Make A Plan
If you are planning to play a series of tournaments, take a look at the tournament schedule and get an idea of what events you are planning to play. If time allows, try to schedule in a day to take a break and enjoy the sites or do something outside of the poker room. This will help you clear your mind after a few long days of tournament play.

Choose A Hotel
There are a few things to consider when choosing a hotel. To save on rooms, get a few buddies together and split the cost of the room. Booking in advance will also save a ton of money and allow you to lock in the best rate. Also consider the proximity of the hotel to the poker room. If you are playing tournaments you will have to consider how long it will take you get ready and get to the tournament before it starts. Sometimes convenience is worth the extra cost to stay closer to where you will be spending most of your time.

Load Up On Music
This is a great time to download all that music you’ve been putting off adding to your Ipod. New tunes are a great way to entertain yourself while you are grinding it out at the tables. Make sure you get all your music together before you leave so you don’t get stuck without it when you get to the hotel. Even though the hotel might say they have internet, sometimes it runs so slow it is difficult even surf the web.

Poker Attire
Bring your lucky hoodie, shoes, socks, underwear, etc. Part of playing good poker is being comfortable and having confidence. There is no way you can play your best poker if those new jeans that cute sales girl sold you are smothering you while you’re trying to bluff someone. Bring what is comfortable and warm enough to withstand the breezy poker room.

Twenty two of the names on the list were automatically qualified and given an invite to the game due to accomplishments they racked up last season, including WSOP Champion Joe Cada. Two players who qualified but will not be playing are Jeffrey Lisandro (who was the WSOP Player of the Year) and Barry Shulman (who won the WSOP Europe main event).

Another high-profile dropout came from poker godfather Doyle Brunson, who was reserved a spot but decided not to participate. He spoke on the matter in one of his online blogs stated: “I’ve got an invitation to play in a big TV tournament and immediately afterwards is the NBC Heads Up Championship. I’ll have to bow out of all these tournaments because there is no use playing unless you are at your best. The competition has gotten so good you need to feel good physically as well as mentally to have a chance to win.”

Marcel Luske has release an album of songs centered around poker. Apparently Luske is quite talented and exhibited his new songs during the Doyal Bruson Five Diamond event in December. A few well known poker professionals attended the concert and later twittered about Luskse’s talent.

Jason Mershon has recently released a song called Playing for a Livin. To promote his song Mershon is offering 50% of any final table winnings at this years WSOP to the first 15,000 people who download and buy his song. He is planning on playing the Main Event, so this might be a pretty fantastic investment for his listeners if he actually makes it.

Although it might be a pretty good return on investment, Mershon doesn’t have the most impressive tournament stats around. According to PokerPages player database Mershon only has four tournament cashes since 2004 and every one of them are under $900. But who knows, he could be the next Darvin Moon.

“I wrote the song to humorously tell what it's really like being a professional poker player; the sarcastic attitudes of many professional poker players; and the monotony of actually playing poker for a living and grinding out the long hours in a casino card room,” stated Mershon.

For more information on where to purchase the song visit www.playinpokerforalivin.com.

"I think it's clear after the hearing that, if not for the financial mess the state is in, these hearings wouldn't even be held," Steve Miller said. "It's such a mess, and they are trying so hard to close the budget gap, that it seems like something is going to happen for certain."

California’s financial woes have been well publicized over the last year, with state officials looking into every possible resource as a potential way of driving in revenue, with online poker being one of the more lucrative options. The meeting lasted more than eight hours, with Miller and PPA executive director John Pappas on hand to testified on the behalf of the poker rights for the 127,255 PPA members that hail from California.

"The PPA respects the due diligence of the committee to investigate 'if' online poker can be regulated, and we stand here to tell you that it unquestionably can be regulated and, in fact, already is being regulated, very effectively, across the globe in well-respected jurisdictions," Pappas said in his testimony.

One of the biggest roadblocks towards the regulation for California comes from the California Tribal Business Alliance, which overseas Indian-related gaming in the state. One of the alliance’s members, Leslie Lohse, says that regulating online poker in California would violate tribal gaming compacts and result in the stopping of payments from the tribes to the state’s general fund, amounts which total in the hundreds of millions of dollars.