Nat Arem's Blog

So yesterday, I turned 28 years old. I was 23 when I started blogging so I’ve pretty much gone from early 20s to late 20s on this blog. Here’s my blog entry from a year ago when I turned 27. The things I said in that entry still hold true for me. I don’t mind getting older. I suppose it will mind it once I get to the age where my age actually holds me back from doing things I want to do but I’m still not at that point. In fact, I’m pretty much in the best shape of my life. In January of this year I discovered CrossFit and I’ve been pretty hooked on it ever since. Here are two pictures, approximately one year apart (May 2009 to June 2010):

I can see a pretty significant difference there. That represents approximately 45 lbs of weight loss although I guess you can’t really see the gut that I’ve pretty much lost. I’ve still got some body composition stuff that I’m in the process of changing (ie, losing some more fat, gaining some muscle) but I’m in really good shape compared to any other point in my life. I still feel out of shape sometimes just because of the people I’m competing against at CrossFit but the reality is that I am in good shape now and I’m getting into better shape. So I’m pretty happy about that. It’s great doing this at the age of 28 and I plan on being in ridiculously good shape at the age of 29 next year.

For my birthday, I spent a good portion of the day hanging out at a mansion in Henderson that yellowsub is renting, along with a bunch of other players. The people in the house include sub, his girlfriend, Kyle Ray (kpr16), an aussie kid named Rob, a british kid named Tom, some guy named like Yager or something like that, Clay Newman (cnew27) and Dr_Olson. Five people from Athens, GA are visiting sub and Lauren so all of us hung out at the pool and then we went to a place called Dos Caminos at the Palazzo. The food was really good; I got a scallop/rice dish. I definitely recommend the restaurant. If you go, be sure to get the guacamole. Here’s a picture of me blowing out the candle on my birthday “cake”:

You can see Taylor “The Godfather” Douglas (of thepokerfilm and WSOP 1500NL fame) on my left taking a pic of his own. I know that he’s a huge fan of natarem.com so I had to make sure he got his pic on the site. At the end of dinner we obv CCRed (although some of the Athens crew bought out) and I ended up getting heads up with sub before he ended up paying (standard).

After the Palazzo, we headed over to the Gold Coast (yes, the Gold Coast) for some gambling and bowling. I don’t really like table games for obv reasons. I’m not a gambler unless I think I have an edge or it’s actually a lot of fun. Playing in the pit in a depressing casino… not fun for me. Anyway, I did play a little roulette (won $12!!) and some of the other Athens people were gambling it up. I snapped this picture of a decent sized red bet (obv it landed on black):

The girl in the pic is one of the Athens people. She had, apparently, never gambled before in her life. She had a lot of fun playing slots, blackjack and roulette so I’m pretty sure she’s hooked now. Nothing like the Gold Coast to get you hooked on gambling.

So after the stop in the pit, we headed over to the bowling alley (the real reason we went to the Gold Coast) and got a few lanes. Brainwash (Tyler Cornell) was there with some of his friends from SoCal and, obviously, we bet on the games. The first game I didn’t have a bet and I bowled pretty horribly. I kept leaving frames open which is obviously pretty bad. By the end of the first game I’d bowled like 115, brainwash had bowled like 105 and sub bowled like 155 or something. I ended up betting sub $50 getting 25 pins and I bet brainwash $50 at even money. This is the outcome of the game:

I’m N82 on the top left, obviously sub is sub and Ty on the right is brainwash. It was a really sick ending for me and brain. As you can see, I went into the final frame up one but it wasn’t quite that clear at the time because brain had a spare. He got a strike his first shot in the 10th frame (I’d already recorded my crappy 123) and he only needed a 9 to tie or a strike to win. He threw a ball right down the middle and left the 4/7 and 6/10 split which is really really difficult to get a 9 or spare. He ended up with an 18 in the 10th frame and lost the $50 bet by one pin. So I was up $100 after winning $50 from sub and $50 from brain.

Then the next and last game I declined to bet sub because he didn’t want to give up any pins and I didn’t think that was fair even though we ended about even on the 2nd game. I was bowling horribly but I did end up placing a $50 bet with brainwash where I gave him five pins. I won’t narrate the whole thing but I was basically screwed in the 9th frame before going on a strike-strike open to start the 10th and make my 9th worth 30 pins. Really sick considering how I was bowling. That won the 2nd bet from brainwash when I ended up with 164 and he bowled 138 (143 for the bet). Here’s a pic of it:

Including another small $10 bet I won from brain on a specific shot, that put me up $160 from bowling. Not bad. Brain said the $110 was my birthday present. That’s more than I got from anyone else so I’ll take it. He was really drunk by the end of the night after pounding beer pitchers and, as we were walking out of the bowling alley, he attempted to slide down the stair railing on the way back down to the casino floor. It didn’t go so well. He fell over backwards on the railing and landing on his back/side and then rolled over his head/neck before coming to a stop on the stairs. I wish I had video of it. He tried it again (smart guy) and I took video but unfortunately/fortunately he made it down okay. Even though it’s uneventful, here’s the video:

And I guess that was the end of the night. I didn’t get to sleep until like 5:30 but I’d say it was a pretty fun birthday.

I went down to Costa Rica from the 4th to the 11th. It was a very last minute trip and it went pretty well. Nothing really of note to report from the whole thing. It was unseasonably nice weather (it’s usually really rainy this time of year) and they made some huge improvements in some Costa Rica infrastructure stuff. The airport is way nicer and they also put in a new road out to the pacific beach. It cuts a full hour off the drive and makes the drive itself way more tolerable (a lot less slow winding in the mountains).

