Posted by Tom Dwan | Filed under Poker
Hiya, just woke up and figured it was a good time for a blog. First thing i’ll talk about is how awesome san francisco was. I’ll definitely be going back pretty often. We went to an awesome breakfast place called dotties, which is 2 blocks from the clift hotel (dont remember streets). Depending when you get there you need to wait some amount of time between 15min and 1.5hrs. We had to wait about 25min or so, but it was definitely worth it, as the whole breakfast was super amazing. Unfortunately i only had about 24 hours there because my parents were still in vegas (they came to visit me for 17days) and i had already missed them for 4 days, so i wanted to head back. On the way to the airport I hit gary denko’s with jonas (riverboatking) and zach (crazyzachary). It was pretty awesome, and then i was on the way back to vegas.
Having my parents here was pretty sweet, but they just left Sunday. Yesterday though my college roomie, eric, whos super awesome flew in for a few days, so i probably won’t be playing much until thursday when he leaves, and then I have a friends birthday this weekend- so it’ll probably be a light poker week. Also eric’s setting up all my computer stuff- because over the summer i’ll probably be playing more short sessions while i play a decent amount of series events. When i’m playing long sessions i’d rather be on a laptop so I can move around and play a few hours on a bed, a few hours outside, a few at a table etc. But if i’m playing shorter sessions for an hour or two before/ after tournaments everyday, i’d rather be on a 30 inch desktop display.
I’m gonna be trying to blog a bit more often, and for the last week i’ve actually kept up with that. I read a bunch of the responses to the last two blogs, and i’ll try to do that more often. No proofreading again on this one- hope its legible.
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5, rated) Posted by admin | Filed under Poker
so I’m forgetful, and only did 2 blogs last month, that means i need to send 10k more to charity. I’ll be searching for charities at some point in the next few weeks, and if anyone has any recommendations please post them here or pm me on twoplustwo. If the sites are still matching donations for haiti or red cross or something i’ll donate there since double the $$ sounds sweet. At some point in my life i’d like to get fairly involved in some charity stuff, but its unlikely that happens anytime too soon, so for the short term finding a suitable charity to donate to will have to do.
I’m in san fransisco for the day, and have a bunch of friends here i haven’t seen in a while, along with one of my best friends from college, so im hoping to grab lunch with her and have a big dinner before heading back to vegas. I played isildur right after blogging yest, and won about 900k- so that was pretty sweet. So far this year’s going a lot better than 2009 did, although it wouldve been pretty tough to match my 09 for poker downswings. Also i woke up this morning to find out phil galfond won 1.6m yesterday, so i was pretty stoked to hear that. He’s one of my best friends, and a super cool guy- along with obviously being an amazing poker player, and i know 09 didnt go ideally for him either, but it seems like this year is starting off a bunch better.
Thats all i got for now, and im too hungry to edit this- so hopefully its legible,
Tom
(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5, rated) Posted by Tom Dwan | Filed under Poker
So I played bay101 monday. Made a ton of crossbooks then busted out so that was fun. I was pretty tired so I went back and crashed, then got a limo to napa early in the morning w/ Erica. A little sidenote here; I’ve always been fine drinking any non-terrible beer or vodka, but when it comes to some alcohol- namely red wine and tequila, im pretty spoiled. I drank white wine a bit in college, and would get pinot gritio santa margherita almost everytime… its an awesome wine thats only about 25-30$ if I remember right in stores. When I started drinking red’s though, it was usually at a dinner when poker friends would order them, and end up getting bottles which were 200ish or more. So even though I knew nothing about red wine (and wasn’t a big fan of the moderate ones i’d had in college), when I started drinking it more often I was pretty spoiled. This led to where I’m at now- which is barely knowing the names of wines I like, yet only wanting to drink really good wines. That would generally be a tough person to satisfy, except when I happen to live in Vegas, or even easier, if I’m in napa.
