High On Poker

Eating Instead

2012-01-13T19:01:45Z

Yes, we have another post about what I am doing instead of playing poker. This one is also a bit of an announcement. Bloggers Gotta Eat is now live! If you are interested in reading about food, then check it out. Fortunately, I am not alone in this endeavor, as AGSweep, thisisnotapril, Jestocost, and Kipper have offered to join in the food writing fun.

I expected to announce the site’s opening in a couple of week, after we had some content, but thankfully, the group has already put out a handful of posts, including two great cooking posts from AGSweeop and Jestocost, to accompany two restaurant reviews from your truly. Rather than let those posts gather dust, I figured it was worth an early announcement.

If you want to participate in the Bloggers Gotta Eat blog, even for a one-time guest spot, feel free to email me (top left sidebar) or leave a comment.

Until next time, keep eating (oh, and make mine poker)!

Bloggers Gotta Eat

2011-12-15T18:17:50Z

Since online poker is non-existent, I have found new avenues for my blogging activities. While poker has been supplanted mostly with art, the blogging has been supplanted with my writing for Pokerist.com. Still, I have yearned for more opportunities to write, and usually, I fall back on my go-to topic, food.

See, I love food. Some may even say I am addicted. It’s gotten so bad that I have found myself eating as often as three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening. It’s goddamn habitual, and when I don’t eat, I swear my body goes through withdrawals. My stomach makes noise, I feel lightheaded and in a matter of days I even start to lose weight!

Much like my poker addiction, I have decided that it would serve me well to turn my food addiction into a blog. The way I envision it, the site would be mostly restaurant reviews in NYC, with random recipes and cooking pieces.

The thing about blogging is, it requires dedication and content. It’s easy to start a blog. It’s difficult to build content and maintain the site.

That’s where you come in. Wouldn’t it be fun if a bunch of ex-poker-bloggers (’cause let’s be real, most of us have been relegated to exes) wrote a group blog about food? We are all over this country, so we can each cover our given areas, and where worthwhile, post about a local restaurant, or a recipe or whatever.

And so, I ask you all, is anyone interested? Of course, this will be largely an informal group, so even if you just want to do a guest post once or twice, that would work.

Let me know in the comments or via email. My email link is on the left sidebar, near the top.

Until next time, make mine potato!

PaintShop Instead

2011-12-13T16:43:39Z

In my continuing series showing what I do now that I cannot play online poker, I show you my Hanukah gift for my wife.

As you may recall, wifey Kim and I abducted (she says adopted) a cat a couple of months ago, who we named Deuce (after the card, not the BM). When I’m not raising money for the orphanage or playing a thrilling game of free bingo, I have been spending time making wifey Kim’s Hanukah gift, which I admittedly already gave her.

The goal was to make something unique. At first, I just took photos of the cat with various items signifying the different months, but soon I realized I had to go deeper. I spent hours digitally altering photos, and here are some of the best results:

Cover.

February.

March

June.

September.

Until next time, make mine poker!

Wire, Instead

2011-12-07T17:07:23Z

In a recent post, I showed a couple of my pointillism cat drawings as a sign of what I have been doing with all of my free time now that online poker is not a realistic option in the US. When I’m not volunteering my time at the Women’s shelter or attending a Bingo Social, I have been playing around with art supplies that have remained essentially untouched in the last five years.

These two pieces were made for my brother-in-law. At first, he requested a lizard. I went through several failed attempts before ending up with a stick-figure version that I finally decided was complete. It wasn’t what he expected, but that’s fine with me. I decided to keep it and recently mounted it on my wall, on a rafter by my clock. The rafter is probably twenty feet in the air, and I had to climb on my counter to do it. But the result is kinda cool, and gives viewers the chance to see the piece from a unique angle. I am particularly proud of the swirly eyes, and the fly placed on the tongue. Also, the piece was prepared with only two pieces of wire, taken from opposite ends of the same spool:

When I discovered that my original piece was not my brother-in-law’s ideal piece, I decided to do a smaller version of a piece I made a long time ago called Tug of War. Its essentially a tug of war between a fat wire man and a thin one, all made from one piece of wire. It is supposed to be about greed, since the fat one is taking everything (i.e., most of the wire) and leaving the thin one with little more than desperation. Or its just a tug of war. Whatever:

Until next time, make mine poker!

Jordan Sells Out…FOR YOU!

2011-12-02T17:46:21Z

Good afternoon everyone! Some of you may already be in Vegas. Others, like me, will be leaving for the land of broken dreams tomorrow. Still, others of you are not going at all.

Regardless, if you have been following along on ThisIsNotApril’s blog, ThisIsNotAPokerBlog, you may have noticed her recent announcement: Pokerist.com has been kind enough to offer an extra money toward the Team Last Longer Bet, and money toward the food tab at Sunday’s football gathering. And who is the man behind the curtain who made this possible?

