So lots has happened in the last month for me. The biggest thing was the arrival of my new niece Rebbecca. I'm happy to report that she has had a very healthy and quiet (not alot of crying YAY!!) 1st month of her life. It's amazing how big she has gotten in only a month. I'm also happy to report that the almost 3-month old experiment of living with my sister and her 3 kids is also going well.

As for poker, well thats going pretty good too. In fact, tonight I made 3 final tables online getting 8th, 3rd and 2nd. I was pretty disapointed that I didn't win at least one, but the tournament I got heads up in I should have won and was robbed =/. I'm really happy with how I'm playing right now and can't wait to play live soon. Friday I leave for Vegas to play the 1st ever NAPT tournament @ the Venetian this weekend. From there I will be heading to L.A. to hopefully cause some damage at the LAPC before heading home to play a couple events in the Chicago Poker Classic in Hammond, Indiana. My hopes are high to make a very big splash live soon, as long as I can stay patient which is my biggest weakness live. I just need to slow everything down and let things come to me.

Last week I experienced something new... my first ever earthquake!! It was the weirdest 30 seconds I've ever experienced. It was 4 in the morning and my entire house just started shaking. Being a huge fan of 24, my initial reaction was that there was some kind of terrorist attack going on. It sounds funny, but I was legitimately scared.  I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in a larger earthquake. Thankfully nothing in my house or around us was damaged.

Wish me luck on the road, I'll be tweeting updates...

Kevin Saul

I bet you all thought I forgot my log-in to communicate to the pokerroad peeps. Well, not so and I'm back. My new year's resolution is to blog more this year, and to blog more consistently. I'm just finishing up my stay in the bahamas, waiting for my flight in a few hours and figured what better time then now to start? Alot has gone on the last 6 months, but I guess I will start from the most recent and work backwards?

So I played the PCA main event, had heaps and heaps of chips ending day 1 (like top 5 overall) going into day 2. Day 2 was a disaster though. Nothing went right after the 1st 2 levels and if it wasn't for the stack I brought into the day I wouldnt have even made it to the last level of the day before busting out. After the main I played the 1k NL, the 5k NL and a 3k sattie to the 25k high rollers event. Nothing went well in any of those tournies!

Even though I didn't win my seat into the high rollers tourney, I felt the field was relatively soft and it had a good turn out of like 86 players so I decided to play it. Things started slow and I incresed my chips during the 1st 2 levels when I decided to bluff all of my chips off to some euro kid's AA....sorry but euros aren't supposed to get AA ever! That left me 8k from the 50k starting stack, and I proceeded to grind my ass off. Right before the last level of the day I found a key double up vs Benny Spindler to get all the way back to 70k. I then card racked my way to 125k right b4 plays was supposed to end, then proceeded to bluff off 45k to another euro and finished the day with 80k.

Day 2 didn't go so well. I hero'd off 1/2 my stack to Justin "BoostedJ" Smith on a AQ8Q3 board with a missed flush draw with AJ...he tabled QJ and I was back on the grind with my 35k. I grinded for a bit when I found a good spot to double with AK vs A1o all in before the flop, but a 10 flopped and I failed to improve and here I am waiting for my flight home.

And when I say home, I mean home...as in MY HOME!! Right before Thanksgiving I closed on my 1st ever house. Pretty exciting/stressful stuff being a home owner. I moved to the western suburbs of Chicago with in 5 minutes of both my Mom and Step-Dad and my oldest Sister. I then moved my other sister and her 2 kids in with me. It's only been about 7 weeks in the living situation but I love how its working out for the most part and can't tell you guys how great it is to see my niece and nephew every day when I'm in town. Oh ya, and when I get back tomorrow, well my sister is having a baby Thursday so I will have a brand new baby niece in the house too!! I will let you all how that works out too!!

Back in August I fracture my left radial bone, and have been doing therapy for 10 weeks trying to get my arm back in shape. Things haven't worked out so well and when I get home I will be getting a second opinion on whether I need to have surgery to clean out my elbow. Hopefully I won't need it but I think that will probably be the outcome since therapy hasn't helped much lately.

