It's Fridaaaaaay

I’ve been buried neck deep in Javascript and other ‘maintenance’ activities, and I almost forgot…Today is Unnecessary Shit day.

Since there is no visual for today (due to the fact that it didn’t even cross my mind until just now), here is some completely Unnecessary Shit I heard on the news last night. Neither example is funny, unfortunately, and both are actually pretty sad.

#1—It turns out that the Kansas Legislature has voted to officially ban gay marriage (yeah, I know, BIG surprise). Everyone knows that if two people of the same sex are married, it automatically gives them license to come fuck your kids and take all of the health and retirement benefits from the upstanding hetero folks. (I sincerely hope everyone recognizes the utter sarcasm in that statement)

They had blurbs from two ministers in town, one supporting and one opposing. The one supporting said something fairly innocuous and vanilla, but the other said this:

“This issue is MUCH more important than any other tax, school funding, or deficit issue we face”

Jeeeeeeee.Zus. My state sucks.

#2—Free Texas Hold’em at various sports bars and the like all over the city have been deemed illegal in an opinion issued by the office of the Kansas Attorney General.

This is nothing new to anyone, as I’m sure that any of the cities that you all currently reside in have something at least similar, if not identical, to this. The cops have been told they are basically free to bust any of these games should the mood strike them, because even if the bar charges a cover every single night of the week, it is still illegal to play poker because money is changing hands, even if it isn’t at the tables.

Man, I sure am glad we have such a fantastic state government. One that cares enough to protect me from degenerates pushing their habit onto me. (dammit, there’s the sarcasm, again)

Ack, this state bloooooows. I gotta move.

So there is your Unnecessary Shit. Hopefully next week it will be amusing instead of sad.

One Last Thing….

In my reading of The Poker Chronicles and the recent back and forth with another player from the WPBT on Wednesday, I started thinking. (I know, hard to believe considering the above drivel, but I swear I was. ) It would be cool to hear about how some of the bloggers who play for higher stakes got there. What levels did they start out with, what kind of roll, etc…hell, whatever stories they want to tell would be more than fine. I know vaguely how SirFWALGMan got up to where he was (and have also been glued to my screen due to his recent tumble and object lesson on tilting). I also very much enjoyed BadBlood’s backstory (Dec 26) when he officially became profitable.

I guess what I’m saying is that if any of the higher level players would like to disseminate some stories of small time days gone by, it would be quite well received by this $.50/1 micro-plebe. Or, you can just tell me to spend more time digging in archives because they’ve all been told already (if you do tell me this, give me a link, as it will be much easier on this lazy blogger).

OK, I’m stopping now. Stop by SirFWALGman to send him some positivity and wish him well, the dude is going through some rough shit.

Until next time, I’m striving to Think Big, and my head is Much Bigger.

My shame, laid bare...

Welcome to one of about 100 or so other reports where the blogger in question details their shame.

I think my dog Stella’s face most accurately reflects my post-tourney look and feel—

But I did learn a few things last night, including but not limited to…..

• Just because beer has wheat and/or barley in it, this does not make it a substitute for a meal if you arrive home from work hungry and about to play cards.

• Unless you have Iggy or CantHang somewhere in your name, alcohol may not be the best idea when playing against other folks who can obviously play well. It turns what is under the best of circumstances –EV into just a plain bad idea.

• That I can’t wait until the next one, and will strive to make a stronger (and more sober) showing.

I exited in a shameful 122^nd place when mirvin(Austin) took my ass, kicked it around, and then handed it back as he/she said goodbye. A quick recap of my last hand…

--AJs in middle position, I limp (first mistake), mirvin limps, someone else completes or checks, not sure which. Sorry I can’t remember who else was in the hand, I was going to take notes, but the beer told me not to.

--Flop comes J A Q rainbow. First to act bets T150 and I raise to T450, mirvin call so quick I almost didn’t see it. The part of me that has the ability to Think Big started screaming “ABORT!”, but the beer told me that two pair here was the mortal nuts and I should push. Guess which one I listened to?

--mirvin takes all of my chips with the flopped nut straight.

Here is the last thing I learned (I hope for the last time):

• AJ really is a shopaholic whore. I think I’m gonna have to choke a bitch.

In my 41 minutes of tourney life I got to play with Bob and ChrisH, which was great fun. I am disappointed not for the money, but for the fact I didn’t get a chance to chat with any of the others. I hung around and watched some of the other tables a bit and even tried to say “HI” while watching Otis, April, and Hank play around the first break. I don’t really remember what I typed (the fuzziness was well set in by this time), but given the lack of response I’m guessing it was pretty f’n idiotic.

Congrats to everyone who got did well, as it was no small feat. I’m going to go jump into some sackcloth and ashes, chastise myself for the rest of the day, and will talk to you tomorrow where I will try to resume Thinking Big, while my head will stay Much Bigger.

Update: I forgot to mention I played with and learned of FHB and his blog, which is a great read., as well as BrentStacks of Lord Admiral Radio. Looks like I’ve got some more linking work to do.

Getting close

Are you getting totally pumped?




Unlike most boring Wednesdays, this one comes with a WPBT event. Head to PokerStars and signup under the Private Tourney tab. Password: the hammer.

"But I'm only a reader, I'm not a blogger," you say? It matters not, the tourney is open to all.

Grab a drink and get your gameface on. Heck, you might even win some money.

--Don't forget, if I manage to claw my way to one of the top four places, I'll be transferring the entry fee back to the bubble boy/girl--

See you all there!

Deebo said it best...

Last night I finally finished the first volume (QuckSilver) in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle Trilogy. Usually, I’ll tear through whatever book I’m reading in a week or less, but this one has taken me a bit over a month, oof. This first book is a thousand page blend of fiction and non-fiction (there’s probably a name for that, but damned if I know what it is), with characters who tie loosely into one of his other works, Cryptonomicon. It’s a tough read, but a good one, and deserves some admiration (if for no other reason) simply because of its sheer size and scope.

Of course, upon finishing I couldn’t sleep so I got up to surf a bit until Mr. Sandman decided to make an appearance. While I browsed around, I brought up PokerStars and watched the latter stages of a couple of tournaments. The couple of events that I watched got me to thinking about what is, in my opinion, is the most brutal part of a tournament.

Is it busting out early? Nope. Busting out sucks, but it’s certainly not the worst.

Is it just missing the final table? Nope. That sucks, too, but at least you get some money for your trouble, even if it is a small amount.

It’s THE BUBBLE.

