Love the game

[What have they done to blogger? I can't do italics or links in this horrible new set-up]

Corfu was nice. This time last week I was sitting by a blue swimming pool under a clear blue sky and blazing sun, sipping Coke and reading a good book.

To follow on from my last entry, Spider-Man 2 was absolutely stunning. Amazing. Spectacular. Speaking as a long-term fan of the Spider-Man comics, familiar with Marvelisms like ‘no-prize’ and ‘nuff said’, I don’t think it could have been any better.

When I got home I played short-handed Pot Limit Omaha, which is about the biggest risk I could take with my paltry bankroll. However, it was a strangely passive line-up (hallelujah!) and I won about thirty bucks without ever really having any sweaty moments. I also won yet another heads-up match, before retiring to bed happy and looking forward to my holiday.

Fade to present day:

So last night I got back in the saddle. It felt real weird playing again after a long break of ten days. I felt patient and calm. Sadly, despite a reasonably attractive lineup at the PLO table, nothing really went my way. It was a table where people simply paid off anything and everything, but that does mean you have to make a hand from time to time and it just didn’t happen. I was down a catastrophic (in my current situation) eighty bucks, until I caught a bleary-eyed full house at 1am to recover forty of it.

Since I also won a PLO sit and go, I finished the night down just twenty dollars. It was nice to win the SNG after a long streak of missing the money entirely. People really do play spectacularly badly in these, but it doesn’t necessarily help unless you manage to wind up as the beneficiary of one of the huge mistakes yourself.

Probably the most interesting (hello, anyone awake?) thing about my card-playing last night was that I actually played some online blackjack.

Huh?

Yeah, I know. Well, what happened is that I read that super book ‘Bringing Down The House’ (Ben Mezrich) on holiday and ended up playing hundreds and hundreds of hands of blackjack with myself on the sun-loungers of Corfu, teaching myself a basic card-count.

I wondered if it might – just *might*, you understand, since I am not stupid – be possible to card-count online as long as you played at very small stakes. But of course not; the casino shuffles the deck(s) every single hand. Well, I had downloaded the damn casino software now, so I figured I would at least try to get myself a £20 bonus, which meant staking £80 playing £2 stake blackjack. I had a lovely rush of cards and was up about thirty quid once I had played the requisite hands, so I moved my original stake back into my poker account and am now just waiting for the free money. Cash-out curse reared its head when I played on for a little while with my profits.

So that’s my recent poker and card playing updated. Its been nice today to have a week’s worth of blogs to catch up on. Boy Genius never, ever disappoints, nor does Iggy. (I favour frequent, shorter posts Iggy).

Couple of comments/thoughts on other recent blogs:

HDouble says the USA is as good as it gets for gambling. True in a casino sense I am sure – but as a Brit, it sure is nice to live in a country where gambling online and in betting shops (found on every high street in the country) is completely, unambiguously legal and tax-free.

Matt of The POker Chronicles does ‘go off on one’ occasionally, and I can’t avoid taking his comment about James Woods to task. With typical hyperbole and bravado Matt claims to have watched ‘more movies than anyone I know’ and yet hasn’t heard of James Woods? Without so much as blinking I would think of ‘Videodrome’, ‘Contact’ and ‘The Hard Way’, and I know he’s been in better stuff than those. I guess Matt is quite young. He remains a good bilious read, anyway.

Pokernerd was a blog I had somehow avoided reading, and its good; my curiosity was roused when boy genius mentioned Nerd’s catergorised listing of links. I was gratified to find myself listed quite high in the ‘almost every day’ section.

Finally, not a bloggism, but I really liked this quote from Rolf Slotboom’s latest CP article:

‘Don't be too results-oriented. Poker is a beautiful game, and you should enjoy it even when you're down. It is my experience that people who really love the game perform much better than people who just think in terms of money made/money lost.’

He’s right, poker is a beautiful game and I do love it. I am going to play tonight for the *enjoyment*. We’ll see how that works out!

PS Damn this new blogger interface sucks. Apologies to all blogs above who would be linked otherwise.