Life

Despite my admirable food prep, I did not go deep in the MiniFTOPS Main Event. I lasted five hours with one of my stacks but unfortunately did not cash. Dave cashed with one of his six entries at around the 6 hour mark.

I registered normal tourneys until 5 pm and then played turbos after that. I didn’t get a lot of volume in because I lasted so long with most of my stacks in the ME.

Right now I am in the Amsterdam airport waiting for my flight to Edinburgh. I got ~5 min sleep on our overnight flight, so I am VERY tired. I can’t wait to get to Dundee and then just go to sleep!

I’m back from the Big Game! Here’s a blog with my thoughts about the experience:

Courtney Gee Back from the PokerStars Big Game!

I signed a strict non-disclosure agreement and was told that I’m being watched closely, so that’s all I intend on saying until the shows air. I had to get that bit of writing “approved” before I could go ahead and post it, so you can see how strict they are. It’s all really understandable, of course.

Yesterday was my first day home after Vegas and I had an amazing day. I couldn’t help but think how amazing my life is. I always hear people complaining about their jobs, wishing the weekend would come, looking forward to the next holiday so that they can have a day off. I never feel that way anymore. I look forward to Mondays because it’s my day to relax. I look forward to Thursdays because I get to play poker again. Weekends are great because they’re always long days filled with tournaments. And then I’m back to being happy about Monday because I always sleep in that day.

If I wake up in the morning feeling like crap, I can take the day off. If something comes up and I need to be somewhere unexpectedly during the day, I can rearrange my schedule. When I made the Big Game and needed to clear a week to fly to Vegas, I didn’t have to beg my boss. This is freedom. This is what I want from life.

I admit that there is an appeal to becoming a nurse/pharmacist/teacher, having benefits, and being guaranteed a pension when I retire. I would save a bunch of money for sure. I’d have plenty of money for retirement and I’d be able to see the world once I was done working. A secure and reliable income is really appealing – I can’t deny this.

And who knows. Maybe in a couple years I will realize that I want that security back. Maybe I will realize that I don’t want to play poker for my entire life, that it’s too much of a grind, that the downswings are just too emotionally difficult. Maybe I’ll want benefits or maybe I’ll realize that I don’t have enough put away for retirement.

Or maybe online poker will die and I won’t have a choice. Maybe I’ll have to stop playing poker because I’m not making enough per year to support my kids or to buy a house or whatever I’ll want to do in 2 or 5 or 7 years. It’s not like I’m living in luxury and it’s definitely not a secure income. There are downswings. It can be scary when you don’t make money for consecutive months and when the bank account gets lower. Maybe it will eventually take a toll on me.

But right now, I love my life. I play a card game for a living. I’m doing what I love. Is there anything better than that?

There is no word in the English language that can describe how I feel right now. It is a mixture of being anxious, overwhelmed, excited, nervous, scared, and in disbelief, all at the same time.

:D!!!

This post is incredibly overdue. I haven’t written for weeks and I never even wrote my PCA trip report. My life has been absolutely crazy since I got back from the Bahamas.

I found out almost two weeks ago but I didn’t want to post anything public because I still had to undergo a background check. The background check went fine, though, and now everything is ready to go! I am leaving for Vegas on February 18th and I’m playing on the 20th.

I really can’t describe how it felt to read the congratulatory email. I was in shock and so happy at the same time, I’ve never felt anything like it before! I pretty much sat here and thought, wow is this really happening?

To add to that, just a couple days later I chopped 3-ways in the $53 super turbo on Full Tilt for $14k. Talk about being a lucksack!

After the news and the score, I was shocked and excited for around four days. Then the days that followed were actually incredibly stressful as I tried to juggle my life, work, and poker. I felt really overwhelmed and was actually restless and depressed for a couple days.

I thought to myself, WTF is wrong with me? I’m running so good at life right now yet I feel like shit. What’s wrong?

I wanted to make poker a priority so that I could mentally get ready for the Big Game, but I was scared of leaving everything else in my life for after I got back from Vegas. And then we were trying to good train, bus, and theatre tickets for the March trip, and I totally couldn’t handle the stress!

Anyway it’s been a week since I started freaking out about everything, and I’m fine now. I decided to leave everything else for after my trip to Vegas so that I have more time to focus on poker. Deciding to do this has really helped me mentally.

Thinking about going on TV doesn’t scare me, and playing poker in a big game doesn’t scare me, but putting them together is a different animal. Although saying that I’m “scared” is definitely wrong. Worried that I might play horribly while everyone can see my hole cards and KNOW I’m playing horribly … this is probably more accurate. It’s a silly thing to worry about and obviously all I can do is just play my best and hopefully have a great time in the process. I am working on not being nervous or anxious and so far it has been just fine.

I have done a lot of little things to prepare myself for the show. I feel incredibly lucky to have had help from some wonderful people at FTR – I am so grateful to you guys. I have one more week to get myself prepared, and I just plan on making the most of it.

Thank you also to everyone that has congratulated and supported me so far. Thanks for the advice and well wishes.

Continuation of epic run good one time?!

Regular readers of this blog (I THINK some of you exist) will know that I have been trying to get onto the Big Game. It started back in September when I made an audition video, and since then I have filled out a questionnaire, done a phone interview, and now I have done a video interview.

