Location: Domodossola, Italy

I woke up on my train to Italy to a knock on the door. Our small place there had little else but two tiny bunk beds, a window, and a cupboard. It was nothing like our trip into Switzerland, although I’m pretty sure it was just as expensive.

I figured it was the guy who ran that part of the train waking us up because we were at our destination. Buki had ear plugs in so I was the one who had to answer. I knocked back, like we had to do on the Swiss train, but the guy said, “could you please open the door.” I opened it.

A drug sniffing dog came into my room along with two guys in vests, reminding me of what FBI agents look like in movies. I was pretty sure they weren’t as powerful here but I was still scared shitless waking up to that. The dog started going through our room and not finding anything.

“Do you have marijuana?!” The guy yelled at me. I said no. Then, almost on cue, the dog started scratching my backpack, and looking back at the agent. Fuck.

“If you have something you better tell me right now.” I could tell by the way he asked it he already knew the answer. It was just a matter of if I handed it to them now or if they went through everything. I got up and opened my bag and handed him a small brown bag.

At that point they told me to come with them, that if I played nice they wouldn’t cuff me. I didn’t have time to put my shoes on so I walked across train tracks barefoot, carrying my things. They took me to some isolated room which apparently was the police station there and spent an hour going through everything I had. I didn’t even know what city I was in. I only really knew it was 2:00 AM, and I was somewhere in Italy.

I don’t know why but after they started going through my things I stopped being worried. They couldn’t put me in jail for too long with my whopping 7.8 grams. I could pay a fine. I was just pissed off about being woken up at 2:00 AM by fucking drug dogs.

After an hour of going through my things and yelling at me they started filing a report on another French guy who had been caught with weed, on some other train. My train at some point pulled off, setting my $200.00 ticket on fire, separating me from my friend Buki who somehow slept through all of this, and stranding me in a city I still didn’t know the name of. That’s if I didn’t go to jail.

The French guy signed some papers though and they let him out the door. Goody.

They let me stand around for another half hour before finally grabbing a bunch of papers in Italian and asking me to sign. I asked what they said and that started another shit storm, but I wasn’t signing anything till someone told me what the fuck it said. Finally, a guy looking really bored, not like he had any reason to lie, who seemed to be in control of everything said, “look…you sign…no problem…you can go. It says…we found 7.8 grams of marijuana…took away. Finished” If I hadn’t seen the French guy walk out earlier I probably would’ve still not signed but I still had the delusion that I might be able to get back on my train at this point, so I signed, and I left.

They didn’t even look at Buki. The dog identified my bag and they pulled me out. He said it himself, they didn’t even look at him because of his Japanese passport. I hadn’t woken up to those dogs going to any other place. I’m 21, I’m American, I got checked.

That and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone saw my eyes on the way into the train.

I’ve seen ecstasy handed out like free candy in Italian clubs, often to 14-year-olds whose brains are still developing. I’ve seen cocaine. They apparently test heroin on random people outside of Naples in broad daylight. I’ve seen huge brawls, and I’ve heard about how a friend of mine and his friends nearly got stabbed to death in a bar fight over nothing, a fight he didn’t start. Want to know the first arrest I’ve heard of or seen out of all these incidents? That’s right, me. They let the guy off who stabbed my friend in front of 10 others, but good job boys, way to call the fucking task force on my 7.8 grams of a plant that if I light on fire and inhale will cause me to watch Spongebob and eat Three Muskateers, thank fucking Christ I’m off the streets.

Seriously, the cops were pretty polite to me, they just yelled a lot, and I got off with less than a slap to the wrist, but it still seems stupid to me, the above paragraph. The absurdity.

Why is marijuana illegal? Why is my habit, and one of millions of other law-abiding, tax paying citizens, illegal, in practically every country around the world? I am happy I got off with a warning but seriously I shouldn’t be. Alcohol drinkers cause car accidents, and thus cause deaths. A number of battered women report the abusive male is almost always drinking when he hits her. You can get alcohol poisoning and die, but you can’t overdose on marijuana.

I’m not even that super passionate about weed. I smoke when it’s around me and enjoy it, but I can go without it. I just have a day of traveling ahead of me and I’m annoyed.

Still, whatever, I could of being actually being convicted of something or given a huge fine, and I knowingly broke the law so I can’t bitch.

