Being recently single I headed to LA on Valentineís Day, February 14th, to spend the day (and the week) with my †first and true love, poker.

Some people may think that Los Angeles is the only other place in the country that compares to the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas. Well those people have not been to a small area of L.A. called Commerce, California. I would have to say it is not exactly the most enchanting place on earth; itís more of an industrial townÖ not like the sparkling neon lights and abundance of celebrity sightings that I am used to. You see living in Las Vegas, maybe I just have become accustomed to the poker rooms being filled with well dressed individuals and men in pricey business suits. Nestled in the heart of Commerce is the Commerce Casino, a place where the air can be so stuffy that you must take several steps away from the Casino just to get away from the wall of chain smokers standing right outside the doors.

I traveled to this fabulous land with a good friend of mine, Brian Rast, who is also known as screen name TSARRAST, to the online poker world. He has had such an amazing month playing online in 500/1,000 RA games and is up over the $2 million mark in February according to HighStakesDB.com, so letís just say he was feeling pretty good about things despite our surroundings.

The 10 days spent in Commerce were consumed with poker, poker andÖ more poker. We played two tournaments, the $10,000 Heads Up Event and the $10,000 Main Event. During the Heads Up Event, I made a lot of side bets, and hoped that my friend Alec and I would cash deeper in the money than any other teams. I bet $5,000 against Bryn Kenny and his stake Ryan Young, and if that wasnít enough I bet another $3,000 against Sorel Mizzi and his partner A-mac. Okay so I just needed a little bit more action so I bet against Aaron Bean in a $1,000 player draft. We each took turn picking players, and whosever team ended up cashing for the most money wins! I chose players Issac Haxton, Alec Torelli and friend Brian Rast. Bean chose Scott Seaver, David Benyamine and A-mac. Well I ended up busting out in the 3^rd round, which was very disappointing since I had made all those extra side bets, making it seem like it was going to end up being a very expensive tournament. Bryn Kenny and Ryan Young both made early exits in the tournament so I ended up free-rolling the bet, meaning I would win if Alec cashed, things were looking up for me! Alec started off 6 and 1 but lost his 8^th match and ended up finishing just outside the money making my bets with Bryn and Ryan a wash. A-mac ended up cashing, so I lost both bets with Aaron Bean and Sorel Mizzi, so afterall it did end up being a very expensive tournament. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to get a seat in an action packed 4100 HA game so happily I was able to recover my losses very quickly.

While in lovely Commerce I spent a lot of my time with television stars Antonio Esphondion and Phil Lakk, who both have become very good friends of mine recently. Phil Lakk has to be the most entertaining person I have ever met in my life, which he took note ofÖ literally. He just happened to have a voice recorder with him, which is a perfect example of his eccentric personality; I mean who walks around with a voice recorder in their pocket? He said that anytime he was feeling a little blue he was going to replay the recording of me telling him he was the most entertaining person in the world; he must have been feeling down because he did exactly that, playing it over and over again while walking around the poker room.

One night after dinner Antonio and Phil invited Brian and I to the set of Love Line which they were co-hosting, which has to be one of the most hilarious and memorable times of my life. The show was also co-hosted by VH-1 Reality Star Striker. One thing that Dr. Drew found hysterical was that Antonioís solution to every possible question was ìanal sexî. Antonio and Phil kept betting on what the next questions would be, then during the intermissions of the show we all played a game called ìLodden Thinksî, named after online poker legend Johnny Lodden. The object of the game is someone is Lodden, in this case it was Dr. Drew, who got asked a series of silly questions, for example ìhow many kangaroos do you think are in Austrailia?î then the other players go back and forth, Chinese auction style to come up with the answer. Dr. Drew is a very smart and interesting human being, it was fun to sit there and kind of pick his brain. One of the questions was ìhow many partners has the average American male had?î Dr. Drewís answer was 6 partners, while Brian, Antonio and I all said 8 and under. Phil Lakk said 8 and over, so it was nice to collect some Phil money.

Poker went ok on the trip.† I did alright live, but had some big losses at 500/1000 HA online (where I only had 25%).† Overall on the trip I maybe made $30,000 playing poker which would have been nice except I lost over $100,000 to millionaire real-estate mogul and certified badass Bob Safi playing props.† Heíd pick two cards such as AK and bet $100 on them.† Then if the flop came AKK, KKA, AAA or KKK Iíd have to pay him $36,000 (the true odds are 394:1), otherwise Iíd win $100.† I know this sounds crazy, Iím willing to lose $36,000 to win a mere $100, but as a professional gambler how could I pass up the 6% juice!† Sometimes Bob would play up to 18 different props at the same time.† This got terrifying for me since, for example if he had bet 100 each on AK, AQ, AJ, AT, A9 and the flop came AAA that would be included in 5 payouts!† So Iíd have to pay him 36,000 * 5 = 180,000!† Thankfully, this never happened but he did mange to hit the normal props on me left and right..† †

I also recently hired a new assistant, Lindsey who is going to help me to post these blogs regularly.† We are going to do it at least once a week, so†a new blog should be up every Friday.† If I donít post at least one blog a week for the next month Iíll send $50 to the first person to post in comments and notice on Full Tilt Poker.