I'm Back

My holiday and self-imposed absence from the poker scene are now officially over. I think playing in five or six blogger tournaments every week, in addition to all the other tournaments and ring games, finally burned me out on poker. I quit playing in mid-December and only started playing a bit of limit hold'em again this weekend. It was a nice break, but after my first successful limit session in what seems like the last six months, I think I'm ready to throw myself back into the fray.

I've scheduled the WWdNot the NewinNov Invitational for this Thursday at 2200 EST at PokerStars. If any other bloggers are reading this I'd appreciate your help in getting the word out.

I'm also planning to play the WWdN tonight. I had signed up last week, but I wasn't feeling well and unregistered at the last minute. This time I intend to play. It will be my first tournament in over three weeks. I hope I remember how to play.

Over the holiday I drove from Orlando to my home town of Aurora, Illinois, to spend Christmas with my folks. Aurora has a casino that started as one of the riverboat deals and eventually became a land-based facility on an island in the middle of the beautiful Fox river.

My cousin and I were going to go play in their mid-week tournament, but they apparently have way more potential players than they have room for. You have to show up at 9am to get a bracelet which is a lottery entry and hope your number gets called for the tournament that starts at 1pm. Way too involved for me, not to mention the getting there at 9am thing.

So we decided to go to breakfast and wander by the casino afterwards to get into a cash game. When we got there about 11am there were at least 25 names on the list for each available game. They have eight tables in the poker room, only six of which were being used. The guy at the desk said it would be at least a two hour wait. I figured more like three. He said if we wanted to play in the future we should come by at 6am when they post the sign-up sheet by some podium outside. The casino doesn't even open until 10am. If they have people signing up at 6am for a cash game that starts at 10, it seems pretty obvious to me that they need to expand their poker room. I don't know, maybe the profit per square foot is higher on the 2¢ slot machines than it is at 10/20 limit hold'em.