6 Days to Vegas

I have become a prize whore. In case you haven't heard, I was picked as the winner of the BBT writing contest. I'm not sure which I'm more proud of -- the monthly leaderboard wins or the writing contest. The leaderboards required months of marriage bending dedication, while I whipped out the writing contest posts in three or four hours, but I do write for a living.

Regardless, I am very happy to win this prize since it saves me a good $500 on airfare and a few hundred I would have spent on a hotel room if I had stayed until the end of the WSOP. (Now, I imagine that FTP will put me up in a room a wee bit nicer than Binion's for July 9-16, though I don't know which one yet.)

I anticipate the work will be similar to what I did for Party Poker at Pokerblog.com (still running over there thanks to Tim Lavali, aka "The Poker Shrink") in 2006, with about a post a day of whatever interesting things I see. The pay is the same too at $1,000 a week (or for a week in this case). I will also be writing for Dan Michalski at Pokerati.com during the Series, but Dan is a slavedriver. Just kidding. Dan has been a big help to me for finding writing work during the WSOP so I am happy to pay him back by working with him this year.

The FTP blog is called "Poker From the Rail", but I still hope to blog for them from the main event felt. That will require some satellite mastery on my part to get into the big one. I'll play a mega or two if I get a nice tournament score early in my trip or have a few extra WSOP satellite chips in my pocket later in the trip.

This really will probably be my last hurrah in Vegas, as in lengthy trip for the WSOP, at least for awhile. When I get back from Vegas I will be hitting the job trail, and would probably continue to do poker writing work on the side. But for the next month I'll be enjoying the fruits of my poker labor.