Mentos Fresh!

God I’m a tard.

Shut up.

Yesterday I was trying to link up Pauly’s excellent article about playing online without distractions for PokerPlayer and tying it in with my final table run at Stars on Sunday but my wonderful cut and pasting skillz left the whole paragraph out. Can’t write, can’t edit, and I’m not even a decent lay. Sheesh, where’s my gun.

Anyway, after reading the blogs lately I’ve been reading about several huge upswings, not counting Mr. Bracelet’s recent visit to Hooter’s. Hoyazo took down the 40K Guaranteed at Party, Cmitch has several recent scores including a WSOP ME seat and a second in Full Tilt’s big Sunday tourney. Me? Hell, I’m happy just to be playing profitably again. Its not an variance thing either, its more of an epiphany of sorts. I’ll be repeating myself about this for weeks to come, but after five months of getting beaten around like President Bush’s approval rating, I can actually feel good about entering my logon ID and password into various poker sites and playing some profitable poker.

When I get the chance.

Over the summer I have softball two nights a week (Monday and Tuesday) and we normally head to the cabin unplugged for the weekend (Friday and Saturday). Mix in some time with friends, saying hi to the spouse once in a while, and acknowledging the screaming probably means Wyatt doesn’t want to eat his dinner, well there’s not much time to play. I try to make time by logging on after reading a Spongebob Pop-up book and watching a few innings of the latest Twins disaster with the wife before she goes to sleep.

But is that “productive”?

Do I learn a poker skill by being able to play in between drifting off into the dreamland of naked women volleyball players, Cap’n Cokes on tap, and annoying people getting beat senselessly by midgets wielding mini-sledgehammers like that guy who special orders food at McDonald’s and holds up the line for 10 minutes causing the 16 year old high school kid to freeze up in fear that he’ll be put on mop duty if he fucks up the order again.

You hear about Danny N. and the players in “Bobby’s Room” having these 254 hour sessions and think “WOW, I need to do that if I’m going to move up”. Really? Think about it if you’re a causal yet serious player with a life outside of a card room. If your life goal is to be playing $2k/$4k with that crew or play for a living, by all means, learn how to play your “A” game without being in “A” game shape.

But if you’re a part-time player and would like to improve your game, cut out the distractions (as mentioned by Pauly), get enough sleep (amount of sleep varies from person to person, as I need about 5 hours to feel fresh), and sit out of the game/tournament if have the sudden urge to hunt down the latest gossip on Bradgelina or Brittney Spears’ latest how-not-to-be-a-parent story. If you’re not into celeb stuff, I’ve heard there’s always porn.

Thanks for dropping by, now I’m sure if you’re a Twins fan you read Aaron Gleeman (if you don’t you should be) but if you’re not into the stats (like I am) and need a more satirical look at our beloved Minnesota baseball team stop by Bat-Girl (thanks to Stacie for the reminder of this site).