Coming up: Macau Poker Cup $30,000 Highroller

Tomorrow I'll be traveling to Macau and I'll be on a mission. The mission is the win the Macau Poker Cup Highroller event for the third time. The buy-in is $30,000 this time and it's a vanilla multi-table-tournament. By my rough guess we should see 60-70 runners, putting together a prize pool of around two million HKD. Top cheese should be around 700k-800k. But it's less about the money than about defending titles. I'll for sure bring my best game to the table. Gogogogogogogogo!

Btw, go Mavs go.

Peter Eastgate's Comeback Statement

This was sent to me from Pokerstars as a press release. After reading it, I gotta say that Eastgate is quite a brilliant man. (I'm posting the original transcript here since I assume as a press release this is public info anyways.)

"Sometimes in life a person can feel lost and wake up one morning not recognizing who he is. Last summer that was how I felt. Prior to winning the WSOP in 2008, my life was very much a good solid routine of playing online poker and hanging out with my friends and family. Winning the WSOP changed that. I relocated to London and started a new life, the life of a high profile poker pro. For almost 2 years I was in a constant spotlight, travelling from poker tournament to poker tournament, doing thousands of interviews and never had a chance to catch my breath. In the whirlwind that followed winning the WSOP I lost track of the most importing thing in my life, myself.

Last summer I decided that I wanted to stop playing poker and catch my breath and find out who I am and what I want to do with my life. Over the last 8 months I have had a chance to reconnect with my friends and most important, my family. I have spent quality time with my family and really had an opportunity to figure out who I am and what I want to do with the rest of my life. When there is no financial pressure it can sometimes be hard to get motivated to move forward as a person.

I truly enjoy playing poker. I love the competitive element and the mental challenges of tournament poker. I feel it is important to constantly grow as a person and for a while I didn’t feel I was moving in the right direction. Having had time to think about my life and future I feel I have figured out how I can combine playing poker with a healthy life outside of poker.

I do not consider this a comeback, as I always knew there was a good chance I would play poker again. During my hiatus from poker, PokerStars have been very supportive. Therefore, I am pleased that I will start out with playing two events where I will be sponsored by PokerStars. First, I will be playing the PokerStars.com EPT Copenhagen which of course means a lot to me, since it is on my home ground. Then I will play the NBC Heads Up Championship. I am fortunate that PokerStars have the best online tournaments, so I have an opportunity to get back in tournament shape.

There have been some questions about the sale of my WSOP bracelet. I was not trying to devaluate the WSOP name. It was not sold to make any kind of statement. It was sold to raise money for UNICEF and I am very proud and thankful that the sale raised £100,000 to UNICEF."

- Peter Eastgate

FTOPS Event 7: $216 HORSE

I played reasonably well in this one.

I Barely missed the money. (Busted 174th out of 903, money was at 112 places.)

Made some mistakes to go from $4000 starting stack to $2500.

Moved up to $6500 in Razz thru two hands.

Moved up to high point of $18000 thru Stud and Stud8.

Made more mistakes in Hold'em.

Somehow hit a Royal Flush in Stud8 to win half the pot.

Busted in Hold'em with AQ against QJ.

Oh well.