Long time no poker

It's been over a month since my last blog entry. I've mostly been staying away from poker and other active (i.e. requiring movement beyond occasional rotation on the sofa to avoid lividity) leisure time pursuits in favor of pure vegetation in front of the TV. Having seen every episode of "Stargate: SG-1" at least three times, I found myself firing up a poker client or two over the long weekend.

I'm still working on a bonus at Stars, so I multi-tabled 1/2 limit for a while. Uncharacteristically of recent history, I didn't lose my shirt. One session down about $10 and another up about $20. The points cleared rather slowly, but they always do at Stars. Another couple hours of three-tabling and I should have my bonus finished.

Also played a couple of those tourney ticket tournaments at FTP. Busted out of the first to a horrible suckout. Won the second one running away from the rest of the field with more than double the chips of the next closest player. It's a nice feeling to know you can lose an all-in to any player at the table and still be the chip leader.

About 20 minutes before it started, I got an email reminding me of the WPBT event Sunday night. Since I'd just won that ticket tournament and was in the mood to play, I figured I'd give it a shot, even though 7-stud is not exactly my game of choice. I don't think I played that badly, but I just couldn't get anything going, ending up the fourth or fifth player eliminated. Can't say I was real thrilled about the cackles over the suckout that sent me home either. I've obviously set my sights too high, expecting more gentlemanly behavior of fellow bloggers.

I'm not sure if this weekend was a rekindling of my poker fever or if I'll go back to vegetating. Time will tell.

Oh, one more thing that is only marginally related to online poker. Please learn from my experience. Do NOT under any circumstances buy a D-Link wireless router. When I moved into my house I went to CompUSA and bought the cheapest wireless router they had, assuming they were all about the same at the lower end of the price scale. The D-Link I got was less than worthless.

For months I thought I had a neighbor whose cordless phone was interfering with my wireless connection, causing it to periodically drop. I finally ran a network cable to my usual computer position, but found that I was still losing the connection a couple times a night. Upon further investigation I discovered the router was rebooting itself for no apparent reason.

I bought an older model Linksys (WRT54GL) that runs Linux, reburned it with one of the open source firmwares (I used Tomato), and haven't had a crash since. I'm going to take a hammer to the D-Link and mail all the tiny pieces back to the manufacturer.

I will never buy another piece of D-Link gear. I strongly suggest you follow my lead on this. Spend the few extra bucks to get the good stuff. It's money well spent.