The Pudding

And it’s another blogging hiatus by yours truly.

I’m always a bit unsure about how to come back to the blog, it’s much easier if there’s something pressing that drives me to write an entry but currently that’s not the case.  My last post was about my record breaking results in May, so I guess I can start this entry by briefly providing an update on what’s happened since then.

I only played ~100 hours in June, which is about half of a month’s normal grind.  Results were fine, albeit unspectacular.  Spent a week in Vegas and stayed far far away from anything WSOP related.  I’ve actually considered playing a big WSOP schedule at some point, perhaps as early as next year, but at the moment it just doesn’t sound appealing to me.  Of course, there’s a small contingent of my friends/family who routinely ask me if I’ll ever play the “big tournaments on TV” so it would be nice to shut all of them up.  Mark it down folks, abarone68 is shutting people up in 2016.  Maybe.  We’ll see.

I did play a few hours of cash, but that was the only poker of the trip.  Actually had a rather hectic vacation, which was broken up as follows:

Thursday: Fly out to Vegas
Friday: Friends arrive, EDC #1
Saturday: Fly to Sacramento, CA and drive to Sonora, CA for a friend’s wedding
Sunday: Fly back to Vegas for EDC #2
Monday: Girlfriend flies into Vegas
Wednesday: Fly home to Vancouver

Seven days, four flights, two nights of EDC, one beautiful wedding, and a couple’s trip in Las Vegas.  Lots of fun, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t exhausted by the end of it.

One of the best meals I had was with my girlfriend @ Gordon Ramsay’s Steakhouse.  Girlfriend said the steak was the best she’d ever had, but for me the real stars of the meal were the Caesar Salad and Toffee Pudding dessert.  I still dream about that dessert.

Me/Beer

Caesar

OMG Toffee Pudding I miss you!

Got back to Van, rededicated myself to the grind, and had put in 100+ hours before returning to California for another wedding last week.  At this moment I’m sitting on 62,000 VPPs for the month and ~415,000 VPPs for the year.  That puts me a bit behind SNE pace (540,000) but as the Summer months come to a close, I’m confident traffic will improve and I’ll be able to make up the extra points.  Unfortunately, PokerStars is throwing a wrench into my plans.  You see, last year Stars announced ‘Likely significant changes’ to the VIP Program in 2016.  There’s been a lot of speculation about exactly what they’re going to do, but it’s surely going to negatively affect the rewards/rakeback system currently in place and therefore, hurt my bottom line.  I’ll go into more detail in the next post, but there’s a very good chance I don’t repeat SNE this year.