I got out of the police station-place and just went into this random city looking for a hotel, a city I would later find out was Domodossola. I was exhausted, I only slept an hour on the train, and then I couldn’t find anything for an hour, then when I did find a hotel the power was out in my room, then when I got internet I saw my wire transfer to my bank got delayed, meaning my bank account is overdrawn. That was money for my family and me, so not super cool. Chase bank just sees fit to spend 5 days doing nothing with every wire transfer I send them now.

I’m not even sure I got bought into IPT: Venice, the initial reason for this trip through Europe. Stars changed the W$ price at the last second it seemed to me, so I had to just send W$ to my account to pay for it. All of this just amped up my stress.

Fortunately, the random hotel I found had air conditioning, and internet so I could start catching up on all this shit. Then I slept like a baby with the air conditioning. I woke up late, past the check out time, and no one seemed to care. Played Tupac while I woke up, and then Eminem. Got me actually moving around.

I just want to get off at this stop, sometimes. Any stop. The next stop I come to. Stressa, would be the city name, if I got off now. Just disappear into one of these small cities I always pass through, become a teacher or something. Learn their language and never speak English again. Be a normal person. Poker life is fun but poker life is distant.

Traveling with Buki has been fun, and honestly life on the road is pretty exciting, but I’m feeling kind of burned out right now. I’m ready to settle down a bit. This trip was kind of like a last hurrah in Europe, since I’d never visited Amsterdam and Buki had never been to Europe I was eager to go. I’m going to enjoy my time left in Malta then probably bail to some place more permanently.

There’s a certain romance to it, learning a new language every week, trying to meet a local girl in the few days you have, and oh yeah…competing for millions of dollars. I’m just tired of only eating at shitty diners and corner stops, of people not understanding me when I talk, reaching for a word in the back of my head which I haven’t used in a year, of being tired and never catching a good night’s sleep, never being up to date with my friends, of living in hotels and other people’s houses. I get why bands stop touring now. The hedonism is beautiful, intoxicating. Being nothing in anyone’s world isn’t.

I still love it, of course, and always will, but I have not known the word “moderation” in a long time.

But yeah, traveling with Buki has been a blast. Up in Interlaken the last day before we left we went up to that “Top of Europe” thing. Essentially you get a day pass to use any train up there, and you go up into the Swiss mountains and walk around these tiny towns that look like something out of the 1850’s, and just enjoy the view of the mountains. Oh and if you ever get tired of walking between cities you just take the old train that looks like something out of Thomas The Tank Engine or the Arctic Express. That was the name of it right, the children’s book they turned into a CGI movie with Tom Hanks? It looked like something out of a Disney movie, again, and I couldn’t believe places like that existed.

It was just green grass, old cottages, and dirt roads. We stopped to chill on this one hillside, and it was just hard to believe we were enjoying the kind of views we were getting. I took so many pictures.

Of course, hitting the pipe up in the mountains was pretty crazy/cool. I never thought I’d see the day at 21 I’d just smoke the best weed on earth walking through the alps, shacking up wherever my friend and I ended up.

The actual top of the world thing took forever to get to. When we got there there was this huge observatory where you could walk on the snow and take a picture next to the Swiss flag, looking over the whole world. Buki took it a step further and did a one-handed headstand next to the flag, with a bunch of people looking on, who were gasping. I got the picture, trying to frame it up against the mountains, the sunlight. I lost my sunglasses earlier in the day though (ugh) and my eyes were just about bleeding with the reflection of the summer sun off of tons and tons of snow.

The last few days have been really fun, I’ve just been exhausted. It’s clear I’m not in as good of shape as I was before last year’s EPT season. I have money now I just have to chill and get things done.

Of course, Buki and I have walked at least 6 miles every day for the last week. And I did get woken up by Italian drug agents and drug dogs. So the fact I’m just tired as I roll into Venice feels like a blessing. I’ll take care of all the problems, like I always do.

Man, I was just freaking there for a bit. Daniel got online after I finally found a hotel and I was just so pissed, reading about my overdrafts, kicked out of my train, and I was just pissed off ranting to him, the poor fucker. Now it all seems so stupid. I’m drinking a coffee, enjoying the view of the Italian countryside, and lazily blogging while a train whisks me away to Venice. I didn’t get arrested. I’ve seen so much of the world.

