A few things leading up to tonight's WPBT tournament on PokerStars...
Otisian Bounty:
Knock my happy ass out of this tournament and you get a brand-spankin' new PokerStars windbreaker (size large, I think).
I'll be playing with a teething kid on my lap tonight, so I should be easy to bust.
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Brian, who some of you met in Vegas, is doing a little more than blogging these days. He, like me, is an aspiring freelance writer. Be sure to check out his blog and his recent essay about being a new player coming into the game.
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I've been chatting with a blog reader for a few weeks now. He's not a blogger (yet?), but seems to have a keen interest in the game and blogging. He asked if he could offer a guest post here and I thought it might be a good chance for him to get some feedback on whether he should start a blog of his own. His name is Rich. He's a poker player and jam band musician form the West coast. Give him a read and let him know what you think in the comments section.
***Unedited from Rich's e-mail***
It may have happened to you back in kindergarten. Away for the first time in your life from the support network of family & friends, you find yourself wandering around the play yard, cafeteria, or some such other locale of your pre-educational youth. There is an unfamiliar and somewhat unpleasant feeling that's not quite fear but certainly isn't the warm & fuzzy that's ruled your realm up till now; call it "trepidation" (ok, its TREPIDATION - thank you :>) - whatever it is, its not good - "me no likey" - you want to go home, now - enough already, and yet...
You see others of your ilk there, doing things, together, that look like FUN
F is for friends who do stuff together
U is for you and me
N is for anywhere and anytime at all...
OK, stop - enough SpongeBob - where were we? Oh yeah - other kids who look & sound much like yourself, are thoroughly enjoying each other's company - playing on the swings/seesaw/slide, playing Johnny-on-the-pony (or buck-buck, or whatever other name that insane, vertebrae cracking game happened to go by in your neck of the woods), or just doing some general, amorphous roughhousing - and they're doing it without you. But it sure looks like fun, and you wish you were doing it too – with them.
And then it happens - a glance, met & acknowledged, a shared smile – a slight nod of the head, that says "hey - you wanna play?" So you respond with a quick look down, a shuffle of the shoes, maybe a shrug - you can barely contain your excitement, but for some reason you feel you should (that poker face starts early, don't it?).
But you’re overjoyed that you are WELCOME - you have on some, small & brief, and as yet undefined level, been ACCEPTED; you've found kindred spirits - you've made FRIENDS. If you're lucky, this scene repeats itself several times throughout the course of your life - at school (grade, middle, high), at college (the separation of "school" & "college" is not unintentional) – wait, is that not a non-double-negative? (this writing stuff is harder than it looks !!!) - and even more importantly, when you become an adult and start W * O * R * K * I * N * G for a living - when it no longer seems to be so easy to do something that once came so naturally - the simple act of opening up and extending one's self to another.
I remember instances of this in my life – there was probably something similar to the aforementioned preschool incident (though I must confess, I may have created that one out of whole cloth) – but that’s not the point – you get the idea (don’t you?) – for I really do remember a time when I and a bunch of other drunk & rowdy members of the high school football team traipsed out to the beach at night, and gleefully dug a giant hole in the sand – which we proceeded to fill with the smashed, cracked, and broken members of the lifeguard chair we had just demolished – and then set it afire – in retrospect (and at the time), it seemed incredibly pointless & wasteful – but it was FUN and I was doing it with my FRIENDS – I was IN with THE CROWD – sounds a little like…
POKER?!?
Other serendipitous & socially engaging epiphanies have followed – such as the discovery that learning to keep time on a drum set at a volume remotely resembling reasonable, while simultaneously listening to what other folks were playing on their instruments – well, that skill earns you an eternal membership in the brotherhood of aspiring amateur musicians.
And if you like to run, and participate in organized group races, you find no shortage of sweaty, fellow striders – especially if you continually pace yourself a few steps/seconds behind them, and share your extra energy gel packets – bonus points for remembering to pack some post race ibuprofen.
Well, for months now, I’ve been enjoying the collective works of poker bloggers in general, and specifically the posts of the contributors to Up For Poker. I’ve watched from afar – I think I may have caught a subtle wave of the hand from one of them, but I’m not sure. I’ve affected a bored and averted gazed. But now its time to come clean, and get to the point…
“hey um, Guys?
…can I, ah –
can I play too??â€
***End e-mail***
See you at the WPBT tonight, folks.