High On Poker

We are now a little more than a year out from April 15, 2011, when the Federal Government finally used the law that it enacted five years prior, the UIGEA. Since that time, the online poker landscape in the US has drastically changed from an underground yet oddly legitimized handful of rooms that offered seemingly secure online poker to a wasteland, where a few online poker rooms are willing to keep serving the few brave enough to keep at their favorite online hobby.

One year gone. One year of looking for something, anything, to replace my love of online poker. One year of considering whether I should take my chances with some of the few US online poker sites around. One year of playing videogames, making art, and twiddling my thumbs.

At this point, there seems little point to do anything but wait for the government to finally catch up to where many European countries have been for years: licensed, legal online poker.  Of course, the government is a slow-moving behemoth, and god forbid the economy improves.  In the meanwhile, I’ll be twiddling my thumbs as I contemplate when and where to play poker online.

Until next time…

For those unfamiliar with the term, ring rust refers to boxers who have been out of the ring for too long, such that they are rusty and need training to get back into fighting shape. For poker players, especially post Black Friday, it seems that ring rust has been a common theme. After all, we have gone from playing poker online daily to fitting in a live game when we can.

This post, though is not about my ring rust. Rather, it is about the possibility that ring rust is a fiction for some poker players, and a harmful one at that.

Consider this: I have played poker regularly for several years, on a near-daily basis.  I stopped playing regularly when Black Friday happened. Now, when I play, it is rare and I feel like I am not playing as well. Certainly, my results have plateaued. Does this mean I have ring rust?

Possibly. It would be easy to argue that I am not playing well because I am rusty. My concern is that this belief, that poker must be played often to remain at a high level, is a cop out. Is it really that I am rusty from not playing a lot? Or am I playing poorly and using my lack of play as an excuse? Even more scary, am I playing well and suffering variance, but blaming it on ring rust?

If this was 2009, I would consider the problem to be ring rust and spend more time playing until I felt back in the swing of things. Since it is 2012, I am no longer able to play online poker, so my options are much more limited. I could, potentially, increase my hours at the local BatCave Club, or try to attend the homegames I have been getting emails about for months. But both of those actions take significant time, money and planning that I do not have. So do I give up on poker?

And therein lies my dilemma.  If I believe that ring rust is the reason for my plateaued results, then the answer is for me to stop playing poker altogether, since there is no way for me to work through my ring rust on a regular basis. Quitting poker, however, is just unacceptable.  Therefore, I have committed myself to a different theory.

Ring rust is just an excuse for playing poorly. I don’t need to play often to work through ring rust; I just need to be extra vigilant when I do play. In some ways, its just changing a label. Instead of saying “ring rust” I say “poor play”. The difference, to me at least, is that when I say “ring rust” I feel like I am blaming the results on the circumstances that surround me. When I saw “poor play” the responsibility is mine.

For me, the poor play most often comes from forcing action, which is surely a byproduct of infrequent play. Since I do not get to play often, when I do, I want to get the action started quickly. But I tended to have the same problem when I arrived late to a game; I’d try to play catch up. Or after a few losing sessions, I’d try to win back my money quickly on the next session. Those aren’t due to ring rust. Nope, that’s just plain poor play. I don’t need to fix my ring rust. I need to fix my play.

And so, I encourage all of you to not let ring rust get in the way of your poker. It is just an excuse. Ring rust is just another word for bad play, and any bad play should be ferreted out, whether it be due to infrequent play or other shortcomings.

But hey, that’s just my 2 cents.

Until next time, make mine poker!

Yes, we have another post about what I am doing instead of playing poker. This one is also a bit of an announcement. Bloggers Gotta Eat is now live!  If you are interested in reading about food, then check it out. Fortunately, I am not alone in this endeavor, as AGSweep, thisisnotapril, Jestocost, and Kipper have offered to join in the food writing fun.

