Sitting on my flight to Vegas, I BEGAN to consider the truth that this may occasionally be my ninth year in a row attending the sector Series of Poker and going to Vegas for the summer. It looks like just yesterday I USED TO BE a 21-year-old kid coming off my first big win at EPT San Remo just 7 weeks before playing my first WSOP. I USED TO BE excited, motivated, and thrilled to be going to Vegas to compete on the WSOP.  

On our approach to Vegas

 

Well, it's now nine years later, and that i still have that very same feeling. I'm excited for a possibility to capture a fourth WSOP bracelet. I even have a few exciting prop bets so that you can give me extra motivation to play as many tournaments as possible this year. For the primary time in my career, I'VE made bets on winning multiple bracelets. Essentially the most exciting bet is against a fellow Team Pro, Vanessa Selbst. She laid me 180 to one (my $10,000 vs. her $1.8 million USD) that I won't win 3 gold bracelets this WSOP (Vegas only). I'm really hoping to provide her a sweat in this one.   The schedule this year is the same to last year's, because of this I WILL BE playing an excessively similar schedule to what I did in 2015. I WILL BE specializing in the most important buy-in small field events and playing just about every tourney with a $5,000+ buy-in. These are my best chances to win events, so I WILL BE skipping some of the huge-field/small buy-in NLH events.   This summer may be especially exciting as it kicked off with a $300,000 tournament hosted on the Aria.  This event started on Sunday and i am going into Tuesday in fourth place out of the 16 remaining players! I'm really pleased with the way in which I'm playing at the moment after coming off of an overly strenuous SCOOP grind. I played between 10-16 hours an afternoon for 16 days straight. For those who just checked out my results, chances are you'll think it was an overly successful SCOOP for me. I ENDED second at the overall leader board, second at the high leader board, made six final tables and captured a win, my fifth SCOOP title to this point. However, in reality that I TRULY lost a small sum of money (around $10,000) just at the tournaments in the course of the series.   This needed to do with the massive amount of giant buy-in events I played and my biggest cash being around 40k. I left some huge cash at the table on the first five final tables where I ENDED sixth thrice and fifth twice, before finally capturing a title within the medium $215 PLO8 event for around $22,000. I'm still really pleased overall with how I played and the quantity of deep runs I USED TO BE making each day.   I think playing SCOOP every year right before going to Vegas serves is a very nice warmup for taking part in the WSOP. I AM GETTING to practice such a lot of different variants in tournament form and get ready for the long grind of sitting in a chair mentally battling my opponents day in and time out.    2016 has already been a very exciting year for me, and that i can't wait to look what happens this summer. #CantStopWontStop 

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