So I play tomorrow (Sunday). Looks like there's going to be around 800 players so probably over 2 million euros for first. I'm not ready to tell you all about Monte Carlo yet because I didn't leave my room today. Last night was the PokerStars cocktail party which was a lot of fun. It seems like everyone is here, this tournament is just big. Anyways I ended up having a bit too much fun trying to take advantage of free drinks as opposed to $10+ drinks like anywhere else here. So today I just lied around and did nothing all afternoon. In the evening I played the Saturday afternoon EST tournaments to get my mind back on poker for tomorrow but had little luck. I also mixed in some cash games though and ran really well at those. I was up $22K at one point ($20K on one 25/50 table) but I lost a few big pots at the end to finish up only $13K. I haven't posted any cash hands in a while so here are some of the big pots from today:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425185 - I decided to slowplay preflop. It should still be fairly obvious I need a biggish hand to call here so I was pretty surprised to get paid off by such a weak hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425213 - His little minireraise was scary and I almost decided to play the hand more passively by just calling it. He was an unknown player to me who bought in fairly short and had run it up and on this site that usually means a fish. He didn't seem to be that bad though and passive players can definitely have AA or KK here a lot. I decided that it was likely enough he was just doing something stupid and would give me lots of money so I opted to just try to get it in preflop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425200 - A very skillful hand on my part. Notice how I can win from either side of these races, with the AK or the pair, the sign of a real expert.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425254 - Here I mixed in a 3-bet bluff. It's hard to get action from worse hands on the flop having overrepresented my hand preflop so I check behind for pot control. This gives him the chance to bluff with worse hands and also lets me see some more cards to try to improve my hand if I happen to be beat. If he's slowplaying a big pair which is not all that unlikely and I make 2 pair or better I may win a huge pot instead of getting checkraised off my hand if I bet. I backdoor my flush and win a nice pot.

So I'm rolling along unable to lose a pot until these two hands at the very end of the session:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425308 - I'm never sure how to play the turn here. I usually just lead out but then if he raises me it's really ugly. I probably have to fold but it's not a fold I'm entirely comfortable making since it feels so weak. I decided to just check/call down and give him the chance to run a big multi-street bluff trying to represent a hand like AK. In particular once he bets big on the turn I'm very concerned he has a huge hand and I definitely am not going to raise him, but I certainly can't fold at any point.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425343 - Just one of those gross hands. I don't think I can play it any other way but the queen is such a bad turn card, as soon as it hit I just had that feeling that I was about to lose a lot of money.

Anyways time to get some rest before I play tomorrow. Play starts at 1pm here so 7am EST. CardPlayer is here doing live coverage (www.cardplayer.com) so if you're bored that's probably the best place to check and see if they happen to have any updates about me.

Mike

Hello, bonjour! I am now settled in the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort, and it is pretty much the best place ever. I'll have lots of time to rave about it in the coming week though once I've seen and done more here, for now I want to talk about the last few days doing the tourist thing in Italy. So timex, ch0ppy (Matt), and I stayed in San Remo Sunday night and played online tournaments until 7am or whatever because of the time difference. Our plan was then to check out Pisa and Florence before heading to Monte Carlo for the EPT grand final, but at the last minute while we were looking for hotel/finalizing our plans before leaving timex dropped out and decided to just stay in San Remo and be a degenerate, so only ch0ppy and I ended up going. We decided to try to keep the trip cheap so we ended up booking a cheap hotel in Pisa for 3 nights. The first night we arrived and crashed almost immediately after a quick wander around town and bite to eat. The second day we went to see the leaning tower as well as checking out the rest of "Piazza dei Miracoli", or Square of Miracles as it is called. The third day we went to Florence for the day and did one of those open top bus tours all around the city.

So day 1 ch0ppy and I leave timex passed out and hop on the train towards Pisa. We transfer in Genova and arrive in Pisa around 4 or 5pm after a 5 and a half hour journey counting wait time for our transfer. It's a short cab ride to our hotel from Pisa Centrale but as tired as we are it's still too early to sleep. We decide to kill some time wandering around Pisa looking for a decent place to eat and end up at a pizzeria by our hotel. Our server looks like the stereoypical Italian pizza man from North American tv/movies which amuses ch0ppy greatly. We're so tired we can't even finish our pizzas and we're passed out in our uncomfortable 45 Euro/night beds by 8:30.

We sleep in until just before 10am and miss breakfast, but we're feeling refreshed and ready to do the tourist thing. We get a cab to the Square of Miracles and after grabbing lunch at a place the cab driver recommended nearby (the only cab driver we had in Pisa that spoke any english beyond "leaning tower" or "train station") we see the tower for the first time. It really is a pretty remarkable building to see first hand. The lean is quite pronounced (approximately 5 degrees, though it was even more than that in the 1990s before it was closed and scientists had to figure out a way to straighten it up a bit and prevent its collapse), and the white marble with which it is built is quite striking. We paid our 15 Euros each to go inside and climb the ~295 steps to the top, and it really is a spectacular view down on the city, the cathedral, and the rest of the square. We next paid our 10 Euros to check out the rest of the buildings of the square. The cathedral was quite nice as well. I've never been inside one before so I was very impressed, though the Duomo in Florence the next day blew it away, but the rest of the square was quite underwhelming, though we did end up learning a lot about the history of Pisa and the Square of Miracles. I also paid 30 Euro-cents to take a piss. Go figure.