I found out last week that they wanted a video interview. I had to go and buy a cheap webcam because my webcam was literally 6 or 7 years old. That brings my monetary investment into this Big Game audition to like $45, grr 😛 Someone suggested that I try to return it since I’ve only used it once, but I think trying to put it back in the packaging isn’t worth the $22 I’d get back!

I had my video interview with Jessica Cummis today. This blog gets a lot of random hits because people are googling that name and getting my posts, lol. If you are one of these people, welcome!

Jessica asked me all the obvious questions you’d expect for someone interviewing for a poker show. One of the questions was: who would you like sitting at your table if you make it onto the show? I said definitely a rich businessman 😀 But if I can’t have one of those, I’ll take Hellmuth or Negreanu just for fun.

She recorded the 15 min interview and said that it gets sent to the producers. They watch it and make a decision.

The good news is that this is apparently the last step in the selection process. I asked her how many people made it this far and she said about 20. Considering there were ~6,000 people to begin with, it’s pretty cool that I made it to the top 0.5%.

The bad news is that only 4 of us are going to be selected. The other bad news is that none of us are going to be held over for another season. So if I don’t make it and I want to try again, I have to start the selection process all over again.

The reason only 4 of us are going to be chosen is because they have people held over from last season. For various reasons they didn’t get a chance to play last season, so they’re playing this season. This leaves less spots open for new people.

Apparently I got a really good evaluation for the phone interview (where that guy tested my poker aptitude), so it’s probably going to come down to demographics. So basically if they have another young female that they rate slightly better than me, I will be cut.

She said that I’ll hear back either way in the next few weeks. 2 outer one time? 😀

I finally got to play Thursday through Sunday this past week. Over 4 days I played 78 tournaments and lost around $1,500. I have to admit that it wasn’t the most enjoyable 4 days of poker I’ve ever had 😛

Because of the holidays, I probably won’t be playing anymore poker for the next week. This is kinda bad, though, because I need 617 VPPs for a $50 stellar reward on PokerStars. Maybe I’ll find some time to grind them out by playing step 3s? Otherwise I’ll have to play 4 long-ish days of tournaments in the last week of the month which I guess isn’t THAT bad.

I’m not really looking forward to Christmas. Usually I love Christmas time, but this year is all messed up because of a bunch of family problems. I’d really rather Christmas don’t come at all.

Don’t let me bring you down though! I probably won’t write again this week, so Happy Holidays to you 🙂

PokerStars finally called me last Sunday and asked for a 15 minute interview for the Big Game 😀 I was having a rough day and had just finished crying about something, so it ended up being rescheduled to this coming Sunday. I’m a little nervous but mostly excited about it. I hope it goes well. As long as I give a great interview and present myself as well as possible, I’ll be happy whether I’m chosen for the show or not. Something I have to my advantage is that I am extremely confident on the phone. I worked in sales and did cold calls every day last year when I was working full time. I mean I’d probably prefer to do the interview in person but over the phone is a fine alternative for me.

I had an extremely stressful and tiring week. Aside from some bad news about my family, I have been taking care of my 10 year old brother since Friday while my parents are out of town. I feel like all I do every day is drive him around, cook him food, and clean dishes. I love him and he is a good kid, but I will be ecstatic when my parents come back on Sunday. On Monday I think I’ll sleep in until minimum 11 am to celebrate not having to wake up early to get him ready for school!

Thanks to live poker, my birthday, and watching my brother, my poker volume in November was abysmal. I basically broke even overall for the month after my PCA package.

MiniFTOPS starts this week and unfortunately I have to miss Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Hmm those are only some of the best days of the week for poker – kinda disappointing! I think I’ll play on Tuesday and Wednesday which is really meh but better than nothing. The week after I plan to right my schedule FINALLY and hopefully I can play Thursday through Sunday.

2-day event fail again haha. I never make Day 2 of anything! (except the Cascades Women’s Event earlier this year, but that doesn’t count right?)

I actually made it to the very last hour of the day. In fact, I only had to last 30 more minutes to make it to Day 2. The problem was I was short stacked and I’m pretty sure limping to Day 2 is the dumbest thing ever, especially when I still have to outlast like 25 people to be in the money.

At my last table I got down as low as 5bb. I pushed A3s in LP and got called by a pretty big stack in the bb by 89s. I held. A couple orbits later I shoved 22 in early MP and got called by the bb with AKs and miraculously held. Now I was up to 25bb, wow!

My “big” stack did not last long. In MP (just before the HJ) I about min raised 33. The stacks behind all had about equal or more chips than I had except for one guy that was 9bb deep. I like my raise a lot for many reasons in a live game. I would probably open fold this in an online tournament.

Unfortunately one of the least desirable scenarios occurred and the shorty shoved. I was assuming this would happen at least a third of the time, though, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. Even if he has the nittiest range in the world (which he didn’t), I was priced in to call because the antes made the pot huge.

Anyway I called and he unfortunately had 44. I was down to 12bb now. Then I shoved QJ blind versus blind and he called with 44 too. 44 is my undoing! GG with 30 min to go in Day 1.

Overall I’m pleased with the way I played yesterday. I sadly nit folded AJ twice to shoves. I was ahead in at least one of them (he showed me ATs) but I am still confident that I made a solid fold. ATs is well at the bottom of the range of a live nit that doesn’t usually play tourneys.

I rambled longer than intended. I’m about to go celebrate my birthday with my favorite person 🙂 Have a good day!