It's like the start of the Christmas Season 2

It feels like the beginning of a holiday. With the Pot Limit Hold'em Championship beginning today, it's the official start of The 2008 World Series of Poker.

Terrorist Alert!

This scarf:



Looks like this headdress:



Enjoy Guantanamo Bay, Bitch.

Pokeremestari.com

One of the great things about playing poker is the international nature of the game. Playing in Vegas and online, you get to meet and sometimes get to know people from all over the world.

Blogs also have an international aspect, but I was still surprised to be asked to review a poker site from Finland. The site is in Finnish where they call online poker nettipokeri. Checking my stats, I do get a lot of traffic from Northern Europe in general, so maybe it's not totally crazy. Just partially.

At any rate, if you speak Finnish, check out Pokeremestari.com. Via Google Translation it looks like a fairly comprehensive Poker Forum with features like a site of the month, poker bonus sites list, poker discussion forums etc.

I've participated in a few poker forums and the time invested pays dividends in poker knowledge and entertainment value. If you are more comfortable with Finnish than English, this pokeri site might be the place for you.

Illinois Johnson

Going to the Drive-In tonight to catch a double feature of Indiana Jones and Iron Man. I saw Iron Man two weeks ago, but it's worth seeing again.

Harrison Ford is the same age as my father. Dad doesn't swing from bullwhips much anymore at his age. I've already read one review that said the most satisfying part of the movie is the Get Smart preview. The Drive-in rarely shows previews, so I might not get to see the best part of this hype-fest.

Mental Illness

This guy here, (with the really cool name) took over $17K in prop bets that he could win $10K in one month playing only $25NL.

He's set up a web cam so you can watch him. So far it seems like he's down about $35. A warning if you watch his webcam...it has sound and he sometimes sings along with his music.

EDIT. Amazing how he can play 24 tables at Pokerstars at the same time and still manage to look bored. He's up about $400 now.

Tard

Hey.

Douchebag.

Don't go to a foreign country, address a foreign parliament, and publicly take shots at another American.

You take care of that business at home. You don't talk shit on the road.

Fuckwit.

How Dumb?

How dumb are the players at the low level SNGs on Full Tilt Poker?

I haven't played SNGs in a while because I don't even want to commit to even a half hour at one time. But I got to sneak out of work early on time for once today, and I thought I'd try a lower level SNG to see if I had ANY patience left for poker.

I expected the poor plays. You know, the usual. Min raising pre-flop with big hands. Betting 80 chips into a 1000 chip pot. Calling two all ins with Q8 and hitting a Q8Q flop. Telling other players whether to call or fold. The classics. The standards.

What I didn't expect was a dude TELLING THE TABLE WHAT CARDS HE'S FOLDING. To give the game "an extra edge."

No shit.

The Revolution Will Be Delayed Until Fall

The final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event will be delayed for several months, so that it can be shown nearly live on ESPN.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is it good for poker but bad for the fans? Is it good for Harrah's but bad for the players?

The answer is; I don't know. Nobody knows. It might be great! It might suck!

But someone might cheat! You know how long it takes to make a deal to cheat? I'm pretty sure it doesn't take months. If people want to cheat, you aren't going to stop them. Everyone is likely to get at least a million dollars. If they want to risk a sure million for a chance to win a few more by cheating, they're probably not bright enough to get away with cheating.

I do know the steam was always taken out of the WSOP for me because I knew the winners of all the events months before they were televised. Trying to avoid it was impossible given my reading habits. If the change helps me enjoy the ESPN broadcast a little more, I'm likely to consider this a good change.

I love the WSOP, and I believe it's more than just another big poker tournament. But it's not much more. It certainly has room for improvements. I don't blame anyone at all for experimenting with it. Sometimes that's how you discover improvements. There will be unintended side effects. Sometimes those are the best things.

I think a lot of people had a knee-jerk reaction that told them "if I have to wait longer, it's BAD!" But sometimes waiting can be tolerable, sometimes delaying gratification can even be pleasurable. Some people think a big build up makes the event even better.

If not, fuck em. We'll watch the US Poker Championship.

I got nuttin

I can't think of anything else to post, so some more pics from the old days.


This was a woman who's son mysteriously died in a jail cell in the county lockup. His picture is on her T-shirt. I can't remember what the final determination was.



The man on the right is Larry Langford. At the time he was the mayor of a small city called Fairfield Alabama. He is currently the mayor of Birmingham Alabama. Loony dude.


When Miss Alabama won the Miss America pageant, she had a parade through Bessemer, but unfortunately it rained. I took this shot of a little girl waiting in the rain to see her. You might remember that Miss America, she was the deaf one.


Youth football returned to the area after being gone for a long time. I did a story about the return and always really loved this shot of the kids at their first practice.


Every few weeks I would go to the animal shelter and take some photos of dogs to try to get people to go adopt them. This woman ran the shelter and she was awesome. They didn't euthanize healthy dogs there. If a dog was anti-social, they tried to train them by letting them run loose in the office.


Another dog shot. This one was at a Catholic School in the area on St. Francis of Assisi Day, where they would bless your animals if you brought them to the church. Always good to get lots of faces in the paper.

More Photos

After I left the paper in Virginia I got a job at a weekly newspaper in Alabama as a photographer and sportswriter. I covered local high schools for sports and took care of all the other photography responsibilities for editorial and advertising.

Here are some of the photos that I took for that small town paper. Most of them are scanned from halftones that were actually on the layout sheets. I used to peel them off after they came back from the printers and stick them to the wall of my office. I wasn't very responsible about maintaining copies for my portfolio, so I was lucky to be able to keep a few of these as memories of that time.

Photography

I finally scanned in some of the photos from my portfolio from back in my newspaper days. It amazed me how much of the defects in the photos showed up and looked horrible when in digital format. Luckily a lot of that stuff is also very easy to clean up. That kinda thing takes time so most of these are pretty raw and flawed.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites:


This one is from the 80's for sure, probably 1987 or 1988. Notice Dennis Rodman on the right, sans tattoos. One of the perks of working at a local paper in my hometown was that occasionally we got to go take pictures at Bullets or Redskins games.

Happy Mission Accomplished Day

Five years ago today:



Way to go, Douchebag.