Why do you torment me so, with your teasing second-best hands? You fill my heart with hope when you bring forth queens and kings, sometimes aces, only to give another player trips on the river with his 8. Please don't let my constant losses to this inverted symbol for infinity be a sign that my losing streak will be perpetual.
Whether you are real or imagined, as in graphics on a computer screen, you club me over the head, metaphorically with a real weapon and in actuality with a flush of puppy-dog feet shapes. Blue, red, green, brown, all of your colors are tortuing me. It's not supposed to happen like this. I'm better than average. I should be beating the dickens out of the plethora of fish sitting across from the table or across the world via the Internet. But you just won't let it happen. And as I go on tilt and begin to play poorly, you won't treat me as you treat the others, providing that miracle river card that would allow me to snatch the pot right out from under them as they do to me. Why, oh why, poker deck, do you treat me so?
I know what doesn't kill you (or your bankroll) is supposed to make you stronger. But right now I am a weak man and my game is in disarray. You did it to Jay Lovinger, he of the mighty ESPN family, but he deserved it more. I've read his column. He just doesn't play very well. Why me? Why now? I'm trying to build up my bankroll to prepare to zip cross country for a poker travelogue. This is a time when I need to be winning and saving money, not seeing it blow away in a hailstorm of bad beats.
Ok, enough with the whining. The fact is this: I'm down about $1,500 for March, and tragically March is only 8 days old. Ooh. There is the inverted infinity again. Concidence? I think not.
I can take comfort in the fact that my poker column is a go, at least through the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group. It will run in some of the dozen or so papers that the NYT owns, mostly in the South, with a couple in California.
I also hope to receive approval in the next couple of weeks for my one-year leave of absence to go for the book. I've even determined a rough schedule of my travels and I've got friends and fellow poker players lining up to go with me, which is good since if I go it alone I expect to spend around $8,000 for travel and traveling companions can help defray some of the costs.
Here is that rough schedule:
June 21-end of the WSOP -- Las Vegas
3 weeks in Aug. or Sept. -- drive to St. Louis and Deadwood, S.D.
mid Oct.-mid Nov. -- week in Atlantic City, week in New York (stay with a friend), week in Connecticut for Foxwoods (stay with a friend)
2 weeks in January 2006 -- Tunica, Miss. for the WPO
late Feb. and most of March 2006 -- Commerce Casino near LA and Reno Hilton for the WPC
June-July 2005 -- back to WSOP to wrap it up
In total, I figure to spend about four months on the road during this 13-month period. I'm giddy thinking about it, but weary of my recent losing streak. But I suppose that will make for good book fodder.
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