Until yesterday the make-up o’ meter was sitting somewhere around $125,000. The tournaments I play for Timex every week include the $1,000 freeze outs on each site and things like the FTOPS, WCOOP, and a few other events that roll around I jump under his financial security again. The largest amount I had won under him previous to yesterday was around $13,000 when I went deep in a WCOOP event.

Yesterday I won the Absolute Poker $1,000 freeze out for a bit over $33,000. After the scandal I boycotted Absolute for a few months but eventually with the soft $1,000 tournament having its great structure I returned. I’m still not sure how to feel about the issue, but at this point I feel less than criminal playing there. Of course, that’s easy to say after you get your second largest online score ever on it. That brings my make up way out of the six figure area and puts it right back in the upper $80,000 region. If I can get a couple more solid scores under Timex before the summer I’d have a chance of seeing a considerable amount of any score I had playing under him in the live poker tour.

Full Tilt called me the other day to talk about the writing content. The conversation was more informal than I expected which I really liked. When the topic of compensation came up I blurted “Uh, well when it comes to compensation I let my agent Kyle do all the asshole negotiating for me.” They awkwardly laughed and I told them I’d get them his information. Kyle sent them an email explaining who he was and what I’d been doing for Tworags. The only drawback to having Kyle as my agent is that it puts him at a pretty considerable conflict of interest if the deal with Full Tilt involves giving them exclusive rights to the content. The content I’ve put up for Tworags has generated a decent amount of traffic to the site, the site which Kyle owns. That doesn’t necessarily mean that if I signed up with Tilt I’d have to totally leave Tworags, but the amount of content I’d end up generating for them would obviously be greatly reduced.

I also called an acquaintance I know who’s the marketing director in Asia (and was in Australia until recently) for Pokerstars. I mentioned my email and asked whether he got it and he said he had and seemed to remember replying to it. I told him I hadn’t got one and was wondering if he was interested at all. He said he’s not looking at sponsoring any players at the moment. I told him I wasn’t actually looking for sponsorship (he gets asked all the time, hence that kind of answer) but just wondering if he wanted the writing content that was going to come from this trip. His interest perked up a bit and he asked me to resend the email so he could have another look.

Otherwise things have been quiet on the writing front. My editor John over at Pokernews recommended a hand for Bondgirl and I to do for our next article, a hand on High Stakes Poker between Sam Farha and Jamie Gold where Gold runs his KK into Farha’s AA. There’s almost no strategy to really consider in the hand but there’s an absolute ton of table talk, so I basically threw away the blueprint for what I normally write for them and did something way more up my own alley. I sent it off to John considering it about 50/50 whether they’d actually be able to use it. Worst case scenario it ends up on here instead.

The Grand Prix is on in Melbourne, which is Australia’s equivalent to the Indianapolis 500. Unfortunately the race track for it is about a mile away from my flat, meaning several hours of the day (including fairly early in the morning) there’s a constant screaming of engines outside the window at a decibel that’d make you think someone threw a nest of steroid juicing hornets into your apartment. My friends asked if I wanted to get tickets for the race and go on Saturday
“Really? Sweet! This is our chance to see cars drive!”
Nobody caught my Simpsons reference. I guess I can see the appeal if you like hanging out in a huge crowd getting drunk all day (and believe me, there are times when that is the best idea ever) but since I’m off alcohol for the moment that idea doesn’t hold much allure seeing as I don’t really get the sport.

I’ve been off alcohol, soda, and the majority of things that are enjoyable in life for about a month now. I’m running every morning and then stopping by a café to get a coffee to start my morning. I feel so refreshed and ready to go after this that I feel like it’s a decent part of the equation of why I’ve been winning lately. It’s hard laying off the booze when I go out with friends at night, and every time is the same process of being offered a drink, declining, then getting made fun of for several hours. God I hate my friends.

lakeoffire says

Nice cash, Bond! I hope you guys work out the specifics and everybodys good. Good luck!

03/14/08

Anonymous says

nice cash good luck with FT

03/14/08

St_Lucifer says

I enjoy your coherant writing style... Good luck on your future endeavors

03/14/08

foulky says

Man, giving up booze... You are a much better man than I am sir.

03/14/08

Swami54 says

Dude...you're on fire

And here I was under the impression that alcohol solved all life problems.

03/15/08

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