November 23, 2008
Remember Me?
I know, I know, long time no see. I won't bore you with apologies for not posting in nigh on five months. I'm not that blogger. If you're reading this, it's probably through a feed reader or some such modern technology that doesn't require wasting seconds of your valuable water cooler time each day loading up the site. You're just glad to hear from me, and I'm glad to be remembered.
I haven't written here, on my poker blog, because I haven't had much to say about anything even tangentially related to poker. I've been busy. Real busy. The kind of busy that doesn't happen to a professional poker player until they move on to something bigger and better.
Since I last played a hand of poker, my business has raised a funding round, entered the football season (which is, to us, what Christmas is to Best Buy) and released a couple new products. I've spent much of my spare time writing, and even played around with a novel like a 4 year old plays with the vegetables his parents told him he had to eat in order to leave the dinner table. I'm still sitting in my high chair staring at it, hoping their resolve will crack before mine but knowing in my heart that it won't, and one way or another I'll be eating that asparagus.
I've clicked the publish button with a respectable frequency on my personal site, mainly writing about technology, politics, and the other minutia that my days are now comprised of. It's a far cry from the highs and lows of yesteryear, but it's more fun and more rewarding, so I don't have to tell myself that it was a good decision too many times before I believe it.
I do sometimes miss the money, but not as much as I thought I would. I miss the travel too, more than I thought I would. But I find myself smiling a lot more now. It's a solid trade when you get down to it.
This weekend I'm taking a much-needed and probably all too brief respite from the startup life and heading out to my former home away from home, Las Vegas. I plan on playing some poker while I'm there too so I figured I might as well dust off the old blog for a bit. I won't lie to you and say it'll be a regular thing, but it doesn't have to be a one night stand either.
I'll probably spend my time there playing cash games. Back in July, which was probably the last time I went two consecutive days without working, I'd ventured into the no-limit tables a bit. It took me about five years to say "what the hell?" and join the herd, but then I've always been so far behind the times that when they cycle back around again I'm made to look like a rather prescient trendsetter. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that no-limit Texas Hold'em game is going to be popular.
On the plane ride out, the person seated next to me made me realize just how far removed from that world I've become. Apparently the World Series of Poker ended, six or so months went by, and then the final table was played and aired on television with me oblivious to the whole thing. Nowadays I find myself more aware of the goings on of Somalian Pirates than the world I used to inhabit.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Poker is much like standup comedy in that most people who do it professionally view it as a stepping stone to something else. You'll notice that a lot of the well-known pros now spend their time promoting their card room or book or TV show or what have you, the same way that comedians always seem to segue into television or movies. It's not a coincidence.
So I've made the jump, but every now and then I still get the itch. Just as you'll occasionally see Ray Romano or Jay Leno do a couple nights of comedy, you might bump into me at a poker table every now and again.
Posted by themaroon at November 23, 2008 6:21 AM