Poker and Politics

Before I get to tonight's main theme, let me discuss the weekend. Last week Full Tilt sent me a "we love you and want to give you money" offer that was impossible to resist. $50, for free. No deposit required. Just clear the bonus under the normal terms. I just can't get away from these damn bonuses. I keep trying, hoping that I've seen the last of ring limit. But the bonuses just keep coming.

This time I've made an effort to clear the bonus playing NL rather than limit. It's slow going, partly because I'm trying to play it safe with my FTP bankroll and swimming only in the shallow end of the pool, and partly because I can't multi-table shorthanded NL. Well, maybe I could, but I'm not willing to try just yet.

I've played for probably four hours and have just cleared the first $5 of the bonus. I have this week to clear the rest. It's not looking good.

I had a rough time of it Thursday, losing a couple buy-ins, though it's some small consolation that I made the right move on both big losses and the other guy just got lucky. Friday I ended with a small profit after a couple hits in the early going.

Sunday I played a couple tournaments. Early in the afternoon there was the ITH league tournament. I followed last week's victory at HORSE with a very premature departure when my nut flush ran into a full house. I obviously knew the full house was a possibility, but given the way the betting had gone on the hand there was no way it was likely. I mean, seriously, who the hell slowplays pocket jacks? Three limpers and then the BB with pocket jacks just checks? That's seriously twisted. And then jams the pot when they hit the nut full house? So it goes.

Sunday evening was the latest installment in the WPBT series. I bubbled the points in the last event, finishing one place below the halfway point. I've never had any delusions of winning anything in this league, but I did want to get my name on the leaderboard, so just missing the points was a big disappointment.

This time we played Razz, one of my strongest games... NOT. I managed to actually catch some cards in this one and was doing pretty good in the early going. Through a fine combination of minimal skill and near-maximum luck I came in sixth. My best WPBT finish to date. I just wish I felt there was a bigger skill factor involved in this.

Now, on to our main theme for this entry. And it's probably not what you think. From time to time I come upon some politically related thing I think the world at large should know about and, this blog being my only communication channel with the world at large, I'm tempted to post about it here.

The point would not generally be to voice my opinion on politics, regardless of how silly I think it is to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, but to simply point out where others have presented some information or what I think to be an informed opinion. But then I think, "This is a poker blog. Politics are a divisive topic. No matter what I say, I'm likely to piss off about half the already very small audience I have." Thankfully, to date, I've avoided the temptation to post anything on politics other than that which is directly related to poker.

There used to be a cable TV network called TechTV. I was a regular viewer of several shows on that network, my favorite being "The Screensavers". Our friend Wil Wheaton, host of the WWdN tournaments, made a few appearances on that show. I always recorded "The Screensavers" on my ReplayTV and it was almost always the first thing I watched when I got home from work. (This was before I discovered online poker.)

On one particular show, Leo Laporte was interviewing some guy. I think he was a science fiction writer. As part of the introductory chatter before they got to the meat of the interview Leo asked the guy about his vacation in France. That was the summer of the big heat waves in Europe that allegedly resulted in a lot of deaths. Leo asked the author if he thought the heat wave was a result of global warming. The guy replied, "Of course it was." I hit the FF button.

This author had just said something so stupid that in my mind it cast into serious doubt the worth of anything else that might come out of his mouth. I was no longer interested in anything he had to say on any topic.

(Just so we're clear, global warming is a climate thing. It affects the planet as a whole. The heat wave in Europe was a weather thing. It affected just Europe. The two are almost completely unrelated and the less than one degree Celsius increase in the earth's average temperature over the last century did not cause the European heat wave.)

When I read other poker blog postings about politics I realize how smart I was to not give in to the temptation to post such things myself. Other than to record for posterity my journey through pokerdom, I have some small hope that a few gems of poker wisdom may eventually emanate from these pages. For those gems to be of any use, somebody has to read them.

If I want people to stay around to maybe pick up the odd gem of wisdom, I need to keep from annoying them with my poorly considered views on non-poker topics with which I'm ill informed. (At least the ones that haven't already hit the FF button due to my saying global warming didn't cause the heat wave in Europe.)

Most blogs are personal things and people are free to post whatever they want. But when you post opinions on political topics you run the very clear risk of alienating a big portion of your audience. Just as you have the right to post whatever you want, I have the right to ignore it, and everything else you have to say, just as you have the right to ignore this and everything that might come after.

And that's all I have to say about poker and politics.

Tonight is the MATH at PokerStars. I probably won't be there, but that just means the way is free for all of you who are now boycotting me for taking a stand on mixing poker with politics. 10 pm EDT. Password is hammer.