Off to the Oncologist...Have a Nice Day!

Because I love you so much (LOL), and you all seem to love me as well, I'll leave you with this last post before my oncologist appointment and heading up to Vegas.

Since this seems to be the popular topic of the week (HA), I'll post it again. Some of you seemed to quite overlook the fact that this is a biased list. So biased, in fact, that I, myself, break some of the rules, which is one of the many reasons why I declared myself one of the "worst" poker bloggers in both 2004 and 2005. Write what you want, do you really think I care? I don't even follow my own rules, for cripes sake. I'm not "telling you what to do" on your own blog. I'm flattered that you think I have that much power over the universe though.

Once again, this is what I, personally, think makes a good poker blog. It's subjective.

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 your opinion
6) Are you a poker journal, or not?
7) Try to act serious about your play
8) If you are going to enable comments, actually REPLY when someone leaves one

If, however, you still insist on flaming and threatening me over my own, freaking opinion, please direct that hate mail here.

Have a good weekend, picture my shark attack while you are eating, please.

Felicia :)

Wynn Anyone?

Glenn feels really rotten about keeping me from Tunica. Poor guy, he hates to say "no" to any of my harebrained ideas.

So as a consolation, he said we could go to Vegas this weekend. I could use a little mixed game at the Wynn, lol. I hope it gets going. We'll probably leave this evening, after my oncologist's appointment.

Today I was going to release the Best of, Worst of 2005 on this site, publicly. However, after the flaming I received over stating MY opinion of what makes a good poker blog, I'm rethinking whether or not I should release it. I just can't believe how angry people get on the Internet. Wow, it's like an outlet to go postal or something.

I figure if they get this mad at me for not even mentioning names, how many threats am I going to get when I release the huge monstrosity with names and links??? Oy, vey! And to think, I even left off the names of those I feel might be sociopaths altogether this year (after what happened last year, I was too scared not to leave them out!).

So maybe in the case of self preservation, I should keep the Best of, Worst of 2005 off of Blogger.

I hate being a wimp, but I like my head (attached) just fine!

Felicia :)

Tunica Nixed

Well, Glenn just had a long talk with me and nixed Tunica. I understand, he's doing it for my own good. My iron (and other labs) are just low. Dr. Al (Schoonmaker) keeps telling me that the reason my memory won't come back is because my anemia is so bad.

Glenn thought I'd be mad at him, but truthfully, if I was mentally tougher, I'd admit to myself that he's right and I'm not strong enough, and I would have canceled myself (or never made the reservations to begin with).

While the structure of the events looks absolutely fantastic, and the cash games are not to be topped, how can I really expect to keep up? I'd probably spend most of my time in the "cottage" anyway, moaning and groaning about how sick I am, lol.

He says we can either make a trip to Vegas for poker-only, or go out to LA a little earlier than our cruise (January 28th) and get in some poker at Commerce and the Bike.

I'm sorry if anyone made any plans around meeting me in Tunica. Don't throw rotten tomatoes at me, throw them at Glenn, haha!

Felicia :)

What Makes a Good Poker Blog? (Summary)

Since we're leaving tomorrow for Tunica, I'm going to just touch on each one of these a bit. I may elaborate more when we return.

Once again, this is what I, personally, think makes a good poker blog. It's subjective.

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 your opinion
6) Are you a poker journal, or not?
7) Try to act serious about your play
8) If you are going to enable comments, actually REPLY when someone leaves one

1) I covered yesterday, to much anger and hysteria among the blogger community, lol.

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

3) Everyone loses. Whether you are running bad or playing bad, no one wants to listen to you whine. Take your variance like a man and buck up. Just tell us you lost, and let that be that. You don't have to whine about how badly you are 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.

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

6) Do you keep a poker journal? Or are you a politician? Keep politics, kids, pets, religion, marriage and other topics off of your journal if you advertise yourself as a "poker journal." There are obvious exceptions, like if your wins or losses have to do with something personal in your life. Or if something "political" is threatening your livelihood of online professional playing. A personal anecdote can also be used as a segue into your post, and is done very successfully on many poker blogs. But if you find that over 25% of your posts aren't about poker, change the name and description of your 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 your blog describes you 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 you enable comments, and someone leaves you an encouraging one, an informative one, or compliments you on something, it is generally GOOD ETIQUETTE to respond. If you keep ignoring comments, you can watch your sitemeter bomb like a California mudslide.

