Congratulations

Thanks for all the love guys, has been a great time in my life.



October

Following September, the plan was to continue grinding hard into the birth. 19 days into the month and I've played 5 hours of poker. I did some errands, but the majority of it was being social...went out to a wedding to see old college friends, caught up with friends from highschool...It was a good time.

I'm the first one of my close friends back home with kids so I think I new this was the time to prioritize spending time with them as the flexibility was going to be a lot different going forward.


Birth

With our due date sitting at October 21st and set up for a natural birth there was mostly just time waiting. My family is a bunch of degenerates so they asked me to set up a gambling pool to bet on the birth of my child...which I of course obliged

We went to the OB for the weekly checkup on the 7th and after checking Jaz, the doctor basically told us anything can happen but it's unlikely to happen for another week.

Lo and Behold, at 4:55 AM on the 12th we get a call from my cousin that her water broke and she was going into labor.

First thoughts were pretty much "Oh ****, this is happening"

Which is kinda funny since during the whole pregnancy the whole situation felt abstract, like I knew a baby was coming but it didn't feel REAL until my cousin was in labor.

Anyway, we get to my cousins at 7AM, drive to her doctors at 8AM, and she's about 2cm's so not ready for admittance.

The hospital we were going into was in Morristown (pretty active city in NJ, lots to do) so we went to get coffee.

Anyway, contractions finally get going enough that we're admitted at 5pm and she's now at 3cm (Me as a guy figuring out Labor is long).

Due to COVID regulations, only one person is allowed with Jaz during the labor. When it was time for delivery they would bring me and my cousins husband in for the delivery from a nearby waiting room.

Fast forward to 9:40 pm, after a few hours of shooting the **** with Joel (cousins husband) we find she's 6 cms.

Ok great, probably have a few hours before the birth. I go to the vending machine w Joel, leaving my phone in the waiting room.

I get back to the waiting room, and my wife rips through right in.

"WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING, SHES GOING NOW"

Now for those of you who have spouses, I'm sure they all have a look that you desperately try to avoid, and this was Victoria's.

End up sprinting down the hospital halls to get to the room.

My hearts beating a million miles a minute, pretty much when you're bluffing all in at your biggest stake times 10.

We get in at 9:45pm and 4 mins later my daughter was born.

I'm in shock and awe, but while I'm standing still the doctor yells at me to do my job and take pictures lol.

I got the ok from both wife and cousin to post so here we go.




I think this is my favorite picture of the birth. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think this fits the bill.

It has been such an emotional journey, especially from my wife and I think you can see the emotions pouring out here. That + the support from Jaz and Joel has been top notch. The whole surrogacy journey has been exhausting and hard but man did the end justify the mean. This whole process has been special.

Here's a few other pics since the birth.








Dad Life

I'm probably getting repetitive, but still feels surreal to think of myself as a father. A lot of my day to day life has changed, but I'm hoping to kind of fall into a routine soon as far as my day to day life.

As far as my daughter, I'm already completely enamored with her; they say sometimes it takes awhile but already she has me wrapped around my finger.

Basically, it's been awesome.


Poker

For a poker blog, there hasn't been too much talk about poker, right? Surrogacy has taken such a big part of my life, poker kind of fell a bit as far as priorities in my life.

The reality is now I have a family and I'm the only source of income, so being a dad is really not going to slow me down in this facet.

I feel like I'm a bonafide top 5 player in the country in both 6 max/HU and can still push my game way further.

I have a ton of self confidence (^clearly) but its important I don't push that line into arrogance.

Really, the end goal for my career is to set up my family with complete financial freedom and I have an opportunity to do that.

I have a great network and I've shown a total willingness to invest in my game. In fact, I recently passed over $100,000 spent on coaching/software/self-improvement etc. That's a # I'm just as proud of in relation to my actual profit.

Blog going forward

When I started this blog, the goal was to be an endboss. I don't really consider myself an endboss in the grand scheme of things as I still make tons of mistakes every day, but I am one of the best players in the US climate so I feel like it's a goal accomplished there.

Obviously, my goals now are also a lot different now than when I started. I also don't plan on ending this blog.

