• A trip to Puerto Vallarta with Melissa
• A trip to Las Vegas with Chris
• A half-marathon in Los Gatos

I’d like to get some improvements done to the condo as well; we’re thinking about hardwood flooring and maybe a couple other things.

I sure hope all the wildfires in California are put out soon; the haze in the sky from all the smoke is really a bummer.

We went to Poipu beach -

We played golf…

…we went hiking…

…and we went diving! Right off those rocks.

Everyone had a blast. For more Kauai photos, check them out here.

We got a couple cloudy, windy days, but for the most part it was sunny and beautiful. A few quick notes:

• We went golfing at Poipu Bay Golf Course, which was a 10 minute walk down the road from our condo. Awesome course. Too bad winds were 30+ mph. Apparently, Tiger is a frequent patron, so at least I can say I’ve played on a course which he has played. No, I’m not going to tell you my score.
• The hike and waterfall we went to is called Kipu Falls. It’s frequented by locals, especially on weekends, so we decided to wait until Tuesday to check it out. It’s a short hike, but a great place for a jump off the rocks, or a swing off a big rope into the water. I think the jump was around 15-20 feet high. The water was very cold, much colder than the ocean.
• We stayed in a condo at Poipu Kai resort, about a 10 minute walk from Poipu beach, which I think is the most dry and sunny part of the island, on the south shore.
• We did lots of snorkeling. There’s an awesome spot for snorkeling just as you walk out into the water in Poipu beach. You can rent snorkel gear across the street at a few places at reasonable prices. We rented three sets for a week at $20 each, which was well worth it. I think snorkeling was the most popular activity of the week.
• We decided to buy all of our food at Costco at the beginning of the week, since we had a full kitchen in the condo. It was fun to cook food with friends, and we saved a lot of time and money. I’d highly recommend it.
• We also went to a Luau at the Hyatt down the street. We enjoyed it, but I think it would have been much more fun had it not been so cold that night. It got very windy, and we all started to freeze our asses off.

I can’t wait to go back!

I’ll start by saying that six days in Vegas is a long time.

By the end of the trip, I think I put in about 50 hours of poker, give or take. I’ve never played that much poker in that short of a timespan; it was a good test. For cash games, we played mostly 2-5 NL at the MGM Grand, and some 1-2 NL at Hooters when we were feeling less inspired. I was up 500 after the first night, then blew it on a couple tourneys the next night without cashing. I finally finished down about 700 by the end, thanks to a few bad beats on large pots.

The WSOP tourney was a lot of fun. I only lasted about 3.5 hours. This was easily the biggest field, buy-in, and blind structure I’ve ever been in for a poker tourney. I’m used to playing in tourneys which have blinds going up every 15 or 20 minutes, so I figured I’d really need to show some constraint and tighten up. Turns out this was not the best idea. There were most likely several spots where I could have been more aggressive.

I have to say that I wasn’t feeling all that great about my chances for a few reasons:

• I’m just not that good
• It’s my first WSOP event
• I’ve got three pros sitting at my table

When I get to my table and get situated before the tourney, I take a look around and at the players sitting at my table. Two seats to my left is a guy wearing two gold bracelets and a big fat gold ring. These aren’t just any bracelets, one of them is a WSOP bracelet. This guy’s name is Scott Clements, a 25-year-old up and coming poker pro. He actually ended up finishing 5th in this tourney. about 20 minutes after we started playing, David Williams sat down just left of Scott. So now, we’ve got both David Williams, runner-up in the WSOP main event in 2004, one WSOP bracelet and over five million in poker winnings, and Scott Clements with one WSOP bracelet who went on to finish 5th in this event and also won another bracelet about one week later.

I got four playable pre-flop hands during my 3.5 hours of play – AA, AQ, AQ and KQ. I won pots with both the AA and KQ and lost with the AQ. I then got blinded off for a while and got rivered for the last of my chips. My brother Mike lasted about an hour longer than me.

It was really cool to see so many well-known poker pros. We saw everyone from Chris “Jesus” Ferguson to Joe “The Elegance” Beavers. I learned a lot, had a great time, and look forward to playing again in the future, hopefully with better results.

• Re-read some poker books before my trip to Vegas for the WSOP
• Start planning a trip to Italy with my wife
• Weekly basketball and softball games to play in(perhaps some soccer too)
• Fix my computer (I’ll get into that mess in a future post)
• Go to more San Francisco Giants baseball games
• More blog posts

Sounds pretty good to me.