I just watch these guys in front of me. They’re so scared to talk to the girls already sitting next to them. They check their tickets constantly, as if the train will just take another route magically. I’m sure wherever they’re going is a trip their English school put together. I wonder how many trips they’ve done on their own.

I go back to Seattle and so many people I used to know are still doing the same shit. They’re working some shit job their friend or parents threw at them two years ago. They’re getting the degree their parents our guidance counselor told them would be good. The only meet people in their select social circle. They get caught up in rumors, who has a better car, who threw a better party.

Fuck it, I’d rather be getting arrested by Italian cops, at least I learn something about myself. Every dumb little misadventure I’ve had on the road has taught me something about myself, and the big lesson overriding everything is that I can handle anything.

You learn so much about yourself and the people around you, with every time I’ve listened to some guy talk at a bar about his situation, for every sight I’ve seen, for every one night stand, for every argument in another language, for every fight, for every random city I didn’t know existed till I spent a night there, for that featured table that will be broadcast across all of Europe, to grinding 100 NL by yourself at nights…I’ve learned more. I am still up and down emotionally but I get everything done I need to get done, and I trust myself and view myself much more positively than before. My emotional swings are not as severe.

The other thing I’ve learned is that deep down people have the same problems everywhere, and most people are good if you give them a chance.

I have to figure out my transfer here at Milan now. Hopefully I can find Buki.

I am currently sitting in an internet cafe near central Nairobi. It has been one week since I’ve arrived now, and it has not been without incident. I have a couple hours to kill today because I’m supposed to go to a bank in the city to retrieve the credit-debit card an ATM at the mall ate yesterday. The volunteer program I’ve gone through had required their final payment and their online processor didn’t except either of my otherwise fully functional credit cards for some inexplicable reason (probably because of my lateness, which was my fault) so I was told I needed to get cash or would have to leave the program. I went to the ATM to get out 51,000 Kenyan shillings (about ~650 USD) and after getting 20,000 out and attempting a number of other transactions the machine elected to eat my card and give me a slip of paper to present to the bank to retrieve it. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

If you - like me - feel that you’re a fairly accomplished poker player, who knows his/her own game very well, but also recognizes his/her own limitations, I think you’ll be able to recognize one of the following sentiments, after you’ve played a session:

- Damn, that was just one beat after the other.
- Wow, variance really bitch-slapped me today.
- I guess I’m happy he called me with Q9 offsuit, but still hard to believe.
- Phew, need a break after that. One more suckout and I would’ve started to tilt.

…or something along those lines! The point here is that you’re the sort of player who recognizes how ridiculously small the edges that we chase sometimes are - thusly also resulting in extreme swings. You’ve come to accept this fact and still choose to play poker, because you’re certain that in the long run you’ll come out on top.

That’s all good. But HOW SURE are you that it’s all variance after a session? [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Location: En Route To Interlaken, Switzerland

Another train.

This time we’re within Switzerland, headed to the city of Interlaken. We spent our first day out of Amsterdam in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is like being in a fucking Christmas card. I couldn’t figure out what Switzerland did so well, everything was clean and under control. Nobody jaywalked. Nobody littered. The people were all casually going about their day, more than nice to you every time you asked them for help.

It seemed like something out of Pleasantville till we took a few roads down to lower levels. Yes, levels, like there are actual levels too the city since they are against mountains. There we saw streets torn apart, graffiti. It’s as if the whole town threw every minority working there in that neighberhood. We heard an Indian family screaming at the top of their lungs, when we walked through the slums. Children crying and things breaking.

Through it all though, art. The city had some of the most expansive landscapes I’ve ever seen done with graffiti. Buki and I just chilled there, as we walked through the city.

We saw a number of parks that were incredibly picture-esque. We had nothing but amazing dining experiences, since we ate at better restaurants. It was just so interesting to see how the country was doing with immigration, where people worked, what attitudes were apparent in which part of town.

Eden turned out to be at the university, where everybody was just laying on the grass, enjoying the sun and the view of a crystal clear blue lake in the mountains of Switzerland. People just hang out freely, all different races and ages. We saw people just freely smoking a joint, playing music, being barely clothed…no one really cared. The Swiss girls are unbelievably hot too.

Today we’re going up some mountain…trolley, thing? Cart? It goes up the mountain sideways and apparently it was something Buki’s grandfather did before he passed away, so Buki’s always wanted to do it.

