Ani DiFranco says it so well

squint your eyes and look closer

I'm not between you and your ambition

I am a poster girl with no poster

I am thirty-two flavors and then some

and I'm beyond your peripheral vision

so you might want to turn your head

cause someday you're going to get hungry

and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will

and I have done well by their names

just the kindness I've lavished on strangers

is more than I can explain

still there's many who've turned out their porch lights

just so I would think they were not home

and hid in the dark of their windows

til I'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl

course too pretty is also your doom

cause everyone harbors a secret hatred

for the prettiest girl in the room

and god help you if you are a pheonix

and you dare to rise up from the ash

a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy

while you are just flying back

I'm not trying to give my life meaning

by demeaning you

and I would like to state for the record

I did everything that I could do

I'm not saying that I'm a saint

I just don't want to live that way

no, I will never be a saint

but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer

I'm not between you and your ambition

I am a poster girl with no poster

I am thirty-two flavors and then some

And I'm beyond your peripheral vision

So you might want to turn your head

Cause someday you might find you're starving

and eating all of the words you said

Trying to explain a technical passion to others

How do you do it? Is it even possible?  The things that make our passion exciting to us are hard to translate to people who haven't felt the things we feel.  Among poker players, for example, it is hard to explain the soul-sucking defeat of having two outs or the absolute elation of playing a hand such that you get your opponent to put in their stack with only two outs.  The non-technical translation ("That's a really good thing!") or even the somewhat technical translation ("Mathwise, I am a 90+% favorite.") really doesn't cut it.  It's just one of those things that's hard to explain to others who haven't been in the trenches.

Travis recently tried to explain such a situation on his blog, and to be honest, even as someone who would like to think that she gets the game, I found his post rather boring to read (apologies, Trav).  I think that has something to do with the passion.  It's hard to translate that to people who don't love the game. 

I manage to still have some people in my life that don't "get" poker.  Even if they inquire about my play, I have learned to KISS (keep it simple, stupid) cause otherwise they get a glazed over look on their faces.  Similar, I imagine, to how I felt the first time I tried to read Sklansky's "Theory of Poker."

I wish there was a way to translate the passion to people.  If someone figures it out, let me know. 

Things I have lost

teeth
my Star Wars action figures
sleep
temper
my favorite little black dress i bought when we went to boca
money
my eyebrow
toenail(s)
moles
the contents of my stomach
hands of poker with the best hand
hands of poker with the worst hand
pets
grandparents
a husband
friends
innocence
sanity

Just Like Riding a Bicycle?

I haven't posted in awhile.  Been busy with the end of the semester, and then busy not doing much of anything that was bloggable.  I did recently see Pixar's Up! and would highly recommend it.  Just be sure to bring the tissues.

I leave for Vegas to play in WSOP event #31 ($1500 HORSE) in a little more than a week.  It's hopefully gonna be a great trip, and I'm really starting to get excited for it except...I haven't played live NLHE in almost two months* and I'm a bit worried about my game not being up to par.  I'll actually probably play Omaha8 more than anything else while out there, but I really want to get some live action under my belt again.

A few nights ago, I was saying something to this effect and it brought up the topic: if you've been out of the saddle, do you think you need a warm up or are you cool with just showing up.  Playing my A+ game takes a lot of mental warm up, so for me, I need to get out there again sooner rather than later...  But I'm interested to hear what other people have to say.

*Assuming you don't count the three hands I played at the last game ever of the SHOP.  Third hand, I flop a set of 9's against an obvious overpair on a QJ9 board.  T on the river after all money goes in on the flop.  Ugh.

Angels and demons review

Blevins really wanted to see Angels and Demons, and I was curious having liked the book better than the DaVinci code. I promised him we'd go on opening night.

Without giving too much away for those who haven't seen it, I had two major problems: 1) they don't develop what should be one of the major characters nearly enough. 2) the best part of the book is all the philosophy and history. They are bit players in the movie; window-dressing.

Overall it was an average movie. I think I might have been less disappointed if I hadn't read the book.

Lou Krieger on HORSE

There are a lot of dualities in poker.  Some people at live poker are really annoying, yet these are often the people you want to sit with because they play badly.  Being a professional player may seem like a great life, and there are a lot of freedoms, but it also comes with a lot of stresses that a "normal" job does not have.

I have long lamented the lack of books, strategy advice, etc about HORSE games and tournaments as their own entity.  Of course there are several things to be read on each game individually, but there are few things that discuss the overall strategy of mixed games and tournaments.  The meta game, if you will.  Most of what I know on that front I have gleaned from personal experience and discussion with other players who know what they are doing on the mixed front.

On the other hand, this lack of ready information is exactly what makes HORSE games so juicy.  While NLHE is probably the game that I understand the best, just because I have played far and away more hands of that compared to anything else, my relative skill level relative to my opponents is certainly much higher in HORSE.

Nonetheless, I am really happy to see that Lou Krieger is doing a new weekly HORSE column for PokerNews.  The first part is available here.  Second is here.  I'm definitely looking forward to future columns.

Personally, I know I need improvement on the HORSE tournament front (in the middle of rereading FT's Tournament book in prep for the series).  My HORSE cash game is pretty solid.

Maybe not a vampire, but close.

I was gmail chatting with a friend the other day and I noted that the worst part for me about returning to a 9-5er would be waking up in the morning.  I'm definitely not a morning person, though I did manage to turn into one of those people who wake up by 10am on weekends after 5 years of the 9-5 thing. 

He immediately retorted with: "But you are always awake early!" 

Indeed.  It was 7:30am when we were chatting.

Before I could type my response he wrote again: "Oh.  *Still* awake?"

Yessir.  Definitely NOT a morning person.  I much prefer to be able to sleep when I am sleepy and wake when I'm not.