Catching cards to chase the blues

I didn't have the most pleasant day today. Work was a bit sluggish; it felt like I was treading water most of the day, trying to get various things done but not making much progress on any of them. After work, I taught the children's tae kwon do class that I teach every Tuesday, and stumbled around in that. I called out the wrong techniques a couple of times, and counted off the moves incorrectly in a form that I was trying to teach - which most of the kids in the class reminded me of quite loudly. When I left that class, I felt like I had lost a bit of the respect of many of the students. I was in a funk when I finally got home.

Nothing of interest in the TV Guide. A chapter or two of the novel I am in the middle of didn't do much to keep me enthralled. I decided to play some Internet poker to kill time until lights out.

I have been playing poker on line for several months now. I started last year when some friends talked about it on a message board that I visit from time to time. I played poker in my college dorm back in my youth, rather poorly. I remember running to the local supermarket once to cash a check so I could have a few more bucks to play with after losing in a game that night. Fortunately that check was only for about $7.00. After that, I only played sporadically until last year. When I found out that there are Internet poker sites where one can play the game with fake money against real people, I thought, "What a cool idea. I can practice my skills and learn more about how to play, especially this weird game called Texas Hold 'Em." Hold 'Em is the most popular form of poker today, at least among casinos and professional players and the online poker community. I won't go into the specifics of it here; there are plenty of sites where you can find out how to play it, what the rules are, etc. There are also dozens if not hundreds of books about Hold 'Em and poker in general on the market. I own and have read a number of them, and they can be quite informative and often entertaining to boot. I know they have helped me improve my play.

Anyway, I signed on to Pokerroom.com tonight to play in a single table tournament. I thought I would take a gamble and get into a higher stakes game than I usually enter. Maybe I was trying to goose myself out of my dark mood by going a little further out on the limb than normal for me. Of course, I'm still only playing with cyberbucks, so it's not as if I'm risking anything that matters, but it's the thought that counts. I "bought" into a $500 + 50 (the amount of money you have to pay to enter) table; I typically play in $100 + 10 games. I have played in single table tournaments many times, although I'm sure there are players who are much more dedicated (addicted?) than I am and play much more often. Still, I know some of the patterns of play at these tourneys, and I can usually last until the most of the starting players have been busted out. Tonight I was playing pretty well, and also getting some good cards. To make a long story short, I won the table, enriching my play money account by $2,500. I felt almost as good when I finished in first place at that table as I would have if I had won 2,500 real dollars. Now, I'm not going to go empty my savings account and catch the next flight to Vegas to hit the poker rooms. But it's a nice little morale booster to have that small success at the end of what was otherwise a downer of a day.

So who out there wants to play some online poker sometime? Let me know and we'll get a game together.