Regardless of the circumstances surrounding a bubble bust-out, I don’t think there is any other spot in a tourney where I actually want to barf, no matter the buy-in. It’s the spot where the phrase, “So close, and yet so far….”, hits closest to home. Witnessing, yet again, the brutality of the bubble gave me an idea….

--If I can make it into the top 4 in tomorrows WPBT event, I will transfer the tourney entry fee back to the person who bubbled out—

Yea, I know, not the most magnanimous of offers, but the idea came on pretty short notice. And hey, I gots to take some moneys for me, right? Perhaps for the next event I will have a better idea, but for now I’m going to stick with this one.

If nothing else, it should serve to motivate me a bit more to reach the top of the tourney rankings.

Perhaps there will be a late rush of entries, and I certainly hope there are, but the lineup seems a bit short. Yea, yea, it’s a whole 22 bucks. Just skip a meal at one of those awful chain restaurants in which we all find ourselves at one time or another. Think of it as food for your soul, which by the way contains 0 grams of fat or carbs. And to top it off, you don’t have to sit among the sweaty, stinking, bitching masses to take part.

If that doesn’t motivate you, perhaps the words of Deebo from the movie Friday, will.

“Quit bein’ a bitch!”

Get signed up people, only one day left.

...and a little bit of that

A little FireFox hacking…

While I know that a lot of the other poker bloggers out there are MUCH more tech savvy than I am on things web-related, but I found something really cool for the FireFox users among you. Some of you readers may even be asking, “What is Firefox?” Long story short, it’s an open source browser that kicks (and is currently kicking) the crap out of the Microsoft’s offering of Internet Explorer 6. If you don’t have it, just click on the little button at the very bottom of my sidebar and get it. **begin Arnold** You’ve got to get youahself a moah secuah browsah. Do it nowww **end Arnold**

And as for the cynics and skeptics who may be reading, NO, I do not get paid if you download and install Firefox.

Anyway, with that in mind here is the hack for all broadband users:

1) Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return.
Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2) Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3) Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

WARNING: This hack may cause whiplash. Yea, it’s that fast.

A little television observation…

Normally my posts are finished in the morning, but due to brain-scattered-ness (reasons unknown) I couldn’t seem to pull one together so I did some schoolwork and read for a bit while drivel from the telescreen washed over me. Then, a voice; raspy and strange, but somehow familiar, was tunneling its way into my cortex, so I look up…..

It’s Kirstie Ally. Egad.

It appears that she is no longer shilling for Pier 1 and is now doing some sales work for Jenny Craig. Now, some may know this, and some may not, but Kirstie is from my hometown of **cringe** Wichita, KS. I was 17 when I saw her for the first time, wait forrr iiiiiiiiiittt…

Without makeup. E-frikkin-GAD.

Throughout the years since then, I have always wondered why Kirstie was ever any semblance of a “star”. Everything about her annoyed, from her look to her voice. Today, as I watched her shamelessly promote Jenny Craig, I understand, if only a bit.

With her self-effacing, “You may have noticed, I’M FAT”, to the way she balls up and shakes both of her tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex fists while scream-grunting “FETUCCINE!!!”, I just couldn’t help but laugh and like her at that moment. It takes a pretty big (no pun intended) person to do the necessary things to keep themselves and by extension, their career (and the attendant paychecks) going.

Who knew a diet commercial would give me a better view of Kirstie? Just goes to show you that miracles can, in fact, happen on occasion.

Or maybe the brain scattered ness of this morning hasn’t ebbed yet….

A little political ranting…

Most days I try to put it out of my head, and my anger recedes back to a simmer. Then, I see Dubya or one of his demonic entourage and the anger comes boiling back, which sends me seeking out some kind of engrossing activity to bring it back down to a simmer, and the cycle continues….

Then today, I happened upon this. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, needs to read it. People out there who voted for George’s second term, you especially need to take time out of your breeding, cheap beer-swilling, minivan-placarding schedules and READ IT. Take it to heart, be ashamed, and then do your soul a favor and find some way to painfully punish yourself for the grievous and ignorant error that was your vote.

I never thought I would actually utter the words, but for now, and for at least the next four years, I am ashamed and embarrassed to be an American.

“How dare you not love your country! Love it or Leave it!”, I can hear many of you saying. Anyone saying or thinking this only further demonstrates their ignorance. It is precisely the fact that I love my country that makes me so ashamed and embarrassed.

I’m a big fan of the psychology forum on 2+2. There seems to be a lot of talk lately about compulsive gamblers—should I be feeling bad for them, should I intervene, yada yada yada. This parallels quite strongly with an argument I hear quite often. The one that goes something like this: “If we hadn’t stepped in those people would be destroying themselves.” Maybe, but instead of trying simply to help or take a diplomatic route, our not-so-esteemed leaders thought the best way to handle it would be to conquer and force our will, all on information that has been proven to be COMPLETELY FALSE. Add to that the fact we now have debt that most likely our children’s children will be dealing with, a world position that is seriously undermined, and what happens? The Stuttering Ignoramus is voted into a second term. YOU HAVE SERIOUSLY GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Yea, I know, people suffer all over the globe every single day, regardless of what we do, but that’s no excuse to make it worse…and YES, we have made it worse. Bottom line: You can’t force a country to be like you, even if they spurn your niceties, any more than you can force a compulsive gambler that does the same, from losing their money.

Am I a bleeding heart liberal? Hell, no.

Do I support anything Republican? Not a whole hell of a lot.

What do I do then? I don’t align myself with any party’s dogma, and actually think for myself. I sure wish more of the general public would do the same.

And now, the poker…

Last night, after getting the hell beat out of me at Party (up 11 BB’s, only to crash at -10 BB’s 2.5 hours later), I was in no mood for more ring games, but still wanted to play me soma dem cards. So I hopped into a $5 +.50 SnG at Stars, turned out a second place (but for complete heads-up boneheaded-ness, it would/should have been a 1st), and was feeling much happier. Still wanting to play, I declined another SnG and decided instead on the $2 Sunday Night NL Crapshoot.

2613 players, 1st place pays a grand. NICE. It’s been quite a while since I played in any kind of MTT, so I figured this would at least get me warm for the WPBT event on Wednesday, and boy, did it get me warm.

As anyone who has played for any notable length of time will tell you, it definitely takes skill, but it also takes a little luck to do well in a really large tournament. You need to play well and dodge a few bullets along the way. Oh, and you really should do your damnedest to get a decent stack while the monkeys are throwing around their chips like so much poop.

