Spring is Here!

For me it's official! Spring and summer season has begun. On Monday I went to my lake place and put the dock in. It's a fun and unenjoyable time of the year. The first few trips to the lake are all about work and getting the place ready for the summer. Putting dock and lifts in, cutting fire wood and unwinterizing the RV are always the first on the list. Next trip will be to put boats in and clean up the yard. Next will be all the reeds the get cut off by the ice out that float up to shore will have to be removed. If I am lucky I may even get to go fishing. Now this may sound like whining, but it is what is necessary to do before all that come to visit can come and enjoy our lake place with us. It will be an exciting summer. It looks as we will get a little more time this year as I am hoping to work 4 day weeks all summer which would be a great match to my wife's schedule. So I hope to see many of you at the lake this summer for fishing, beer around the campfire and just a plain old good time!

Poker Boredom

Lately, I have had a hard time caring about playing bar poker. Yesterday was a great example. Found out last minute that I didn't have to work and thought great I will go play the CMPPA event that I thought I would miss. Tournament started and played very tight to start and accumulated almost 5000 in chips and then it began. I started playing or raising almost every hand because I really didn't want to be there anymore. I made a whole lot of bad calls, but it did take a long time to lose all my chips. This is how it has been going. Start like I want to play but soon lose interest. I don't know if it is from my new position at work or just a boredom of dealing with the same predictable people all the time and their poker play. Maybe it's a little both. I think I am going to take some time off and see what happens. Maybe the will to play will return. I just may have to find something else to blog about!

My Take On Black Friday!

As many of you know, I was a former part owner of Full Tilt Magazine. We were forced out of business when Congress passed the banking laws that drove many of the online poker sites such as Party Poker out of the US market. These sites left companies such as ours with accounts receivable that were never paid forcing us to make hard decisions. Now after leaving the industry alone for several years it is once again focusing on online gambling. I guess that I don't really blame them. We have three main online sites that have been making huge amounts of money off of Americans with out giving the government it's share. Can you imagine what would happen if I started a business and didn't pay my taxes. I would be out of business or in jail, so you can't tell me these sites didn't think or know that this was going to happen at some point and time. I would not feel too sorry for them as they may not currently be making any money off of US customers. They still have overseas players and all the money that each players had in the site at the time they were shut down probably millions maybe even billions. I realize that this is about the government getting it share not about me gambling online. What the government fails to realize is the financial impact that this shut down will cause. Every online player that was making a living playing poker is now without a job and even though I disagree that they should be able to make a living without paying taxes as I do. They now don't have an income to spend into the economy paying bills, buying food or going out to eat. I believe that the number of online players that were making a living playing poker is a large number thus the impact to local economies will be felt such as a town losing one of their factories. The other aspect the government didn't think about was how much money these online companies were spending on advertsing, promotions and marketing. That money in turn was being taxed through the companies that were doing business with. Now how about the WSOP effect. If the WSOP losses even 2000 entries that may have come from online sites and I think the number is much higher. This is people going to Las Vegas, staying in hotels, eating at restaurants and cash game players that wouldn't be tipping their dealers. The loss to Vegas could be in the millions. Now there are some businesses that will gain. All these out of work gamblers will be forced to get a job or to start going to casinos or cardrooms and unless they win huge amounts that money will be tax free just as it was online. Unfortunately for causal online players such as myself, I think we are for a long draught of online play unless you want to play for free. My suggestion is come out and join me at a local bar game and drink down a tall one or two  and start having fun playing poker again!