Monday, January 3, 2011

2010: A Poker Year in Review (1 of 2)

2010 is over, wow. It seems like I was just writing my 2009 Year in Review blog entry. While the past year wasn't the best year of my life, it was definitely a very very good one. I managed to book another winning poker year (my 4th out of 5 years as a professional poker player, albeit my smallest winning one) and graduate college. I also felt like I grew a lot as a person, and I hope that I can continue to do so in 2011. Below is a bit of what I was up to in the past year.

I brought in the New Year at the bars in Birmingham, AL as I anxiously awaited my last semester of college. It was an exciting time for me as an Alabama fan, too, as I'd made plans to fly out to Pasadena along with my Mom, sisters Heather and Carly, and my brother-in-law Ben to watch Alabama play for the national football championship. In what I can best describe as a top 5 day of my life, I got to watch Alabama beat Texas with my loved ones.

My first poker trip of 2010 was a short one down to Biloxi, MS for the WPT poker tournament in January. I was out within a few hours and on my way back to Tuscaloosa. The year was off to a rocky start until I had a big Sunday in mid-February online. Things turned sour again in March and April as I had a rough couple months online all-the-while grinding out a difficult course load at school. When the beginning of May came around, I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel though as I was one week away from completing my final exams and graduating.

I was lucky to draw day-time exam slots in that final week, as I was interested in playing the FTOPS events that were taking place a few days before I graduated. In what was one of the most special, memorable nights of my poker career, I sat alone on the couch in my apartment in Tuscaloosa and outright won the $300 rebuy FTOPS event on Cinco de Mayo (after uncharacteristically turning down a friend's offer to get drinks) for $214,000, the largest score of my online tournament career. A few days later I won the $100 rebuy on Stars for $44,000ish.

As a college graduate at this point, I was now free to play a lot of live tournaments. I immediately went down to New Orleans to play the WSOPC event but again had a bad showing. From there I headed to Vegas for the 6 week long marathon that is the WSOP. This is the point that the year pretty much took a turn for the worse. I played a ton, ton, ton of poker, 34 events, which shattered my previous high of 29 events in 2009. I did manage to cash a career WSOP best 5 times, but none of the cashes was very large as I lost about $70,000 in events on the summer.

Additionally, I put a lot of money in action on other individuals in the main event and that did not materialize. For a minute, I thought I might make a very deep run in the WSOP main event. I entered day 5 with 1.5x the average chip stack with 550ish players left in an event that would pay the eventual winner $9 million. The most heartbreaking hand of my life occured as I had tens full vs kings full against a guy that covered me on KT33 to bust in 515th for around $30,000. I'm still without a WSOP bracelet, which is something I desperately want.

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