True to form at this low buy-in, the monkeys were flinging the proverbial poop everywhere. You couldn’t put hardly anyone on a hand. After about four orbits, I get PP 10’s. One of the super flinging monkeys with a little less than half of his original 1500 chips goes all-in, and this is where I decide that I need to get lucky, so I go all-in to try and isolate, and get a third caller. WTF? 3-way all-in, and my PP10’s are up against PP Q’s and Rockets, can you say ‘poor timing’? Oh well at least I’ll have 150 chips left to try and mount a comeback while the blinds are still small.

The poker gods ring up a karma debit, I sign the receipt, and triple up with a straight after both hands flop their sets. Boy, it’s nice to be on the other end of the suckout, for once.

Rather than bore you all with a three page narrative of a low stakes MTT, I’ll briefly sum up: I played better than I have in quite some time, and dodged a few bullets along the way. I picked my aggressive spots well, made more steals than would previously have been comfortable for me, and generally solidified a lot of lessons I have been trying to teach myself. Out of 2613 entrants, I finally exited in 33rd place, when my AQ failed to draw out against JJ.

At first I was pretty upset. I made it all that way, only to end up with a payoff of $15 for 5 hours of work. I REALLY wanted to make the final table and perhaps win, as I have yet to make the final table in a NL MTT. I have made many finals in PL MTT’s, but for some reason just can’t seem to make it over that invisible hump, and end up busting out somewhere between 10th and 40th nearly every time.

Then I gave myself (truthfully, it was my wife, God bless that woman) a figurative “kick in the ass” for being so results oriented and felt much better. The lessons learned are always worth the effort, even if the monetary reward is smaller than you would like. What is it they say…..A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?

After last night, I can say that I’ve taken a few more.

Watch out for me on Wednesday, because I now actually believe that I’m Thinking Big, but I never doubt the fact that my head is Much Bigger.

Sunday Brain Dump

I wish I had something more exciting to report on the poker front, but alas, I do not. I thought I was going to get in a healthy session or two between Friday and Saturday, but it was not to be. I only played about 4 hours total between Stars and Party, making an entire $1 at Stars after about 1.5 hours, and bringing my free money Party roll up to $90 ( a gain of 17BB’s) in approximately 2.5 hours.

For the first time ever on Party, I got myself positioned to the left of a maniac and my cards were actually hitting. After weathering some initial bad juju, where none of my big pocket pairs held up (to the tune of about 13 BB’s), I moved tables and that’s when it happened. My first hand of 77 hit the set, check raise on every street with two other people involved. This was my intro to the printing press. Usually I have a hard time making any significant profits against these types due to lack of cards or suckouts. This guy wasn’t your ordinary maniac, he was mui grande uber. The maniac pairs anything on the board? Bet and raise no matter what. Holding an Ace? Bet and raise no matter what. In the space of about 45 minutes I personally took over 30 BB’s from this guy, and the great thing was the others at the table tilting and chasing him with crap, which allowed him to suck out just enough to keep him afloat, allowing me to get more chips from him with my good hands. My cards started running bad, so I decided to leave with a decent win, but kept the table open for another 45 minutes while I did some schoolwork and watched him lose another 50 BB’s or so. Amazing. I keep thinking that he HAD to be some higher limit player just blowing off steam because no one in their right mind would play THAT BAD…..right? I was so elated just to have a decent win at Party, I completely forgot to add him to my buddy list. Yea, I know, silly mistake…but it definitely won’t happen again.

Here is a 2+2 thread I think some of you may find interesting, if you didn’t see it already. A $20 home game being busted, good lord. I’m sure this sort of thing happens everywhere, but it lead me to some reading on search and seizure abuses, in particular one county Arkansas, where they can (and do) seize property and cash claiming outlandish things relating to drugs. (Someone posted a link on the 2+2 thread but it was edited out, so feel free to send me a link if you know the county name) Innocent until proven guilty? Not on your life. It’s on you to provide proof that the money is yours and is lawful. You have the proof, so do you think your getting your money back? Not a chance. If you do, it certainly won’t be the original amount, you’ll be lucky to get a fraction of it after legal fees and other beauraucratic hassles. Over 2/3 of the police budget in this particular county is financed with seized monies, to the tune of close to 4 million per year.

While this is an extreme example, the fact is that this can be done in nearly any state, by the Feds or Local government. Pretty tricksy of them too, as a favorite technique is to seize any and all cash and valuables because they ‘suspect something’, but fail to file any criminal charges, thereby making it a civil matter. Why is this smart on their part? If it was a criminal matter you would get your day in court much sooner. Being a civil one, you MIGHT get an initial hearing in a year or so.

I’m not in with this group of folks yet, but I hope to one day be one of the folks who can gamble at a level where I deal with larger than normal amounts of cash. Who doesn’t, right? I realize that there are ways to get around having to deal with large wads, especially if the amounts are VERY large. I’m speaking of the folks I think of as ‘little high-rollers’ who might carry anywhere from $4K-$10K. It is you folks who are the targets, as it provides nice padding to law enforcement budgets in many places all over the country. And why wouldn’t we as gamblers be targets? After all, none of the sheep that make up the general public are going to blink at the fact that a degenerate gambler (who by extension MUST also partake in drugs on some level) had their funds seized. After all, if they were really above board they wouldn’t have been in that position to begin with, right?

Why did I go on so long about this subject that doesn’t even really apply to me at the moment? I talk about it on the off chance that some of the ‘little high rollers’ out there may not have considered the subject too seriously. If you are among these, I encourage you to do so, as it is guaranteed that the situation will not get any better, more likely it will become worse. Don’t give anyone an opportunity to shake you down. TSA and Department of Homeland security are the new Gestapo. For those who find the subject interesting, here is a good article titled The Myth of National Defense.

OK, I’ll stop the diatribe for now. Go ahead and take a bathroom break while I go get some fresh tinfoil and give the NSA a chance to flag me since I used TSA and Gestapo in the same sentence.

Iggy has crafted many a blurb on the insanity of Russ Georgiev, and while he is on Guinness and Vicoden hiatus I thought that I would post this not-so-little nugget from Russ. It seems as though one of the running themes this month is that many of the players on the 15/30 level seem to be losing big in January. (See, I told you January was the worst) Anyone who has read 2+2 for any length of time knows who David Ross is. If you don’t, just do a search on the site and you can find a TON of reading where he has documented his life as an online pro. It is common knowledge that this guy is a pretty darn solid player and he has recently taken a 510 BB downswing (holy freaking ouch, Batman). Enter the Russ posting on RGP. I would do what Iggy normally does and lay the whole thing out here on the page, but it is LONG.

