Want to be my Sex Slave?

Oops, wrong blog :)

My poker blog pick of the day is Andrew, A Slave to Variance. Andrew actually asked me to look at his blog during the last go-round, when I offered to be the inexperienced and highly subjective "world's greatest blog critic."

I added him immediately, since the current post was about Stud. He was an auto-add, as those posting about any Stud variation are guaranteed a read in my book. I forgot to link him, however, because of the shock of the cancer diagnosis, and my subsequent brain meltdown (I know, lots of you said I became insane long before the cancer came along).

Andrew prefers to post short, to the point poker entries. That gives him an A+ in my book! While I enjoy long, ramblings posts, medium posts and short posts, I give extra credit for those who can get to the point, if they are unable to engage me for long periods of time or if that is a good style for them. Andrew is able to get to the point, and does so, successfully.

Rather than solely post around one theme: "Here is what I played, and how I did," Andrew addresses a whole host of topics, which keep me interested and coming back for more. Andrew doesn't just assume that he is the best player in the world, and every loss is due to some horrific suck-out. He is candid about his play and his ability. He uses some self-degrading humor for both wins and losses, and keeps me entertained no matter what he is writing about, with little, witty one-liners.

So here you have it. Keep up the great work, Andrew, and I hope you win the series with your 4000 FPP's buy-in!

Felicia :)

Excellent Friday

I think I'm going to try to play in the Palms $100 NLHE freeze-out tonight. I need to get out of the house. I'm starting to feel like a hermit, a shut-in.

On the way to the Palms, Laughlin has an outlet mall. That is where I have the three $10 gift cards for Izod. They are only good for the month of April, so I need to use them fast. I wanted to wait until after the mastectomy, knowing my upper body would change radically.

What seems to have happened is that I need to disguise my chest a little bit, layer things.

I hate to type this up, because it seems so trivial and off topic. But it's a part of my life, a part of me, and I can't ignore how I feel.

Last night I took my first shower since the night before surgery. Real shower, not just a tiny little bath with the water only covering my legs.

Anyway, after the shower I got some insane notion in my head that I should try on some shirts since all of the packing and drains are gone. Bad idea, really bad idea.

I wanted to try on "real" shirts, not just x-large tee-shirts and sweat shirts I've been wearing. This was a nightmare.

Without anything underneath them, the look was horrific. Tons of bumps, concave pits, ridges. It looked like I was deformed. And I guess I am.

I then tried to wear a sports bra underneath, and that gave a slightly better appearance, but I can't wear the super tight ones yet against my skin, so constrictive and sensitive. So I wore a loose cotton one, and it helped hide the hideous appearance, but it didn't get rid of it altogether.

In a word, I was shocked at how bad I look in fitted shirts.

So my plan of attack is to buy some better sports bras at the outlet mall today (the ones I've been using previously are just cheapo's at Walmart).

I also plan to change the Izod tops I'm wearing to the less fitted, layered kind. Button down will probably help disguise the disfigurement as will layers. Izod has such soft, comfortable clothing that I have no doubt I will be happy with whatever I buy there.

So a big setback mentally, but I'm tough, and I can get over this.
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Last night Glenn was dealing. Someone raised it up with 72o, then bet all the way. As the pot was pushed to him, he yelled, "Hammer!"

Glenn said, "Oh, you must be a blogger if you call 72o the hammer."

He said, "I am actually just a reader, but you must be Glenn, Felicia's husband."

They chatted for a while, and Glenn told me the guy said I am one of his favorite bloggers. He said that I'm not in the top ten of all blogs in the world (poker or otherwise), but I am 'right up there.'

Thanks!
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I have this friend, a poker friend I met on UPF a long time ago. He and his wife lived and worked in LA, but have very flexible jobs that can be telecommuted.

They never liked LA, like so many others. They had a condo that was outrageously expensive. The cost of living was unbelievable, the air and traffic are some of the worst in the country.

They are video poker players, too, and stay for free in Laughlin due to the comps. They come here probably six times per year.

