Book Review and bits and pieces

I finally read "Bigger Deal" by Anthony Holden. I know the rest of the 3,567 who got this book for free because you had a poker blog have already read it, so this review may be pretty worthless. But I've had some stuff going on in my life. Scroll down to see.

Overall it's a good book about the new poker craze. But it has its flaws. Holden really doesn't offer anything new. We find out how the World Poker Tour, Chris Moneymaker and online poker all contributed to the poker boom. But most poker fans know all that already, and Holden talks extensively about his poker exploits, so much so that it may bore those who aren't really into poker or even those who enjoy playing once a month and that's it.
So it's hard to know exactly who Holden's audience is for this book.
Yet it felt somewhat universal just because Holden is that good of a writer. He sense of detail, through the eyes of a jaded yet amusing Brit, captures the feel of the poker tournaments he's involved in and loses in. But it's his descriptions of himself that make the book worth reading. Any poker player, the tournament players especially, know what he feels when he continues to bust out of tournament after tournament short of the money. He describes his own play, probably the play of most bloggers (tight/aggressive) and discusses just how lucky you really do have to be to win a big score, along with tidbits of loneliness that most poker players have also felt over time.
His best chapter come when he attends a poker camp. Not only does he point out his own shortcomings, he manages to make us laugh about them, especially when faced with a fiesty Annie Duke. This chapter made me laugh out loud. The rest of the book just made me smile.

If you did get it sent to you, it's worth reading. Otherwise wait for the paperback or pick it up at the library.




Otherwise, life continues to roll on. The twins are basically sleeping through the night, and as a result, I ran under 23 minutes at a 5K for the first time in a year. The pace averaged out to a 7:22-per-mile run. I also have experimented with starting slower and going faster as the race went on. In the past I just ran as hard as I could and tried to survive. But this time I started out at 7:40 and averaged 7-7:15 miles those last two, and those last two miles felt the best I've ever felt in a 5K. I'm doing that from now on.

Poker finally is going well after a mediocre three-month stretch. I'm winning at the cash games lately. I'm still playing mostly cash games just because I still can't count on spending two hours at the tables uninterrupted. I did play a Mookie last week and I hope to get back to that on a regular basis soon.

We went out to dinner the other night. By ourselves.
Heaven.

Life, finally, is good again

When people asked me how I was during these last three months, I'd say, "great."
How could I complain? I had a toddler who was turning into a great kid, every day, and I had a beautiful wife and a good job, and I was able to keep up my running and even some climbing. Hell, even poker wasn't too bad.
Oh, and I had two super-cute girls. We avoided a lot of rings of fire that many of parents of multiples had to go through. No NICU, they were 6 pounds each and they were really, really healthy. They were unexpected, too, which meant no fertility treatments and no spamming in a cup with a room and a magazine full of women with headlights bigger than monster truck tires.
So how could I complain? Life was great.
But it wasn't good.
I wasn't sleeping, and everything, mostly my running, suffered as a result. I just plain quit in a 5K, barely managing to finish in under 24 minutes. Kate and I, especially at first, fought quite a bit, with most of the nasty argument hovering around how one of us dared to leave the house for even just a second while the other worked out/got something at the store/played poker/squinted at the sun/got a breath of fresh air. Most of all, I just had a hard time adjusting to coming home and hitting the ground running and working even harder at home than I did at work. I got maybe an hour of free time to myself at night, and that was usually spent playing poker.
As you might guess, it affected my play, and I had the longest losing streak of my short career playing for money. It was not a bad losing streak, just a long one. I'm not sure if my play was bad or if I just ran into bad cards all the time.
In the past my summers were full of mountain climbing and chasing after the 14ers. This summer it was full of poop.
But then the three month milestone came around. If you haven't had newborns, they don't change gradually. One day, you wake up and notice that someone has swapped your lizard-like newborn with a super-cute, smiling, cooing baby; that's like ordering a cheeseburger and finding filet mingon and garlic mashed potatoes in the sack.
(The jury's still out on their supposed Identical status. Their faces look the same, but otherwise they look different, and they act different too. Allie is much more laid back, like a flower girl from the 60s - I can even see her say "hey, maaaaan" at times - while Andie is harder to please, with a stronger will, and she isn't afraid to use her lungs if we haven't responded to her cries of hunger within a minute of her sounding the alarm.)
They sleep more, almost through the night, and they respond to us now, even laughing a touch at my funny face. Sure, they still whine and cry and need to be held, but they also can stay in their swings, the Bumbo seats and the bouncy seats longer.
I"m still amazed at just how much time gets swallowed up through the day by caring for the infants and Jayden. But it seems a lot more fun now to do it.
There will always be setbacks. Just Wednesday I had to stop our final timed mile of the year with our group because I was too tired to continue. In softball the next night every pitch I threw was out of the strike zone, which is hard to do, if you really think about it. And these last two days, they've gotten up before 6 a.m. and stayed awake once we feed them. Man, that pillow sure feels sweet at 6 a.m. If only I could use it a bit longer. But no.
Still, it feels like we've turned the corner a bit.
Life, finally, is good again.