It’s funny how a self-proclaimed cheater and scammer can blast someone else for the crime of crookedness. Nonetheless, whether you think online poker is rigged or not, the read is an entertaining glimpse into Russ’s personal insanity.

To wind up, I should take a second to thank Chris Halverson , and for that matter any and all who have linked to me and/or read this little blog. Chris was one of the first folks to link to me, and after doing some looking it seems that a full 25% or so of my hits have his blog as a referring URL, so Thank You. I only average 40-50 hits per day, which I know pales in comparison to many of the other great poker bloggers out there, but for someone who has only been at this for 2 or 3 months, it feels great. Also, many thanks to Iggy, Pauly, Bob, and April for the encouragement. I may have missed a couple, but if you read this with any regularity you already know I’m an idiot, so I expect your forgiveness :)

The current tsunami of awards shows has obviously turned me into a gushing ninny, so that’s it for today. Don’t forget to get your collective butts over to PokerStars for the next WPBT event coming up on Wednesday, Feb. 2. See you all there, where I will be attempting to demonstrate by my play that I am…

Thinking Big, while my head is Much Bigger.

It's Friday...You know what that means...

Do some looking around most anywhere these days and you will find some kind of discussion as to the redeeming social values of poker, or lack thereof. While most of us take the game seriously, the fact is, for a majority of us it is just a hobby (that takes a lot of our time). I also think that many of us would like to do something to “contribute”. I am not wealthy by any stretch, and save a few specific organizations, I blanche a bit at the thought of giving my hard earned money to most charities. I’m not sure why, but I think that the Seinfeld episode with George Costanza’s Human Fund has something to do with it.

Last night, though, I had an idea. For a while now, I have been a contributor to Folding@Home. To read up on exactly what it is, just follow the link, but I’ll try and sum up. “Folding” refers to protein folding, and it is a distributed computing project at Stanford. You simply download a client which uses your spare CPU cycles (computer brainpower) to help fold proteins and send the work unit back to Stanford. The client doesn’t get in the way of anything you’re trying to do, either. It simply uses the power that your processor doesn’t. If anyone accuses you of completely wasting time while sitting at the PC playing poker, with this you can claim: “I’m doing my part to help find a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease.” In case any poker bloggers ( or anyone else for that matter) want to contribute, please consider joining the team I created. The team name is ‘Thinking Big’ and the team number is 42205. Stanford tracks the work done and awards points, not for prizes or anything, just a ranking system. Perhaps as poker players, one day we will be able to say that we have not only liberated the fish from their chips, but also the brain from various diseases.

Unnecessary Shit

Since it is Friday and the second installment of “Unnecessary Shit”, this would probably be the most appropriate time to explain it’s origins a bit. (For typing ease I will begin referring to it as US, how mildly ironic),

It was during my time in the military that my friend Jonbo first introduced me to US. It is in a nutshell, this: Any wildly random action taken that doesn’t fit into current context in any way, shape, or form. Perhaps a couple of examples would be better……

• You're at a store (type doesn’t matter, but the more subdued, the better) wearing, say, flip-flops or some other loose-fitting footwear. Everyone around you is shopping quietly and nicely. You suddenly let out a “Hup!”, kick your leg, and then chase after your footwear that just flew to a random location. This will prompt some priceless looks from observers, ranging from disgust to pity because quite obviously, engaging in this type of behavior must surely mean you are retarded in some way. Regardless or your age, you can literally see people wondering where your mother is.

• In this example you are at work, which is often the most entertaining place of them all to engage in US. Equipment needed: Empty (or very close to it) plastic water bottle, the shape and size are of no import. While standing around talking to a couple of co-workers (the bigger the group the better), if the conversation begins to lull or grows tiresome, simply yell out the aforementioned “Hup!”, whip yourself around 180 degrees and chuck the bottle as hard as you can, and turn back around as though nothing out of the ordinary happened. This works especially well in rooms with a hard tile floor (as opposed to ‘soft’ tile?) as it will make an incredible amount of noise. From those who know you, this should prompt some ‘your pretty weird, but I think it’s pretty funny’ looks. From the ones you don’t really care to know or don’t really like, this will keep them at a healthy and respectful distance going forward.

Now, engaging in US does take some practice. It can be very easy to slip over that fine line where it is no longer funny, but has fallen over into the realm of poor taste. Should you accidentally cross over that line, don’t be disheartened. Just as in poker, where a move can quite suddenly be either genius or folly, so it is with ‘Unnecessary Shit’. While there is definitely a time and a place for such immature shenanigans, with practice you too can find those places you never knew were there, because they weren’t before. Congratulations! You have now added lightheartedness and a bit of the strange to seemingly unfit places and situations, thereby liberating yourself by another increment from normal societal constraints.

Considering the frights that Grubby gave those of us who work with his running porno collages, I will simply link to this week’s Unnecessary Shit. Just make sure that if you are at work, no one can see your monitor. I’m not sure if it is fake or not (probably fake), but it IS completely unnecessary.

It’s snowing outside (unbelievable, I know), so today is going to be a poker day, if I can find some good games. Otherwise it may be a video game day and a poker evening. Either way, I should be around tomorrow or Sunday with some poker content, where I’ll be endeavoring to Think Big, and my head will be Much Bigger.

Just a few plugs..

Egads, it’s still January. Mommy, make the bad month stop. Between dealing with the tribulations of the month, school, and the corporate overlords, there has been NO time for poker. This obviously means no poker content today. Hell, I’m too beat to even go on a smallish rant of any kind. There’s still plenty of material, but as Otis might say, “I’m ill-equipped” at the moment.

Years ago, I went through A+ and Net + course materials but never actually took the tests to get certified. Not because they were difficult, mind you, I was simply unmotivated to do so and short on money at the time. The only actual certification I hold is a CCNA, which now that I’m thinking of it, is nearing it’s expiration. Fast-forward to my current corporate servitude. Some micro-brained non-tech from on high has issued a “directive” that all the SysAdmins should be A+ and Net+ certified by August of this year. That means two separate week-long boot camp sessions in Phoenix which is no big deal (refresher education is always OK, as long as it’s tech or poker), the problem comes with the news that they’ve cancelled my trip for the Cisco/Avaya bootcamp until FY ’06. Huh? What kind of numb-skulled idiot decides that A+/Net+ is more valuable than Cisco or Avaya? What a waste of time and money. And while my valuable training gets slashed for this year, tons of money is still being spent on ‘Ethics Training’ for the rest of the corporate monkeys. Okay, I’ll shut up now. It’s not like I’m the only worker bee out there with these frustrations, but sometimes you just gotta bitch a little, right?