Finally they got fed up with LA. Like Glenn and me, they invested their money wisely and could afford to sit back and not worry about money as long as they lived frugally and didn't go overboard.

They came to northern Arizona often, and asked us a ton of questions about living here. In the end, they decided Bullhead was their first choice. Although the cost of living has gone way up in Bullhead, it is still nothing compared with LA.

So they made a very prudent decision. They sold their condo for a profit, and bought a humble home in Bullhead. He plans on becoming a dealer in Laughlin for extra money and the benefits.

I cannot say how much I admire this couple. Not many people would be so wise and frugal with their money, making a choice like this, taking determined, slow steps in order to reach their goal, and planning so wisely.

For every couple like them, and like us, there are hundreds who make such hasty, immature changes in their lives. For every couple who is content to play low limits, or play sats to get into bigger tourneys, there are dozens who blow their retirement money buying in to big tourneys they are not ready for, or "taking a shot" at higher limit games.

I have had many people write to me and scoff at my willingness to stay at the Motel 6, or some other budget motel while playing in big tourneys. I have been the object of scorn and ridicule both online, and live in tournament areas of the bigger events. Most of them feel "too good" to stay at any other hotel than where the festival is taking place. Most of them laugh at Glenn and me for budgeting and eating at Jack in the Box rather than the gourmet restaurants in the casino.

And yeah, most of them aren't around anymore, or are asking me to back them now. While I am still here, and still kicking.

I have made my fair share of mistakes. And yes, I am probably more frugal than I need to be. But I want my AOL money to be left when I'm 65. I'm not going to spend all of it to line the pockets of a high limit pro who is vastly better than me. If that means cheap motels, fast food and satellites galore, so be it.
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My Mom is back to dealing, and is now at Santa Fe in Vegas. If you are out that way, give her a big "howdy." Her name is Ruth. She is only 5'2" and 57 years old, with totally gray hair (see where my future is headed???).

She is dual rate right now, so you may see her dealing, or on the floor.
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I am going to play up to 3 HORSE sats at the Plaza, and then just relax and try to gather my strength. The HORSE tourney starts at noon on Monday. The structure is so fabulous that I might be able to fold my way into the money, LOL!

Lots of people; bloggers, players, dealers and friends are going to catch up with me there. I hope Tanya can make it, but it's no biggie if she's not feeling up to it. I am praying for her and wish her the best!

Please say hi if you see me at Plaza. Don't be shy, my bark really is worse than my bite!
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Hope you are all having a great Friday!

Felicia :)

Asia

Today I decided to pick Asia as my blog to pimp.

I'm not purposely trying to find female bloggers to talk about, this one just happened to catch my attention on Bloglines.

I love reading about travel, and I don't believe Asia claimed to be all-poker all the time.

I find her writing and style interesting. I want to keep reading more, it is engaging, which is always something to strive for if one is a writer!

Felicia :)

FTP Horse

For a few weeks, we were having a private 2+2 HORSE tourney over on Full Tilt. I came up with the idea (having stolen it from RGP) and initiated contact with Perry, but another 2+2er was overseeing the tourney, and giving out the password.

The other poster kind of drifted away a bit. I'm not sure he was ever that interested to begin with, I think he was just trying to be nice to me, knowing I was about to go into surgery and then chemo. Since no one else stepped up to the plate, he offered to take it over for me.

We were supposed to be beta testers for FTP. They supposedly wanted our opinion on the HORSE tourneys before they made HORSE an open event for anyone to join. From the start, I think this was not completely honest.

After RGP held their private tourney, they had many complaints about the structure and the amount of chips we were given in conjunction with that structure. Instead of responding in a way befitting a business that is looking for honest feedback, Perry responded in a very defensive way, refusing to budge an inch, yet sounding almost insulted by the constructive criticism.

Despite my initial skepticism about Perry's (lack of) customer support, I went on with plans for private tourneys for the poker bloggers and for 2+2. I was hoping someone besides Perry would be accessing the feedback, and that the sheer number of players requesting a better structure would convince FTP that their structure should be changed.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Perry has only become more defensive and hostile towards constructive criticism, and no one else at Full Tilt seems to be interested.