On the way we see old Swiss castles, buildings. Long waterfalls, giant mountains. We also see the scars of industrialization. Villages abandoned due to a mine running out. Rampant graffiti. Perfect small buildings, perfect boxes, far, forever, with perfect roads.

We’re lost now. We don’t recognize the names of the cities. We don’t know where we’re going, or where we’re staying tonight. We don’t know what we’re going to do tomorrow. The only thing I know for sure is I have to be in Venice for the Italian Poker Tour in four days.

Poker is fun again. Having 100% of myself and pieces of others makes the game far more exciting. I want to run my accounts up to keep paying for this life.

Location: En Route To Lausanne, Switzerland

Blur. Everything in Amsterdam comes back as a blur…of course.

I’m on my way to Lausanne, Switzerland right now. Buki and I took an overnight train last night from Amsterdam. It was probably one of the most pleasant traveling experiences I’ve ever had. Nobody harassed me at any point with any of that pesky “security” stuff. I was given a small bottle of sparkling wine upon entering and had the nicest Swiss stewardess in the world pretty much waiting on us. We got a ton of munchies to complement my space cake high and fell asleep watching the countryside pass by our windows while The Office reruns played on Buki’s laptop.

I don’t really recall most of my trip to Amsterdam in any coherent order, and my sense of time turned into sections simply labeled as “when I was high” and “when I was really high” and finally “when I was so fucking high I had no idea what was going on and I’m pretty sure I had a lengthy dialogue with a duck.”

Of course, I started with that terrible section known as “not high at all.”

I showed up in Amsterdam about five hours before Buki came into town. I booked the hotel last minute. It was weird, it was just a tall and narrow Dutch house. The front desk to the hotel was just the owner’s apartment, left open for all to see. The guy was really nice to me, and gave me a map with all the information I needed.

I asked him at one point if the hotel website charged the card. He showed me a piece of paper and nodded. I asked for him to let Buki in later.

I went out and walked the complete wrong direction, and found what turned out to be the worst coffee shop I went to the entire time. It was still great, however. I just bought some pre-rolled joints and bullshitted with some Spanish girls, and had my coffee. I wanted to go grab my laptop and write there. I just felt so relaxed, in my groove, at my speed. This is way more me than hanging out at noisy ass brutish pubs.

I walked further into the city and found some rastafarian joint that was sick. A couple Indian guys owned it who were mad cool, hooked me up with some smooth hash. I got hungry then and had the bright idea to try a space cake.

I go up to the guy. “Yo how potent are these space cakes?”

“The best man. In thiirdy minutes you feel…” his head falls back with his eyes going into the back of his head, “rEEEAAAAL goood man.”

“Shit, I can’t turn that down.” So I took the space cake, which later would land me on the moon. Tripping balls I walked around Amsterdam, soaking in the sights. It’s just this hippie city, where small streets wind and turn through tall Dutch buildings that have been there for centuries. Canals intertwine, with small boats slowly drifting down them.

I met up with Buki back at the hotel, then had the wonderful experience of having a Dutch hotel owner scream at me “don’t try and fuck me!” Apparently earlier when I went “did expedia charge my credit card?” and he pointed at a paper and nodded he didn’t have a fucking clue as to what he said. He only could understand credit card, so he pointed at a sheet of paper saying I hadn’t paid. Then I started going on about my friend Buki was coming later, could you let him in? He thought I was saying “wait till Buki gets here to get paid.”

So then we came home and his wife asked if we paid and I said, “yeah,” assuming my card had been charged. The guy then called me in my room and asked me to come downstairs to talk to him, saying there was a problem with the credit card. I was annoyed, and grabbed my computer with the receipt.

He just started screaming at me the second down there, “don’t try and fuck me!” I, of course, couldn’t figure any of this out because in my mind I already paid the guy. Eventually, after we’d established that he didn’t like me (he pointed this out repeatedly), and that I was a lying stoner, we went back upstairs to get the money for the hotel…and I figured out what happened.

Pissed off a bit we left that hotel the next day and stayed in this nice hotel a taxi driver found for us. We got the rooms for really cheap, and then out of no where Mrbigqueso just showed up in Amsterdam for the weekend, so he came out with us on one of the days as we toured the city.

We got to see a bunch of the historical landmarks, hang out in a bunch of cool smokeshops, and just chill in a different world for a while. I got to try so many different types of weed. It was paradise.