A full-on congratulations goes out to Otis on his foray into fulltime writing. He’s living a dream that many of us have, and deserves every bit of it. I hope I get to actually meet him at a blogger event one of these days. For writing that is better than what you will find on these pages, go check out his posts on Up For Poker or on his personal blog. Good stuff.

Just in case it hasn’t been linked to enough and you haven’t seen it yet, get thyself over to AlCantHang’s L.A. Poker Classic auction. Show some support for a drunk hippie and get you piece of dat. I decided to go ahead and invest in an entire 3%! In my ever so humble opinion, better to gamboool on Al than the stock market.

Don’t forget, there is now less than a week until the next WPBT event on PokerStars. February 2^nd at 9PM EST. $20+2 buy-in, password: thehammer. The money will be well spent, as you can rest assured that you’ll see some better dialogue than you would watching most movies, and unlike the MPAA, poker bloggers aren’t evil and are more deserving of the cash. So come one, come all!

Tune in tomorrow, as it will be Friday, and that means the second weekly installment of ‘Unnecessary Shit’.

I’m Thinking Big. My head, Much Bigger.

Degenerate Monks

I arrived home from work this evening to find my new issue of Wired waiting, and I immediately devoured it in one sitting. Whenever there is a new issue of something I am interested in, or a new posting on one of the blogs I read, I morph into something resembling my dogs who wolf down their treats as though someone will come racing around the corner and snatch them away at any moment. Anyway, there was an interesting article on the dominance of right-brainers in the coming Age, and it got me to thinking….

Since the article isn’t on the website to link to yet, I’ll try and sum up as briefly as I can. The author basically asserts that the Information Age and the abundance that came with it was/is ruled by left-brained thinking, logical and analytical. Now he makes a case for what he calls the Conceptual Age, in which the right-brained will prosper. Those who see the Big Picture and not simply the mechanics of it. Those who feel more and can see and bring more beauty and meaning along with new concepts. Idea people, basically.

The value of the dollar goes down, white collar wages in other countries like India continue to rise, but are still far below what a US worker expects/needs. Any job that relies solely on sets of rules is at risk to other people who will do the same job at a much cheaper rate, or machines. Hell, even programming in many cases is handed over to the computers themselves. Having skills in the logic, the analytics, or the mechanics of a thing won’t be going away. In fact, it will remain a necessity. It’s just that in not-too-distant future, these skills alone won’t be nearly enough by themselves to prosper.

In the name of all that is holy, what does this have to do with Poker? I’ll try to explain it coherently, and if I fail miserably, you have my many apologies as it is late and I am writing in that sleep deprived “copy of a copy” state.

While poker is certainly booming, and shows nary a sign of slowing, the fact is that sooner or later it will. Whether we like it or not, this is America, and the trend will certainly decline from it’s current fever pitch. Many of the fish will move onto the next big thing, like Hidden Limit Kilted Pachinko Tournaments, Stuffed Animal Wargames, or vigorous matches of ‘I can take a Bigger Dump than You’. As folks who actually take the time to write our thoughts on the game (and incidentally, anything else that comes to mind), I think that the serious bloggers will maintain an edge, however small it may or may not be.

The deeper thoughts and ruminations on this game that someone writes about day after day may be just the thing that keeps the game fueled when it would normally be fading back into oblivion. I am definitely beginning to become more and more convinced that we will be the ones continuing to prosper as poker marches inevitably into it’s own Conceptual Age. Degenerate Monks, if you will. Many of us see not only the mechanics of the game (knowledge of which will always remain a necessity), but we also see the beauty and deeper meaning contained within it. There is empathy for another’s daily struggle with the game. We are neither left-brained or right-brained, we are both. I believe that it is this propensity that will allow us to prosper regardless of the twists or turns poker may take.

Then again, maybe the fish really will never stop coming and I simply have diarrhea of the brain. I need to get some damn sleep.

For those of you who feel their time was egregiously wasted by the above rambling, I offer this token that someone posted on 2+2 (can’t remember who, and yeah, what a weird place to find it). I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be horrified. A bit of both, I guess.

Keep Thinking Big, everyone. My lack of sleep and head remain, as always, Much Bigger.

January...Oy veh

Everyone knows the Counting Crows song, A Long December. I’ve decided that they were really talking about January, they just couldn’t use it because of the extra syllable.

I’ve always hated January. Many are uplifted by the New Year that it brings, and I am often confused by this positive attitude. Of course, positive attitudes have always confused me. I never once felt the urge to help “turn a frown upside down” or assist in diagnosing a case of the Mondays.

So, in honor of the month with no seeming end, let me try and make a case to persuade others to join me in shaking my fist at the January’s of our lives.

• January, in most places, is the height of winter. It is more often than not an extremely depressing month, weather-wise.

• Waiting for all of those damn W-2’s to come in. Taxes, in their role as one of life’s only two certainties, can never be done soon enough. I hate that monkey being on my back for any longer than necessary.

• For those of you who, like myself, have the utter misfortune of being corporate worker bees, I hate the first of the year “hoo-rah” motivational conference calls.

• There are 31 days in January, and boy, for some reason that extra day makes a REALLY annoying difference.

This week isn’t looking that great for poker, unfortunately. Work, sick dogs, more work, and a lot of schoolwork to round out this hellish 31 days. A pox on you, Midwest.

I won’t get in to the boring-ass details of my weekend poker any further than I already have, suffice to say it was decent, I guess. After gaining 17 BB’s on Stars Sunday morning, I got nailed in the afternoon for a net gain of 2 BB’s. I fared a bit better on Party, coming up 23 BB’s to get my free money roll up to a few cents short of $75. Yippee. But hey, it’s better than losing, that’s for damn sure. And even though I am not winning wild sums of money (yet), it’s good to know that I can hold my own over many hours in the no fold’em jungle that is low low limit.

Being the “gay” community that we are, we just got “gayer” (if indeed that is a word). The new WPBT site is up (built by PokerErrata) and looks great! With this bit of centralization, look for an extremely gay blogger event near you! We are fam-i-ly.....

Given the fact this week looks to be pretty hectic, don’t be too surprised if the posts are a bit intermittent. Then again, given the fact that I’m pretty OCD about posting (even if it is mostly worthless drivel), don’t be surprised if they keep coming regularly, either.

