Monday Recap

We have a lot to be thankful for today. Not the least of which was watching my brother in law Lester000 eliminate four-time MATH casher drraz fairly early on in the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament last night. Lester won himself the $5 bounty that I placed on drraz's head for the event last night, and got to knock out the MATH's leading lifetime money winner in the process, so I was happy to see that. In the end Lester could not hold on to a huge chip lead with 7 players remaining, and congratulations are in order to KJ who took down the event and the $160 first prize, a nice pot given that there were just 16 signups for the second straight week as holiday season and the weekend blogger festivities in Vegas work to keep overall participation in these blogger events down somewhat for the time being. Our other cashers included AJBurns in 3rd place in his first ever MATH tournament (nice job Burnsey!), and jeciimd in 2nd place, a non-blogger friend-of-a-friend of mine who has played several times in my tournament and has done fairly well in each case. A good time was had by all as per usual, with even me enjoying myself despite, once again, losing another fucking race early to exit 2nd out of the 16 players. Having been through streaks like this before, I know that at some point I will stop losing every race I am involved in online and will stop suffering recockulous suckout after recockulous suckout, and when that happens, Look Out Below ladies. But until then I will continue to provide the dead money in the Hoy, the WWdN (tonight at 8:30pm ET btw, password "monkey" as always), and the Mookie tournament on Wednesdays at 10pm ET, as there is just no way I can get no cards, win no races, and survive horrific suckouts with any regularity and still expect to be around for the cash in these events.

Speaking of which, here I am going to post the top ten lifetime money leaders for the Mondays at the Hoy tournament, with now 6 weekly events under our belt, which I believe is enough to start drawing some conclusions without random luck from any given week getting in the way. So without further adieu:

1. Drraz:	$444.00
2. Jules:	$280
3. CC:	$220
4. Smokkee:	$200
5. Miami Don:	$198
6. 23skidoo:	$198
7. SoxLover:	$180
8. KJ:	$160
9. Iakaris:	$132
10. Wes:	$120

Oh and one more thing I wanted to share from this weekend's festivities in Las Vegas. At one point a new dealer sat down in the Caesar's poker room to deal to my table for our blogger tournament. It was maybe an hour or two into the event, and this new dealer was an older gentleman, someone who you could tell pretty quickly didn't know much about computers. So, this guy (Robert was his name) sits down, starts dealing out our cards, and says to us "So what do they call you guys again? Loggers?" After an initial chuckle, a few of us responded to tell Robert that he left off the "b", we're "Bloggers" not "Loggers". Robert responds by saying that his three children know a lot about computers (turns out these "children" are now each in their 30s), but that he doesn't know a darn thing about them, never has and never will. So at this point Robert asks us "So basically, you guys are all poker writers, right?"

I paused for a few seconds before I answered, and I perceived a similar pause going on with a few others at our table, along with a few murmurs of "I wish" and "yeah, right!". The easy answer, of course, is "No we're not poker writers! We're just poker bloggers." Scott is a poker writer. Jay Greenspan and Michael Craig who were playing in our tournament with us are poker writers. These guys have written books, actual, tangible reading materials detailing various aspects of poker -- poker strategy, poker history, even poker fiction.

But as all these thoughts ran through my brain in the split second after dealer Robert asked if we are poker writers, it occurred to me how similar what I actually do on this blog would seem to a guy like Robert. He doesn't know from computers or computer screens. I mean, you could print out what I or any of us other poker bloggers do, hand a copy to Robert, and he would view it with all the same bookness of "Pressure Poker" -- minus the snazzy cover art of course -- as he would a hard copy of Scott's book, or even SuperSystem for that matter. And as I sat and thought about it, for the first time in my entire life, I actually thought of myself as a "poker writer". No I haven't written a book or a novel, I haven't been published, and I have no aspirations whatsoever about ever doing any of those things. But it occurred to me as a sat there pondering the answer to Robert's question -- what am I if not a "poker writer"? I write posts about poker almost every single day of the year. I detail various aspects of poker strategy. I tell stories and review hands and poker tournament histories, putting my own particular style on the retelling of last night's events. I try to educate and entertain my readers with my unique style of writing every single day as it relates to the latest goings-on in my poker world, and/or the poker world at large. Is that really so different from what so many other so-called "poker writers" do? All this occurred to me then and there, for the first time in my life, in response to a simple and innocent question from a non-technology-savvy casino dealer at Caesars in Las Vegas.

I am a poker writer.