In this week's P.O. Box:

Well, my PO Box posting streak died after 145 consecutive weeks.

I was in Kansas City for the Dawg Bowl last week, set up the template on the flight Friday, and then completely forgot to finish it on Saturday morning.

If you watched any of the streams from KC, you probably can figure out why.

Oh well, we are back in the saddle this week and ready to start a new, meaningless posting streak.

As you can imagine, it's been a whirlwind week for me—a trip to KC that included three late nights and 10 hours of live streaming (plus a miserable 4am wake-up call on Monday to make a flight back to Boston), a quick 36-hour pit stop at home to celebrate April's 3rd birthday (we are doing a bigger thing next weekend with family and her friends), and then a 24-hour trip to Vegas to play a World Poker Tour event (I'm just as confused as you).

“Pro” is sure being generous.

I knew when I got invited to play the WPT event that it was awful timing, but I really didn't want to say no. For one, I'm bad at saying no—especially when it comes to cool experiences like a free trip to play a poker tournament with a million dollar top prize.

But also, like so many other people in the DFS space, I was racking up thousands of hours on the felt well before I ever started playing fantasy football. And a lot of the early content I made when I first started out was Manz poker content. I don't really envision myself ever fully getting back into poker—it's an even bigger time suck than DFS—but I had a legit blast playing 10+ hours of tournament poker on Wednesday. 

I started the tournament out way too loose, bluffing off a third of my stack during the early levels. I quickly settled in, though, tightened up, and found my groove. It's crazy how much of the muscle memory from playing thousands of tournaments in high school and college came flooding back in the moment.

I don't think my tablemates really knew what to do with me either. Some of the things I did screamed noob while I also was playing super aggro in a lot of spots. 

When the dinner break hit, I had a very short stack (about 20 big blinds). I went back to the room and finally showered (I had gone straight from the airport to the tournament), took some creatine, and focused up. When I returned, I immediately doubled up with aces. I was feeling dialed in and ready to play deep into the night (dealers were forecasting a 1am-ish end time based on the massive field size).

With around 105k in chips, I looked down at AQo in early position (yeah, you are getting the nitty-gritty play-by-play). I raised, there was one call, and then a big stack on the button made a re-raise. Calling was not an option, because I would have been pot committed regardless. So I ripped it in, the other guy folded, and the big raiser showed pocket 7s. 

If you aren't familiar with poker, this is a classic flip situation. Two over cards vs. a pair is a true 50-50 proposition. It sucks to put your tournament life on the line with a true coinflip, but it's impossible to avoid these spots late into tournaments if you are trying to spin up a stack into something that can actually do damage.

It didn’t go my way:

We lost this flip, but there’s always another slate…right, Kyle Pitts faders?

💎 Week 15 Gems: My favorite sleepers on Underdog. This is a loaded slate, so need to be picky with the gems. YouTube members can grab it here and Masterclass subs go here.

🤯 BLOCK PARTY & BULLY THE SIMS: Week 15 DFS Strategy: Top Plays & GPP Angles. JMToWin and ShipMyMoney both share some contrarian stacks for tournaments.

🔮 FANTASY LIFE: Roundtable - Cutting Marvin Harrison Jr., Our Favorite Christmas Songs, and More! Collaborated with Cooterdoodle and Jake Trowbridge on a fun piece.

🤓 FANTASY LIFE: Newsletter Roundup. This week in the newsletter we laughed at Philip Rivers’ return and investigated the value of Blake Corum going forward.

I regularly write the Fantasy Life Newsletter. Get it in your inbox free every morning:

💪 THE SWOLECAST: Week 15 NFL DFS Picks. The one where Davis told me to read a poker book.

📈 STAT CHASING: Week 15 DFS Plays & Playoff Best Ball Alpha. Solo show from Sack where he applies a lot of recent usage trends to playoff best ball angles.

☕ POURTFOLIO REVIEW: The Guys You’ll Need In The Fantasy Playoffs. Recapped the Dawg Bowl and Week 15 contests.

After Dark is back tonight (8pm ET). I’m behind on drafting so I’m going to draft some teams and share some stories from KC and Vegas…

For After Dark shows, you can become a YT member for access or subscribe on Spotify for a private RSS feed (I post the video/audio there directly after the show).

Then we’ve got the Week 15 DFS Cram at 10:30 am ET on Sunday:

And then we’ll have the ShipCast at 4pm ET:

🏃 Book #10 for December (35%): Born To Run by Christopher McDougall

Not much reading this week with all the travel, see ya next week…

⛪ Book #9 for November (ABANDONED): The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson.
🏃 Book #8 for September (COMPLETED): Endure by Alex Hutchinson.
🤼 Book #7 for August (COMPLETED): Playworld: A Novel by Adam Ross.
🚶 Book #6 for July (COMPLETED): Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir by Craig Mod.
☁ Book #5 for June (COMPLETED): Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
🐊 Book #4 for May (COMPLETED): Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner
🍌 Book #3 for April (COMPLETED): The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
💉 Book #2 for March (FINISHED): Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe.
🐃 Book #1 for February (FINISHED): The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

Got a question for me? Reply to this e-mail and I’ll get back to you…