks, TV, misters, and a private pool, what could be better?

Well I know what could have been better, winning the main event. Since you haven’t seen me on TV it can be assumed I didn’t win the $9 million, but I gave it my best shot. I actually did win the Sunday warm up (online tournament) for 75k, but between all my live tournament buy ins, live cash, spending, and high stakes adventures, I came out about even for the trip. I had a great time and plan on going back this summer again. It may not have been the best trip financially but at least I got some good pictures out of it.

First off, the blog is back! After a year of being lazy with this, I think it’s time to start it back up again. I’m going to try and post some of the events from the last year, but I thought my move to San Francisco would be a good starting point.

I lived out here for Grace’s last year of college in the Inner Richmond district, and loved it so much I wanted to move here permanently. It’s such an inspiring place to be and I really think it’s the greatest city in the world, sorry to all the New Yorkers out there. I’m living right next to the Giants stadium which is going to start being crazy as opening day is tomorrow. Every store within two blocks is black and orange themed and it’s obvious that my quiet, up and coming section of the city will now be the center of baseball madness, at least 81 days of this year. Remember how many bandwagon Celtics and Red Sox fans there were (to all my fellow Boston fans)? I remember being able to buy the $10 seats and sneaking down to courtside, but those days are long gone and my hopes of doing that at AT&T Park seem doubtful. It’s no Fenway, but it’s definitely the most scenic ballpark I’ve ever been too. I wish Bonds and steroids were still playing because it would be worth it to rent kayaks in the bay to catch some homerun balls.

Grace and I got so lucky with the place we moved into. We’re living in the “Dogpatch area” which is technically SOMA, but it’s a new, up and coming section of the city with all brand new apartment buildings which surround UCSF. Our building has a great gym, amenities building, cooking classes, resident mixers, and best of all a parking spot! Since I was going to be working from home it was crucial to have a window office, and we have a great view of the city and Twin Peaks. I picked up a 42” monitor off Craigslist which has made playing poker so much easier, but for some reason I seem to be wearing my reading glasses a lot more.

Grace has a great job downtown at a recruiting firm called 24 Seven. She loves it so far and it’s within walking distance, even though she somehow gets me to drive her all the time. Now that she’s working 40 hour weeks, I have no excuse not to start pursuing all the activities I was hoping to do since coming out here. First order of business is volunteering at this YMCA in China Town. The goal is to coach some kids in basketball, but until the summer rolls around it might be more of a tutoring deal. Anyways, Grace and I love San Francisco so far, and I really look forward to exploring this city more and more.

For Grace’s spring break we decided to go to Miami. It was a couple of Grace’s friends and some of my best boys from Babson. We finally all decided on a place and Grace’s friends and I flew from San Francisco as my friends made the epic drive from Boston which we’d all done together at least 3 times. When they finally got there I went to help them with their luggage. When I opened the trunk Norm popped out, wasn’t sure if the guys knew he was in there or not, but it was going to be awesome having the Legend in Miami. Even though it was March Madeness, Norm still actually made it out of the condo and saw some daylight this time around, but still his best pick up line to any girl was, “hey did you see the game last night?”

Wacker got a call a couple a days in the trip saying that there was a white car in his driveway which a tree had fallen on. Wacker didn’t know whose car this was so he didn’t care, but Jake overheard the conversation and reminded Wacker that he had parked his white car in his driveway before they drove down. We all concluded that Jake had somehow earned this bad karma so no one felt too bad. Look for the crushed sunglasses on the dashboard.

We befriended this club promoter, Greg, who hooked us up with the hottest club every night. He was a goofy character but somehow he seemed to be a Legend in the MIA. We went to the beach every day, drank every night, and got a couple noise complaints from our condo complex. I even taught Grace how to ride a motor bike, which was a little scary watching her drive solo, but she picked it up fast. Brian and I allowed ourselves one unreasonable act each against the other person. The way this works is one person is allowed to do anything to the other person that might be labeled as “unreasonable” in the real world and the other person has to just laugh it off. Brian decided to pour a beer on my head after I had just gotten ready to go out and I thought it would be funny to egg him as soon as he got out of the shower. The eggs were frozen so it was basically like throwing rocks at him but it was just as funny to me.