Felicia :)

What Makes a Good Poker Blog? (Part I, Bad Beats)

Okay, now that I have ripped everyone to shreds, and likely made a few new enemies (I'm good at doing that, aren't I?), I'll try to provide some hints on what I, personally, think makes a good poker blog.

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 your opinion
6) Are you a poker journal, or not?
7) Try to act serious about your play
8) If you are going to enable comments, actually REPLY when someone leaves one

We'll take them one-by-one, since I've never had trouble "elaborating," plus some of you still don't know much about reading comprehension, because you continue to break the many commandments of good blogmaking.

First, NO ONE cares about your bad beat. You could post the worst beat in the world, and I guarantee you, we don't care. Players with any, little amount of experience have suffered beats. Most of us have "seen it all." And you know what? We DON'T CARE!

Believe it or not, and no, I don't expect many of you 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. Your supposed "bad beat" normally means you 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 you write about your "bad beat," or tell a player at your table, etc, it is just an act. Because we truly DON'T CARE! If you are sitting next to a player who commiserates with you, he is doing it because he feels you are a fish and he DOESN'T WANT YOU TO LEAVE! If you post it on your blog and get some sympathy, either one or two things are occurring. Either the person commenting is humoring you because he thinks you are a fish, or the commenter is a fish himself, and has no idea how to play poker. Either way, you LOSE. Stop posting your bad beats!

Felicia :)

Photos

As most of you know, I have been on three cruises within the past two months. I missed a lot of things in the blogger world and the poker world.

While I was gone on one of my cruises, something big happened.

I stumbled across it after I came home, and was pretty appalled and shocked.

I'm not going to go into specifics over this tragedy, because it is old news, for one thing, plus it wouldn't do anyone any good. It's one of those horrible situations where no matter how correct one is, he just can't win.

The debacle is about online photos, believe it or not. I have absolutely nothing to do with this fight, oddly enough. I was just an after-the-fact reader. In addition, if anything, I care for the guy who is legally correct LESS than the other party. But because he is right, I'm going to stick up for him anyway.

I was talking to my Dad online, when suddenly I saw that someone had been flamed and threatened for posting pics online. He had posted several, random pics of a social occasion he attended. Not only did the parties who had their pics posted flame him, but threatened him legally.

What made this extremely hypocritical, to me, was that the party who felt abused, had also posted pics of the same event, a week earlier! The offended parties said that the reason it was "okay" to post the first pics, but not the second, was because the first pics were "more flattering" than the second (???)

So, after reading the entire flame war, and just sitting in front of my monitor with my mouth gaping open, I said to my Dad,

"I think I remember reading somewhere that if you pose for a picture, you give you consent to be photographed, you are at a social occasion and these are not candid pics, you pretty much waive all of your rights to those pics, and what happens to them, as long as the photographer isn't planning on using them for negative purposes, right?"

My Dad said that he thought it was something like that, but maybe not quite that liberal.

I had remembered this because of reading about FBI agents not being photographed, and wondering why. Yes, this was a long time ago, maybe 15 years or more.

Anyway, I did what any normal internet junkie would do, and looked it up.

I found the website of a copyright attorney who laid out the law on photography pretty clearly, and in a way that we ignorant laymen could understand.

Sure enough, if you are at a party, or some kind of social setting, and someone whips out a camera, if you smile and pose, or don't object in some way, you are giving the photographer full permission to take your pic, and do whatever the heck he wants with it.

She did point out a few exceptions. Like if the guy tried to make money off of these photos (not in a newsworthy way; the media is a whole other can of worms, ugh), or if he was libeling/slandering you. Or if the pic clearly identified where you live, so invited someone to come harass you. Stuff like that.

