September Truckin', European Travel and the Rebuy Answer

The September issue of Truckin' is out, and I'm proud to be included in it. My humble contribution is a story I penned about this summer about meeting Pauly's mother in Las Vegas.

Every single month for over five years now, Pauly digs in and takes the time and effort to publish and share travel stories from his friends-- even when he's knee-deep in shit like the WSOP. I honestly don't know how he does it (well, I sort of do... he doesn't sleep that much). I mean, somehow this month's issue hit my in-box while he was on a trans-Atlantic flight! If you like what you read, drop him or the writers a line.

1. Pyramid by Paul McGuire
I quickly discovered that Seattle was a bastion for the super weird. You needed to have layered eccentricies in order to stick out among the masses of freaks. Goth-dykes with foot fetishes might freak people out in conservative cities and small towns, but in Seattle, that puts you in the core group of "normal people."... More

2. Cross-word by Sigge S. Amdal
Her hair was in explosive disarray across the pillow like the blood spurt pattern from a shotgun blast. It was slightly blond, streaked with brown and very beautiful. It looked like the crossroad of infinite options where only a handful suggested returning to the bed. She was fast asleep... More

3. Meeting Mama McGrupp by Change100
I had yet to meet Mama McGrupp. Pauly assured me it was for a good reason. All I knew about this woman was that she was five feet tall, chain-smoked, had a wicked New York accent, was overly fond of Amaretto, and never had anything nice to say about anyone... More

4. Kansas Clouds by Susan B. Bentley
Click. I got a photo of Kat just before she gave me the finger. Lying back down, I moved the lens across the sky, trying to capture a cloud on its journey. I sat up and took a picture of the track ahead. Nothing but mud and dust, bordered by fields of corn slowly moving in the breeze, nothing but empty for miles ahead... More

5. Summer Story by May B. Yesno
Friends are a difficult thing. As a matter of fact they are almost impossible. Difficult to find for the first thing and just as difficult to keep - especially in a mobile society... More

Speaking of the Doctor, he's just arrived in Amsterdam where he's renting a flat with a malcontent French journalist and an Aussie poker pro. I'm joining him next week and we'll smoke our way through the 'Dam before departing for Spain, where we'll be covering the EPT Barcelona for Poker News. From Barcelona it's on to London for the inaugural WSOP-Europe.

Travel is wonderful. Getting paid to travel and write about poker is even better. Getting paid to travel and write about poker and getting to go see Europe with your boyfriend at the same time? Well that's just the stone cold nuts.

I'll take lucky in love over lucky in cards any day.

Speaking of cards...

Thanks to everyone who left their (extensive, thoughtful) theories on the Rebuy Hand from Friday. As Drizz or maybe Wil Wheaton would say U R TEH SMRT. I R TEH DNKAY. Maudie gets a gold star for correctly putting the UTG player on Ad-Kd, the hand that ultimately cracked my kings and the button's A-A. Here's the screen shot.


I had the distinct feeling that I was beat by the button, but not necessarily by the UTG player. I absolutely positively should have saved my 48,000 (which would have left me with a below-average, but not horrible stack with 1,200-2,400 blinds) but again, I think the problem was just all in my head. Having just doubled up, I was so pissed to go back to having to struggle to build a stack again that it played a lot into me making such a donkey call-off.

As I once heard Gavin Smith say, "no one can become a great tournament player without the ability to handle adversity." I totally failed at that here.

Where'd my patience go? Oh that's right. It's been playing limit hold'em. Could be time to go back to Harrington before playing more MTTs.