And regardless of how hectic things get, I will remain Thinking Big, while my head is definitely Much Bigger.

Play, not results

Man, what a long night.

I played for probably six hours or so yesterday. I started out on Stars, and unlike the usual tighter play that seems to personify Stars, I actually had a maniac at my table and was pretty excited at the possibility of taking down a couple of big pots. When I got on the table, the maniac had about $15, and proceeded to go on a run in which he won 8 hands straight, running that $15 up to over $60. Why doesn’t a rush like that ever happen to me? After playing my for about an hour, seeing hardly a face card, and getting blinded and missing some flops, I finally pick up AJ UTG + 2 so I raise and only have 2 callers, one of them being the maniac. Flop brings 2s 3s Jd TPTK, I bet, maniac raises, third player drops, I reraise, maniac call. Turn is my third Jack. The maniac caps the turn with me. Sweet. River brings 5 of spades, I bet, another raise so I just call, and sure enough, he flips over 10-7s for the flush. Capped the turn with less than the nut flush draw? WTF?!!!! Needless to say, Zip Zoom TILT. Intellectually I know I want people at my table playing like that, but that doesn’t always help. I bled away another 5 BB before finally leaving with what little was left of my buy in. Losing almost 10BB’s on a hand like that was pretty goddamn disheartening.

I know that I’m steaming pretty bad, so I shut it down, do a few dishes, and hit the shower in an effort to wash away some tilt, and it helped somewhat. I played earlier in the day on Party for about an hour, ending the session up about 9 BB to bring my free money roll to $61. I thought, “Why the hell not?” I played a couple of hands, and then remembered, “Hey you’ve been observing the Stud tables for a couple of days now, and they seem damn fishy as well, you should go fleece those.” Great idea.

Now, for anyone who hasn’t noticed yet, or who may give a shit, the ante on Party is HIGH on the low limit stud. .25/hand at .50/1 and 1/2, which is 5x’s higher than Stars for the same level. I figure that’s a 30BB buy-in, which I know is short, but I’m not going to get anywhere being a punk, and I can play Stud well (it’s not very tough if you have even a little bit of intelligence and observation). Let’s make a run at these fish.

As I watched the chips fly around between the fish, the hardest thing was just waiting for the proper cards and not gamboling. 3…2…..1…Let the fishy suckouts begin. The worst being running two’s on 4^th and 5^th street to give some douchebag a full house 2’s over 3’s to my made nut flush. Four giant suckouts total, to knock me down to a paltry $9. I was pissed, but not tilted (yes, I think there is a difference) and just buckled down even harder to wait for what I figured would be my last hand. FINALLY, things turned. I got trip 10’s to double me up to $18. I had two more hands that actually didn’t get sucked out, one being quad 6’s which ran me all the way back up to $62. I played one more hand and got nailed again, so I just left with my $57 for a day’s profit on Party of five whole dollars. Not bad for four hours of play, lol.

Do I recommend the Party Stud game? You bet your ass I do. Just go into it knowing there is going to most likely be some freakin’ HUGE swings. There was only one other good player on my table, and he was able to run his $50 up to almost $200 in that 3 hour span. One of these days I’m going to actually have a substantial winning session on Party. I always seem to end up with a piddly profit after being forced to climb out of a giant suckout hole, or get knocked back down by suckouts after I make a nice score. I can’t seem to tell whether or not I’m doing something wrong, or that’s just the way it has been going. If it is something I’m doing wrong, I know it’s just that one tiny little thing I haven’t seen yet, and when I do, it will put me over the top.

Oh yeah, and Poker Gods, if you’re listening, I’m still waiting on that rush.

I played some more Stud on Stars this morning and made back the 18BB’s that I lost yesterday, so I feel much better now. Slowly but surely, focusing on play and not short term results is sinking in. VERY slowly. Hopefully today/tonight will be better as I plan on playing some more because I still have that damn bonus to clear. Boy, how slow am I?

Play, not results. Play, not results. I’m Thinking Big, while my head remains Much Bigger.

Completely Unnecessary

I’m either a genius or a complete idiot.

• Your average Joe Bag ‘o Doughnuts definitely couldn’t do my job. Maybe my head is so crammed full of techie stuff, it has pushed out common sensibilities. Hence the (albeit lame) argument for genius.

• I’m not rich. I haven’t won any Nobel Prizes. There’s the idiot argument.

Taking the above factors into account, I think I’m going to have to go with complete idiot. But let me tell you why…..

I arrived home last evening with a little bit of time before I had to go to my AITP meeting, so I thought it would be a good time to sneak in a little bit of poker while listening to the new Linkin’ Park/Jay-Z collaboration at an ungodly volume. (By the way, if you like either of these artists, this collection of songs kicks a whole lot of ass) Poker and loud music were obviously NOT in my immediate future, because for some reason EVERYONE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET decided it was time to give me a call. What a pain in the ass. I hate flurries of phone calls. If I could convince my wife to go along with it, the only way you would ever be able to get a hold of me would be through email, but I digress.

Being harried from the barrage of calls and other goings on, I head out for my meeting. This is to be my first, so I know where it is, but have never actually been in the building before. It’s in the Bank of America building downtown. I get parked and head over, only to find that I can’t get in! Is this another bout of THE IDIOCY (kind of like THE DIARRHEA , only in your head), or can I really not get in? Am I unintentionally at the completely wrong place? After wandering around the building like a vagrant, trying every single door, I make a few calls to track down the number of the guy who invited me in the first place. I actually get a hold of him and get inside the building with about one minute to spare before the presentation starts.

Where’s the idiocy, you ask? Soon, soon…

The presentation was on computer forensics and was actually (and I hesitate to use this term, but in my case I can’t help it) wildly interesting. I even got to hear about some of the tools that the NSA uses and some of their capabilities. Cool Stuff.

Anyway, the presentation is a bit over an hour and a half, after which I spend about 15-20 minutes talking with some folks, then head out to my car. While heading out to the car, I do what we all do, grab for my keys. Where the hell are they? Did they walk out of my pants in search of a better home? Oh crap, don’t tell me I locked them in the car. Yup. Not only did I lock them in the car, I locked them in with the frikkin’ car RUNNING.

My car, middle of downtown, running for two straight hours. I am King of the Morons.

Time to make some more phone calls. Turns out the police can’t help you into your car anymore, thank you legions of lawyers and sue happy Americanos! Due to the recent storm my car is still being repaired, leaving me with a rental which of course doesn’t have anything even resembling OnStar. The cops let me know that the only ones in the city willing to get me into my car are one of the cab companies. Weird. Back in my day (which really wasn’t long ago AT ALL) there were multiple solutions to this problem, and now my only savior is a creepy old cabby? Gimme a break.

