All In

Howdy everyone.

Sorry that I haven't made an update all week, but it's been all kinds of crazy busy for me. Besides working, I've also been going to back to school working on my poker game every day, and when not doing that, I've been pounding the digital pavement looking for opportunities. Once I find one, it's a couple hours of online applications and paperwork--casinos inspect your colon with a microscope every bit as much as brokerages do, so I have to provide all my employment and residence history for ten years with each application. That's a tedious pain in the ass, but something that has to be done. And I've done it a few times this week, so hopefully my phone will ring soon. But I swear, you do less paperwork buying a new car than you do when applying for a casino job.

I'm also going to wear the black and whites to school tomorrow, practice a bit, then show up at a room that is looking for dealers (and where I've applied) and see if I can't get an audition, or at least do a little bit of networking and politicking with the boss.

Besides working and looking for more work, the rest of my free time has been spent earning a little extra cash playing online poker again.

Back in 2003, I played poker online for about four hours a day every day, and whenever I could get away, I'd drive down to Tunica and go on a poker bender for the weekend. And I had a good run--I could consistently beat my normal Tuesday night game at the City Club, in fact I even programmed $125 per week into my Microsoft Money budget spreadsheet as regular income. Trips to Tunica were hit or miss--I'd either break even or come back down a couple hundred, but that was tuition in Poker School, I've since realized (not poker dealing school...)

But I had the most success playing online on Party Poker. It started out a bit choppy, but after awhile I found my groove and was consistently beating the Single Table Sit-n-Go tournaments, with buy-ins as high as $55. And I just killed the six-player $5/$10 tables, too. That was back when Chris Moneymaker was just becoming a household name, and like thousands of other kitchen-table poker Gods, I harbored not-so-secret fantasies about being a poker pro and sporting an arm full of bracelets. I wasn't a great player, but I was pretty good. In fact, I had a stretch of about nine days were I made just short of $2000 playing online poker. I remember cashing out $1700, and then with that last $300 I couldn't win a hand to save my life. I played in a tournament where I lost with Ace-King four times, and after that I started counting how many times Big Slick would lose for me. The answer, unfortunately, was 28 times in a row. That's when I said goodbye forever to Party Poker. It seemed to me and my tinfoil-hattery there were some poker-bots or at least some type of collusion going on, so once my account balance hit zero, I never played online again.

But fast forward about three years, and now my Vegas partner-in-crime Sticky is a poker freak. On her last visit a few weeks ago, we played poker three times and each time I walked away a winner--two times a big winner! So I began to think I would enjoy it again.

Unfortunately, I don't like to go down to the Strip by myself (even though I absolutely *love* the poker room at MGM Grand), because I get that "degenerate gambler" voice in the back of my head. So I was cool with only playing poker when I had friends in town who would join me.

But Sticky plays online all the time, and has been preaching that gospel to me ever since she left. She finally talked me into downloading the Poker Stars program and opening an account, and last week she put $20 in it for me to get me started, thanks to those traitorous bastards in Congress who outlawed online poker, or at least transferring money to poker sites from US banks.

Again, the first few days were rough, and I lost most of my mini-bankroll playing those micro-tournaments. But I knocked the rust off, and in the past four days I've paid Sticky back and quadrupled my bankroll. Yesterday I played four tournaments, won three of them and took second in the other one. Today was a little rougher--two second place finishes, one knockout on the second hand, and then I finished off the day with a first place win.

So my poker game is back. And so far it seems to be working for me. I can tell, however, as much as I enjoy it, I don't crave it nearly as much as I used to. Back then, I couldn't wait to get home and play every night. Now, I'll play if I've got nothing else going on or if I'm tired of doing housework and such. But as long as I'm doing well I'll keep playing. But I'm playing low-limit cash games and small buy-in tournaments, picking up no more than $15 per win. So it's not like it's a retirement plan. Hell, it's not even much of a part-time job, but I'm still having fun.

And since the March Madness Tournament is looming on the horizon, it's good to be able to tune-up a little bit. Last year I wasn't very good at No-Limit tournament play. But I can see how far I've come and how much my game has improved. Sticky can see it too, and doesn't like to play in single-table tournaments with me any more. I think maybe I'm too aggressive for her tastes. She has a different style and plays damn well, but when we've got the Yahoo voice chat going while we play together, she's called me a few choice names after some of the moves I've made... But in structured-limit cash games, I've *never* lost while we were playing at the same table. She's definitely been my good luck charm.

So this week has been all about poker--either playing it, or looking for a job dealing it. I'm hoping next weeks results are even better.

Mikey