This blog has been pretty much a journal of my career, and I'd like to keep it going til I end my career. That being said, I'm not going to force any updates. It could be 2 days from now; it could be 6 months from now.


AMA

I'm spending some time w family next 2 days so will be mostly off the tables. If anyone has any questions about anything poker related/my career/ etc go ahead. I have time to answer

As always good luck at the tables.

Great update and a big congratulations to you and your family.

I've played a bit of HU whenever I get the chance and Im pretty confident I could easily be the KOTH of my regulated site if I put in the work. Any advice for a 6 max player on how best to improve/study HU?

Thanks appreciate it.

Imo there’s very little good HU content out there. It’s a boring answer, but solver work.

There are some pretty big strategic differences 6m v HU. In my experience, alot of regs who play strictly 6m and jump into HU are going to make some fairly large mistakes

Who have your coaches been throughout that $100k spent?

Congrats man. Awesome to see you being a new father!

Ive always been curious since you are one of the elites of America. In terms of HUNL game, what do you think differentiates you from say a buttonclicker or stefan. Is it theory or more exploitation.And do you think solver work is the end goal to reach hunl elite? I belong to russian community, and stefann made a post about berrisweet hunl and said its nothing like solver but instead pure exploitation. He still ranks him top 3 in the world. what are your thoughts on this comment

late to the party, congrats, way to time it around wsop

The main notables are

1.) MMA through BTS (worked with him a little over a year)
2.) Clanty (worked w him since Aug 2020, was my intro in HU)
3.) Elliot Roe (Little over a year)

I’ve worked w others but on a much smaller time frame

This is a great question that’s a bit hard to answer.

I’ve never gotten any reps against a world class HU player (Top 10 imo); so I think the first variable is competition. These guys are playing against other top 10-20 players on a consistent basis. Additionally, it’s a lot more competitive in ROW holding tables than my experience in US.

So as far as the difference between them and me is probably a mix of both. It’s a lot of small stuff that adds up, as players at this level really not having leaks that are huge.

Berri/Stefan are special players. Just ultra, ultra talented. I’ve seen too many hands where he makes insane calls and just happens to be right far too often to question him

I consider Berri more a phenom type. 99.9% of the population can’t be word class in this format w/o solver work imo.

Haha right, thankfully not missing it too much

That last picture is so cute!

Super intense/awesome shot from the hospital

in & gl

congrats on the baby! the wsop regs appreciate your hiatus

there hasnt been much action above 2 5 lately anyway

Congrats on the new baby. The smiles in all those pictures are wonderful, really show the joy of a new family.

I have a HU range construction question. If you are in BB and are planning to play a hand like Q6o, A2o, or 93s - hands that have low SDV/low EQ/low EV yet are pretty much defended 100% of time either through calls or 3bets. When you start 3betting a lot of these speculative hands, whats your approach post flop? For me these hands are incongruous with a stronger polar range and infrequently have viable equity. Use them as bluff catchers and to pull in additional bluffing combos when relevant?

My approach postflop in these scenarios is pretty simple. If it's a texture that isn't a range bet than, than I estimate a general frequency for my range (for example 50%) and based on my hand's quality and interaction with the board bet more or less than that.

Not sure if that answers your question but that's the first immediate thought process

Thanks appreciate it they had a photographer at the hospital so we said why not.

Yeah Highstakes action has been lacking quite a bit less than last year, unsurprisingly.

Baby is two weeks old. Most difficult thing is going to be falling back into my routine. And getting enough sleep. Haven't forced any volume as some days have been getting 2-3 hours (she's a night owl); but it's pretty wild the changes I've seen from her in two weeks

After following along on the entire surrogacy journey, I'm very happy to see your Daughter home and healthy! Congratulations!!

Late to the party, but thank you for this! Being a father has easily been the most fulfilling part of my life!

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Hope everyone had a good holiday. It was a rough holiday season as both me and my wife got hit with the flu (possibly COVID; tested negative on rapid but PCR are in lab and ridiculously backed up due to how many cases of omnicron in this part of the country). Worst part of this was ofc having a 2 month old to take care of and try not to get sick. Thankfully, my amazing mother and MIL came and stayed over to watch so we could keep our distance.

