Epically Excited

So I'm sitting around my mom's house after my de-herniation surgery and I'm scrolling through Twitter. I casually mention the Living Social deal for the Epic Poker League (@EpicPoker) and poker training by Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke) on Dec. 9th and 10th. I mention that it seems like a pretty good deal for two nights at the Palms, four hours total of poker training, entry into an Epic satellite, and various other little "gifts." Honestly, I'm just making conversation. My mom looks me dead in the eye and says, "You want an early Christmas/birthday present?"

Is that a real question?

I scoffed and said that plane tickets were probably outrageous, as the event was only a week away. Mom said that if I paid for the ticket, she'd buy me the package.

So of COURSE I checked. And of COURSE the tickets were still affordable. And of COURSE I'm going.

I've recently made a conscious effort and taken necessary steps to try to make poker my life. I want to make a living playing the game and I want to make a living writing about the game. Hell, I even have a part-time financial backer. This trip seems like the perfect storm of serendipity-ness. Serendipitiousness. Serendipiocity. You know what I mean.

Not only do I get world class poker training from Annie Duke, but Ali Nejad (@Ali_Nejad), Matt Glantz (@MattGlantz), and McLean Karr (@mcleankarr) are also part of the teaching roster.

I feel like that reads like a commercial, but I don't care. I'm fricken' excited.

In addition, numerous poker media types will be converging on the Palms that weekend for all of the Epic Poker festivities, and this is what I'm really looking forward to.

A while back I tweeted to a few writers and photogs and asked if they had any words of advice for someone wanting to break into the industry. The first response I got was from Jessica Welman (@jesswelman), Managing Editor of BLUFF Magazine and WPT reporter. In a phrase, her advice was "don't expect it to be easy, work hard, get lucky." Fair enough. A couple others tweeted their agreement with her, but added nothing themselves.

Then I got a response from Jennifer Newell (@writerjen), writer for Epic Poker, amongst other publications, and this one was much more in depth. She asked about what I'd done so far and what my specific interests are. She told me to keep blogging to build an audience and email poker websites and ask if they need part-time help. Bingo. She even did me a solid and followed me on Twitter and has re-tweeted a couple of my blog posts. Awesome.

So, needless to say, between all the poker lessons and poker playing and running around introducing myself (without seeming like a stalker) to poker media types, this weekend should be full of fun and excitement and has a lot of potential for changing my future.