Tao of Poker

Gate 4 and Nolan Dalla

I'm sitting in those uncomfortable grey chairs at Gate 4 again. I've been wasting too much of my life sitting in random airplane terminals waiting for my flight to take off. This is one of the main reasons why I bring my laptop with me, so I can catch up on email and reading blogs. The only time I have to read through my bloglines folder is when I'm in airports.

Long Beach has wifi which means I can play a few orbits of Party Poker and skim poker and political blogs while I multi-task writing this post and praying that the old Jewish lady that looks like Bea Arthur with the dog will not be sitting next to me on my flight back to JFK. I'm liking my chances of winning that coinflip.

I spent almost a week in Hollyweird and I have a few good stories. I also finished a recap of Knit Ball if you are interested in reading about a night of music and weirdness that I endured last Friday.

The other night, I played a $5 HORSE SNG with Change100 on Full Tilt after some heavy partying. She would play Hold'em, Omaha 8, and Razz. I took over during the Stud and Stud 8 rounds since I'd rather shave my testicles with a cheese grater than play Razz and Omaha 8 back-to-back. Change100 was in 4th place when Stud came along. I picked up a lot of chips to move up to second. By the time Stud came around a second time, she was second with three players remaining. The shortstack busted in third and I took a monster pot heads up to take over the chip lead. I ended up busting when the other guy rivered a backdoor flush on me. I started out with A-J/A and picked up two pair on 5th Street, yet he kept calling me down with junk until he caught his card on the river. Second place is better than bubbling.

Heading back to NYC for a few mellow days before I have a crazy month of June that will take me to Foxwoods, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Boulder, LA, and finally Las Vegas for the 2006 WSOP.

Make sure you listen to Hold'em Radio with Lou Krieger and Amy Calistri. The guest on Thursday's show will be Nolan Dalla. Those are some of my favorite three people in poker and I was fortunate to meet all of them last summer at the WSOP.