So I'm leaving the private tourney. I'm also probably going to cash out any remaining funds I have there, and get rid of the software. I'd rather give my 10% juice to a site that really listens to it's customers, or go where there are bigger fish.

It's too bad, because they are the only site offering Razz, and the only site with HORSE tourneys. Unfortunately, I'm just not interested enough in online poker to really care about a site that is so completely stubborn and unyielding.

Felicia :)

Seattle John

I'm up to just under 200 poker blogs on Bloglines. I'm simply shocked. I know, I keep harping on this one thing over and over again, but I can't help it. The quality of some of these writers is outstanding.

I can't remember who sent me the link to Bloglines, so that I could establish a subscription, but whomever it was, thank you!

Here is someone I've been reading for a while, but was too lazy to link up:

John is a serious player, like me, and not just playing for "fun." Those are usually the blogs I like best. Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a recreational player, I simply have less in common with recreational players than serious players.

John often writes about his friend, Aaron, who plays some of the highest stakes. Having a "sub-character" in a blog breaks up some of the monotony and makes a blog unique.

Great site, John!

Felicia :)

Izod

I don't think I've talked about this before.

I'm not much of a clothes person. Heck, I'm not much of a woman at all (and that has nothing to do with the double mastectomy, lol).

Since I started playing in the bigger tourneys, last April, I've noticed that I need extremely comfortable clothing in order to survive up to 14 hours in a chair at one stretch. Regular clothing doesn't do it. I need super soft clothing.

Sure, Walmart has some jogging suits and comfy stuff, but I had never found anything so soft until I discovered Izod.

Remember Izod from back in the 80's with the alligator shirts? It's the same brand, but their golf collection.

Not only is the clothing extremely comfortable to sit on for hours at a time, but it is also color coordinated, for doofuses like me, who don't know jack about clothing, and couldn't care less.

Shopping at Izod isn't as expensive as you would think, either. If you go to their outlet, and shop the sales, the clothing is about the same price as Walmart. The fit and feel are obviously much superior than Walmart clothing, too.

The last time I went there, they were giving away $10 gift certificates to be used in the month of April (this was in January, I think). The gift certificates have no minimum purchase required, and more than one can be used at a time. Since there were so many snowbirds around in January, they had many left over by the end of the day, and the clerk gave me 3, instead of one, so I am able to get a free $30 worth of clothing for no minimum purchase. Can't say no to free junk, can I?

Anyway, my point is that if you are interested in good quality, nice fit, great looking clothes that always match, try out Izod. Playing live for long stretches couldn't be easier!

Felicia :)

HORSE at Plaza

Yesterday I visited Nakamura. I asked her about playing in the HORSE tourney next Monday. She said that if I keep the drains sites covered (even if they have already healed over), she had no problem with my playing in the tourney.

She also asked if it was a two day event, as she thought I might be too weak to play for two days.

She gave me her blessing, as long as I promised to come back on Tuesday, May 3rd for her to look at the drain sites and make sure they aren't infected and are healing well. I was hoping to be released altogether, but I guess another visit or two won't kill me.

So if all goes as planned, I'll head up to Vegas on Sunday and play some HORSE sats. I might have to play a NLHE table, because they probably won't have a mob wanting to play HORSE sats for the next event, lol.

The turn-out has been so poor at the Plaza that it simply kills me. What a nightmare. I mean, Tanya and I did everything we could to encourage them. We pimped their festival everywhere, from RGP to 2+2. Tanya had a personal relationship with Ben, trying everything to make them a success. Dan, our cardroom manager at the Palms, visited with Ben twice up in Vegas, trying to work out a deal to run sats for the many events. He was more than cooperative.

What did we receive in return? Unreturned phone calls. Unanswered e-mail. No TV contract. No lammers. Nothing. Ben just completely stopped corresponding with any of us.

And so much for his promise that the highest juice in any event would be 5%, and that he was negotiating 4%. Another lie, as you can plainly see at Cardplayer.

In this day and age, when everything poker is gold, Ben Magee managed to screw up a sure thing. What a pity! Then again, he did last year, like Kevin said, so why I expected any different is beyond me.