But if someone takes a pic of someone else in a social setting, and then posts it in the daily paper, or on the internet, or whatever (with no bad intentions), you can pretty much kiss your butt goodbye. You have no legal recourse.

Sure, you can ask him to take the pics down. You can request to be blacked out or something, but he doesn't have to do SQUAT, if he doesn't want to.

She said that with the Internet, anything goes, and you really don't have any legal right to demand your pics be removed from the site (not if he doesn't break any of the exceptions above, that is).

So anyway, after reading through that lawyer's site, and a few other legal sites on photography, I got the scoop.

Fortunately, the whole thing had blown over by the time I even read it, so entering the fray and stirring up another flame war wasn't going to help anything.

I would like readers to know, however, if you smile and pose for the camera, your butt is grass. Just grin and bear it. And although this has absolutely nothing to do with me, and I'm not much of a photographer as it is, if I take a pic of you and post it on here, don't even bother with threats. It ain't coming down. There is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet if you smile and pose for the camera.

While I don't even particularly like the guy who posted the pics, I have to say that he was 100% correct, and the other parties were way, WAY out of line. I think, at the very least, they owe him an apology. But I won't hold my breath for that one!

Felicia :)

Online Poker Sites...Speechless!

One thing that rarely happens to me is that I'm left speechless. Speechless in a good way, that is. Sometimes I'm so horrified about something I'm speechless for a few seconds, until I go completely off.

I find that within the poker blogger (and reader) community, I'm often the one left doing "all of the work." It seems like everyone wants to be catered to and pampered. This is not to say that I'm the ONLY one, just that I'm one of the bloggers that people seem to come to in order to "get the scoop." I'm a bottom feeder's paradise.

Today I was surfing around and found a new post by Suckout.

Excellent.

I mean, even if you, personally, didn't agree with any of his opinions and think Absolute Poker is the nuts (LOL), you have to admit that he did some homework here, and really went out of his way to provide us with a fantastic post.

Thanks!

Felicia :)

Vegas Quickie and Online Omaha 8

I have been playing more online due to the double FPP points that Stars was giving out until the end of the year to promote their new VIP program.

I've been running very well. I'm a nut peddler. I'm tight, I'm a rock, I'm cautious, I like to trap, I don't want to have to concentrate very hard to play, I like to surf, I'm a cinch player.

One of the reasons that online I will only play O8, is because I know if I play a game that requires 100% concentration, I won't play at all. With O8, I can basically just coast. I can play with one eye shut. It is a "sure thing," with very low variance. Sure, I could really dig into it. I could keep moving up limits and pay attention to every player, every hand. I could multi-table and use Poker Tracker along with other online gaming tools. I could increase my EV a little this way (while increasing my variance, also). But I'd only last a day or two, and then quit.

I've never been much of an online poker player, and I suppose I never will be. I just do it to make a little money on the side.

Soooo, last Wednesday was Glenn's last day dealing. What started in February 2004 as a "favor" to Dan, the CRM at the Palms, ended up lasting almost a year. It was a good experience for him, and he's glad he did it.

As a celebration, we ran up to Vegas on Thursday. We planned on staying a day or two. Just depended on if we could get a reasonable room, and how we were running.

We ran by Caesars first. We'd called ahead and they claimed they had a 15/30 and 30/60 Stud game going. Of course, that turned out to be an interest list only, and never got going. Oy.

Caesars has a huge room. It is extremely spacious and spread out. It sort of reminds me of the Bike. Unfortunately, the problems I foresee (confirmed by others who have visited already), are the location, lack of rail (I kind of like this, but I can see where it would be a marketing disaster), cocktail waitresses, general disorganization and lack of knowledge, and type of tables.

As far as the tables go, they are too small for ten players. They either need to make their tables nine-handed, or get bigger tables. The funny thing is that it is such a spacious room, with so much room in between tables, but while you're sitting at one, you feel cramped. Ugh!

So we headed over to Orleans. I wanted to play in a live O8 tourney before going to Tunica.

