One Month Later (still in limbo)

My life since Black Friday (from the 2+2 thread):


Basically I've just been a stay-at-home dad since all of this went down- taking care of the kids, getting stuff done around the house, etc. I haven't really played poker, aside from a couple home game and some micro limit stuff on Cake, but I have been doing some reading and HH analysis to try to tune up my game. Whatever I decide to do long-term poker-wise, it's unlikely that it will involve the extreme multi-tabling I'd been doing in my SNE chase, so it will be in my best interest to focus on my table profits rather than rakeback. I'm also planning hit up the local casinos over the next month (Commerce and potentially the shit-hole, rigged tent casino known as Hawaiian Gardens) to get as much live practice as possible prior to the WSOP. I've got a backer for at least the $1,500, but would like to plat the $5k as well assuming I can find a couple more backers. If you're interested in taking a piece, just leave a comment on this post.

No big decisions yet on how to move forward long-term. Black Friday essentially killed my plans for the next few years, so I'm taking some time to figure out my next move rather than make any quick decisions. At this point, there's a very good chance I'll go to Canada for at least few months (without the family) to determine whether a move would be worth it given the changes to the online poker scene since BF. As far as a permanent move out of the country, it's a tough decision- I own a house here, my wife has a career, all of our family and friends are here, etc. Commuting back and forth a few months at a time is an option, although that has plenty of drawbacks and, with the associated costs, may not even make sense financially compared to sucking it up and re-entering the workforce. I'm still hoping that some amazing acceptable legislation will go through to allow me to continue making a good living at poker from my home, but it's not looking to0 likely that that will happen any time in the near future.

On another note, I'm incredibly impressed with Stars' customer service throughout this entire mess. They've proven yet again how superior they are to any of the other poker sites and most companies in general (fraud and money laundering allegations or not). Timeline of events following Black Friday:

• April 15th- Shit hit the fan/no more poker/FML
• April 16th- Call from Stars filling me in on the situation and confirming my money was safe
• April 20th- DOJ press release on domain name use agreement with Stars and FTP to facilitate refunding players
• April 28th- US cash outs available
• April 30th- Submitted cash out request (couldn't bring myself to do it immediately- I've been playing on Stars for 7 years and spent a long time building that roll)
  
• May 3rd- Money in my account (ship it!)
• May 6th- Stars credits account for partial progress towards my next Milestone Bonus

I hope everyone else out there who played poker for income is hanging in there and getting through this okay. Some of the stories in the PPA "post your story" thread made my situation look like nothing.