And a freight train running through the middle of my head...

I say, gotdamn. On fire. Me.

It would be interesting to track net poker blogger profits over time, as far as net income resulting from time at the tables. I say that for no real reason, other than it'd be interesting to see. I feel slightly ashamed to keep posting good results here, when other bloggers are encountering the ass end of variance and seeing their bankrolls vanish. But it does raise the interesting question of whether the poker blogging community is, as a whole, increasing its net income over time (making the possibly large assumption that the community as a whole is playing poker profitably to begin with).

This loops back a bit to my silly awards idea and the broader idea that a community of poker bloggers is a +EV thing, as far as providing the necessary pool of knowledge and support to play poker profitably. My gut tells me yes, indeed, the community as a whole is generating net income each month. But my gut also tells me that that's probably only due to results being skewed on the high end, with a few whales pulling more than their fair share of the load. I bet if you threw out the top 10% of winners and the bottom 10% of losers that we'd be about break even as a whole. Probably losing a bit of money.

Is this is a bad thing? Probably not. Poker is a hard game to consistently beat, even online. Most players lose money. It's also much, much easier to get pissed and tilt away months of work building your bankroll than it is to have a great night and quintuple your roll. It don't always swing both ways, poker. And the very best thing about poker blogs is to reinforce that, to keep you from going crazy when the cards run cold, to always remind you that you're just a flop away from running hot again.

I do think we can do better, though. Poker is a game of skill. Games of skill can be consistently beaten when you accumulate enough knowledge and experience. There's way, way too much distributed knowledge that's sometimes really hard to find, a bit over here, some more buried in the archives over there. And, even when found, it's not ordered, nor is it searchable. Somebody needs to step up to the plate and start aggregating all this great content that's been produced, putting it together in an accessible, searchable format.

There's also a point of critical mass where someone should take the initiative and approach major poker sites about sponsoring poker bloggers as a whole (or at least those that agree to sign on). You have no idea how much money some sites are splashing around to attract and keep new players. It wouldn't be too hard to put together a fairly compelling sponsorship pitch to a poker site, especially one trying to dent Party's marketshare, given the number of collective eyeballs that poker blogs reach every day. Granted, the money per blogger wouldn't enable anyone to quit their day jobs, when it was all said and done, but it'd probably be a nice little bonus, each and every month.

So, you know, somebody do it. And get me some damn coffee while you're at it. If I only had a forty pound steel rocket coffee pot, sitting by my desk right now...