Tao of Poker

WSOP Main Event on ESPN and the Sky Is Falling!

Yawn. I'm more concerned with a some yahoo carrying a small bomb in a backpack moments away from embracing 72 virgins and denotating the fucker on a downtown subway than I am about this most recent news about Party Poker cutting loose its skins. Too much skin is bad for you anyway.

Read posts from other bloggers to get the run down on Party Poker dumping it's skins.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy (Bill Rini)
More Thoughts on the Party Massacre (Bill Rini)
Dairy of a Rubber-less Traveler, Cont. (Otis)
Much Ado About Something (Scurvy Dog)
24 Hour Party People (Scurvy Dog)

All this reminds me of a really good singer in a mediocre band who ditches the rest of the band to start a solo career. The star was always the singer and the star here was Party Poker. Pretty soon she'll be strung out from too much traveling and from chasing the dragon too many times at 4am.

In all honesty, I don't play on any of Party Poker's skins anymore. I used to love playing on Empire Poker under my super-secret screen name and especially their tournaments. I would also do the occasional bonus whoring over there, but those days are over. I pretty much stopped playing on Empire and played tournaments on Full Tilt for a while. These days, I just play on Party Poker (cash games), Poker Stars & Full Tilt (tournaments), and Titan Poker (bonus whoring).

How does this affect me? Not much. Instead of 70K players on Party, there are only 40K. Fish are fish. Donkey are donkeys.

How does this affect the blogging community? I guess if you have rake-back deals with those sites, you just got properly fucked. But as a Party Poker affiliate, maybe I can pick up a few new players? Don't forget to use bonus code: TAO4.

I played in a tournament this past weekend on Party Poker and I got caught in the middle of some sort of upgrade on their servers. I was refunded the money but when I logged back into Party Poker, I discovered a few new changes.

Am I a bot?

I think I am. Whenever I'm asked to fill out those "word verifications" I never get it on the first shot. I always need a second or third chance to get it right. Maybe I'm just retarded or perhaps I got bot blood running through me, but I always fail the word verification on the first try! I used to be a suit and a sheep. But a robot? When I sat down, a pop-up screen asked me to do a word verification to insure that I am not a bot. Party Poker is giving off a new illusion of safety. I appreciate the effort.

Party Poker is also trying to hook degenerate poker players into playing Blackjack by adding a nifty little button to your tables and the main lobby. Bill Rini has a post on how to remove those images. Check that out.

I stopped playing Blackjack in casinos because it's -EV. I used to count cards and I was not as successful as those MIT teams, but I did good for someone like me. I had a big score at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico during Spring Break one year in the early 1990s. That was the first time I actually played in a casino. I once played at a table by myself at 6am in the Casino Magic in Biloxi, MS. I played two hands at once, betting up to $100 per hand while my college friends watched in awe. This was over 10 years ago and I won over $2K in a few hours. They comped us McDonalds. Cheap bastards.

Senor and I used to make runs to Mohegan Sun to play Blackjack from NYC when it first opened in the mid-1990s. My first several trips to Las Vegas included hours at the Blackjack tables. I usually won a lot or lost a lot. I couldn't handle the swings so I would play poker, mostly Seven-card Stud, to slow down the bleeding on bad days. In my early 20s, I also made regular trips to Atlantic City for Blackjack and some poker at the Taj.

I'll never play Blackjack online although I watched Grubby go on a nice run the last time I was in Las Vegas and he let me crash at his apartment. Party Poker is trying to get interested folks into their new project... Party Casino... which is supposed to open next year sometime.

I started throwing more dice after I moved to Las Vegas earlier this year. Nothing too serious. I'm up lifetime playing craps, but that can all end on one roll.

Maybe I should start playing the numbers with the bookies like those old Italian ladies do at the bakery on te corney where I grew up in the Bronx? Mafia-run lotteries are not rigged like online poker, pro-wrestling, U.S. Presidential elections, and boxing.

******

A couple of things before I go. I was invited to attend a Poker Stars VIP Event in New York City tonight downtown near Times Square. Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Isabelle Mercier, and 2005 WSOP winner Joe Hachem will all be there. Oh and I think that Otis is supposed to be there too. Stay tuned for a recap of that.

Tonight, ESPN is finally airing the main event! Flipchip has a great post about that. You should re-read my live blogging updates of Day 1A and Day 1B. Set those TiVos and VCRs!

Don't forget to check out Flipchip's 2005 WSOP Photo Gallery.