I expected to announce the site’s opening in a couple of week, after we had some content, but thankfully, the group has already put out a handful of posts, including two great cooking posts from AGSweeop and Jestocost, to accompany two restaurant reviews from your truly. Rather than let those posts gather dust, I figured it was worth an early announcement.

If you want to participate in the Bloggers Gotta Eat blog, even for a one-time guest spot, feel free to email me (top left sidebar) or leave a comment.

Until next time, keep eating (oh, and make mine poker)!

Since online poker is non-existent, I have found new avenues for my blogging activities. While poker has been supplanted mostly with art, the blogging has been supplanted with my writing for Pokerist.com. Still, I have yearned for more opportunities to write, and usually, I fall back on my go-to topic, food.

See, I love food. Some may even say I am addicted. It’s gotten so bad that I have found myself eating as often as three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening. It’s goddamn habitual, and when I don’t eat, I swear my body goes through withdrawals. My stomach makes noise, I feel lightheaded and in a matter of days I even start to lose weight!

Much like my poker addiction, I have decided that it would serve me well to turn my food addiction into a blog. The way I envision it, the site would be mostly restaurant reviews in NYC, with random recipes and cooking pieces.

The thing about blogging is, it requires dedication and content. It’s easy to start a blog. It’s difficult to build content and maintain the site.

That’s where you come in. Wouldn’t it be fun if a bunch of ex-poker-bloggers (’cause let’s be real, most of us have been relegated to exes) wrote a group blog about food? We are all over this country, so we can each cover our given areas, and where worthwhile, post about a local restaurant, or a recipe or whatever.

And so, I ask you all, is anyone interested? Of course, this will be largely an informal group, so even if you just want to do a guest post once or twice, that would work.

Let me know in the comments or via email. My email link is on the left sidebar, near the top.

Until next time, make mine potato!

In my continuing series showing what I do now that I cannot play online poker, I show you my Hanukah gift for my wife.

As you may recall, wifey Kim and I abducted (she says adopted) a cat a couple of months ago, who we named Deuce (after the card, not the BM). When I’m not raising money for the orphanage or playing a thrilling game of free bingo, I have been spending time making wifey Kim’s Hanukah gift, which I admittedly already gave her.

The goal was to make something unique. At first, I just took photos of the cat with various items signifying the different months, but soon I realized I had to go deeper. I spent hours digitally altering photos, and here are some of the best results:

Cover.

February.

March

June.

September.

Until next time, make mine poker!

In a recent post, I showed a couple of my pointillism cat drawings as a sign of what I have been doing with all of my free time now that online poker is not a realistic option in the US. When I’m not volunteering my time at the Women’s shelter or attending a Bingo Social, I have been playing around with art supplies that have remained essentially untouched in the last five years.

These two pieces were made for my brother-in-law. At first, he requested a lizard. I went through several failed attempts before ending up with a stick-figure version that I finally decided was complete. It wasn’t what he expected, but that’s fine with me. I decided to keep it and recently mounted it on my wall, on a rafter by my clock. The rafter is probably twenty feet in the air, and I had to climb on my counter to do it. But the result is kinda cool, and gives viewers the chance to see the piece from a unique angle. I am particularly proud of the swirly eyes, and the fly placed on the tongue. Also, the piece was prepared with only two pieces of wire, taken from opposite ends of the same spool:

When I discovered that my original piece was not my brother-in-law’s ideal piece, I decided to do a smaller version of a piece I made a long time ago called Tug of War. Its essentially a tug of war between a fat wire man and a thin one, all made from one piece of wire. It is supposed to be about greed, since the fat one is taking everything (i.e., most of the wire) and leaving the thin one with little more than desperation. Or its just a tug of war. Whatever:

Until next time, make mine poker!

Good afternoon everyone! Some of you may already be in Vegas. Others, like me, will be leaving for the land of broken dreams tomorrow. Still, others of you are not going at all.

Regardless, if you have been following along on ThisIsNotApril’s blog, ThisIsNotAPokerBlog, you may have noticed her recent announcement: Pokerist.com has been kind enough to offer an extra money toward the Team Last Longer Bet, and money toward the food tab at Sunday’s football gathering. And who is the man behind the curtain who made this possible?