Unfortunately, I was in Costa Rica on the night of the 10th when Jeff “yellowsub86″ Williams made the final table of the 5K NL (WSOP 17). I was refreshing PokerNews for chip counts and whatnot but it just wasn’t the same as being there. That’s one reason why I would like to avoid leaving Vegas during the WSOP but the trip was needed for work so I couldn’t hang around on the off chance that a really good friend of mine makes the FT. Anyway, as my blog readers probably know by now, Jeff and I have been pretty good friends going back about four years now. We’ve been business partners on multiple projects, etc, etc. So given that he’s probably my closest friend in the poker world I really wanted to be there if he won a bracelet. He ended up getting third for about $330k. He also made about $40k off of a crossbook with durrrr so that was a decent padding on the score. I definitely want to be there when he does take down a bracelet. It’ll happen one of these years…

And earlier tonight, PocketFiver JD “BubbaKGB” McNamara got 2nd in the 1K NL (WSOP 24). JD works (well, now that may be “worked”) for our company in Costa Rica. He mainly worked on Poker News Daily, PokerSoftware.com and PokerTerms.com. I am guessing he’s probably done writing articles for PND at this point but maybe I’m wrong. We definitely hope he stays on but I would understand if he wanted to leave or cut down his hours and just freelance or something. Anyway, JD cashed for about $310k and, as far as I know, did not have a large crossbook with durrrr so he isn’t getting $40k extra or anything like that. It would’ve been awesome to see him take down the $500k+ and the bracelet but it just wasn’t meant to be. One funny thing is that I started a BubbaKGB sweat thread in PocketFives’ Off Topic section when there were still like 400 people left in the tourney. Pretty crazy he made it all the way to 2nd when I never make sweat threads for people!

Also, I am actually watching some World Cup matches. I don’t really like soccer all that much but the World Cup is entertaining. It’s kind of like how I would never ever consider watching cross-country skiing except at the Olympics (not that I have the option, it’s never on TV in the US). There’s something about the “whole world” aspect and the rarity of the event that make things like the World Cup and the Olympics pretty compelling.

I don’t particularly care about how the US does because I pretty much figure they’re not going to win. In that sense, it kind of reminds me of when the Sixers make the playoffs in like the seven seed. In other words, both teams are “okay” but they have pretty much zero chance of winning the whole thing. Makes it kind of pointless to really start to care about them in my opinion. That being said, it would be cool if they made it out of their group and it seems like getting a tie against England was a decent start on that quest. Also, my cab driver from the Vegas airport when I flew back from Costa Rica is a self-professed soccer expert and he predicted either Spain or Argentina would win the World Cup (this was on the 11th). Not a good start for Spain, they have a ton of pressure on them now…

I really have to start blogging more often.

I’m currently sitting in a hotel in California.  I came out for the day to do some PocketFives gear work with some people in So Cal (tshirt capital of the world imo).  I’m really happy with what we’re getting and I can’t wait to see them.  So anyway, when I was driving out earlier today, I was getting gradually more and more tilted by my TomTom GPS.  It can’t pronounce ANYTHING.  Any street, city, whatever, it’s always wrong.  I don’t understand how this is possible.  I am not even talking about something obscure or hard to pronounce.  I took a short video of it trying to say “San Diego”… you should see what I mean:

WHAT? San Dieggaahh? How can a huge company like TomTom let their units say San Diego like that. Better yet, you should hear it take a crack at saying San Bernardino. Total fail. The list goes on and on, this is not a one time thing.

I also feel like I should comment on the perfect game today. Make no mistake, it was the 21st perfect game in MLB history. I’m going to go ahead and put forth the idea that it was the best winning regular-season pitching performance in major league history. No one has ever faced 28 batters and gotten 28 outs in a winning performance. Obviously the World Series perfect game and the Harvey Haddix game still outshine this game in my mind but how can another perfect game possibly be considered better than this guy? 28 batters simply hasn’t been done. Sure you can factor in things like opponent batting average, number of strikeouts, number of amazing defensive plays, etc. But I think going by number of outs is fair. Congrats Armando Gallaraga on the 3rd best pitching in MLB history, you should be thanking Jerry Joyce for allowing yourself to separate yourself from the rest of the rank and file 20 pitchers on the “normal” perfect game list.

In other news, PocketFives relaunched on Monday. So far it has been mainly smooth. Obviously we’ve had a few hiccups here and there but overall it’s been relatively painless. I think we have an amazing platform from which to build the site to its full potential. There are simple so many things to be done with it that I can barely decide what to get working on first. I’m really excited about it though and it’s going to continue to be my main project for a long time to come. I also want to mention our top-notch developers (in alphabetical order): Mario, Ryan and Sergio. Mario and Sergio are Costa Rican programmers who work from our office in Escazu. They’ve both been with the company for years now and they’re top-notch guys. Ryan is newer. He is based near Boston, MA and he was brought on earlier this year part-time as a vBulletin consultant. He’s quite good at vB and has been invaluable throughout the project. Hopefully he will keep working with us for a long time to come. All three of them did a great job and they should be at the P5s party on July 3rd at the Rio (more details to come, it’s going to be in a big suite that evening at the Rio). Ryan still isn’t confirmed because of a minor issue (his wife having a baby in a week or two etc) but hopefully we’ll be able to get him out to Vegas at the last minute. Definitely come by to say hi.

In other news, I am enjoying WSOP season so far. Also, I had a fun time at a UFC party at the Wynn last weekend. It was a party sponsored by FIGHT! Magazine (the MMA magazine that is owned by BLUFF) and I got a great picture with Urijah Faber (former featherweight world champ, still a top title contender). I am going to get a copy of it and put it up here as soon as I do.