my pair of Ace's lose, on the river, to Q9 when he trips his Q

Momentum is important. Miss a couple of days of the blogging thing, and it's hard to get back on the horse. But alas, here I am, trying to get something down on paper tonight. It's tricksy, because i'm not sure what to write about.

I played a bit of poker today, online. I play occasionally through PokerStars.net, though not for real money. Well, not for real money i paid for. The sight gave me 2 free dollars, and i've been nickle & diming with those. I was up to about 4$ earlier, but I had a string of bad calls and now i'm only down to 3$. That's after about 3 total sessions playing, though. So far, long-term, i'm winning. Slowly. Once I get a little bit more cushion, i'll play bigger games. I don't expect to make anything real out of it.

I also play with fake money on the sight, and from the $2000 I started with, I'm at over $25,000 now. That doesn't mean nearly as much, because a lot of the people playing with fake money are horrible and it's really easy to take the money from them. Mostly because they don't care and it doesn't cost them anything. That's why playing with fake money is only partial practice, because people don't very often play smart poker.

I played in a few tournaments. the first one, I made some bad calls and got knocked out quick-like (placed 6500-ish out of 9000). The second one, I did better, lasted a bit over an hour, but I made a call I knew I shouldn't, and it cost me (4100-ish out of 9000). the third one, I played good poker, and got crap luck (4900-ish out of 9000). It sucks when you make a solid call, statisticly you're going to win most every time, and then the other guy beats the odds and gets lucky on the river. Happened to me twice. Learned a lot, though, going forward. In theory.

I think i'm a pretty good poker player. not like, phenominal or professional level necissarily, but i'm defiantely better than your average bear. It makes sense to me, enough.

I'm still toying with the idea of my blogging novel. I have a character idea, a 40-somethign down-and-out poker player. Each "chapter" (blog entry) could be subtitled with a poker hand. He's got a lot more work to do before I'm ready to use him, but you gotta start with ideas. I could resurrect a few of my old characters (the American and the twins, Mono & Stereo) that could fit with him. *shrug* just sort of rambling.

With the online/blogging format (and a little planning ahead), you could even add a soundtrack to the blog (original, even!). Hmmm.