Real Estate, Buyouts, and Content Distribution
Hello CSP fans! Long time, no see. Tons of people have contacted me wondering where I’ve been since my tournament success this summer. I’ve been very busy taking steps to ensure that 2016 will be a big year for everyone. Today I’d like to address some of the things that have happened recently.
After the WSOP, I flew back to Fort Lauderdale to play the $2,500 Florida State Poker Championship. Four days and 50 hours of poker later, I chopped for $104,500. Playing several days in a row normally isn’t an issue for me; however, a long summer at the WSOP followed by multiple 14 hour days destroyed me. I’ve never felt so withered. It’s hard to differentiate between spades and clubs when you’re 17 Red Bulls deep.
Shortly after that, I bought a little two bed, two bath townhouse… in cash. See Chuck Berry impersonation here. To be clear, I’m not a baller. It was definitely a fixer upper. The contractors said it would take three weeks to remodel. The problem was that I was busy playing all the big events at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. I didn’t have time to be picking paint colors and buying furniture.
So I thought, “Who do I know that loves to spend money and watch 20 hours of HGTV a week?” There is only one person that has that kind of dedication. It didn’t take much to convince my mom to fly down to Florida and manage the interior design of my house. I handed her $15K and watched tasteful furniture magically appear in every room. She had a blast.
Making cash offers gave me a tremendous amount of bargaining power. I bought the house for 19% under asking price, spent $25K remodeling it, and got it appraised. Three weeks of remodeling increased the value of the property by 53%. I’ll be putting the house back on the market after tax season. In the meantime, I’ll be renting out the guest bedroom. Passive income is the best income.
The next step was becoming a Florida resident. Getting a new driver’s license, registering my car, finding new insurance, making a Declaration of Domicile, and changing the Articles of Organization for CSP was a HUGE time consuming mess. I hope I never have to go through that again. But it’ll all be worth it now that I don’t have to pay Minnesota’s insane state income tax (4th highest in the US).
After a couple deep runs at SHRPO, I decided to take a trip to LA for the Legends Series. Aaron Mermelstein (the guy who effortlessly wins every tournament he plays) convinced me to stay with him downtown at Met Lofts. It was awesome. We didn’t have much time to sleep between the WPT at the Bike, cash at Commerce, clubbing in Hollywood, hiking Runyon Canyon, and wandering around Venice Beach. My first time in LA couldn’t have been more fun.
After that, we decided to make a pit stop in Thackerville, Oklahoma on our way back to Florida. Winstar was hosting its annual $2,500 buy-in, $2,500,000 guaranteed event. It was one of the softest $2,500 events I’ve ever played. Min-cash grinders beware! It has an insanely top-heavy payout structure due to the $1,000,000 first place guarantee. Three bullets resulted in a 96th place finish for $4,500. Sigh.
Back to the Sunshine State. I took 15th in the $2,500 Main Event for $9,500 and then proceeded to brick all the events at WSOPc Palm Beach and HPT Daytona. Now I’m preparing for the $1,500 Isle Open. The tournament directors are going with the same structure that they used for the Florida State Poker Championship that I chopped in July. Super deep stacks and slow structures are perfect for my conservative/methodical style.
Beyond that I’ve been making moves to secure the rights to my poker training videos. RedChipPoker.com changed their arrangement with me resulting in the loss of roughly 75% of my revenue stream. I loved working with them. They’re great people, but I can’t work for free. This will be the last month my videos will be featured on their site.
On top of that, Todd Breyfogle has chosen to leave CSP to pursue his goal of creating a poker tour. I quickly bought his share of the company to maintain complete control of the content. The poker tour idea never really interested me and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get distracted from my goal of creating an individualized poker training site. It was a friendly split and I wish him the best of luck.
Now my plans are simple. No more talk of poker tours, gear, or Team Pros. I will be releasing one YouTube video, each Wednesday at noon, for all of 2016. The video will be my analysis of the most interesting hand history of the week. I will also be releasing one blog post detailing my poker adventures and general thoughts each Friday at noon. Check Shove Poker is my own personal training site. No more, no less. By consolidating my efforts to the things that matter most, I hope to continue to supply you guys with the highest quality content that I’m capable of producing.
In the meantime, I need to go find my passport. I’m headed to the Dominican Republic on Tuesday for Peter’s Poker Tour in Santo Domingo. After that, I’ll be taking an hour and a half bus ride to the Punta Cana Poker Classic. I’m sure it’ll be an interesting experience. Wish me luck. I’ll update you guys on Twitter as soon as I find wifi.
