Here's the Scoop

Heyo. I apologize to my (three) loyal blog readers for lack of posts.

In this post I come clean. I have a dirty little secret. Ok, that sounds kinda perverted. I have a little bit of a shameful secret.

I am superstitious. Or however you spell it.

At any rate, my lack of posting isn't due to lack of hands, lack of time, or even necessarily lack of success. It has to do with the fact that it seems like every time I post about running good, some sort of funked up poker karma whoops my ass at the tables. If you'll notice, I tread very lightly when I talk about success because I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I try and be humble as I can be, as if to hide from this blogwatching gremlin who works for the RNGs at the poker sites that will skew them out of my favor at the very hint of good fortune, confidence, or pride. And yet any time I speak even a little about success, things turn upside down for me. And I guess I am just superstitious (crazy) enough to think that somehow this has an impact on my results, and therefore I'm in this blogging vicious circle where I don't feel like posting when I'm running bad, and I don't wanna post when I'm running good for fear of ruining it. Its fun living in my head, folks.

So for the time being, I wanted to notify you all that I am officially on hiatus until this little poker hobby of mine decides to get off the rollercoaster and go one way or the other. I guess one thing's for sure, I won't be getting off the blogger Z-list for quite some time. Oh, well...

Here's the short answer. I'm all but broke at Full Tilt. I have no useable amount of cash (like .92 or something), and I have like 300-some Full Tilt points that I will probably try and parlay into something at some point, but I mean come on...how likely is it that I'll do anything with them? So, simply because I would like to play at Full Tilt and be earning rakeback if I can, I have a deal with my brother-in-law to transfer me the difference between what I have and a $2.25 SNG out of his measly bankroll, and in exchange, I'll send him enough on PokerStars, where *he* doesn't have any money, for a $1.20 SNG or two. But he plays about once a month, so who knows when this little deal will actually come to fruition. At any rate, I'm not horribly optimistic about success at Full Tilt anytime soon, because as you know I haven't been able to do one thing right at that site since May.

As far as PokerStars, I love playing at PokerStars on my Mac, and that is where I'm doing my playing these days. Turns out I love the site. I always liked Full Tilt because it was more visually appealing to me from the interface to the logo to the gear worn on TV, and all the big name pros they had in their stable. So from a marketing standpoint, they had me hook, line, and sinker. Damn you, marketing gurus!! Turns out PokerStars seems to be more focused on game quality and is much more of a poker player's poker site. Their SNG structure absolutely thumps that of Full Tilt (and of course you know I'd like to think SNGs are where I'm known to be cutting my teeth), and even the .01/.02 NL cash games seem to play astoundingly straight up, and doesn't consist of 7 all-ins every hand like you'd expect. Turns out the game choice, structure, and opponent quality at PokerStars suit me way better. Lets just not think about how if I were *really* a good player I'd be able to adjust my strategy to win at Full Tilt. We'll save that for when I have a bankroll with some wiggle room in it.

At any rate, about the only thing I think Full Tilt has on PokerStars is their top notch tourney satelliting setup. In the little research I'm done, Stars only seems to have satellites to the Sunday Million and their other big tournaments, whereas Full Tilt has a killer thing going with basing a lot of what they do around the ability to earn and use the $26 and $75 token to do almost anything you could ever want. Of course, the ideal setup would be to have money on both, but I'll worry about crossing that bridge when...well...when I have the materials to build it.

So, for now I am playing on my $3.50 in freeroll winnings at PokerStars and working on my own little Chris Ferguson challenge, and I'll just say this...I have more than $3.50, and less than Chris Ferguson. And I feel like I'm playing really, really well.

Now there goes the little gremlin off to report me to the PokerStars RNG. *sigh*

So thank you to those of you that have checked in on me to make sure I was still alive. I am. I'm still playing, I'm still working hard, and I'm still enjoying the turn of every card. Its just that whether I'm winning or losing, I'm currently not posting. I'll do my best to keep checking in, but until I feel like I can't pop open PokerStars and lose my bankroll in a day or less, expect my posting to be sparse. Because I'm just that looney.

Best of luck to all of you, and thanks again for your thoughts and patronage!