Sorry Legend couldn’t find a pic with you, games musta been on

My trip to Thailand was obviously ridiculous, kind of a miracle I made it back here because the lifestyle out there is so fitting to the poker player lifestyle. I guess my blog kind of seems as though I put my life on hold and decided to stay, but I actually did make it back to the states, going against the prop bets I would ditch my flight.

Dave and Ben put it best that everything in Thailand compared to America is just better. The movie theaters are recliners and beds, everyone rides motorbikes, and you could spend a week a MBK shopping mall and not get bored. You might laugh that I threw motor bikes in there, but you really don’t know how sweet they are until you ride them around; definitely a must purchase no matter where you’re living in the world. I thought Argentina was cheap, cab drivers Buenos Aires would be kings in Bangkok. Waters were about 20 cents, bottle service was $50, and hour massages about 10$. If you can afford to just get to Thailand, don’t worry about having that much spending money once you’re there, you can live off the Mango fruit stands and disgusting fried food on the street.

The house we stayed in was ideal for a Zen mindset, 2 full houses (I had 1 to myself), full length pool, and assistants to take care of the little things. Dave and Ben had it all planned out, they showed me around Bangkok, the islands of Phuket, and even did a side trip to Cambodia to hang with the ex mayor of Bangkok at his buddy’s Poker Room Casino opening. I’ve been to a few beaches and the scenery of Phuket was easily the most relaxing place I’ve ever seen. Phuket is pretty much the Carona commercials with Bob Marley music. We stayed there for 3 days for my birthday and could definitely use another 3 months. We saw “Big Buddha” which is a construction in the making of a 100 foot stone Buddha on top of a mountain. My favorite drink on the trip was the coconut they machete right infront of you. I probably had about 50 of those coconuts, and would have had more if they served them at the clubs.

The other guys there were real chill. One of their friends, Boden, put on a sick rap show at this one club; we all had VIP and chilled out to some good beats. Probably the coolest thing we did was a Thai boxing match. There were about 5 fights which were all crazy. Thai boxing is way better than American boxing (obv); it’s pretty much UFC with some Jackie Chan mixed in. Here’s a picture of Ben and I with the Champ, these guys are small but they’d knock me out before I knew what happened for sure.

Thailand was awesome, people out there are great and the lifestyles of Bangkok and Phuket were amazing.

So I’m leaving for Thailand Sunday night to visit Ben and Dave and I couldn’t be more excited. The trip is 24 hours total but I’m going to lose a day because of the time change. Dave and Ben have been hyping up Thailand so much I don’t know what to expect. My main goals are to explore the culture and cross my fingers that my vaccines kick in. Dave said he gets a lot of respect from the people there for being a white American. I stand out in America for being tall and extra white so I think I finally found a place of acceptance.

Things are going well in San Francisco, Grace is in her last semester and her new job at yelp sounds awesome. They have a keg of Blue Moon on every floor and it seems like people stay late every day to party, maybe I’ll see if I can set up shop in their office. Poker has really been stressing me out lately, not to mention I’m back to taking six figure swings and if Xblink hit and runs me one more time my computer is going out the window. I’m hoping to find zen in Thailand where the only thing Dave wants me to bring him is a nice robe. If that’s his biggest problem, Thailand must be the place to be.

I made a run at 50/100 the other night playing observer84. I’m trying to run my ftp account up so I can trade $ and get a bankroll started on Ipoker. Supposedly its 10x easier than the American sites and people are just cleaning up. Anyways, I was up about 80k on this guy but my degenerate side kicked in and I couldn’t stop until I had lost most of it back. It’s so had to stop once you’ve been crushing someone that bad, but when the luck turns its time to get out. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to control myself but I was at least conscious enough to take a screen shot of when things were going well.

I’m going to start making a post at least once a week, I’ve been pretty lazy about this blog but I think it will help motivate me to get off my laptop and get some good pictures. Next post will be from Thailand using my computer in a house on beach, how could I possibly be stressed.