On the poker front, tough to miss holiday games, but physically just in no shape to play.


Will do a 2021 recap sometime in mid January, as I have a lot on my mind I want to share.

Hope everyone has a good last week of the year and onto 2022!

As we can see, there was no update in January; I have hopes that I can still recap 21' and give a full breakthrough of all the crazy, crazy things that have happened to me the past 6 months.

But for now, a quick update.

My daughter Isabella was born last October and since then I've really really loved being her dad. I am incredibly proud of my poker career, but nothing has me feel as fulfilled as being a Dad. In the meantime, we had matched with another surrogate with plans for transfer that would come through in late November.

As luck would have it, it worked again and lightning struck twice. For the second straight surrogacy we found out there were multiples. This time identical twin boys.


We are now 21 weeks in and thankfully everythings looked great, they are expected in July but with premature birth likely June is possible.

All in All, it's extremely exciting and I'm really excited to grow the family... but I'd be lying if I wasn't a little scared shitless!


This news has changed up my poker trajectory as well. We sold our house and our moving out this Friday where I'll be staying with my parents for 2 months. If you told me 5 years ago that I'd still be living in my parents basement I'd assume my life turned for the worst but it's actually a big help! Thanks mom and dad

We are hopefully closing on our new home in May, it's a beautiful property and I really can see myself staying there the next 20-30 years, but between this + having to buy a new car + new furniture, there's a very real possibility I may have to move down.

That's a possibility I've come to terms with and it may just take me awhile to get the roll back where it was, and that's ok! Life feels a bit like an oxymoron; where I've never felt more stressed but also never been more happier either.

As far as poker, my results have been really poor but my process has never been better so not really worried about that at the moment.

Hopefully in the future, I can have a post summing everything up in a more fleshed out way.

grats brother you’re an inspiration

ooo nice I'll count you in as a party of 5 at City Bistro this year!

Congrats on the family dude, I'm sure you're doing a great job as a dad. Whenever I'm struggling I think about you and all the other parents who play poker for a living. Puts things in perspective on how little I'm actually dealing with in the grand scheme of things. Say hi to Victoria for me!

Congrats!

Very late on this but I appreciate it; still an avid reader of your blog and one day gonna take you up on chess lessons

Appreciate the support and absolutely in for city bistro

Thanks man!


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I am planning on updating this blog a bit more once my twin boys are born (due in only 16 days now which is hard to believe)

Been a pretty paradoxical (if this is even a word) year; have hit some major life goals (having a kid is really just super awesome and buying a dream house) while on the other side of the coin it's been a really tough year of poker, doing much worse than even my conservative estimates going into this year. Despite being a pro for 6+ years now, it showed a little naivety on my end.

Other notable news: I separated from BTS in a mutual understanding; no bad blood but where I was at in poker + being a dad, flexibility became more appealing than anything. As a result, I ended up taking on 2 students in pretty much a mentorship role.

I'll dive more into that in a fleshed out recap.


TLDR: Been hectic year, will update more going forward, life is good, poker is hard sometimes

GL to everyone at the tables as always

Can sympathize with the new dad run bad. But hey, at least we have a constant reminder/encouragement to chip away and grind.

Keep the updates coming, and best to you and your (growing) family! <3

please do!


congrats on everything~

Hi, Brian. I'm currently a microstakes poker player with aspirations of moving to small stakes (meaning 100NL+) within the next calendar year. I wanted to ask for your opinion about the BTS Academy, which costs $200 a month. I believe that BTS previously offered a much cheaper subscription option called BTS Lab which was primarily aimed at microstakes players, but the content has since been amalgamated into BTS Academy, which is now the only option available outside of being a member of the BTS CFP stable itself. I'm trying to decide if BTS Academy at $200 a month offers better value than something like RIO Elite, which is only $100 per month. I've been very impressed by the free content on the BTS YouTube channel, but I'm not sure if the Academy is worth it. I've previously been a member of RIO Essential and Upswing Lab, but was a little underwhelmed by the content available. As you were a BTS coach for a significant period of time, I would assume you had significant input into the content currently available in the Academy. I wanted to message you directly about this, but I don't currently have the ability to do so.

congrats dude! hope everything went well