A Very Dull Land

Ah, another day. Jeez, you should see our forecast. It ain't always easy living in the desert. But I'm not complaining, I wouldn't live anywhere else. I just get up earlier, more like 4am these days. Since we don't do daylight savings in Arizona, the sky is light enough for me to garden just a little after 5am right now.

Sometimes months and even years can go by with seemingly little to no drama here in rural-ville. But it is not always the case. In our very county, there is a big manhunt going on for Warren Jeffs. I was hoping they would leave this guy alone, and even create a new law so that things would be "legal" for folks like him in the future. It's such a sparsely populated area, and there are so many men I'd like to marry right now. I was hoping to settle into his complex and become friends with my six husbands. I'm sure the whole town is just riddled with inbreeding. I'd fit right in.

I have also read somewhere that another of my heroes, har har, Timothy McVeigh lived in Kingman. And it seems so peaceful. Everyone snoozing away the hot, summer afternoons in a siesta-trance. Little does society at large know what is brewing just under the surface. Heck, I don't even know what is brewing (besides Meth, which seems to be a big problem here, as well).

So here I sit, trying to amuse you with a couple of lead-in paragraphs, and then get to the poker which is the only thing I really care to read about.

Since I finished my post about recreational vs. serious games, I can add another interest to the to do list. I have wanted to write about dealers for so long that I can't even remember when the interest started. In fact, I think I have several incompleted posts about dealers, which always just kind of trailed off, leaving me with nothing much. I hate that.

Although I'm sure that most of you deduced this when you read my original post, most of what I was saying yesterday was for someone looking at black & white extremes. All-out fun, or all-out profit. This is most definitely not the case in these games. It was simply what I was trying to illustrate. But not all is black or white in poker, as you well know. The edges between serious poker and recreational poker get blurred all the time. I wanted to make a point, and I wanted it to be clear, but as Dan so graciously pointed out, there are more more variables involved. Say you are on a cruise ship where the rake is 10% up to $20 ($20 in rake, not $20 in the pot). You may still want to play. And maybe you want to play seriously. This is FINE, it's great. So you play in such a manner to "lose less," or to "break even," knowing that if you make some dough, it is just that much more sweet.

You might also do things like counting the pot carefully before that river bet. Say you are playing O8 (which is laughable on a cruise ship, but this is just for illustrative purposes only). Say you are more than 90% certain that you are chopping the pot. Let's make this even more ludicrous by saying that you are heads-up on the river. Now you count the pot and you see there is $110 in the pot (minus the $11 in rake already taken). Why bother betting the river with a one-way hand? If you bet and are called, that takes another $4 out of the pot. Keep that money for drinks, cuz they sure ain't free in a cruise line's poker room!

So that is a way to still play seriously in a dud of a game, but to arrange things to make as much as you can in a bad situation.

Today I am trying to decide what I'm going to post about. There are so many ideas, but only some of them leave such a burning desire in me that I can't wait to get it out.

Felicia :)