For anyone who will be in the Dallas area 9/10-11th, check out the Lonestar Poker Expo.

It has a guest lineup of Clonie Gowen, Bob Ciaffone, and even Chris Ferguson.

Tickets go on sale August 9th, but you can pick some up for free. The info is on the site (link) on how to get em.

Take a look, it sounds like its gonna be blast.

It was bound to happen sometime. I just didn't know that I wouldn't be able to see it. For all of you without cable/dish, you'll have to do like me and read about it. For those of you who actually live life the way it was meant to be and have every channel known to man and then a couple extra for the wife, heres all the info:

Start time: 5p.m. central time (In other words its been running for 15 minutes already)

Channel: FSN (Fox Sports)

Players involved: I don't have the ability to verify this but I have been told Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Howard "The Professor" Lederer, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman, Clonie Gowen, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, and Daniel Negreanu.

Location: club La Bete at Wynn Las Vegas

It should be interesting.

After long consideration and a little ass chewing by Mike, I decided it was time to post again. After all, it has been just a little while (almost 6 months) since my last post.

For all of those who care, and the many more who don't, my lengthy abscence from this blog has been mirrored by a lengthy absence from the professional world. Caught up in all the "I wanna make it as a poker pro" I decided to make the last 6 months an expirment into playing poker for a living rather than a hobby.

The results in terms of cashflow have been better than anything I could have hoped for. I'm averaging a little over 7 times () what I would have been making had I worked a summer/evening job in my per/hour win rate (roughly $60 an hour). The quality of my game has jumped to a level that I never thought it would get in three years let alone 6 months. I guess I can acredit that though to playing 6-7 tables for 9-10 hours a day, a huge jump from my 2-3 for maybe 1-2 hours a day previously. I've plugged most all of my previous leaks in my game and found a couple more that I am working on (you're always doing something wrong that you can fix in this game). All and all, in terms of strictly poker, I have had fantastic results.

Outside of poker things have been a little more difficult. A couple nights a week I go out to some of the local card rooms around Dallas for live games. My win rate in live games is dismal compared to my online rate, but I found that I enjoy the game so much more live. I think the main reason is that playing poker online is such a solitary activity. Since I have started, my skin has paled out, I've put on some weight (I don't know how much is bad weight though: I started a workout program a month and a half ago and I'm hoping its all muscle), and I have begun to experience small bouts of depression and loneliness.

Poker offers such a unique oppurtunity to make it big doing little, but it comes at a significant emotional and mental cost. Working a 9-5 job may not be the most magnificient thing to do, but for the most part, no matter what job it is, doing it performs a service or benefits society in some way. Admit it or not, that gives us, or at least me, some sort of satisfaction. I lack that satisfaction with poker. Unless its a live game, I don't have any communication with anybody while I'm "working" and when you boil it down, all my "job" consists of is taking other people's money and giving them an ass whooping in return. There is something very unsatisfing about that.

I thought a long time about giving up poker all together. Why? I really don't know, its not the only way to fix my problem, nor the best way. Maybe it was that it was the simplest answer. At any rate, I decided against it and that is whats important. Instead, I'm putting poker back into the role it took in my life previously, a hobby. No more. No less. Its just something to do other than sit down and play a video game. Something thats relaxing and an enjoyment, rather than a stress filled, lonely, unsatisfing, job.

Looking back over the last 6 months, I can see why people want to play poker as a profession, but I can't understand why anyone keeps playing it as a profession. Maybe I just get burned out easily, but I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.

In the meantime, I start work with the City of Plano's City Planning Department on Wednesday. It may be a shock waking up when the sun is still up, but I think I am going to enjoy the change of pace in my life. If anything else, it will be a new challenge for me to take on.