The "March" to Los Angeles

Victor Ramdin Blog March 2011

It’s always a sad day when vacation comes to an end. For a lot of poker players, vacation is a lot like their real lives. But for me, I do spend a lot of time managing my other businesses outside of poker, so I was really desperate for a vacation, as well as some much needed quality time with the wife and kids. But, as fate would tend to have it, it’s hard to hide from poker for long – especially when there’s an internet connection.

Yes, even at a beautiful resort in Mexico (complete with its own water park), I could not escape poker. I had a great time with my children, but I also happened to run into a couple of colleagues of mine – fellow professional poker players from Canada. We had some good times as well, and I figured on good turned deserved another as I did play just the tiniest bit of online poker while on vacation. Oops! Sorry! I just can’t help myself!

I didn’t make too much noise online while I was in Mexico, but I did have a pretty good month online, I’d say. I’ve been playing a lot of the nightly’s as well as the $109 MTT’s, and I’ve won four tournaments in the last month or so. I won a nightly for $18k (no chop, thank you!), a $33 buy-in for $7k, a $27.50 buy-in for $5k, and I even won a $5.50 buy-in for $4k. I play at all the levels, so you should definitely come join in sometimes.

I’m still waiting for that HUGE online score for the year, but I’m really hoping it will come this Sunday, as PokerStars is celebrating its 5th Year Anniversary of the Sunday Million by having a $5 million guaranteed prize pool with at least $1 million for first place. I predict that first place will end up paying something more like $1.5 million, but I guess I’ll worry about that when I get to the final table. If not then, I guess I’ll save all my rungood to take down a couple of SCOOP events coming up…

On the live scene, I’m planning on playing a few more WSOP Circuit Events in the next few months. This year the WSOP is having a 100-player $1 million freeroll at the start of the World Series, and the entries are based on WSOP Circuit finishes. The six final players from each of 9 final tables all automatically get a seat, but the only 44 seats are being given away to the highest points earners. If they held the tournament today, I’d be a lock, but I’m going to play a few more events just to make sure they lock up my seat.

At this exact moment, I’m currently on my way to Las Vegas to get my taxes done, but the next day, I’ll be driving to Los Angeles for the NAPT at the Bike. I’ll be playing in both the Main Event (at only $5k buy-in, I think it’s got some great value) as well as the BSO. You know, as I was writing this, it only just now dawned on me that BSO stands for Bounty Shoot-Out. Guess that was pretty obvious. Anyways, maybe now that I know what it stands for, I can finally take one down.

Look for me in the coverage (on Live at the Bike) and we’ll see you from Los Angeles!