It’s ME!!! I think. See, a couple of months ago, Pokerist asked me if any of my readers would be interested in writing posts for them. I saw what they had suggested and figured it might be something I would like to do. Sure enough, I wrote two beginner strategy articles, and next thing I know, the good folks at Pokerist asked me to play a more active role for their website.

Talk about something just falling into my lap. Just when writing about poker was becoming tedious (no steady poker means no steady new revelations or post ideas), Pokerist came along to light a fire under my ass. I have since reached out to a couple of other bloggers about writing for Pokerist, but admittedly, it has been a very slow process while all the details get worked out. Once things are in place, perhaps I will have more to announce. Perhaps not.

As my emails with Pokerist continued, I thought, “Would Pokerist be interested in offering up some freebies to the poker blogging community?” I knew that Pokerist is probably off of most of your radars, since they offer free money poker only, for a variety of platforms (Facebook, iPhone, etc.) and most of us were real money players. But it didn’t take much convincing to show Pokerist that the poker blogging community was robust and filled with people passionate about the game and open to being bought off, erm, I mean courted, with freebies. Let’s be real. FullTilt ain’t sponsoring us anymore with freebies, so why wouldn’t a site like Pokerist want to jump into that void. Lord knows the WPBT are a friendly and appreciative group.

Naturally, if you appreciate the freebies, it would be a great help if you mention Pokerist.com on your respective blogs. Also they ask that we avoid publicizing the amount if possible. The details are on April’s blog. This will help us ensure that Pokerist.com will sponsor future events.

Until next time, make mine Pokerist!

I’m a Loser

2011-11-30T23:09:19Z

With very little time left before the WPBT, I wish to announce that I am a loser, insofar as I lost my phone this weekend. Actually, I think it is in my parent’s house, but they went on vacation immediately after Thanksgiving, so I am shit out of luck. What does this mean to you, fellow WPBTers? It means that I do not have your phone numbers anymore. Sorry. So, if you may want to get in touch with me during the WPBT, you can either look for me at the Aria, where I will be staying, or hit me up with an email so we can swap digits.

Until next time, make mine poker!

Who Wants To Win?

2011-11-29T00:50:14Z

So, is anyone still looking for a Last Longer Team for the WPBT? Roose and I are taking applications for a third.

NY Poker Bloggers Running HOT

2011-11-21T21:55:58Z

I realize that I am not part of the recent group of NY-based poker bloggers whooping ass, but I still consider myself one of the clan. With that, I celebrate with my fellow bloggers some recent big wins.

First and foremost, congratulations to LJ for two recent scores. She took 2nd in one event at the Borgata Fall Open and then won the Women’s Event outright. God damn! I remember playing with her at the Genoa Club (I called it the Salami Club) years ago. Once we realized we were part of the same poker blogger clan, we hit it off. She has always been a solid poker thinker and player, and a friendly person to boot. The fact that she is pregnant is a nice little bonus too. Congrats all around to LJ’s family.

Second props goes out to a man who has been on fire since returning from the Dirty South to New York City, Jeff, aka Edgie. Edgie recently hit two large scores in Bodog tournaments, and followed it up by final tabling a recent Borgata Fall Open event. Damn, Edgie! Much like LJ, I first met Edgie through the NYC underground poker scene. We got along really well, and made a couple of AC trips together. Also like LJ, Edgie is not just a player, but a student of the game. It doesn’t surprise me the least that he has had such great recent success.

Third props go out to Hoyazo. If you don’t know Hoy, he’s got enough blog archives to keep you busy until online poker become legal again, so give it a look. Hoy took 11th, i.e., the final table bubble but in the money, at the same Borgata Open event that Edgie final tabled. I also have to give credit to Hoy for admitting that it was not necessarily stellar play that helped him with his result. We all have to rely on luck every once in a while, and it takes a man to volunteer that reality.

Fantastic jobs, guys. And lest you think that I am not one of these wildly successful NYC players, I will have you know that my mom recently called me the most handsome boy ever. So whose the big winner now?!

Until next time, make mine New York poker!

Art Instead

2011-11-17T15:00:49Z

No online poker and all work makes HighOnPoker a dull blog.

That seems to be my internal motto lately. I’ve been working hard at the office, juggling cases and making things happen. Things have been pretty exciting, with some new large cases, a new associate who does my bidding, and a action packed schedule, with near daily depositions or inspections. Hell, tonight at 1am, I have an inspection at a meat processing facility. That’s all I can say on that subject, but I can assure you that a 1am inspection is not the norm.

Fortunately, the lack of online poker has resulted in some positive things. Mostly, it’s been an artistic Renaissance for yours truly. In high school, I was an art enthusiast, but the feeling that others were better always held me back. When I did something, I wanted to be the best. So when college came around, I basically abandoned the arts and focused on more important things like drinking and getting laid.

