I have been pretty busy over the last week or so. I spent some time away from my computer over the weekend and didn’t get to play poker once again. At the beginning of the week (Last Monday/Tuesday) I grinded online and had a couple sweats/Final tables. Nothing too huge though. I came up to Orlando on Wednesday and then was expecting to go to Tampa on Friday for a DeepStacks poker camp.

On Friday I was asked to help out Mike Matusow with a one day poker camp he was running in Daytona. I drove from Orlando to Daytona, which was about an hour drive, and met up with Mike and the rest of the DeepStacks crew. He had 20 people come to his one day camp and we both instructed the people and taught them cash game and tournament strategy. Everyone really enjoyed it and it was fun teaching them the basics and some advanced things in poker.

After the camp we sat down and played some 1/2 no limit. You can only buy in for $100 in Florida cash games. I ended up winning about $90 in an hour. We ate at the casino and then I came back to Orlando to get my things and head off to Tampa.

I got to Tampa at around midnight and went to sleep. I had to be up early in the morning on Saturday because we had a bunch of students coming in for the weekend camp. I taught poker from 9am-8pm on Saturday. We had a turbo bounty tournament at the end of the day where all the DeepStacks pros had prizes you could win. I ended up making the final table but busting in 7th place when I was really short on chips. I tried to win the tournament, but it was nice that someone won the bounty as well.

That night Adam Levy (roothlus), Alex Outhred, and I went to dinner at the Palm Restaurant right across the street from the hotel we were at. We watched the NBA All-Star Slam Dunk contest and 3 point contest. I was pretty disappointed with the overall dunk contest. I know it’s tough to be creative and come up with new dunks that people haven’t seen but I think you should have some good dunks planned ahead of time. The dinner was awesome and Adam ended up losing credit card roulette which is always nice too. Sorry Adam.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. I was super tired and tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. I ended up watching TV for a couple hours til I finally fell asleep around 3:30am. I woke up at 8am again and headed down to the conference room to teach some more poker. On Saturday we went over cash game strategy and on Sunday we did tournament strategy. Everyone learned a lot and a lot of good things were said about the camp. I was happy that all the students enjoyed their time hanging out with us and learning a little bit about poker. They played a championship tournament that night where first place won a trip to California for one of our later camps and second place won a free entry to a camp TJ Cloutier is hosting in Tampa in a couple weeks. Some more prizes were given out and everyone had a blast.

Since I was doing all that work for Deepstacks I didn’t get to play poker this weekend. It’s going to be tough to balance out my time between playing poker and coaching. I’m still getting my schedule straightened out and seeing when I will be doing what.

I played the 1k FTOPS last night along with all the other decent tournaments. I got deep in a couple but nothing developed. I made a couple silly mistakes and need to fix some of the things I am doing. Overall I feel like I know what I need to be doing and most of the time I am doing what I’m supposed to. I know that sounds pretty vague but I know what I’m talking about! I basically feel like I have a really good grasp on tournament strategy. If I don’t make mistakes and run good at certain points than I will definitely have a shot to get deep in tournaments/win tournaments. I have been cashing a fairly good percentage as of late and need to continue to play well and put myself in a position to win those tournaments.

I was supposed to be going to the Jay-Z concert in Miami this weekend. A couple months ago a friend said he was getting the tickets and something fell through and we didn’t find out until it was too late. I tried to get tickets but all the good tickets were sold out and I didn’t want to sit so far away from the stage where I wouldn’t be able to see anything, so I decided not to go. It might actually be a good thing because now I will be able to play poker this weekend. There will be some really big poker tournaments and I’m looking forward to it.

Tonight I will be playing the FTOPS turbo and probably some other good tournaments. We will see which one’s I feel like playing. Definitely at least the turbo FTOPS if not anything else. I am about to get a workout in and then get ready for poker. I will update more frequently just haven’t been around a computer too often.