Rain and Online Poker: Sweet

For seven weeks in Vegas, I woke up to a perfect azure sky that looked like it would crack in two as the blazing sun rose into it.  I can stand the heat; I’m from Texas after all.  It was the weather’s fragile sameness that was slowly driving me insane.  

It has rained every day since I’ve been home and I am loving it.  I am the only one in Austin who is, however, as they spent the entire summer this way.  We have gotten more than twice our normal annual rainfall already this year.  Many of the lakes in the Colorado River system remain closed to boats as the dam gates are all still pegged open.  Most people feel perpetually damp and moldy.  My hair looks like a brunette Marge Simpson.  Our local weather radar station keeps repeating the well worn mantra “Turn Around.  Don’t Drown;” warning of the dangers of driving through low level crossings.  But I am at peace with the rain.  I notice that a few of my Vegas compatriots feel the same way.  Mean Gene’s first post when he got home was about the rain. 

Along with the rain, I am glad to get back to online poker.  Most of the time, I long for live play.  Living in Texas as I do, I have to drive a long way to walk into a casino poker room.  It’s been years since I played a regular home game in town.  I tend to stay close to the legal line on that front - which means finding an unraked game - which is predictably hard to do.  I won’t say I got my fill of live play in Vegas (by definition an impossibility), but I got to play a lot more live than in year’s past.  I even got to play in my first WSOP event.   (Muchos Gracias to PokerNews for 1) granting days off, 2) scheduling a staff freeroll, and 3) buying a big ass piece of me in the WSOP PLO8 event.)

This was the first time the WSOP offered a PLO8 event.  Pot Limit Omaha hi/lo is an internet creation and almost never played live.  So along with the many pros that played the event, was a select group of internet PLO8 players - all rejoicing over getting to play their game of choice as a bracelet event.  And if they didn’t all know each other by face, they all knew each other by screen name and reputation.  I know a lot of the hold’em internet players, but I didn’t realize that there was a cadre of PLO8 specialists out there - although it makes perfect sense.  While I play PLO8 online, I’m obviously playing for lower stakes than these folks.

It’s been too long since I had a poker goal for myself.  Quite frankly, I’ve just been going through the motions.  But as I played with these PLO8 onliners I thought to myself, maybe I can give this a shot.  Maybe by the time I come back next year, I could build up a decent bankroll and have moved up a few blind levels.  So I actually have started to attempt just that.  I’ve started at even lower limits than I normally play.  Right now, I’m just working the .10/.25 PLO8 game on PokerStars.  And I’m not going to move up unless I’m consistently beating it for a month.  Then on to the .25/.50 game….and so on.  I’ll also try to sneak in a tourney or two every couple of weeks.  But if I really am going to do this - I’m going to do it slow. 

As Garthmeister J. commented in my last post, I did take a few pics of the boy.  He was such a willing victim.  So my pictorial essay today is “The Many Faces of Garthmeister J.: the Triple Draw Years.”  Drizz, I think you are right.  You and I need to make it to a second day in one of these WSOP event’s before someone does a photo study of us….sigh.                   

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized.