I had such high hopes heading back to San Jose this year. I have played the Shooting Star event twice and finished 31st and 7th, respectively, and that coupled with going back home had me pretty fired up.

I couldn't get much going though. The first day started off a little slow and stayed that way until after dinner when I finally nudged my nose out of the darkness and pushed up to over 50k in chips. From that point though it was all bad. I lost a mountain of chips to a super live player, who had incidentally just bluffed off 50% of his HUGE stack ten minutes earlier on a three-barreled bluff. He raised in and I called with KQ suited from the blinds. We saw the flop, which came Queen high, and I felt that I was forced to call him down in this spot because of the erraticness of his play up to that point. I was sick to see him flip up AQ, having me outkicked, and from that point on I was a little tilted.

I'm finding more and more that it's difficult for me to keep my mind in the tournament when things aren't going right these days. I think it's just the added stress of trying to do too many things that is hurting me here. I'm not sure how to combat it completely, but I better find a way pretty quickly if I want to avoid these day one bustouts. Poker TV

Anyway, after that abysmal hand I picked up AK and ended up getting it in against JC Tran's Jacks, and I failed to improve at all. Blech...

We did have one fun night though, when Matt Savage and I hooked up a "limo-bus-like-vehicle" and headed up to San Francisco to check out my old band, Parker Street Cinema. They killed it, and it was a great time. We somehow managed to rally 15 (!) people from Bay 101 to head up, including Gavin, Layne, and Kenna...which is always an experience. It was a fun...and long...night, back up in SF.

Glad to be back home and really would like to sleep for a day or two before Reno in a week or so...

peace,
J


PS-HUGE congrats to my buddy Brandon Cantu for putting on as dominant of a performance in a tournament that I can remember. Congrats/condolences are also in order for other friends, Steve Sung, JC Tran, and John Phan, and Jen Harman...