Friday, March 28, 2008

F You pokerstars

I need to rant.

Basically 16 days ago I request to cash out 600 bucks from stars. Not a problem, always takes 3, maybe 4 business days in slow situations. Once it took five I think.

The 10th business day has come and gone after they saw allow up to 10 for this electronic check. They first feed me the "wait till april 1st because of easter back up" and then follow it up by saying it's out of their hands. My bank has no record of any such transaction occurring.

WTF? If I knew this was only the 600, I'd still be really pissed, but at least I'd be able to move on. I'm now afraid to cash out because I have no idea where the fuck my money is going.

This is on top of having to see a specialist about my back problems of a year now. Yesterday I headed to the doctor and he basically said I have a really severe lumbar strain, and he gave me a cortisone shot and a month's prescription for physical therapy. Just got back into the gym after this fiasco a month ago, and now I'm told I have to cut back again. Awesomeness.

The rest of the BS I probably shouldn't talk about on here, but lets just say this is quickly shaping up to be the worst day in a long time. Sorry for making you read that, this entry was a necessary rant....maybe next time it'll be more interesting? Or at least some better news......hopefully......hopefully....

Thursday, March 20, 2008

AMT signs with Deucescracked!

So, I'm really sorry for not updating this for so long, a lot has been going on. I'll try to keep this short because my brain is fried, lets see...

I think it started about a month ago when my back finally healed for the most part, and after 8 months out of the gym, gaining weight and increasing frustrations with...everything, I finally decided a small dose of pain, a haircut and a new attitude would help a bit. And so it has.

I went back to my freshman year look of short hair, a goatee and earrings, which I happen to like a lot. I added one to the left cartilage so I'm sporting 5 instead of the 4 of a few years ago. I've been back in a steady gym routine, and though not really "dieting", I have cut out some of the excessive crap from my diet, which has also helped. I'm sleeping slightly more normal hours, usually in bed at 130 or 2am on school nights instead of 430 or 5am...yeah, I know, I'm trying ok?!?

Anyways, around the time the work out routine started, my roommate Steve (Deucescracked coach tubasteve) had a conversation on aim with Deucescracked co-owner, Entity. My name was thrown into the mix, and Deucescracked, having been a cash game training site, started looking into building up their tournament infrastructure. I got in touch with DC owner Joe Tall, and more than a month later, I've submitted my first introduction video to them and I've been brought on to head up SnG's for their team and assist in building up the tournament realm for them. I'm very, very excited to work under Krantz's label and look forward to the opportunity of taking on more students and growing the coaching business. Deucescracked is a truly phenomenal site, having just set up two national offices on both the east and west coast, and they really are an organized, great group of people. I couldn't be happier with where I'm at right now with all of it. Here is my page if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.deucescracked.com/coaches/AMT

I'll be coaching SnG's of all types, and doing some work with larger field multi table tournaments as well. We have lots of ideas for video series' and coaching ideas so look for big moves in the future!

Beyond that, I'm going to try and buckle down with school. I've kind of resigned to my fate of not being able to get in playing volume as long as I'm a full time student, so my efforts will be largely geared toward coaching and not going insane in school, and also trying to get my affairs in order for summer classes, and some long term planning for my year off. I'm also planning on hitting the bar more, because I live right next to all of them and lets be honest, I don't drink enough.

Anyways, I hope to be updating this more often but I'm really lazy and a lot of other stuff is going on with the transition, school, approaching world travels, etc... so we'll see if that actually happens. Thanks for reading.


-Alex