So yesterday, we got here about noon, and had enough time to hit a few wineries. The first one we stopped at, Far Niente had an awesome chardonnay for about 200 from the vineyard (wines are somewhere between 50-75% the cost at the vineyard as a liquor store, and 2-3x or so marked up from liquor store to restaurant) which Bellagio carries, and then went to Opus One which was just super awesome (400ish/bottle). 2005 was apparently a very good year for napa wines, and opus had an 04, 05 and 06 to taste. Surprisingly the 05 wasn’t too good at all, the 06 was very good, and the 04 was amazing- so we got a ton of these. I dont really know how to describe wine so I just say if its good or not. Next stop was Cakebread, which are more moderately priced wines, but they had a zinfandel and a syrah which were pretty solid for about 50$ each, and 2 100$ish cab bottles which were super good, and we got a few of those. Then we went to stirling which was definitely my least favorite of the wineries, until right at the end when the wine taster girl brought 2 cabs which were pretty solid and we bought those.
I kept trying to workout getting a reservation at french laundry, which is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the country, but I failed miserably. We stayed at Auberge de Soleil, which seems pretty cool, although after all the wine exploring seemed like a tough task, so i’ll need to do that in a few hours after a short session and a massage. Had an awesome dinner and an amazing bottle of wine to go with it at the restaurant here. John Juanda had gotten a super awesome bottle while we were playing the 1k2kplo, 5k10k triple draw game over the summer, and I was pretty sure it was from napa. Apparently chateau petrus isn’t in napa-, but even thouhg I couldnt go to the winery, they had a bottle at our hotel’s restaurant, so that was awesome.
I apparently missed a ton of action, with isildur winning a few million the last few days, I’m gonna play for 1hr or so now before my massage, but it probably will be a day until we get a solid session going. Hopefully this time around it ends a bit better for me than our last few confrontations on the tables.
ADIOS
(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Tom Dwan | Filed under Poker
Had del friscos with some friends on wednesday night. It was pretty awesome as always, but for some reason i felt sick wednesday night. Didn’t sleep well after being sick and woke up after about 4hours sleep thursday. I did some stuff thursday during the day, and then started playing online last night. I finally went to sleep sometime around 1pm today- so i slept 4hours after being sick then was awake for 30 and there were between 4 and 8 200/400 cap plo games, so i choose not to sleep and played something around 15 or 20 hours straight. I remember dozing off as i was playing a bunch of times, and then deciding to take a break around 7am and get some coffee etc. I remember having some crazy dream about these dogs being out to get me in the 60sec i dozed off while still at tables. Then i woke up, sat back in, and proceeded to run amazing and go from down a few hundred k to ending up a bunch.
Halfway thru writing this i dusted off 135k at 1500/3k 7game. But i just started playing the 2/4 cap plo games again because they’re running today again, so im gonna cut this one short since im on a few tables now, and lets hope i can run as amazing as i did at the end of yesterday
edit: maybe i shouldv’e woke up more before playing and/or blogging because that seemed really rambley but oh well
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Tom Dwan | Filed under Poker
Tom Dwan recently spoke to Full Tilt Poker Academy Dean Phil Gordon about the Durrrr Challenge. Click the link below to check it out.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Tom Dwan | Filed under Poker
I played a ton of poker in 2009, and unfortunately the results weren’t too great, mainly because of the last few months. I was worried at the start of 09 that there wouldn’t be enough highstakes games going (that was one of the reasons i offered 3-1 for 50k hands etc), but that proved to be a non-issue, as there was tons of action throughout the year. At the start of the year there were a bunch of 500/1k headsup plo games, and a decent amount of 500/1k ha games. Then as the wsop approached, some of the highest stakes games to ever run went off in bellagio. These games happened for about 2 months, and it was pretty crazy. Initially a lot of players took shots when the game was around 5001k, and 1k2k plo. However the game kept getting bigger and bigger, and eventually we were playing 3k6k plo and 10k20k limit triple draw most days of the week. That is an absurdly huge game obviously, and once it ended I assumed that swings like the ones which happened over the summer wouldn’t happen again for quite a while. However i was dead wrong. There was a new player to the online scene, and isildur has caused quite a stir. I didnt know this at the time, but he started off down about a million, before proceeding to win a huge sum of money from me. He is definitely a gambler, and gives a lot of action. This means that he can have huge wins and huge losses, unfortunately for me i helped him with his wins, while i recently got to witness huge losses he had to brian hastings. I have a feeling he’ll be back, although it will be tough to match the action we all saw at the end of 09. Isildur won about 7 million straight, and then lost about 7 million straight. I have a decent idea what huge swings feel like, but isildur’s swings were extra crazy. I think initially a lot of people overestimated his ability, however he definitely learned very fast, and caught up to those expectations. He’s someone i’d expect to see around the highstakes games very regularly in the next few years. Also i think its likely that isil’s amazing run will create more highstakes action as people look to replicate what he did. Hopefully I’m right about that, and next time maybe i’ll even end up profiting from it.
