Getting paid to write about poker

Few things are better in life than getting paid to write about something you love to do. As you are well aware, I'm in the process of trying that with the book idea, but a new avenue looks to open soon in the form of a weekly strategy column. I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post. Essentially, I would write about basic strategy situations for new players to the game, hopefully with the occasional comment from the poker pro. This would be part of a revamped Friday Weekend section in the T-News. This looks to be a go around the beginning of February and, unlike my other work at the paper, I will write this at home and sell it to the paper (and then of course attempt to sell it to other papers through self syndication.)

On another note, I finally listened to the Iggy voices in my head and deposited some money in Party Poker for the first time in many months last night. I then proceeded to enter the 7 p.m. $30 NL hold'em tournament and finished 5th out of 1,150, pocketing $1,700. Thanks Iggy!

The following is part of a recent post by Daniel Negreanu on the poker journal on his Web site. To see more of his musings, go to www.fullcontactpoker.com

I was anxious to see the first episode of TILT last night and I was pretty shocked to see that ESPN would air a show that won't help their long term goals of promoting a WSOP tour. Painting us all as gun slingin' cheats, crooked casino bosses, and all around thugs isn't the best way of selling the public on the WSOP being a contest of champion poker players.Yes I know I did a cameo in the show... but man, I never expected them to go out of there way to show poker in the most negative light possible. With poker's growing popularity it was a given that it would receive more scrutiny and this program will certainly add diesel fuel to the fire. The show I saw last night is absolutely nothing like any poker world I've seen or been a part of. Let's all just hope that future episodes get better rather than worse.