Poker Perambulation

This blog wasn’t planned. But most of my blogs happen that way. She points out the darker side of forums and life.

From what little I have seen/heard about Kathy, she comes across as a real person. Of course that isn’t a requirement for playing poker. On the Scoville scale, I guess Clone would come in at the hottest. I have seen threads about Annie Duke suggesting she’d need a bikini wax to wear bib overalls. I’ve seen none in person or to talk to. Whatever opinions I might have are going to be very shallow.

In my misspent youth, I at least had regular features and a build that a suit draped well on. At 6′5”, I garnered some attention. I did the bar scene and did ok. That included a runner-up state title holder in the Miss America pageant – 44DD BTW. Nice girl, but affected by the beauty and insecure because of it. One of those instances where talking to a guy never took place with his eye contact staying above her shoulders.

As I got older, people changed along with me. Some of the girls I dated early on didn’t hold up well. New one’s had children along the way and reflected the experience. If I had a love in my life, it was for a women I got to know after a mastectomy and we were together for the next and the chemo and a bad run. She remained a very attractive person.

As we go through life, there are things that change and things that typically don’t. Experience brings about the best change. Few are lucky enough to have the DNA that keeps them attractive through all stages. Most are lucky enough to outgrow their inexperience and have their glandular development somewhat stabilize.

The problem with forums is that we all can be anonymous. You can be ugly enough to scare children and still play the macho hunk. Many are still students and full of themselves. They view the world as their oyster with a great job ahead. They are young and have the attractiveness that youth offers. In truth, they have the life experience of a fruit fly with no idea of what life will really offer.

I was a heavy forum poster at one time. I was pretty good at it actually. I have an acerbic wit on my good days and could take apart some idiots rather well without using the cheap shot. Then I used a real picture that showed I wasn’t in the 21 crowd. Everything changed. I was out of the in crowd. I was the new recipient of all the cheap shots. It was humorously sad. I moved on.

The only sure thing in life is change. Life proves it has its draw outs in the same way that they happen in poker. One moment you’re on top and the next your wondering how it happened. If you are a complete person you move on to the next hand. Tomorrow is as obscure as when we wait for the dealer to show the turn.

The great thing about poker is that it embraces all of the above. There’s no swim suit completion or questions about how you’d solve world hunger. It is genderless in exposing our frailties. Online we can hide behind a silly icon. In the B&M world, we show more. We all tend to make bad judgments based on physicality. It is a fault but not huge. They aren’t people we’ll pick for friends and, if we have a modicum of courtesy, they’ll never know about our mistake.

On the net we run on at the mouth. We expose ourselves more than we realize. Bloggers and forum posters do it every day. I’m not the person this blog might indicate. Well, maybe I am. The fact is you don’t really know. Whether one is commenting on Kathy, Amy, me, or all those TV players; it’s the tip of the iceberg they are seeing. And when we comment we are saying more about ourself than the person we are lauding or trashing. Anonymity will often expose our least attractive side. And that can be a really Donk move.

ADDENDUM:

The last few days have been good ones at FullTilt. I did clear the PPA donation – which also helped. I’m actually showing a bit of profit from playing HORSE there. I’m also playing some Stud flavor only tables there and at Bodog. That’s working better. I still have a long way to go at Stud but I’m seeing some improvement. I just got off one of those super aggressive tables you run into at times. It was a horse table and people were capping at Holdem and Omaha especially with trashy hands. As often happens, I was getting cold decked and could only drool. I’m tightest playing Holdem and Omaha. I really never had a great limit Holdem feel and Omaha is all about peddling the nuts. I do best at the other games these days. There is a wealth of info on the table at stud. It isn’t a game you can play by rote. There’s no multi-table aspect to it like you can have with Holdem. It is still more feel than genius but at the levels I’m playing at that is enough. It is a good bluffing game but like most small buyin tables it happens too often and makes a great and profitable tell against a lot of players.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 6:07 am and is filed under Off Topic. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.