Stockholm Sun

June in Stockholm is a pretty amazing time of year.  As I sat in a taxi cab at 4AM on my way back to my in-law's place, after a night of video games and poker with Swedish Bridge Champion Peter Bertheau, the sun was shining.  It's a very rare sight to see a major city, in nearly full daylight with completely empty streets.  I've been searching for a while to find the motivation to restart my blog and for some reason, as the car crossed over a bridge between Gamla Stan (the old town) and Sodermalm (southern island), the peaceful image of the city made me want to write again.

My wife Jenny is in her 26th week of pregnancy.  Our little girl is expected on September 2nd. These three weeks between the New York regional and my next tournament in Penticton, BC, Canada were a perfect opertunity to come to Stockholm to visit her family.  As the due date creeps closer and closer,  the nervous feeling of how far away both of our families live is amplifying.  

One of the small costs of the baby is that I will be on the sidelines for my favorite bridge event of the year, one which I have only had the privilege  of playing once because of my Canadian Citizenship is coming up in a week or two;  The USBF Championships in White Plains, NY (click here for Who's playing?  Vugraph schedule) .  The event will crown two winning teams to represent the USA for the Bermuda Bowl in Brazil at the end of the summer.  It is always the most exciting tournament of the year to watch, they play 120 board matches and somehow even if a team has the lead by 100 imps, the matches always seem to end with a single digit margin.

A few other junior bridge players and I are in the process of creating a brand new modern bridge website and my blog will soon be moved over there, check back for more info.  Thanks to anyone who still checks around here, I will soon be posting a lot more conventions and pictures.  

another life update

Well another few months go by, new world champions have been crowned, roger federer has won 2 more majors, a guy who grew up in a refugee camp in laos won the world series of poker, and I am still doing the same thing. The summer was fun, I spent all of june in las vegas for the world series of poker. I didn't do great in any live tournaments but I spent a lot of time with some of the best internet poker players in the world watching them play and having them watch my play and give me advice. I went on a huge poker rush and built my bankroll to the point where I can start flirting with the idea of playing high stakes. The highlight of the month in vegas was when my friend John Kranyak final tabled a 3000 person tournament at the w.s.o.p. finishing 4th for $180000.

The summer nationals in Nashville were average. It was the first major tournament that Warren Spector and I played live together. We only managed to win 1 match, as our 2nd round (3rd round because of bye) opponents were the Strul team (Aubrey Strul, Mike Becker, Lew Stansby, Chip Martel, David Berkowitz, Larry Cohen) We left our team about even at the half and they didn't bring it home, which is understandable against that team of world champions. The 3/4 score was -7 and then the pros just put the lockdown and really gave us little chance to come back. I didnt play too much bridge as I was waiting for warren to finish playing the GNTs so we could practise for the spingold. He won the GNTs which left us with just 1 day to get some cards in. All in all it was a good first outing, we have now begun playing a strong club, which is fun but a lot of work.

September, my 25th b-day, also known as the you dont have to pay a young renters fee when renting a car b-day. I had some of my poker friends fly into Toronto for an awesome outdoor Linkin Park concert.

October started with a regional in Ottawa where I got to play a lot with Jenny which is nice, we haven't had too many oppertunities to play since the blue ribbons in 2005. The team was Beverly Perry , Justin Lall, John Kranyak, Jenny and Me. We played 2 events, and grinded out 2 wins. That tournament is really nice , I love Ottawa its one of my favorite places (obviously canadian regionals are way better!)

Later this month I am going to play in Charlotte. I'm really excited i get to play an entire week with Steve Weinstein. Jenny will also be there playing. After that theres a couple weeks off, then lexington kentucky, then the nationals.

Over the next week I will be playing a lot with Warren on BBO, look for us practising our strong club system

1 month is enough!

OK its time for me to return to my duties as a blogger. A lot has happened in the past month, we played our tournament down in Florida, did quite well, we won a tough knockout and survived with an overall in the swiss after losing the first 2 matches. From there I went to Vegas and played the Cavendish teams and pairs with John Kranyak. John was an absolute pleasure to play with, I have never played with such a nice partner before. We meshed really well and grinded our way to 6th place which had we owned ourselves would have paid $70000, maybe next year we will be able to afford it :) I have a ton of hands from the Cavendish, including 3 occasions where we bid a grand slam, had our opponents sacrifice and then we bid 7NT making. Right now I am commentating on the Canadian National Team Championships Finals. Even though I have stopped playing for Canada, this event will always be important to me, as this is where it all started for my bridge career. Winning this is still one of my greatest bridge achievements and I will always remember the incredible feeling it felt to know I was going to play in the Bermuda Bowl, with my brother Darren as my teammate. One of the high points in my life. Since the Cavendish, I went to Quebec City which was beautiful and it caught me by surprise, I had no idea that it was such a great city. Anyone looking to have a nice vacation I highly suggest it as a destination. I played two pair games with Beverly Perry, we came 4th and 5th overall, and then each headed to our respective home towns. This past week has been spent relaxing at home, watching old episodes of TV and spending time with my family. Maybe you wont have to wait another month before my next blog :)

Short drive down the coast

After a week at my family's place... its time to make the move down towards the Ft. Lauderdale regional. We don't start playing until Friday, however we have taken advantage of my Uncle and Aunts hospitality for a week already. So tomorrow afternoon we are going down to my partner Warren's house right in center of Palm Beach... Jenny, Warren and I are going to play a cut-around bridge game with David and Lisa Berkowitz. I will try to post some hands (I know I keep saying that) After that Warren heads back to New York to work until the weekend when he comes back to play the regional. He is very generously letting Jenny and me use his house down here for the next 4 days until he returns. I am anxious to see what Palm beach is like. Jenny and I are seriously considering buying a place down here in Florida as soon as we clear up immigration... We both like hot weather, this is really perfect (I imagine that a few days in August I wont be saying that)

I am doing my best to answer all the questions you have to all my posts... I would really like input on the blog, tell me what you like to read about, what is boring... every bit of criticism will help me make this blog more interesting.

