Been busy

I've been all over the USA it seems in the past few months with what I would like to call a mediocre focus on poker. I always remember staring at a sign in Mrs. Stuckey's 11th grade English class that had a quote about mediocrity. Whenever I think about doing something not full go, I get nightmares about that sign. It's time to step up again in poker. October is a month where I get to mix in the live play again here in Las Vegas. There are two big events. Caesar's and Bellagio both host a good variety of tournaments. I'll be playing more events at Caesar's because of the variety of games available that I want to play (HORSE, PLO), and the lower buy ins which generally have given a better value in the past in terms of structure. The Bellagio has done a lot of great things with the structure in the recent months.


I've been working on getting my computer updated again. I found myself deep in the World Championship of Online Poker Event #1 when my hard drive crashed. I missed a good 15 minutes while getting my other computer up and trying to figure out what was wrong. I ended up getting 39th out of 7200+ players which was devastating considering the 214,000 first place money. I haven't been this close to this kind of score online in a while. To have the outside factors get shoved in my face was a little unnerving. Since then, I've played a few other events with only one cash in Razz. I really haven't been able to maintain a bankroll on Pokerstars, so I've been limited in playing lots of events in this series. It's really frustrating being in the USA and having what I would like to call an annoyance of trouble in getting money online. It's not hard getting it on, but it's more of an annoyance to a serious player looking to play in the biggest series online in history. A player used to be able to transfer back and forth from sites with ease using Neteller or Firepay, but since some spotty legislation has been passed by 4 members of the government, we are all inconvenienced.

In an ounce of good news today, a bill introduced by Barney Frank was marked up and passed through committee which would limit enforcement of the UIGEA to those sites accepting sports bets. This would be a great compromise if all sites could start doing business with the USA again and free flow of capital from site to site would work again. I ultimately stand with the Poker Players Alliance in hoping for taxation and regulation of online poker because I believe it's best for the long term interest of the industry and for the United States to finally gain their hands into the revenues of these sites. With the impending collapse of our economy, I can only imagine another revenue source would be welcomed.


I want to start putting some more poker stuff here soon, so if I get into some sticky situations in tournaments, I might start posting on the blog more. I'll try to keep updating more often while I'm playing live. Sometimes though when playing multiple tournaments online, it's hard to track all the huge hands.