It's almost like Ben is really working for the WPT or Harrah's, undercover, and was hired to sabotage anything that could keep poker strong downtown. It's just amazing that he could kill a good thing this badly.

Will it stop me from having my one last hurrah before chemo starts? No. Will it keep me distanced from people like Magee and Asmo who can manage to turn pocket aces into 72 offsuit? Yeah.

Felicia :)

Steal the Blinds

In my attempt to add new poker blogs to Bloglines, I have been visiting many of them, commenting on their good posts and giving them encouragement. I also plan to pimp them publicly, here, and add their links to my Blogger page.

Jaxia was the first to write me and ask my opinion on her site. She is a new player, and her enthusiasm for poker shows in every post she has written thus far. It reminds me of the old days, when I was first learning poker, and everything poker was so exciting. It was magic.

Keep up the good work, Jaxia!

Felicia :)

Long Day

Today was a rough, rough day. We left for Phoenix around 9am, got there about 12:30pm, saw the doctor, had the drains removed (ohmygawd), and got back home about 5pm.

Removing the drains was really, really icky. It was a combination of just plain hurt, and that creepy, crawly feeling. Luckily Nakamura knows how horrible this is, so she does it fast, super fast, like one second per drain. Like ripping off a Band-aid.

It only hurt for a few seconds, and then it was already fading. Pain is a strange thing.

I am not sick, I just feel whipped from the trip. Long day.

At least I don't have the drains anymore. And I was able to take off that camisole. Can you imagine how dirty it was after wearing it for a week straight? Fluid was on each side where the drains had leaked. I hope I never see that camisole again, lol.

Felicia :)

Bloglines

Today is the first day that I really feel like I'm getting a good handle on my recovery. Last week, having those tests for eight hours, then the reaction to the contrast, set me back a long way. I was unable to bounce back, as is usual for me. This one sucked the life right out of me, and it's taken several days to get back to the place I was last Wednesday morning.

Last night I sweated the blogger satellite towards the end. I forgot all about the sat, even though I'd not planned on playing anyway. I wanted to offer my support to all of the players, and at least I was able to be there for the second half.

I finally got around to installing Bloglines and putting in my entire list of favorites. It was some work, but boy, the results are outstanding. I save quite a bit of time each day. Also, I have not been adding new blogs very often, due to having such an overwhelming number to read as it is. So now I've added about 50 new blogs, and I'm very happy to have found them.

Some of the bloggers can really write! Some of them suck, true, but the ones who can write more than make up for the boring, sucky, hand history bloggers.

Another shocker for me was the number of people who have been wishing me well. People I didn't even know existed! I feel like such a slacker for not finding them and thanking them, but I will remedy that shortly. The kindness that has been shown to me in the past month since I found out I have cancer has been astonishing. I have been truly overwhelmed. I'm so glad I decided to stick it out with the blogger community, instead of distancing myself, which was my plan after the get together in December.

The final important information I found out while surfing the blogs is that a lot of people don't have me linked, nor even know that I exist. Or maybe they know that I exist, but don't want to link me because they don't care for my blog, or because I don't have them linked in return. That is fair enough. I admire candor. Naturally, though, I'm going to have to remedy that situation, and link a lot more of the bloggers, while finding out why they don't have me linked. Some of them have some really horrible blogs linked up on their site, while leaving out some of the best blogs (I'm not saying mine is one of the best, btw, I have always thought mine only appealed to a limited group of readers).

So I see that I have a lot of "busy" work to attend to while I'm undergoing chemo. Good. This gives me something to do.

If you want to find out, anonymously, if I think your blog is good, or sucks, or is somewhere in between, feel free to write me or IM me. I'm FZDyer almost everywhere, and my e-mail addy is the same, @yahoo.com.

I have a lot of topics to cover today, and while I'm feeling good (tomorrow I go back to Phoenix to get the drains yanked, so that might set me back a few days in my recovery), I'm going to try to tackle them all. I hope you can benefit from my pathetic ramblings, lol.

Felicia :)