I have never been a big fan of the Orleans, for so many reasons that I won't even bother to list them here. Needless to say, their poker room has been FUBAR since it opened. Stealing from the TOC after their opening only began a downhill descent that has never been stopped.

Anyway, it was a cheapie tourney. $40 buy-in with a $20 add-on.

Before the tourney, I sat in the 4/8 O8 with a half kill. It was the only limit they had going. I caught some fantastic cards, against players who cannot lay down a hand, and quickly doubled up. I think I cashed out at $176. So I had my buy-in and add-on.

I didn't think I'd last long in the tourney. I literally did not win even a portion of a pot for the first ninety minutes. Of course catching all of the greatest cards in the world during the cash game meant that I caught a lot of 3999's in the tourney, lol. I was dealt trips five times.

Fortunately, however, I managed to make somewhat of a comeback. Mainly it was due to this hand.

I was in the SB with 237Q. I believe the blinds were 50/75, betting limits 75/150. So I went ahead and completed. If you do not complete in this situation with virtually any four cards, you do not know how to play O8. Please stop playing until you read Ray Zee.

The flop came down: A4xx (high). I believe there were six of us in the hand. I checked. It was checked to a MP player who bet. I think all but one of us called. Turn made my nut low, I checked again, MP bet and there were four of us seeing the river. River brought both a straight and flush possible, but since I only had one big bet left, I threw it in, now believing I was the only player with the low (the players at my table had been raising quite a bit with bare lows).

It was passed to MP, who raised. The only other player left in the hand folded. I expected to see MP with a good high.

Instead, MP had the nut low, too. Yes, I was a little surprised. He didn't have even a pair. He had jack high! I won 3/4 of the pot with queen high.

The whole table exploded. I just sat quietly raking in my chips. This propelled me to make it much deeper into the tourney than I'd expected.

In the end, I think I busted out 25th of 100ish.

My last hand, the limits had gone up quite a bit more than prior to this time. We went from 150/300 blinds (300/600 betting) to 200/500 blinds (500/1000 betting). This left me short, fast. So when my big blind flopped absolutely nothing in an unraised pot, I was down to my last 800.

In the SB I was dealt A7JJ with a suited jack. It was passed to the button, who raised it up. He was brand new to our table. I had no reads whatsoever. I put in my last chips, and the BB called as well.

The flop was nothing special, but put a low draw on board. I believe 45K. Check-check. The turn was a queen. Check-check. Just when I was starting to get hopeful, the river was a trey. Instant jamming. I knew I was looking at two wheels. Yep, they both turned up A2xx and split the pot. Neither of them had even a pair. IGHN.

I started remembering quite a bit about tourney O8. I definitely needed the practice. There were many things I'd forgotten. It's back to Ciaffone, Zee and TPFAP before we leave for Tunica!

Yes, we are going to Tunica, for sure (unless something big happens on Friday, during my oncologist appointment). Hope to see some of you there (but not stalkers ;).

So after I busted out of the tourney, I got back together with Glenn. He was boohooing and bawling around about losing so much. He was running very badly, and down maybe six, seven hundred by this point, between Caesars and Orleans.

We called Aladdin, to see if the mixed game was still going on (HORSE + TDL). It was a go, so we drove over quickly (by this time it was midnight, when they said the game usually broke).

The game was good. Aladdin is still ironing out some details, but I think it will be successful, if they keep it going. The rules need to be standardized somewhat. Like if one raps pat in TDL, can he draw on the next betting round? One playing dealer said absolutely not, while the rest of us said, "Of course, that's just good poker!" Also, they were playing all of the Stud games (Stud, Stud 8, Razz) and TDL with a spread limit of 2-20. No good. The bad players go bust too quickly. Sharks like me will (and did) run over the game. Make it 5/10 like the rest of the games.

We wrapped it up about 2am.

After leaving Aladdin, Glenn was depressed and didn't even want to stay in Vegas. He begged me to just go home. I said that was fine.

So there ya go, a little live game teaser.

I can't wait to get to Tunica. And next time I'm in Vegas I'm going to do the smart thing, and stick to Wynn.

Happy New Year's everyone!

Felicia :)