On this hot, dry evening I’m sitting on the balcony looking into the Vegas landscape. A helicopter floats in the distance, an electric train smoothly pulls into its next stop, and a few blocks away the tall figure of the Stratosphere blinks its changing streaks of light: green, blue, yellow, red, white…. This is Vegas as usual, I’ve seen it many times before. The sun has almost set. In the horizon is still that dull orange glow that reminds you there isn’t much time left. I’m brought to the realization that there really isn’t much time left. The WSOP season is almost over.

This past month has gone by so quickly. Each day melted into another, their borders becoming smudged like a watercolor canvas. I could barely distinguish one from another. What day is this? Does it matter? I’ve hit the tables so hard that when I think back on it, the most glaring images are that of a green-felted table, cards hidden beneath my hands and ever-changing stacks of chips. I drowned myself in the games because I wanted to prove that despite everything that’s happened in the past year, I could still build myself back up. I put in an exhausting number of hours and am overall happy with the results. In the cash games I’ve won the most ever during a WSOP summer. In the tournaments I’ve had the worst results of any WSOP season with over a dozen mostly small NLHE events played and only one cash. It’s been disappointing but with such good results in the cash games I still feel quite accomplished.

It’s the night before day 2 of the Main Event and there isn’t much time left in my WSOP season. I only have 5K chips which is about 12 big blinds. Day 1 was a slaughter. I was card dead for the most of it and got into a few marginal spots where I could have gotten away cheaper and saved my chips. After that bad run of cards I played cash games for a couple days and crushed them. If only I could have run that good during day 1…. There’s a decent chance I’ll bust day 2 so I’m not sure if it will air, but I did a feature with ESPN talking about this past year, the head shaving, playing at Phil Laak’s table when he broke the world record, etc. It would be really cool if any of it gets on tv. I also did a crash interview with Bluff which you can find here.

I’m going to get a good night sleep and play awesome short stack tournament poker for the remainder of my Main Event experience. Maybe I’ll run it up. If not, I'll enjoy the rest of my time here spending time with friends or hitting the cash games as usual.

~Thuy