This entry is being written from an apartment in Budapest, Hungary as I'm currently vacationing here with my boy Matt while I'm about halfway through a seven week European poker trip. This is a really incredible city with so much history, and it's such a great opportunity to visit it. Our time here comes after 12 days in Cannes, France for the World Series of Poker Europe and seven days in San Remo, Italy for a European Poker Tour series. This weekend we'll head to Amsterdam for a week long series followed by a two day vacation in Athens, Greece. Then, Ill head an hour west to a town called Loutraki for another EPT series for a week to conclude the trip before heading back to Birmingham for Thanksgiving. Needless to say, this has been an experience of a lifetime. I've really taken the time to see some sites and haven't taken a moment of the trip for granted. If I could offer one piece of advice from all the travels that I've been so fortunate to experience during my time in this business, it would be to see the southeastern coast of France as it meets Italy. The views of the houses on the hills on the Mediterranean Sea were images that will never escape me as long as I live.

Before, I headed overseas I had a  sort of ten week lull where I spent a lot of time in Alabama making a lot of changes in my life. For those of you who don't know, the three major online poker sites were seized in April of this year, and online poker was essentially banned for now in The United States. The reality of this didn't hit me until after The World Series of Poker which took place this summer, as I was extremely busy trying to grind out a living in Las Vegas over the course of six or seven weeks during that time. I had a lot of growing up to do quickly as my style was cramped with a major source of income being taken from me. It turns out that for the last six years I have been making a very good living for myself playing poker on the live tournament circuit in addition, so I was not entirely dependent on online poker. 

I should make clear that I am in no way bemoaning my luck or complaining. I am incredibly grateful for everyday that I get to spend playing poker for a living as it's something I love and is a career that has afforded me opportunities that I would have never had otherwise.  The reality is that myself and thousands of other poker players were just a coin flip or two away from being in or out of this business many times at the start of our respective careers. No one deserves anything in this business of playing cards for a living. There's no room for complaining when you consider possible alternatives, and it's something regrettably I've been guilty of many times in my career. I've grown out of it and am completely over hearing it from other poker players, many of whom are top names who have been more fortunate than anyone to be where they are. 

Where to begin? To say that I underachieved pokerwise during my 8 week stay in Las Vegas this summer would be a gross understatement.  That said, I'm not writing here to whine or bemoan my luck, nor will I seek sympathy. I am extremely fortunate, grateful, and humbled to be in the position I'm in right now. I look back on some of my blog entries from a few years ago (and even some of my twitter posts from the last year), and I'm left shaking my head at my ignorance. 

I've been playing poker, namely tournaments,  professionally for 5.5 years now. I like to think that I sort of understand the ins and outs of the business by now. Poker is interesting in that it is largely misunderstood in a variety of ways by the outsiders looking in. This summer I played a very intense schedule of 41 World Series of Poker events. I cashed just twice which amounted to a net loss of around $123,000 in those events. The reality is 41 tournaments is an extremely small (almost meaningless) sample. Comparably when online poker existed in the US, myself and other poker players would play something like 20 to 30 tournaments, albeit it much smaller buy-ins, on a single Sunday. It's hard to put into words how liberating it is to understand this. Early in my poker career, I would go through a bad stretch of a few months and get super angry.

The part that stings and results in restless nights is the fact that I performed poorly on THIS stage. By all accounts, the World Series of Poker is our superbowl. After a good showing at the 2008 Series, I've now had three straight forgettable summers. Despite this, it's still an absolute blast being out here playing each summer. While a lot of guys like to pick and choose the events they play, I enjoy getting sort of lost in the grind, ignoring my cell phone, and keeping mostly to myself out here each summer. I'll add that it's perennially great spending time with my roommates Adam Geyer, Mike Katz, and Jesse Yaginuma.We've really become close, and it has undoubtedly helped me grow as a poker player and a man by having them around.

A month of January that started off miserably just took a very welcome turn for the better as I finished 4th at WPT Biloxi last week for $145,000.

Since I last posted I spent 9 days in Nassau, Bahamas for the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure series and then 9 more days in Biloxi. The Bahamas was an altogether miserable experience, if you can believe that. It might sound insane, but there's very little I look forward to about that trip down to the Atlantis resort every January. My friends and I talked about it and they mostly agreed, so I guess I'm not totally crazy. The weather wasn't great and the service from the staff was predictably awful. I also don't like to get caught up in the conversations and ego that goes along with 5000 poker players being in one place. I'll stop complaining though. I played 8 tournaments including the $25,000 buy-in and bricked all but one of them as I finished 9th for peanuts in some $1500 nlhe event. I might've been the happiest man ever to leave that island. I roomed with my boys Jon Little and Adam Geyer and really enjoyed their company though.

I came home for a couple days to relax and then headed down to Biloxi. I stopped off to watch Bama beat then #12 Kentucky  in basketball in what was probably the most exciting Bama hoops game I'm ever attended. I got down to Biloxi and quickly bricked 3 prelim events and was down $65,000 in 2011 before I knew what hit me. I told my dad I was going to win the main event though, a prediction I almost never verbally make. I came close.