And of course, they don’t take any sort of cards. In fact, I actually wasted (THE IDIOCY, again) about 15 mins on the phone with the cab company lady who answered, trying to explain that on my bank card, you can run a charge through as a credit OR a debit. She couldn’t seem to fathom this wacky idea, and treated me like a transient trying to pass off counterfeit food stamps in order to steal a car from some poor, hapless senior. Cash only, so I had to call my wife to bring me some cash, as I typically don’t carry much, if any.

I did finally make it home, thanks to the cabbie who wouldn’t respond to any inquiry or nicety that I made, I guess for fear I might find out he’s a wanted man or something.

I’m not sure quite why I just wasted your time like this. Maybe Friday is random story day, and I didn’t realize it until just now. I think I’ll just blame it on lingering effects of THE IDIOCY from last night. Needless to say, no poker happened last night.

I’ll leave you with Phil’s latest bit of published dog shit. Christ, I can’t believe CardPlayer still runs anything with his name on it.

Thanks for staying with me through all of the preceding unnecessary shit. I’ll try to start Thinking Big again tomorrow where, as always, my head will be Much Bigger.

Ready for another 4?

Break out the Fear Factor puke bucket…It’s Inauguration Day. Come one, come all!

WARNING: Side effects may include transference of the inability to speak correctly, an increase in blundering, arrogant foreign policy, and the loss of even more of the freedoms that you take for granted.

Dubya and friends always puts me in a dark mood, sorry about that. I need some John Stewart, that’ll cheer me up.

It’s been a while, but insomnia sank it’s sharp talons into my skull again last night. It wasn’t too bad though, since I got to catch up on some 2+2 reading and do a little playing on Party. Enjoy this thread on responses for table coaches if you haven’t already seen it. I tried to implement some strategery (<--in honor of Dubya) and find some good tables, but the player counts were dropping faster than Paris Hilton’s drawers, so I only played for an hour or so (what is that, about 100 hands?) before I quit with a whopping 4BB profit due to lack of table juiciness and general lack of alertness.

Inauguration Update: They are handing out blue fleece blankets to all of the VIP’s so they can keep warm. If you’re a brainwashed serf attending this auspicious occasion….(begin Soup Nazi voice) NO BLANKET FOR YOU! That’s OK, being in such close proximity to the Ministry of Love should warm you plenty.

For those of you who may not have lately, get over and read DoubleAs last few posts. He presents a couple of NLHE conundrums that are worth some serious thought. Some of you, I’m sure, already have your tools at the ready to deal with the situations presented, but I sat there for quite awhile giving them my attention. Regardless, it will give your brain a bit of exercise during an otherwise mind-numbing workday.

Dammit, the phone keeps ringing off the hook and I can’t get the words to unificate on the page, so I’m going to cut this short and see if I can get boned up on some of the JavaScript that I have to get done for my next class.

Remember everyone, try not to be right or left. Think for yourself, and always try to Think Big.

Scary Stuff....

I have seen the fourth horseman. It’s not a he, it’s a she.

Her name is Mary Roach….and there really aren’t words.

Who is this person? If you watched American Idol last night you know. My wife made me watch it. Shut up dude, I didn’t want to. Really.

We’ve all seen weird shit on TV documentaries and the like, but it’s something even creepier when you see a schizophrenic/personality disorder literally about to break loose the internal bonds on national TV in the middle of a huge crowd. My nightmares are going to have a new star for the next couple of nights, that’s for sure. How can people be so deluded, I wonder? Is it too much MTV? Everyone is told they are going to grow up and be rock stars, movie stars, what have you, and it looks like they still actually believe it. Dreams are great and all…but damn. If you suck, you suck—just move onto something else that you are actually good at.

At life’s poker table, it seems to me that a large portion of these people are the fish. Feeder goldfish for the piranhas. I was pretty shocked at the sheer amount of people that show up for these “auditions”, and just how many show up completely broke, wallet and talent-wise. Just like the fish that buy into a micro-NL table with $5 and immediately push with their 10 2 off suit hoping for some kind of seriously unlikely miracle.

Hmmm…I thought I had some kind of a point to make here, but if I did, I just lost it. I hate it when that happens. Oh well, let’s talk about commercials…

Have you seen the new Dial foamy hand soap commercial? If we take the commercial at it’s word, this new soap is 10x more effective than any previous soap, which got me to thinking. The last time Dial had a soap commercial, they said their antibacterial concoction killed 98% of germs. So now it kills 980% of germs? If I wash my hands once, I won’t have to wash them the next nine times I normally would have? Never let your guard down folks….Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Don’t forget about me as I might be too be too busy to post for the next couple of days. I have school stuff tonight, and an AITP Meeting tomorrow night. Thank God though, or I would be forced to sit through at least one more two hour session where Ryan Seacrest shills for Coke, Ford, and Cingular Wireless, ugh. If I can squeeze in the time, or get annoyed enough by something, I’ll be sure to get one in, though.

Regardless, I’ll be Thinking Big, and my head will be Much Bigger.

Have a good weekend?

I have a dream……

But I can’t remember it when I wake up.

I decided to not write any posts for a couple of days because it was starting to feel like they were getting shittier, so I figured a few days off would refill the tanks. The tanks are now full again, but it remains to be seen if the posts will be good. They must be decent so far, as no one so far has said, “Geez dude, your posts are shit”. That, or everyone is too nice and doesn’t want to discriminate against the guy with an oversize noggin. That’s right buddy, I’ll sue. After all, I’m an American, and am thus entitled to large sums of money for perceived injustices.

It appears that this week on The Today Show is “Baby Week”. Great, just what we all need, more breeding propaganda. Quick, churn out more peasants to fight in unjust wars for a puppet with the vocabulary of a sixth grader. Can you tell I’m having issues this morning? I spent the weekend reading various political things that caused me to be particularly incensed, but this is not a political blog (for the most part, at least), so I’ll cut it short.

Hella Hold’em put up a good post about the struggle some of us have with being aggressive. As a fellow INTJ personality type, aggressiveness is one of my bigger struggles. In the last couple of months I have made some good strides towards being more aggressive, but I realize I still have a long way to go. I don’t have a problem standing up to the aggression of someone else, but taking an aggressive lead is not something that comes naturally to me. It is finally starting to come together a bit more, in that I was able to put a few moves together on some folks this weekend to take down pots that I previously would have let go, simply because I “didn’t have the cards”. While showing down the mortal nuts to take down a huge pot feels great, it feels equally good, if not better, to win a medium pot with nothing.