I’ve lived in New Hampshire my entire life and never been skiing once. I’m not sure if it’s because I always played basketball in the winter, or that my parents cross-country ski and that just seemed boring. Either way, I’d been wanting to learn for a while and I finally went for a week at Waterville valley in NH. Grace and I drove up and stayed at one of the condos they have in the village. My parents made me book a lesson which we skipped the first day to dominate the bunny slopes. The only time I fell the whole week was getting off the chairlift which I managed to do 3 times. Two of those times I was tackled by Grace who was a little rusty herself getting back on the slopes, or at least off the chairlifts. She got back into her groove pretty quickly though and taught me everything the first day. It was the perfect week to go because there was nobody on the slopes which was great for me because from not taking a lesson I had no idea how to slow down so I would just go full speed until I’d hit an even patch or the woods.

Grace and I had a good routine of warming up on the bunny slopes, grabbing some food in the cabins, and then going up the mountain for the real trails. I really want to get better because if I go back when there’s more people on the mountain it’s just going to be dangerous. I had tried snow boarding a couple times although very unsuccessfully so I’m going to stick with skiing for now. Staying in the condo was cool because we could cook for ourselves and still out go out for dinner in the village. We even took one day off from skiing to go ice skating and explore the 5 shops in town. It really makes me regret that I haven’t been going my whole life, but at least I’m starting now. I really did love it though and I can’t wait to go back.

I ended 2009 on a high note so I’m back playing 25/50 and taking some shots at the higher games. I’m trying to stay away from the 4 table shove matches to cut down on variance, but I wouldn’t say I’m strictly bum hunting either. I’ve been playing a lot with someone I’m pretty sure is Brad Booth and been crushing him until the other night he caught fire. I was so tilted I thought it’d be a good idea to try and get my money back playing Durrr at 100/200. I ran terrible there and decided it was time to quit when he was drawing dead to running 4’s and got there. There was an article written about Durrr on Pokertable ratings that dogs me a little so I thought I’d throw that in here. I’m playing under 603lucifer for those who don’t know…

http://www.pokertableratings.com/blog/2010/01/durrrr-battles-the-heads-up-tables/

So that capped off my worst night ever and brought me back to my degenerate days. Poker players always say it’s not about the money, it’s the principal, but we all know that’s garbage. It’s just frustrating how easy it is for my discipline to slip, and how long it was going to take me to rebound from that spew, but at the end of the day I was down a bunch of money that I shouldn’t have been if I had just stayed in control and that’s what pisses me off the most. I had a long talk with my dad about not tilting, staying in control and continuing to play 25/50 and under and grinding it out.

So obviously the next night I was back playing 100/200.

I had been running well so far that day and there was a new player sitting high stakes on UB I thought I’d take another shot. I sat down with uarepilous at 100/200 and doubled up quick on the biggest hold ever when I had KQ vs 69d on a kd7s8d board. I played well but definitely hit some big hands in the right spots, got my money in good almost every time and ended up taking him for 3 or 4 buy ins. I posted a couple hands, the first being the worst beat I took throughout the whole match (which no one should lose when they’re taking a shot), and the 2nd being the biggest pot I’ve ever played which happend to be a coin flip. The before is when we got the money in, the after is the end result.

Before:

After:

I thought it would take me 2 months to get even, instead it took me 1 day. The lesson to be learned here is that no matter how much you lose, you CAN make it all back in one night, slow and steady does not win the race.

For our one year anniversary Grace and I went to the Big Sur which is supposed to be the most beautiful coastline in California. We stayed at a hotel in Monterey right on the water that had outdoor hot tubs and buffet breakfast delivered to your room. We explored the town and checked out the aquarium which has the biggest seahorse exhibit in the world. They had a whole wing devoted to them, and signs everywhere on how to save the diminishing ocean life. It makes you feel bad but I think we ate at seafood restaurant every night. Monerey is 90% tourists and the people that do live there are old retirees but it was fun to explore and we even rented bikes to see the whole coastline. The myth that once you learn how to ride a bike you never forget, is 100% not true. I probably haven’t ridden a bike in 10 years but I wasn’t expecting to be swerving into trees and crashing into little kids. I got the hang of it after a while but I should have at least been wearing a helmet.

The final day day we drove south to the Big Sur and it really was a site worth seeing. The cliffs are 200 feet high with direct drops down, separated by a measly guard rail on a windy roller coaster road. I live by the water at home, but the ocean looks 10x as big because you’re so high up. We drove up a mountain to eat a restaurant overlooking the coastline and got some good pictures for the family. It was a great trip and I recommend that if you’re anywhere in the area to drive down the coast and check it out.