Hmmmm..what else is new?? Not much in poker, went on a lil heater online in November so that was nice. I haven't played much since I bought the house, but another resolution of mine is to start waking up and grinding tournies during the day online. I need to figure out a new schedule, and likely won't be playing alot of nights during the week since I have a new girlfriend (who is amaxing) and she works during the day so deserves my nights IMO. Not much else to say, leaving for the airport in about an hour...here's to a safe flight home for me with 2 nice naps ;)

Kevin Saul

 What a difference a day makes...and in general what a difference one tournament can make. Thats the life of a tournament grinder. So much disappointment can come from bricking off tournament after tournament. Yet all that disappointment turns to excitement and electricity with one deep run. I haven't done anything yet, but I'm off to a good start in this years WSOP main event. 

I ended day 1 with just under 88,000 chips, where the average going into day 2 will be roughly 40,000. To make things better, the blinds are still really tiny, when we start back Wednesday we will be playing 250-500 50a, which means I have almost 200 big blinds!! The structure of this tournament is awesome, deep stacks the entire time and I plan on using the structure to my benefit. Going into day 1, I had 2 goals. Goal #1 was simple, make day 2. Goal #2 was to gain a modest chip stack of 50,000 going into day 2 up from our 30,000 chip start. I achieved both goals, blowing my chip goal out of the water and putting myself in good shape to try and make a run in the main event. 

My table was pretty good, a mix of good players who know how to fold and bad players who didn't have much of a chance. My seat at the table was also pretty good, tho the guy on my immediate left played pretty well and I lost a lot of chips to him thru out the day with him basically card racking me when ever we played a pot together. I think we lost 5 players total all day, with 1 busting on the last hand of the night, so the fact that I was still able to triple my starting stack without alot of chips on the table is pretty good. I tried to play patient most of the day, I even folded queens pre-flop in a really awkward spot and I think I was right. Eventually I amped up the aggression and played a lot more hands once the antes kicked in. That lead to me getting all-in pre-flop with QQ vs David Singer's A5o for 100 BBs each lol. Only time I was all-in pre-flop all day and hopefully I won't be all in again in this poker tournament for a while.

Today was an off day and so is tomorrow before we come back to play on Wednesday. The plan is to just relax and take it easy and think about playing good online poker when we get backl to work. Thanks everyone for the GL's and well wishes, lets do this one time!!

 Ugly...thats one word that can describe my WSOP so far. Well thats pretty much the only word to describe it. Played the 3k triple chance today and as usual I got up to 16k from the 9k starting stack by the 1st break. Then I kinda got coolered when I raised 78ss and lost about 7k in chips on a 5677Q board to the small blind who flopped a straight with 89dd. I still had 9k which should have been plenty but then I just played poorly and got all the way down to 2800 before the blinds hit 100-200. I didnt give up tho and fought on the short stack for over 2 hours before finally busting out. This makes me officially 0-22 @ the WSOP this year (including 2 venetian events). I think I was like 1-23 @ the WSOP last year with my 1 cash coming in a H.O.R.S.E event. 3 years ago I was like 0-25 @ the WSOP. And I'm supposed to be a NLH specialist? I'm trying to stay positive but these results are making it hard for me. I think I'm gonna look into hiring a coach before next years WSOP...or just wait until the WSOP moves out of the RIO bc I just cant win a hand there. :(

Its not all over yet tho, I still have 2 more events to play. Tuesday is the 5k 6-max and of course the main event starts this weekend. I still haven't decided what day I'm gonna play. My goal is to make day 2 of the main event...never done that before. I wish I was more excited for it, since its the biggest tournament of the year, but unfortunately I'm not. There is no better  feeling in poker like going deep in a big live poker tournament, and unfortunately no worse feeling in poker than consistent early bustouts. Unfortunately for me I've just been experiencing the latter.

Sorry for the depressing tone in my blog. But the truth is I don't know if there is a more depressing city in the world than vegas.... and it has me depressed. Hopefully a deep run in the 2 tournaments I have left may change my feelings.