The next day was a quick hour long train ride to Florence where we met skier_5 (Tommy) at his hotel and went for lunch. The three of us then got on one of those hope on hop off open roof bus tours of Florence. We went around on the first line seeing some of the sights, only hopping off on a terrace across the river from the main part of the city where there was a statue by Michelangelo and a great view down on Florence. We then all went to the Duomo (cathedral) which was really nice. Most impressive was the huge mural way way up high on the ceiling. We paid to go all the way up to the top of the building and get a closer look at that mural on the way up to really appreciate how huge it is, as well as an incredible view down on to the city. ch0ppy and I then went around on the 2nd bus line which took us way out into Fiesole. We then met back up with skier and Ben Straate (straate on Stars, when I first started playing cash games seriously we were both 3/6 NL regulars on Stars and he was probably the first really aggressive really good player I ran into regularly. Most regs were nits and the few LAGs were terribly spewy. We both moved up to the bigger games fairly quickly.) for dinner. We tried to join them for drinks after but we ran out of time looking for a good bar and ch0ppy and I had to get back to the train station so we could crash back in Pisa for the night.

Yesterday ch0ppy and I checked out of our cheap hotel with no tv or internet and hopped on the train towards Monte Carlo. There were some delays and decently long waits for transfers so the trip took a lot longer than it was supposed to but we finally arrived in Monte Carlo around 9pm. So far I have nothing bad to say about the place. Most of the people we've met speak both english and french very well (french being the official language here), the city looks gorgeous, and the hotel/resort is amazing. More on that note once I've been here longer. I'm sorry no pictures for now. I took a lot in Pisa but my camera battery died and I don't seem to have the charger with me so you'll have to wait on those. ch0ppy got a lot of pictures of everything I missed though. Time to stop sitting in my room and go check this place out. A bien tot,

Mike

Could have saved me 5K Euros by not getting sick but instead I had to play the EPT. It was a pretty short day, I doubled up with AKo 4-flushing AKs in a very skillful hand. Then I called a 4xBB shove with K7o and beat his A9o. Now at 36K blinds 600/1200 a100 I get moved to Schaefer's table. He raises UTG 7-handed to 3200, I call with JJ on the button and the BB makes it 11.2K. Schaefer folds, I'm not thrilled about it but shove and BB has QQ. I'd probably fold TT but I think JJ is just good enough I shouldn't be folding. Anyways the 2K Euro event is tomorrow so I'll get in that now I guess.

I haven't talked about San Remo at all, basically the whole area is gorgeous. When I flew into Nice the runway is right next to the sea so it's a pretty sick view of the Mediterranean as you land. The water is that beautiful bright blue rippling calmly. From Nice timex and I got a cab to San Remo, and the entire trip is winding through hills by the coast. There are houses built on the sides of all these hills by the sea that timex claims would just slide down into the sea if he were to give them a little push. The weather has been very nice like 15-20C every day so we've been chilling by the pool a lot. The casino here is kind of small but it's fairly nice and the hotel we're staying at is pretty nice as well. It looked really small from outside but the rooms are actually fairly spacious. We've been going to some good Italian restaurants, lots of pizza and pasta obviously. Speaking of food it's dinner time. Later,

Mike

I was a last minute entry into EPT San Remo today when Shaun effing Deeb had to withdraw because he was really sick. I was able to buy-in and take his spot which was pretty awesome, though obviously I feel bad for Shaun and hope he's feeling better soon. I did my best to make the most of the opportunity though. I didn't run especially good today and it was an up and down session. I probably made some small mistakes but all-in-all I'm happy enough with how I played. I was pretty exhasusted all day because I woke up really early this morning and didn't bother trying to get back to sleep since I wasn't supposed to have to do anything today. I ended the day with 17K which is a bit short with blinds starting at 500/1000 tomorrow but it'll do. I was going to write a quick summary of key hands but I'm really just too tired. My stack basically went 10K ---->15K ----> 3K ----> 14K -----> 6K ----->17K throughout the day is the short version. Hopefully I can catch some cards tomorrow and make a little run. Bed time,

Mike

...and it was so much fun I went ahead and won another one. With no $100K sponsorship package and still a little pissed about the whole ordeal it was clear I had to take matters into my own hands and go get paid. Of course seeing as it was Sunday that meant trying to luckbox some donkaments. Unfortunately all the US-based sites tournaments start super late here and I have a flight at 8am so I didn't really want to bother playing all the late ones and risk having to miss my flight if I was at a final table or something (unless it was a really big final table). Fortunately there are a lot of Euro-donkaments that start at more Euro-friendly times so I just played everything that started from 12pm EST to 5pm EST (6pm-11pm here). Timex told me about a $550 tournament on Betfair that had a $100K guarantee so I made an account there and gave that a shot as well. Lucky he did, because that was where I finally broke my ~9 month slump. It only had 156 players so there was a nice overlay and after a roller coaster final table I finally ran (really) good at the end for once and took it down for $30K.

I guess when it rains it pours though. One tournament I've finished 2nd in at least twice without winning (possibly 3 times not sure) is the Full Tilt $163 tournament. I usually only play the evening one but they now have the usual 3pm one on Sundays as well and it gets a big field. 699 players meant first paid just over $25K and I ran insanely good in this one as well (the first 3 times I got all-in preflop in this tournament in the early-mid stages I was dominated but got there). I cardracked pretty hard at the final table again and shipped this one too. No luck in the other donkaments but +$50k is definitely one of my best days ever and easily my best ever Sunday. Not bad considering I stopped registering 4 hours earlier than usual. Anyways my flight leaves pretty soon so I better go. Peace,

Mike