I don't gamble, but I find myself endlessly fascinated with those who do. I'm not a customer for online gaming, not even to watch the progress of a game—for me, the draw in draw poker is the interaction of the players, their idiosyncrasies and their various approaches to winning (and losing). The Internet hides these human dramas, reducing the game to its most cutthroat level.
Poker bloggers agree, to some extent. What they write supplies the intimate details of sweat and fear, or triumphant grins. For example, Pauly—the famous Dr. Pauly whose book is linked below!—writes on Tao of Poker about the non-poker aspects of a road trip, laptop in hand, to Vegas.
We headed over to Spearmint Rhino to see the lovely ladies take off their clothes and try to seduce us into foolishly blowing our poker bankrolls in the VIP room. Never go into the VIP. It's a black hole for your money. It's like taking "insurance" in Black Jack. It's a sucker's bet... I've been trying to win enough money at the poker tables to cover my strip club expenses.
Who are these poker bloggers? According to flipchipro of Las Vegas and Poker Blog, you may be one! There are nine dead giveaways. I have excerpted my favorites—to read the whole list, click the link.
9. You claim you have to play online poker twenty hours everyday to have something to blog about.
8. You often lapse into HTML during a normal conversation.
5. You think Dr. Pauly's birthday is a national holiday.
3. You not only know someone named "Mrs. Al Can't Hang," but have actually met her.
Readers of poker blogs never quite know what they're going to get—as G-Rob of Up for Poker Blog notes, "Attribution is everything, folks—without it, you know FAR less than you think you do." He illustrates with this.
I was whining to Otis about my blogwriting the other day. As always, he was totally unsympathetic but willing to feign interest, which is all I ask. More than anything, I said, I wanted to write some analysis of my local ring game play. I've been in quite a few interesting hands, found moves that work against certain local styles, and I've found some interesting tells... The problem, my whine continues, is many of those players READ this blog... I SUCK AT POKER AND YOU'LL LEARN ALMOST NOTHING FROM ME, but I find myelf pulling punches here which is a disservice to the great blog CJ and Otis have built.
BY THE WAY
Mrs. Otis works for the KGB. Don't tell anyone you read it here, but tell everyone you heard it.
For strange play online, there's Tom Bayes' Weird Poker Festival, with a portal on a LiveJournal Blog to games that will be organized in other venues. Bayes thinks there are enough online gamblers to warrant a walk on the wild side, with poker variants that are little-known. HORSE, anyone?
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