Getting ready for Punta Cana

The past few weeks have been a lot of fun. I decided to play minimal amounts of poker and essentially just focus on enjoying life both with my family and for myself. Our house was more like a hotel this month as I had several guests come over. It was a lot of fun having friends and family over at the house. To recap the month, I played in our member guest event with Matt Bolt, had Jared Tendler and his fiance’ stay at the house, played in my club championship (more on that later), had my son’s birthday, my wife and I’s 6th anniversary and several more fun days/nights with friends and family. It was a great month overall, but it has been so fast paced, I am definitely excited to just play some poker over at ACR and mellow things out a bit, at least for a week or two.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to defend my club championship title over at Pumpkin Ridge this summer. I can make a lot of valid excuses, but the bottom line is I couldn’t get the ball in the hole. I think each round I shot about as high as I could shoot. It just seemed nothing could go right. Rounds of 73-77-74 are not going to get it done, so oh well, next year….

I am planning on playing a bit more poker this month, both to make some cash and also to get ready for the Punta Cana poker classic this coming October 12-18. I went to the Dominican Republic in 2010 for the Punta Cana Poker Classic and must say I plan on going back as often as I can in future years. The Hard Rock Hotel at Punta Cana is just the nuts. It’s an all inclusive resort, the people are very friendly, everyone is in a great mood and most importantly to me, the beach is amazing. I just love the beach there. The water is in the mid to upper 70s and I plan on spending at least a couple of hours in the water each day. I don’t know why, but there is something about being out in that water that makes it one of my favorite things in the world to do.

Hopefully there isn’t an earthquake like there was 2 years ago. I remember sitting in the hot tub with my wife in the hotel room (the rooms are beyond baller) and there was an earthquake. Being steps away from the ocean we instantly freaked out thinking a tsunami was coming. I called the front desk and asked if there was a tsunami alert and they were like, “no no no. No tsunami is coming” in broken English. This of course didn’t do much to relieve our fears so we went online and saw a warning was issued, but then seconds later it was cancelled. I still didn’t get much sleep that night. Anyway, we had the time of our life out there. It was just so fun to be out in what is essentially a paradise and just enjoy life. I am really looking forward to it and would highly recommend playing in the event or just visiting some day if you get a chance. The travel is not too bad really. I hate traveling, but will consider it well worth it to get to Punta Cana.

I did get a bit of bad, or mixed is probably the better word for it, medical news recently. After years of seeing numerous doctors and in general putting a lot of effort into demystifying what exactly is/was wrong with my heart, I think we finally settled the issue. I was diagnosed with something called “FH” (familial hypercholesterolaemia) that is a genetic disorder relating to how my body deals with cholesterol. I have been trying to fix my cholesterol issue for a long time now, and early in the year went on a mostly vegan, mostly raw food diet (I say mostly because I allowed myself one cheat meal a week), combined with exercise in an effort to reduce my cholesterol. I had my cholesterol retested again last month and my cholesterol got worse! This is pretty hard to do on a diet of mostly kale, spinach, carrots, nuts and fruit etc. After further testing it was determined my body has a genetic disorder that, to quote netdoctor.com, “People with inherited or familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) have a lack of low-density lipoprotein receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood. These people have high cholesterol levels from birth and this leads to an early development of hardening of the arteries and vascular diseases.” Not fun stuff, but fortunately I was able to get on cholesterol lowering medication that should save me from succumbing to a heart attack at an early age. Fingers crossed anyway.

As much of a bummer as it was to find this out, it was good in the sense that I feel I have a much better handle on what to do to avoid more problems in the near future. I tried as hard as I could to avoid being on medication for cholesterol for the rest of my life, but my doctor has assured me there is no way around it, I have to get on meds.

Well, I am going to get back to the tables. Feel free to check me out on “Beast Live” where I will be playing the rest of the year on webcam. There will be others on there as well in the future to add to the current roster of 4 guys. I’m sure I will do something embarrassing on there like get caught picking my nose or my daughter jumping on the desk or something! Anyway, good luck at the tables and come check out Beast Live!