Do the D.A.N.C.E. (May Review)

May was a pretty crazy month in terms of a lot of stuff happening. The month seemed to pass by slower than expected, especially after considering that I was having fun on vacation for most of it. I was able to pretty much just drop everything at the end of April and travel over to London and Spain on a whim after having a successful $20K month. I returned home from my trip overseas around the 14th of May and immediately got to work grinding at the poker tables over the next few days for the first time that month.

On the 20th of May, I took yet another small vacation and headed over to Victoria with my good friend Ben to visit my old roommate and frequent blog guest star, Miles. I wanted to do a big write-up from this weekend because it was pretty awesome but it doesn't look like that's going to happen because so much stuff keeps happening in my life right now that I can't even keep up with myself lol! Needless to say, I pretty much knew that it would be impossible to have a bad time over there and I wasn't disappointed. It also helped that I cashed in the VIP quarterly freeroll that Saturday for just under $3k, which meant that I was now buying the drinks that night if I wasn't already ;)

The VIP freeroll was actually quite interesting the way it all panned out. I woke up early on Saturday on the floor of Ben's place extremely hungover. I had actually forgot about the freeroll almost entirely and had plans to go hit some balls at the driving range with the guys that afternoon so I was never even intending on playing it. However, I changed my mind once I saw that registration was only at about $3K players (I think the previous one got 6k-10k players or something) and figured as a poker pro I could not pass up on this value. I had basically not taken into account what the turnout would be like without any American players and as a result 1 in 3 players would be min-cashing for at least $200. My plan was to try and win like 1 hand lol, squeak into the money and pay for the weekend and then jet off to the golf course. Things started to unfold pretty much as I had planned and after a combination of winning a few hands early and then going extremely card-dead near the money I managed to slip past the bubble with a 10bb stack. Miles had joined Ben and I at Ben's place around 1pm and were getting restless so I told them that I would go all-in and try to bust or double up, that way we could all leave right away or they could go without me and meet me later. The very next hand I shoved A5o from UTG and picked up the blinds. I folded my rags in the BB the next hand with a lot of action in front of me but picked up QQ in the SB the next hand and got action from TT against the cut-off and doubled up. Two hands later, I shoved ATs from the CO and got called by the BB with JJ but I spiked an ace and suddenly had like a 40bb stack lol. With that, Miles and Ben headed for the golf course and we arranged to meet back at Ben's place later as I certainly wasn't about to punt off a 40bb stack in the money to go hit some golf balls when first place was $100K! I continued to run well for a while, which always seems to be the case when you feel neutral about the result since I wanted to go to the grocery store and pick up stuff for dinner anyways. I was playing pretty well too though...there was one hand that I remember where I 3-bet AKo in position against a cash game reg that I play with on a daily basis and checked back a KQ9 flop, blank turn, and then fired big on the river and got called by AJ high, lol. I was pretty much among the top 10 chip leaders for the entire tournament until I lost a huge pot with about 50-70 players left for close to the outright chip-lead. I was opening a ton of pots, mostly due to picking up quality hands, and opened TT from MP and got shoved on by one of the other big stacks at the table. Even though he was another big stack, everyone was pretty shallow and we were all playing 15-50bb stacks so I didn't think he'd have to be super tight in that spot (he had also been quite active too). I also thought that if he had the top of his range he would be more likely to 3bet small or even flat call so I pretty much snap-called him and he showed me 55. Unfortunately, he hit a 5 on the flop and I didn't re-suck so I was left with about a 15bb stack. I certainly didn't give up and managed to navigate my short stack to 25th place, when I busted after losing a coin flip with TT to AQ all-in pre-flop and cashed for $2800. Oh yeah, I was also hosting two SCOOP final tables at the same time, which was a bit tricky but worked out just fine!

Aside from having some great plans in place for Saturday night, another thing that helped take the sting off of busting in the final 3 tables was that I was meeting up with a girl later that night who I figured was 99% down to have fun. I had met this girl the last time I was on the island, probably about 6 months ago, and hadn't been in contact with her in any way, shape or form since. While rather intoxicated the night before I had sent her a message telling her that I was in Vic and asked her what her plans were for Saturday night. I told her where we were planning on going and she said that she was going to the same place with her friends...haha, no shit...anyways, it was kinda tough to find her because I barely remembered what she looked like but we eventually met up and I had a great time-she was indeed down to have fun.

So with all of this time away from the tables I left myself in a bad spot for the last week of May. However, after cramming in 40 hours of poker in the last 3 days of the month I am still Supernova Elite and ran well enough/played well enough to order that gold statue of myself that I've always wanted. I literally started to bust out dance moves uncontrollably in the shower after I had finished my grind and am beyond stoked that I didn't lose my mind or my bankroll!

May



$8,638.85 Table winnings
$3,004.33 Tournament winnings
$4,000.00 Cash Bonus
$2,600.00 200K Milestone Bonus
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$18,243.18 USD

This graph is wildly inaccurate but hey, it's a graph! I have yet to fix my HEM simply because I find it more relaxing to be unable to check my results while playing. I will fix it eventually...most likely during my next downswing! For now, these are all of the hands that HEM has recorded from last month (and since it's missing tons, it's entirely meaningless and doesn't even resemble the correct shape, oh well!)

So I've been taking some time off this first week in June to get my head back on straight before resuming the grind (which will be tomorrow). I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson about leaving everything to the last minute so I don't anticipate anymore 12 hour poker days this year but I guess that time will tell. It's been crazy around Vancouver right now because the Canucks have taken a 2-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Boston Bruins and are potentially two games away from winning it all! I watched the last game outside downtown and had no idea that many people even lived in Vancouver lol. I think that most people want the Canucks to let the Bruins win one game in Boston so that they can come back home and close it out in 5. As I type this game 3 starts in about 1.5 hours and I don't even know where I'm going to watch the game...it will be nearly impossible to get into any establishment as they have all been full about 3-6 hours before puck-drop.

What else has been going on...well, on Friday I had my first patio pops of the year on my balcony because summer is officially here and the weather is awesome. I even hung out at the beach for a while yesterday. I went out on Friday with a group of about 10 people and I ended up meeting a cute half-Brazilian girl that gave me her number. I sent her a message last night around 11pm and she responded by saying that she wanted to call me and chat on the phone in a couple of hours...oh boy, this has stage 5 clinger in the making but hey I'm not going to judge just yet. I didn't get back to her until this morning because I was exhausted and did not want to talk on the phone at 1am lol. I'll take her out to dinner sometime this week and go from there...and then come back and delete this paragraph before it bites me in the ass as this blog has already done over and over ;)

Finally, the same crew that made the short video "I am Nanonoko" are flying into town this weekend to do a similar video for me! I'm pretty excited about it and hope that we have fun making it and that it turns out well. I'll keep you posted with more details about this as it unfolds.

gl at the tables!!!