Tao of Poker

Quality Scribes

I'm impressed. Some great writing the past week out there in bloggerdom. Felicia has an excellent post on her Razz adventures at Binion's. Here's a bit:

I won the tournament with basically no effort whatsoever. Just one of those lucky days. I was catching very, very well. I just couldn't miss. I barely ever paired or bricked up. I just caught, then caught some more. Yes, some of it had to do with starting with only premium hands, then pushing them hard. Some of it had to do with my super-aggression versus the lack of aggression that most of the participants showed. I did play a good game, but I got very lucky, as well!

Here I had prepared to play up to three satellites, and then not even beat myself up if I didn't win one. Yet in less than two hours, I had won my Razz seat, and had nothing more to do!!

Alas, it's another thougt provoking post from Hank. Check out: A Year in the Making written by HDouble. Impressive. Here's the best:

For me, poker's biggest appeal is its ability to wipe the condensation from the mirror, forcing you to behold your true image. You struggle with your successes and your failures, and only a cold, hard stare will tell you if you're a winner, a loser, or a winner who needs to clean up a little bit. I'm looking a lot better than I did on day one, but I know I have a lot of cleaning up to do in the next year.

And of course, Boy Genius wrote a dandy that I would love to publish in an upcoming issue of my literary blogzine. It's called: Anna and the King Queen Suited. Here's a bit:

If the question hadn't come from a six year old with moon pie eyes and no concept that the mountain of chips in front of me at the moment meant more in the context of the game than the piddling little stacks of the others hunched over the coffee table playing Hold Em, I might have been prone to give the question the ol' roll-my-eyes-and-audibly-sigh treatment.

Adorable, a story even your grandma would say was adorable. I'd like to perhaps shoot that as a short film. Could be interesting.

The Poker Penguin never fails to amuse me. Here's the latest droppings from Sir Penguin himself:

All of a sudden, there's a hot naked woman on the TV! Now this is not a normal happening on NZ television. We get a lot of poorly disguised titilation "reality" shows - Paradise Island, Temptation hotel, survivor, the simple life, big brother (for some reason all Australian women, if you lock them in a house seem determined to prance around in bikinis and talk about sex. But actual nudity? Sometimes on arty films, but even seeing topless women is rare. Now, I do have a point, and it's not just that the Internet is far better than TV for seeing naked people.

And lastly, Iggy is not just the Blogfather, but he's a pretty astute writer:

Confidence - that's what I'm talking about. And it's something I could only prove to myself, it didn't matter how many players whose play I respected who kept telling me I was better than I thought. It truly didn't matter. I had deaf ears. I'm a cynic and a skeptic and the last thing I ever wanted to be was one of those players who thought they were a damn good poker player, but truly weren't. That was unacceptable and consequently made me very suspicious of my poker skills.

Best of luck in Vegas!!