Nat Arem's Blog

I’ve been a little unhappy with the blog lately. Since the “Website Success” posts that I made, I feel like it’s been a little boring around here — for me and almost certainly for you. I don’t blog just to blog, I do it because I like it and I (think) some people like to read it. So I thought about what I’ve been doing differently and I realized that I haven’t done much picture posting in awhile. Pictures are usually entertaining, so I picked out a few that are relevant to recent happenings in my life.

First of all, here are some pics of my condo here in Costa Rica. It’s a pretty standard 2br/2ba place. But I put a pool table in the living room area because it seems like I never use those types of areas. I know it’s conventional to put a couch and table in there, but I decided that I just don’t care what most people do. I wanted something that I would enjoy and I think people are just as entertained sitting around a pool table in chairs as they are sitting on couches. Of course, I still need more/better chairs, but that’s just a matter of time…

You can also see the kitchen a little bit there. It’s got some pretty nice/modern appliances, so I’m happy with it. I haven’t been doing much cooking lately, but I’d like to start doing more at some point. It’s definitely healthier and I’ve been struggling to eat well lately with all of the eating out. It’s time that I bear down a bit and get back to a home-cooked healthy lifestyle. Since I don’t have any problem with eating healthy when I’m at home, it’s a pretty simple formula… all that being said, it’s just a matter of finding a balance, I love eating out down here. The food in Costa Rica is terrific in my opinion.

Anyway, moving on, here is a picture of the master bedroom. It’s still very plain, but I like the mattress a lot. I’m waiting on a lot of stuff that I want to put in here. The random artwork and stick holder (or whatever it is) came with the place, so I’ve just left them there for now. My new MacBook Pro is on the bed … that’s one of my favorite technology purchases ever. I absolutely love the thing and if it wasn’t for some development reasons, I think I would completely transition away from Windows and only run OS X without even putting Windows on the Mac. As it is, I don’t know if I’ll ever buy any piece of non-Apple laptop/desktop hardware for a long time to come.

So this condo is my new home. One thing that came with moving was that I had to sell a ton of my stuff. It just didn’t make sense to keep things like monitors, TVs, DVD players, gaming systems and all sorts of other stuff that I won’t want whenever I return to the US. I’ll just want to replace all of it then anyway, so I just held a massive sale of goods on craigslist. For the most part, I sold everything that I really wanted to get rid of. However, just recently, I sold the “big ticket” item which represented my last major stateside asset that I couldn’t reasonably keep while living in Costa Rica. My car. A basically brand new Infiniti G37 6MT. It was so sad to sell it… Here it is back in late September / early October when I first bought it.

I really had mixed feelings about selling it. I’d never driven anything like it — it was really an incredible car. But when I was only going to be in the states for a few weeks a year and I was going to be in different spots all of the time, it just didn’t make any sense at all to keep it. Even though I took a sizable four figure loss on the car, I still had to sell it. I hope the guy who bought it takes good care of it and enjoys it. Whenever I return to the US, I hope to get another one or something like it.

So yea, moving to a poorer country means that I had to give up some of my toys. It’s just impossible to drive a car like that here because the roads absolutely tear it up. It would be destroyed very quickly. Not to mention the inevitable bumper benders (driving here is a lot different than in the states) and the near complete lack of support for Infiniti parts, it was just retarded to bring the car down here and take a huge import tax hit. But, I got to keep one of my toys. The prize of my watch collection: my Breitling Super Avenger.

A few years ago, I got really into watches. I love them because you can spend a lot of money on them and enjoy them, but they don’t really lose a ton of value over time. Most of the cost is recoverable if you decide that you want to trade the watch out for a different one. That sort of flexibility isn’t available for a lot of expensive things, so watches make a lot of sense to me. Not to mention that I like wearing nice watches.

Anyway, that concludes the return of the picture post. I’ll try to keep the blog interesting going forward. Anything that people want to see or hear about?

I’m always intrigued by the ways that sites find to get people in the WSOP. It’s probably the only live tournament where online poker sites want players to win seats as badly as the players want to win those seats. That year-round exposure on ESPN is worth millions to the sites, so obviously the more horses they have, the better.

One of the interesting things to come out of the whole thing is that there are always a multitude of options for winning your WSOP seat. I’ve come across a few interesting ones lately, but I’m sure this only really scratches the surface of available options.

First, a Bodog person emailed me to let me know about a Bodog poker blogger tournament series. There’s a tournament leaderboard online which shows the standings and explains the rules:

The top 30% of players in each tournament will receive points according to finish which at the end of the qualifying tournaments will ultimately determine who will move on to the Final Event. At the end of the 18 qualifying tournaments, the top 18 points earners on the Tournament Leader Board will receive an invitation to participate in the Final Tournament on June 10th, 2008.

I believe that the winner of that June 10th tournament will win a WSOP seat. That’s huge. It’s a lot of added money for a site to put up when a good player, should, in theory, have a positive expectation just for playing the tournament series anyway.

Second, PocketFives is in the process of running a Bodog WSOP seat freeroll that will be decided on May 17th via some sort of SNG. Like any of these seat giveaways, there are a series of elimination tournaments that will eventually give away a WSOP seat (or sometimes a few) at the end.

Third, PocketFives is also running a “private” WSOP freeroll on UltimateBet. Of course, the term private is relative because so many people read P5s, but still, it isn’t open to anyone who is just browsing through UB. Keep in mind that this is a normal $20 MTT, but with a WSOP package overlay! I really think anyone with any interest in playing the WSOP should be playing these special events. It’s a terrific way to get into the WSOP for a relatively small investment (mind you that I hate it when people say that about taking a $2 super sat path through the normal channels, but in this case it really is “cheap” because of the overlay). Whatever you think about UB with the whole NioNio thing going on, they ARE giving away a seat and it’s a cheap tournament to enter, so it’s still worth playing even if that’s the only thing you play on the site all year. Of course if you feel strongly enough about UB/AP to never play there again, that’s fine, but I’m just saying that there’s a lot of value in events like this.

Lastly, BLUFF has been running a league for a few months now on Carbon Poker with a bunch of WSOP seats (one in the Main Event, a couple in smaller events). All added for free! Even considering the rake you pay over the course of the league or whatever event you’re playing, you’re still getting a huge overlay when you consider the added expectation offered by the seat.

Anyway, I’m sure I only covered like 3% of the available way to get seats for cheap. And when I say cheap, I don’t mean PokerStars FPP seats. A 10,000 FPP tournament is like a $160 tournament (10,000 FPPs ~= $160) and the seats are paid out roughly on that basis. The seats are not “free” nor are they “added” in any manner. While PokerStars does run truly free seats as well, the vast majority of their “free” seats are raked and paid for in full by the players. So keep your eye out for cheaper methods and good luck to everyone getting in the WSOP Main Event this year!