I realize it took me a really long time to write this 2nd blog, however my 3rd one will come much sooner. To give myself some motivation I’ve decided that for the rest of this year I’ll donate 10k to haiti or some similar cause any month that i don’t write at least 3.
(21 votes, average: 4.62 out of 5, rated) Posted by tomdwan | Filed under Poker
Hiya.
And welcome to my new blog. So I’m gonna try to post a bunch, but I’m usually busy and since writing isn’t exactly my favorite pastime, this might not work out too well… we’ll see.
Since this is my Full Tilt Poker blog, I’d like to thank them for adding me to the team. It’s an honor to be a part of such a talented group. I’m really looking forward to winning a buncha tourneys with this patch on.
So anyway, onto something I can write a whole blog about… the first things that come to mind are kite surfing and skydiving, so I’ll start there.
I recently spent a week and a half in Spain, hopping around between the beaches and Barcelona. I saw a bunch of kite surfers off of the beach in Marbella, and they totally blew me away. The stunts these guys could do were pretty sick, and I’d like to get somewhat into the sport, at least until I break something…
On to safer activities… I’m getting the urge to go skydiving again. I’ve been twice before in Las Vegas, though I had a slightly different experience each time. The first time I jumped was early in the morning after a crazy night out. I was exhausted the night before, having not slept in 24 hours, and was planning to crash before 11pm. My friend Alan Sass convinced me to go out and meet some friends, and before I knew it we were showing up to SkyDive Las Vegas early the following morning. Still drunk from the night’s activities, we somehow seemed sober enough for them to let us jump. Everyone I knew who had gone skydiving in the past told me how scary it was, but on the way up in the plane I had almost no fear, and thought every moment of it was super awesome.
About a year later, I got a group of friends together to make a jump, remembering how amazing the rush was the time before. This time, I remembered how I had zero fear on my first jump- but with no tequila shots in my system I suddenly realized I was about to fall out of an [expletive] airplane. It was obviously still awesome, though.
I’m actually heading back to London in a few days, and would love to go skydiving while I’m there. I want to see as much of England as I can during my short visit, but I don’t have the time to drive around the country, so I’d rather just jump out of a plane and get a bird’s eye view. On my way down I’ll be pointing things out and going: “That’s cool, that’s cool, that’s cool”.
Speaking of mid-air activities in London, I was recently there and took part in a short helicopter trip. We were heading to what I thought was a Jay-Z concert with Coldplay opening, however in the UK, it was the other way around… news that Patrik and I were not very happy to hear. As way bigger Jay-Z fans, both of us were pretty sad about his shorter set… I thought Patrik was gonna head-butt someone. I wasn’t quite as bothered as he was, but was still pretty disappointed. Regardless, the show was still super sweet. The funniest part of the night was when the helicopter landed in a huge soccer field, and some kids supposedly thought Phil was Jay-Z, which is hilarious if true.
I wanna talk about poker slightly more in at least some of my future entries, and will probably have one about my upcoming heads-up show in London. It’s the FullTilt Poker Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge, starting November 17th in London’s Les Ambassedeurs casino. I’ll post more about that later.
Also, I’ve been playing Isuldur1 a lot lately. He’s a very aggressive player, and there have been some huge swings because of both of our aggressive styles. A month or so from now, I’ll probably be addressing the games in a more detailed entry, but as of now I’ll save that for a later date.
(82 votes, average: 4.70 out of 5, rated)
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