A new and pretty darn fun activity came about by accident this weekend. My wife and I sat on the couch together, each with our own laptop, and played $5 +.50 SnG’s together. We obviously couldn’t play in the same one, but it seems to make my wife amenable to playing poker more often. I haven’t narrowed down what exactly it is yet, but we both have moneyed, if not won, every single time we have done this. Try this on one of those many nights when there is nothing on TV. It’s great fun for a low, low price, and your spouse isn’t annoyed because your not doing anything together or paying him/her any attention. I gave my wife $50 from my PStars roll (which put me down to about $550), now she is on the way to building her own roll and mine is back over $600. Nice dude, nice.

I think I’m going to have to buckle down and buy PokerTracker, in order to accurately gauge whether I completely suck or not. OK, I know I don’t completely suck, but Party sure makes me feel like I do at times. I guess I’m still just having a problem adjusting to the much bigger swings there. You may remember previously that I tilted away nearly half of my free money roll on Party early last week. This weekend I tried to buckle down and make something of the $45 I had left. Over about 8 hours total, things went like this: Post blind, fold to multiple raises. Catch premium hand shortly thereafter, get sucked out on. Be patient, climb back up. Make a decent gain, get knocked back to even on an unlikely suckout. Table breaks, go find a new one and start over. I just couldn’t seem to hold on to any of the gains I made, and after all of that playing, end up at $47.75, yippee. 15-20 BB swings on a roll that short, in a word, sucks. The good news is, I didn’t tilt at all (not even subtly), and kept playing my good hands aggressively. If I had played in the super weak-tight style that is my natural tendency, I would still be down a bit because I would not have extracted all of the bets that I did. So chalk another one up to controlled aggression, lesson reinforced another small bit. Still, posts that state, “I deposited $50 into Party and now one month later I have over $1000” make me think I either totally suck or am doing something very wrong. Oh well, I’m confident that it will work itself out over time as long as I keep plugging away.

One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that I am much better at controlling tilt these days. In days past I would have tilted away my small portion of Party Poker money because of the sense of injustice that rears it’s ugly head when my KK gets sucked out on by a 10-6o on the river. I’ve actually internalized the fact that in poker there is no “justice”, and my premium hands are not entitled to win every time I hold them. They should win a large majority of the time, but there will be times (sometimes in a row) that they lose. Oh well, I’ll keep taking those bets everytime.

Geez, I’m starting to sound like a support group member…..maybe I should write a Serenity Prayer for poker players….

Poker Gods, grant me to serenity to accept the suckouts I cannot change….
Courage to be aggressive on the scary boards…
And the wisdom to know when I should get away from a hand that is obviously beat..

Post this on your PC monitor, my children, and be at peace.

This couldn't wait..

SirFWALGMan is where I originally found the link for this blog, but I felt compelled to post a link myself, because the blog is Sooper Dooper! I'm finding myself with the urge to mystery shop.

One last thing. I got to thinking about it, and before I mortally offend the actual "writers" out there who really do write for themselves, let me clarify that my '95% of the people blogging' statement was not intended to inflame. If it did inflame anyone who's blog I look up to, my sincere apologies. It is simply my guesstimation and opinion.

And as we all know opinions, like assholes, can turn out very stinky sometimes.

For Shame, Stripper. For Shame.

Oh boy, so much to say. How fortuitous that Blogger.com doesn’t limit post length.

First, the recent community drama. I commented on it a bit yesterday, but was pretty unfazed by the whole thing, and determined to go ahead and keep her link up on this blog, at least for a bit longer (though, if I kept reading constant two sentence posts about Pat or trips to ND or wherever, it was coming down anyway). Yesterday though, was the post that broke the blogger’s back. She decided to put down Alton Brown. Oh, the horror. Now, I will say that Alton can be corny and sometimes annoying, but by and large his show is very informative and at least in my humble case, interesting. While I am not a diehard Alton fanboy or anything, I decided “That’s it”, because next thing I know she’ll be taking shots at Anthony Bourdain, which is something that I will not stand for. I’m going to guess she is probably a fan of that ewok, Emeril. (Yes, I know. He’s a great chef, but have you heard the way he speaks on his show? “Like such”, indeed. )

Taking shots at ‘The Hammer’---Bad

Taking shots at Felicia---Even Worse

Actually saying, “I have no interest in being in the limelight”—Fucking Priceless.

No interest in the limelight? What was all that Hammer and Felicia criticism? Deep thoughts from a JuCo savant? Give this community some freakin’ credit. I don’t think it’s out of line in any way to say that at least 95% of us do this in an effort to be “in the limelight” in some shape or form. I’ve always found reading and writing to be deeply satisfying pursuits (which are extended by blogging), but if there wasn’t that “off chance” that blogging could bring some small modicum of notoriety and/or financial gain in the future, I most likely wouldn’t be doing it. If you really “have no interest in being in the limelight”, shut down your blog and grab a pen and paper for your thought documentation

I, for one, am not ashamed to say that I love watching my hit counter. It satisfies my inner narcissist. I know myself well enough to admit it.

Oh yeah, and regardless of what happens in the future, I can guarantee that every time “The Hammer” takes down a pot, as a community we will continue to collectively cream in our jeans.

OK, enough of that business. I know I should probably just be ignoring it, as trolls tend to wither and die when ignored, but I couldn’t help myself this time. On a more pleasant note, Catching the Antichrist linked to a great article by Howard Lederer called Poker and Zen. I actually bookmarked it and printed it off in an effort to constantly remind myself where I’m rally at in this ever so frustrating journey. I am admittedly still way too results oriented. It is easily my biggest hole, and an issue that very quickly and easily slips my mind, so thanks to Anisotropy for bringing the issue up again in his post a couple of days ago. One of these days I’ll have a good portion of these damn holes plugged and will be able to blog about playing higher than $.50/1 games and cheap tourneys. One day I’ll be up there with some of the bigger boys. Am I jealous much? You bet I am, it keeps me motivated.

Last but not least, for those who might give a shit, here is the tinfoil portion: Pair arrested after telling lawyer jokes. Land of the Free, indeed.

It might just be me, but 2005 seems to be starting out as one crazy-ass, fucked up year. Not all bad, though, it never is. I’ll remain here, however, trying to Think Big, while my head will forever be Much Bigger.