It’s ME!!! I think. See, a couple of months ago, Pokerist asked me if any of my readers would be interested in writing posts for them. I saw what they had suggested and figured it might be something I would like to do. Sure enough, I wrote two beginner strategy articles, and next thing I know, the good folks at Pokerist asked me to play a more active role for their website.

Talk about something just falling into my lap. Just when writing about poker was becoming tedious (no steady poker means no steady new revelations or post ideas), Pokerist came along to light a fire under my ass. I have since reached out to a couple of other bloggers about writing for Pokerist, but admittedly, it has been a very slow process while all the details get worked out. Once things are in place, perhaps I will have more to announce. Perhaps not.

As my emails with Pokerist continued, I thought, “Would Pokerist be interested in offering up some freebies to the poker blogging community?” I knew that Pokerist is probably off of most of your radars, since they offer free money poker only, for a variety of platforms (Facebook, iPhone, etc.) and most of us were real money players. But it didn’t take much convincing to show Pokerist that the poker blogging community was robust and filled with people passionate about the game and open to being bought off, erm, I mean courted, with freebies. Let’s be real. FullTilt ain’t sponsoring us anymore with freebies, so why wouldn’t a site like Pokerist want to jump into that void. Lord knows the WPBT are a friendly and appreciative group.

Naturally, if you appreciate the freebies, it would be a great help if you mention Pokerist.com on your respective blogs. Also they ask that we avoid publicizing the amount if possible. The details are on April’s blog. This will help us ensure that Pokerist.com will sponsor future events.

Until next time, make mine Pokerist!

With very little time left before the WPBT, I wish to announce that I am a loser, insofar as I lost my phone this weekend. Actually, I think it is in my parent’s house, but they went on vacation immediately after Thanksgiving, so I am shit out of luck. What does this mean to you, fellow WPBTers? It means that I do not have your phone numbers anymore. Sorry. So, if you may want to get in touch with me during the WPBT, you can either look for me at the Aria, where I will be staying, or hit me up with an email so we can swap digits.

Until next time, make mine poker!

So, is anyone still looking for a Last Longer Team for the WPBT? Roose and I are taking applications for a third.

I realize that I am not part of the recent group of NY-based poker bloggers whooping ass, but I still consider myself one of the clan. With that, I celebrate with my fellow bloggers some recent big wins.

First and foremost, congratulations to LJ for two recent scores. She took 2nd in one event at the Borgata Fall Open and then won the Women’s Event outright. God damn! I remember playing with her at the Genoa Club (I called it the Salami Club) years ago. Once we realized we were part of the same poker blogger clan, we hit it off. She has always been a solid poker thinker and player, and a friendly person to boot. The fact that she is pregnant is a nice little bonus too. Congrats all around to LJ’s family.

Second props goes out to a man who has been on fire since returning from the Dirty South to New York City, Jeff, aka Edgie. Edgie recently hit two large scores in Bodog tournaments, and followed it up by final tabling a recent Borgata Fall Open event. Damn, Edgie! Much like LJ, I first met Edgie through the NYC underground poker scene. We got along really well, and made a couple of AC trips together. Also like LJ, Edgie is not just a player, but a student of the game. It doesn’t surprise me the least that he has had such great recent success.

Third props go out to Hoyazo. If you don’t know Hoy, he’s got enough blog archives to keep you busy until online poker become legal again, so give it a look. Hoy took 11th, i.e., the final table bubble but in the money, at the same Borgata Open event that Edgie final tabled. I also have to give credit to Hoy for admitting that it was not necessarily stellar play that helped him with his result. We all have to rely on luck every once in a while, and it takes a man to volunteer that reality.

Fantastic jobs, guys. And lest you think that I am not one of these wildly successful NYC players, I will have you know that my mom recently called me the most handsome boy ever. So whose the big winner now?!

Until next time, make mine New York poker!