I'm penning this just after getting back from LAPT Panama. In fact, I HAVE BEEN traveling a lotlately, including a visit to EPT Barcelona in addition to another to a PokerStars gathering in Costa Rica where there has been a staff tournament, a freeroll for the entire employees. I REALLY ended up winning the tournament which, of course, is often a fun thing to do, but that trip was fun for other reasons, too.

There were probably about 100 people participating within the freeroll, and the most efficient a part of the experience was attending to check with lots of people with whom I communicate via email or even meet in passing at various events. It was great to get to grasp everyone slightly better. Everyone was super nice to me and they are all obviously very hard workers.

The freerollin' Angel Guillen

I met a couple of guys at the language team who do a large number of translation work, in addition to people from the support team and the protection team. It was interesting to listen to about all the measures they take to maintain the location safe from collusion, multi-accounting, and so forth. A part of that effort includes having a team who analyze hands, and they're always studying poker and improving their knowledge concerning the game, like players, really, to allow them to interpret hand histories and understand every situation to stop cheating.

Chris Moneymaker was there to boot with me, and he and that i made a final longer bet. There have been two tourneys, and as I say I won the primary one. There has been a prize of 60,000 FPPs, and that i gave it to everyone on the final table which meant those finishing second through ninth all split it up. Then Chris played the second one tournament with me and he ended up going deeper and so won our bet.

After Costa Rica I came back to Mexico for a celebration celebrating our Independence Day. That was the plan, anyway. It turned out I played some tournaments while I USED TO BE there and had an excessively deep run within the Sunday 500 where I STOPPED third, which caused me to overlook the party.

Viva Mexico! Guillen captains his home team

From there, it was directly to LAPT Panama where I had a good run broadly speaking Event, finishing 46th out of 570 players. I also played the High Roller and finished fifth, which was good. The entire trip was enjoyable as I'VE a large number of friends in Panama and we were in a position to hang around and party a lot.

I'll be back at the road again as I WILL BE going to L. a. (to peer my girlfriend, Lynn), to London (for the EPT), after which to France (for the WSOPE and WPT Paris). I'm traveling with a few Mexican brothers who've been playing and winning so much lately, Santiago and Jose Manuel Nadal. They have been winning so much at the LAPT, and in reality both had deep runs within the WSOP Main Event this year with Jose Manuel finishing 174th and Santiago 278th.

The road will also be hard, but it's great to have friends to look and to take the adventure with you.

Angel Guillen is a member of Team PokerStars Pro.

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