Crossroads

I played in a home game Saturday. It's probably the first home game I've played in at least a month.

The poker was good. I booked a winning session. But it wasn't about the poker. And that's when it hit me.

It was the first time in quite a while I've had any fun at all playing poker.

It's not the extending losing streak I'm currently enjoying. I'm actually down less than the cost of a new video game. Sure, putting in your money when you're ahead and getting constantly sucked out on sucks (that must be why they call it sucking out). But the online game just doesn't excite me all that much any longer, and the opportunities to me to play live just aren't there very often. A training schedule, kids and weekends full of both will do that to you.

When I finally got the call from Pokerworks that my services were no longer needed because of cutbacks last week, I was grateful for the opportunity for the freelance work and not surprised at the same time. Times are tough everywhere. I was honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I have no obligations to poker any longer. I'm not sure where that leaves me with the game. I may not play very much any longer.

Not only do I not have that much of an itch to play any longer, but the game may be passing me by. I'm probably old school despite the fact that I'm only 38. I learned the old way to play from the books, and I'm not aggressive by nature at the game. I don't know if I'll ever be too aggressive, and I don't know if I'm willing to put in the time to learn to play that way. You might think this is fine, I can just stick to the lower limits, but even the lower limits are filled with tough, aggressive players these days.

I may concentrate only on Omaha for a while, but I fear in a year or two the same thing may happen to me.

So what am I doing in those rare, spare times when I actually have some free time? Well, I'm reading, writing and raising my kids. And I'm playing Nintendo 64.

You remember that system, don't you? Yeah. I brought it back out, and it's amazing how good some of those games actually were. When you're raised on thinking blobs of light shooting at other blobs is fun, your standards are pretty low, so playing games that are 12 years old just doesn't bother you like it probably should. You tend to think those games are still pretty fucking cool. Which they are.

So where does that leave this blog? Well, this really hasn't been much of a poker blog for a couple years now. I'll still write here, and I suppose the dozen or so of you will still read it, as I doubt you had expectations about why AK in early position really fucking rocks.

I still watch poker on TV, I still read poker blogs and I still keep up with the game. But it's now only one of many activities I chose to spend my time on, and right now, it's probably in the back of the line.