I could see myself chilling here for a couple of months, having a cappuccino in the morning with two joints, writing for four or five hours. I dig the mixture of races in the smokeshops, the different cultures. Of course, love the stoner chicks. Freakier than the drunk girls. I love the music, the atmosphere.

I knew I’d dig Amsterdam. Probably why I told myself not to come. Amsterdam is not the kind of city you want to be in when your bankroll is at, “not enough to make my career work but just enough to blow on a bad weekend.”

I went to the Marijuana Museum, which was fascinating. Seeing how the Japanese and Ottoman empire interpreted canibis, reading medical profiles of the drug from 1850’s American medical journals, by the Greeks, reading the different laws in different countries.

The only real parts I didn’t like about Amsterdam was when we saw a taxi driver we used more than once essentially get gouged of 35 euros. The police said he could come down to the station and pay 165 euros or just pay them 35 euros in cash now, which had to be “bribe me now or I throw the book at you”. He scrapes together the 35 euros, then tells us they fuck with him all the time because he’s Turkish. He had been a great driver every time we’d used him, he was always helpful, and always charged a fair price. It’s sad to me people are granted their citizenship in a country but aren’t allowed to live by the other people

At some point Buki and I got the idea to go to Switzerland so we went and booked the overnight train.

Which by the way, did I mention, had a shower on it? With hot water? So much better than an airplane.

Alright, so I basically was able to spend as much time in London as possible without the trip being a financial success.

As stated in my previous entry, I got 2nd in my heat in the Poker Million which put me through to a turbo consolation round against other 2nd place finishers where the winner went on with the winners of other heats.

I changed my flights and played the Unibet Poker Open. I was expecting the field to be a lot like WPT Venice since the vast majority of the players would be online qualifiers. Unfortunately, Unibet isn’t on Ongame(not sure why I thought that) but is actually on Prima, so the field was filled with crazy-euro-swedes. The structure was to my knowledge the exact same as the old EPT structure but played more levels per day and had a field of only 270 so they could run it in 3 days rather than 4. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

First and foremost, my condolences.

My girlfriend’s family lost a loved one this morning (her grandpa), just minutes ago, to cancer. Coming from someone who’s gone through the exact same thing, I obviously know how tough this is and how dehabilitating the disease can be in its final days. There can’t be anything more difficult than watching a member of your family go through something like that, and obviously I wish her and her family nothing but the best in this worst of times. RIP.

"Perspective" is a somewhat abstract concept with a very clear effect. The shitty part about it is that for most of us, especially those more privileged, it is something that only takes the kind of shape it should immediately after an unfortunate or devastating event. Then, after some time, it fades out again, until some other terrible circumstance has to occur to bring it back around.

In this line of work, it’s very easy to lose perspective - money flowing in and out, incredible luck turning to awful luck in an instant, and so on. Sometimes all you can remember is the last hand, the last session, and you lose sight of the big picture - the big picture both of your poker career, and of life as a whole.

Nothing hits home quite like the death of someone close to you. It is one of few events in life where everything else you have on your plate is immediately put aside, and nothing else really feels important. It is also a time of remembrance - remembrance of his or her life, and the remembrance of what’s really important in this world.

Opening this blog to make this post, I came across my past few entries. I wasn’t too bad, but I guess it takes a moment like this to realize my own recent loss of perspective, in multiple ways. First, my recent running bad in poker has made me forget how far above expectation I’ve run overall in my poker career, and all of the incredible things I’ve already had the privilege of accomplishing and experiencing because of it. Second, and far more importantly, I am again made aware of the fact that the events of "running bad" in poker are literally nothing compared to the events of "running bad" in life. The times that I got upset after a bad beat or a bad session seem trivial and almost stupid in moments like this.

Some people say that poker players need to remember how lucky they are to "sit on their ass and make a career out of playing a game." In some ways, that is definitely true. In my opinion, though, what they really need to remember is that nothing that happens at a poker table, both positive and negative, will ever come close to outweighing the crucial occurances that happen away from it. All that really matters in this world are your family, your friends, and your health. Being blessed enough to have an abundance of all three, I should really never complain, let alone because of a bad river card.

So, my regaining of perspective tells me this: for every "bad beat" I take, instead of complaining, I should remember these kinds of moments; moments that help me realize that in the big picture, bubbling the final table of the Main Event on a 1-outer could never change how lucky I truly am.

-AJK