Friday afternoon Musings

The internet poker world is aflame after the mega e-wallet netteller closed its business to US customers as the main middleman between them and the internet poker sites. I am very concerned as to how this will effect the long term profits of my business, but still remain optimistic that a solution will be worked out. Of course, if our main lobbyists have been the PPA, we probably have been doing ourselves a huge disservice. Everyone knows that not enough was done to stop the anti-gambling forces, but this post on twoplustwo really upset me.

In other news, Michael J. Totten, ie: the best independent journalist out there, writes about his travels to the Hezbollah heartland in Lebanon.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The once great artist Cat Stevens helps me enjoy and afternoon coffee and smoke with this lovely song. How disappointing to know, he'd rather have me dead nowadays than chilling to his music. I guess I don't feel too bad about the songs I have of his on my computer (that I obviously paid top dollar for...)

Travelling

around a bit. I'm now in Israel, and will be going to Europe (Amsterdam) for a week before heading home to the US of A. I spent a year in israel after highschool, and it's been nice coming back, seeing the family etc... (It also has a much safer feel than 4-5 years ago) The only major problem is that I haven't wanted to stop playing the nightly tourneys, so I've been getting up @ 2am each morning, and starting my day then.

Amsterdam, should be fun, but in a different way. I'm really looking forward to 07, as I just started playing MTT's @ the end of 05, and 06 was a very succesful first year on the online circuit. I hope I can graduate to the major's (big live events) this year, but we shall see, patience is key, and I have no plans to violate my strict bankroll requirements. Getting backed has crossed my mind, but so far I haven't found any interested parties. Either way, it's not like the live circuit is going away any time soon (or so I hope) so if I need to wait until I'm 30 to play the big events on a regular basis, I don't feel like that would be so bad.

Online play has exposed me (I think) to alot of the positive and negative variances of poker, and I'm just no where near ready to handle a -42 tourney run @ the 10k level. (Which I have done online).

I haven't decided for sure, but I'm thinking of starting a little experiment on the cash game side, using Barry G's idea of buying in small into those games. Ideas, ideas...