Day 1A is going to be a long one. Play is scheduled to start at noon and not finish till about 1:00am. I plan on still being in with about 65,000 in chips. Just sayin’.

On the off day I’ll be playing another tournament, the World Cup of Poker which is a lot of fun and it’s always cool to play for your country (Canada by the way).

Tonight I attended the welcome party with Mommy and she loved it. I took some pics, lots of pics, signed a few autographs, and stayed the duration. I did not drink. I had half of a beer and three glasses of pineapple juice. Now I’m sitting in the lobby checking e-mails, hockey scores, etc. and will call it an early night, falling asleep to season 4 of Lost.

In my last blog I mentioned cutting back big time on extra curricular activity. I’m a man of my word. I used to write for both CardPlayer magazine as well as a syndicated newspaper column. Last year I stopped writing for CardPlayer, and this year, after a four year run I’ve decided to stop writing the syndicated column as well. Deadlines are really stressful and I found myself getting less and less motivated to meet them. 200 newspaper columns and probably about 300 CardPlayer columns is enough.

I’m still going to be just as focused, if not more focused on winning every tournament I play. I also, totally randomly decided to try a little fun experiment. Starting with a $10 bankroll I’m playing ring game NL hold’em on PokerStars, starting out at $0.01-$0.02 and not moving up in limits until I have 500 big blinds at the next limit. Why? It’s kinda fun. Also, I’ll be documenting the results in a thread in the Full Contact Poker forum as well as making videos of it at PokerVT. So far I’ve played two sessions, 145 hands total and have had a good run winning $6.29. When I get to $25 I’ll jump to $0.02-$0.05.

The goal is to run it up to like $100,000 in about three years or so. If I go broke I’m just going to quit, but I’m trying to avoid brokedom by being careful with my buy in amounts. Whatever my bankroll is, I will always buy in for 1/5th of my total bankroll. So, in the $0.01-$0.02 game I’ll start with $2.00. If I were to happen to lose the $2.00 my next session would be 1/5th of the $8.00 bankroll I have left (1.60). I’ll continue to do that as long as the game allows, meaning if I dip below the minimum buy in I’ll be forced to gamble. I won’t go down in limits.

I think it will be a bit enlightening too. Starting at the very bottom and really getting a feel for the differences between micro limits and higher limits. I realized after shooting a micro limit video for PokerVT a few months ago that I was a bit out of touch with some of the random goofiness you’ll see in the micro games. I’m getting a much better feel for it which will help me make better videos.

Other than that, I’m just livin’ man. Enjoying my life, sorting things out in my personal life, and just really looking forward to having a good 2009. Peace.