On another good note, I had another monstrous day at poker, bringing my total for the week to +6000... a good weeks work!

Singer Island, Florida

Obviously within the first 24 hours of being in Palm Beach my shoulders and neck were terribly sunburned. So the last few days I've hidden from the sun, although I've tried to spend as much time as possible outside. Jenny and I are staying on Singer Island (just north of Palm Beach) with my uncle Les and aunt Sara. They are both bridge players and we played yesterday for my first Florida bridge club experience in 5 years. The people were nice and friendly.

A lot of shopping being done... Being the genius that I am, no pairs of shorts managed to make their way into my suitcase even though I knew we were coming to Florida.

The sunburn has forced me indoors and I've had a chance to play a bunch of poker. This week has been swingy, on Sunday I played the big Sunday tourneys and also some cash games and lost around $1500. Then 5 winning days in a row has gotten me that $1500 back plus a healthy profit of $2500 for the trip so far. To explain my poker situation... at the spring nationals in Dallas last year, I approached Steve Weinstein who is a world class poker player (not to mention bridge) about training me to play. He agreed to it and staked me to play $1/$2 No Limit Hold em. The deal is he puts up the money and we split the profits. I have to build up my bankroll before I can move up stakes. I am now at $2/4 N.L. which is a huge step from 1/2. So far so good... its really fun and its a good filler of time when there is nothing else going on. There is more to our story which I will get to later...

Just got the phone call, more shopping and sunburning err tanning to do.

Documentary is up on You Tube

OK here goes nothing, I've thought for a while about what to say to you about the documentary, all I hope is that you watch it with the understanding that they took the most heated moments of 2 YEARS of filming and made our story as dramatic as possible. Just to set the record straight... Vince and I are still great friends and he is still one of my favourite partners and hopefully now that he is back from Australia I will get the chance to play with him some again. No matter how much you like someone, or enjoy playing with someone, 5 years of tens of thousands of hands together can bring out the worst in anyone... and when you have cameras in your face after losing a big spingold match, you'd be surprised at what you say or do.

I heard the numbers of viewers, the method in which they come up with this is unknown, however on Saturday when they aired the documentary in Canada, the hockey game had 2.1 million viewers, the documentary had 518000, a new record for W-five (the show that produced the documentary) I'm really proud of that.

Lastly I want to thank Andy Pederson (the evil producer) and Warren (the unlucky camera guy). I think these guys did a tremendous job in livening up bridge for the camera. They took an otherwise boring couple of guys and made us appeal to a large audience, now I just hope that people see the documentary and have a place nearby where they can learn the game, in the end if anyone learns bridge because of the documentary, it will be a success.

Here are the links to the documentary, I'm not sure how long it will last on youtube because I think there may be copyright issues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ccvPArUq18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Xn6-yCh6U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIbjS1DLmfA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C--FAcdtG2I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Db-2ASnyA

Parts 4 and 5 arent working yet but should be up there soon.

Enjoy the show!

End of the week

So its Saturday and we finished playing tonight so that meant we could go out and have fun. We went over to the house that a lot of American juniors and their friends have rented for the week of the tournament. The house is really cool. 3 floors, 8 bedrooms, huge room on the bottom floor with a pool table and air hockey table.

The night started by me betting Steve Weinstein $100 that I could beat him in an air hockey match up to 7 points, but I had to spot him 4 points. So we started playing and i got 2 quick goals bringing the score to 4-2. Then he fired straight back with a straight shot beautifully placed making it 5-2. A long time rallying until we exchanged two more quick goals making it 6-3. At that point he got a little arrogant about his position and offered me to buy out of the bet for $75... my response "Hell No, lets play" So I tightened up my Defence and pulled out the match with a 7-6 victory. So sweet :)

After the match we went upstairs just as the late NHL playoff game was ending and brought out a copy of the documentary. It was a real experience sitting in a room with like 20 of my friends watching a dramatized version of the last few years of my life. Everyone really enjoyed the show, we had a good laugh because everyone could relate to how i was feeling.

(in pic from left to right, Charles Halasi, Daniel Lavee, John Barth, Joel Wooldridge, Steve Weinstein)


We hung out for a while, took some pictures then came back to our house and were just about to take a hot tub. Tomorrow is a travel day, Jenny and I head to Florida where we will spend some time with my uncles and aunts that live there. I thought the Ft Lauderdale regional was this coming week but there turned out to be an extra week off in there I didn't know about. So our ticket is booked for tomorrow and my mistake earned us a vacation in Florida. Left to Right: Kevin Bathurst, Me, Justin Lall, John Kranyak
Left to Right: Kevin Bathurst, Cata Robles, Me, Jenny