Interestingly, when I started to play poker, I didn’t suffer from the same problems. Even when I was losing consistently at online poker, I still loved the game. I think that part of me was ingrained as a young kid. I always loved games. Now, this part is going to sound a tad conceited, but I was also a very smart kid. As a result, when it came to a lot of mental games or even video games, I had skillz. After a while, I developed a perverse love of challenges when it comes to games. It’s not there with most things. If its an athletic competition, well, frankly I can’t really compete with the best. If it’s a work thing, I don’t want the competition. But if its a game, I like to know that I can lose and that there is room to grow. If you win every time, what’s the point?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather win than lose any day of the week. But losing at poker, at least initially, was part of the appeal. It meant I had room to grow, and challenges to overcome. Hell, its enough to make me want to check out websites that review online poker rooms to find out if any of the US-facing sites are worth checking out.

But back to the art. With no online poker, I’m like a heroine junkie who finally kicked the habit but is suffering through the reality that life is just boring. Most nights, if the TV is on, my hands are just aching for something to do. It used to be online poker. Now, it’s back to art.

So, what have I produced so far? I have two wire sculptures that came out fairly well. The first is of a lizard of sorts, intended as a gift for my brother-in-law. He didn’t love it, so I decided to do a smaller version of a piece I created in high school called Tug of War. The piece is a skinny wire figure and a fat wire figure playing tug of war, all done with one continuous piece of wire. Pictures to come soon of both pieces.

The other two pieces were pointelism pieces, pen and ink drawings consisting solely of dots. For the first one, I was inspired by my new cat, Deuce. I was literally looking for something to do one night when I decided to start sketching the cat. From the sketch, I became inspired to delve into pen and ink, one of my favorite mediums. From there, I decided on pointillism, as a throwback to my HS days, when I made a pointillism skull, a complete knockoff of a project my older brother was doing from school. The result:

Admittedly, the picture was before the piece was completed, as you can see from the left side. Once the cat was done, I decided that it was too plain, and opted to add the 2d motif (after all, my cats full name is Deuce Diamond).

From that piece, I became inspired once again, this time from the cats of wifey Kim’s good friend Genny. Genny’s cats, Tiki and Moe, are orange in color, so I decided to try something entirely new (to me) by using four different colored pens to create color and depth in a pointillism drawing. The results:

In this case, the paper was a bit warped, since I was scanning it on a crappy scanner and the paper was too large. The impression, though, is there.

So there you have it. No online poker makes idle hands, and idle hands make art (its better than some of the alternatives).

Until next time, make mine poker!

In America, You Don’t Play Poker; Poker Plays YOU!

2011-11-08T17:11:15Z

Lately, when I think about the world of poker, I can’t help but look at things in a much darker light than when online poker was legal. It’s almost as though the recent crackdown of US sites has caused the illusion to dissipate, and I am able to see the poker world for what it really is. Sites like FullTilt were opportunistic monsters, and not the vanguard of poker that we all expected it to be. The big online poker players are now all ex-patriots, playing online poker from Canada, Mexico and Europe, leaving the dregs of the US online poker community behind. Live games have been more popular, but that only causes us to face, in person, a reflection of ourselves that can sometimes appear desperate, lonely, broke and sad.

Of course, that’s not all I see. I can still appreciate the game for what it is. To me, poker is the perfect blend of mind game and strategy. Sure, it attracts some dregs, but that is only because it is associated with gambling, which has been widely regarded as a vice. And with those dregs come cheats and scoundrels, but that will happen in any area where things are largely unregulated (I’m looking at you, Wall Street.). The game itself CAN remain pure, but to do so, we require places to play that are safe and regulated. I don’t see online poker returning to the US for another 3 years at least (2015 is my best guess). But in the meanwhile, we can still play in casinos and home games, and at times underground games, when desperate.

I’m not quite there, but I can definitely appreciate those who left the US to go to a foreign country. It’s not just about getting to play poker. It’s about reclaiming our freedom. The end of FT was necessary. It was a company that was increasingly turning into a sham. It didn’t start that way, but it sure as shit ended that way.

On the other hand, a sites like Pokerstars.net actually offered what they advertised, a safe place to play online poker. At least there, you could play solid poker, win some cash, and know that your money actually existed somewhere in the world, ready to be withdrawn when you are ready. At least they were able to stay afloat through their European and worldwide player base. Plus, their continued success is encouraging to the US market. If Italia Poker players can safely play poker on Pokerstars.it, there should, presumably, be an adequate model for the US to take.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to play in the live games with degenerates, gamblers, bums, scam artists, and do-nothings. And I will use those dregs as a reminder that, as amazing as the game is, it is a game, and its up to me to make sure that I’m playing the game and the game isn’t playing me.

Until next time, make mine poker!