After a day off to celebrate my birthday, I'm back to work at the Rio. In fact, I'm typing this from the media room across the hall from the tournament area, sitting at the same desk as the rest of PokerStars' Team Blog. I've decided that we're poker's Voltron, and I'm lucky and grateful to be part of this giant robot.
I'll cover Greg Raymer and Tom McEvoy's progress today, and I'm working on two non-time-specific features that should hit the Intertubes within the next 36 hours.
Here's my first post from today:
Forgive me poker, for I have sinned
. . . they say confession is good for the soul, and I hope they are correct, because I need to exorcise some poker demons now.Forgive me, poker, for I have sinned against thee. It's been too long since my last confession.
I got eliminated from the main event because I got stupid. That's really what it comes down to. I got stupid, made two total rookie mistakes that I know not to make, and didn't even make it to the third level. I was the sucker. I was the dead money. I was the idiot who shouldn't even be on Celebrity Poker Showdown, because he fell in love with top pair -- twice -- early on in a deep stack tournament. And called off all his chips. Twice. Complete. Idiot.
The worst part of the whole thing is that I completely beat myself. I wasn't trapped, or tricked, or masterfully outplayed; I just got stupid and made two completely idiotic donkey moves. I played like a stupid celebrity poker player.
Every time it mattered in this year's World Series, in every event I played, I choked. I'm disgusted with myself. I let myself down, and I feel like I let PokerStars down (even though my friends who I work for and with will tell me that I shouldn't beat myself up about it, we all know I screwed up.) I'm sorry, everyone. To everyone who believed in me: I'm sorry. I sucked, and I blew it.
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I'm actually really happy to be back writing. The day off was nice, and hanging out with my wife was awesome, but the truth is that I've gone from homesick to heartsick, and if I have too much time to sit around and think about it, I miss my kids and my house and my dogs so much it hurts. When I'm focused on finding and writing a story, I don't have time to miss them. Look for about fifty brazillion words to come from me in the next two weeks.
