How I Could Change and Make My Poker Blog Good

I'm going to try an experiment to see if my epiphany has any crediblity. See what I mean about how realizations aren't that good for me? It's already consuming my life when I should be out in the garden and yard, doing something productive.

Okay, I'm going to use one of my most controversial posts ever. I'll take it apart, and put it back together again changing it to read more internally. I usually have trouble referring to myself this way, but I'll give it a go, just for the sake of the experiment.

Now here is where the rest of you (you meaning "other people besides me" not "all of us") come in. Every reader who has ever thought I was slamming his or her blog, every reader who has ever wanted to strangle me, every reader who has ever flamed me either in my comments, my personal e-mail, IM's or on his or her own blog, please read through the updated version of this controvesial post, and give your candid comments at Live Journal.

For all of my regular readers who know of people who have stopped reading my blog due to their false belief that I am "out to get them," please refer them to this post, if they are interested in taking part.

For this one time, only, I am allowing you to publicly and openly tell me how you would have reacted to this post if it had been written this way originally, instead of the way I actually posted it.

One warning, though. If you send me a death threat, because you think you see an easy way to attack and scare me, I'm sending your IP address and threat to the FBI. They are as paranoid as me, they don't screw around. So don't think you have found some way to "get back" at me for all of the "horribleness I have brought into your life," lol.

I just want plain, simple, direct comments:

1) Would you have been less offended by this post versus the original?
2) Would you have been offended just as much?
3) Would you have flamed no matter what I said, because you hate me, everything I stand for, and are looking for an outlet for your hatred?

That is it, I don't need some kind of manifesto on why I'm a terrible person, why I need to be burned at the stake, why you hate me, why I have some kind of mental problem, what I should change about my blog for you to like it better, why you exist or anything else that you might think is important. Don't waste your time, I'll just delete it.

Okay, so here we go:

Original post is at: http://felicialee1.livejournal.com/76303.html with a follow-up at: http://felicialee1.livejournal.com/77279.html

Here is the changed, combined post (combined for ease of reading):
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Okay, now that I have ripped myself to shreds, I'll try to provide some hints on what I think would make my poker blog good.

1) Don't post bad beat stories
2) Don't post hand histories
3) Don't whine about losses
4) Don't post pics of kids or pets
5) Give my opinion
6) Am I a poker journal, or not?
7) Try to act serious about my play
8) If I am going to enable comments, actually REPLY when someone leaves one
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I'll take them one-by-one, since I've never had trouble "elaborating," plus I still don't know much about reading comprehension, because I continue to break the many commandments of good blogmaking.

1) First, NO ONE cares about my bad beat. I could post the worst beat in the world, and I guarantee, no one cares. Players with any, little amount of experience have suffered beats. Most of us have "seen it all." And you know what? They DON'T CARE!

Believe it or not, and no, I don't expect myself to believe it, because I am obviously not targeting top players, "bad beats" usually are anything but...they usually are indicative of bad play. Yes, I am serious. My supposed "bad beat" normally means I played badly either during the hand, leading up to the hand or in general. Good players realize that there really is no such thing as a "bad beat." We call that variance. Or the small price we pay for keeping the fish in the game. We don't even think about "bad beats." We congratulate the fish and move on. It is NOT an issue. We don't tell our friends about "bad beats," we don't tell other players, we don't really write about it (except to flesh out the story, or illustrate how we got eliminated from a tourney), we don't cry, pout or whine. We just keep going. It's not an issue.

No matter how sympathetic someone acts when I write about my "bad beat," or tell a player at my table, etc, it is just an act. Because they truly DON'T CARE! If I am sitting next to a player who commiserates with me, he is doing it because he feels I am a fish and he DOESN'T WANT ME TO LEAVE! If I post it on your blog and get some sympathy, either one or two things are occurring. Either the person commenting is humoring me because he thinks I am a fish, or the commenter is a fish himself, and has no idea how to play poker. Either way, I LOSE. Stop posting bad beats!

2) Hand histories are complicated to read through. Use a converter, or better yet, tell a narrative. If I'm not literate enough to walk through a hand, I probably shouldn't have a public poker journal.

3) Everyone loses. Whether I am running bad or playing bad, no one wants to listen to me whine. Take the variance like a man and buck up. Just say I lost, and let that be that. I don't have to whine about how badly I am running (or more likely, playing).

4) This is a personal one. Lots of people like cute little pics of pets and kids. I don't. If you see "me" playing online with a stupid little dog avatar, blame Glenn. (I can't seem to find a way to really change this one)

5) Opinion is the whole concept of keeping a public poker journal. It's MY journal. It's about ME. We can get watered down media anywhere. People want to hear about ME, for good or bad. Don't back down, state my opinion.

6) Do I keep a poker journal? Or am I a politician? Keep politics, kids, pets, religion, marriage and other topics off of my journal if I am advertising myself as a "poker journal." There are obvious exceptions, like if my wins or losses have to do with something personal in my life. Or if something "political" is threatening the livelihood of online professional playing. A personal anecdote can also be used as a segue into my post, and is done very successfully on many poker blogs. But if I find that over 25% of my posts aren't about poker, change the name and description of my blog.

7) Giggly goo-goo about playing the beer hand and cracking aces is cute the FIRST TIME. It ceases to be cute when 50% of my blog describes me getting wasted and showing down 72o in order to tilt the table. Table screen shots, distorted and demeaning pics, losing buy-in after buy-in at small stakes while purposely playing like a monkey aren't cute when posted more than once. Save the comedy for another type of blog, not a serious poker blog.

8) This one is so obvious that I don't have to elaborate. Then again, after yesterday's fiasco, perhaps I do. Reading comprehension seems to be non-existent these days. If I enable comments, and someone leaves me an encouraging one, an informative one, or compliments me on something, it is generally GOOD ETIQUETTE to respond. If I keep ignoring comments, I can watch my sitemeter bomb like a California mudslide.

COMMENT HERE

Felicia :)