Summer Coming to an End/The T.O. Countdown

"I'm skipping most of WCOOP"
"LOL. That's just silly"

-Simon Charette and Kevin "imalucsack" Macphee (MSN convo)

Summer is coming to an end in Toronto and I hope we still get a couple more warm days to enjoy. I decided to skip the CPT event in Calgary this weeked to try and a have a relaxing fun one in Toronto. I really wanted to defend my title as "CPT Champion" but the timing of the event along with the expected prize pools aren't enticing enough to get me out. However, EPT London is a go and I'll be leaving for England on September 27th, not long after TIFF.

TIFF! I get jazzed for this every year. 10 days of movies played all across the city. Drama, comedy, action, horror, foreign, experimental; The Toronto Film Festival has every type of film you can think of and we get a lot of movies here before they play anywhere else. Only problem with TIFF is that it's scheduled right in the middle of WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) every year! Gah!

A man must have priorities. and TIFF takes it. I skip most of WCOOP every year to enjoy the festival. I'm a laughing stock to many of my friends in the poker world for skipping the biggest prize pools of the year. They consider it unfathomable to not take advantage of so many high equity tournaments. They might be right. However, this is an easy decision for me. I love movies and the plan is to have a successful career as a screenwriter a couple years down the line. Not to mention, I've only got 3 months left in Toronto before I begin wandering the world in search of love and meaning (and maybe a 10k tournament here and there :). I've put myself through some serious torture trying to keep up with poker and my personal life in the past. Some decisions of which I regret and some I defintely don't. Either way I was too young to understand and I think it's OK to cut myself slack for those mistakes I did make. Gotta remember there is both life equity and poker equity. They aren't the same thing.

Balance. This is the key. A word not found in most professional player's vocabulary. Balance.

Peace,
Simon Charette

The Month Without Smoking

"Cigarettes are highly addictive"
(written on any pack of cigarettes sold in Canada)

It's been about a month since I quit smoking and I'm so thankful that time has passed. This has been a HUGE goal of mine. I only smoked for 2 years but it defintely affected my breathing and overall composure. So happy to be through with it. Building new habits like working out regularly and eating properly will be the new goals for a while. I can't encourage people enough to quit, just as people have encouraged me. Thanks to all my friends for the support I've received this month on Facebook and Twitter. It was awesome and really kept me motivated.

I've played very few online sessions since quitting (skipped most of FTOPS) and they've gone quite poorly. Been too irritated or annoyed from withdrawal to play my A game and in retrospect I should have not played at all.

There is a small chance I'll go to Calgary for the CPT event but I don't think there's enough action to warrant me to go. Which is tough since I'm 1 for 1 in CPT events. The plan is still to play almost no online poker and just chill out for a while. The Toronto International Film Festival is in a few weeks time which is a great time to be in T.O. I'm pretty sure I'll travel to EPT London end of September. I've never been to London and all my friends in the poker world will be there for the entire month. I'm sure it'll be fun.

Thinking good thoughts. Peace.

Simon Charette.