Americans Suck

The B2B network is the latest to join the party, banning all US players as of Sept. 1. Again, not the worst of news, as their player base is almost 99% crazy Swedes and other assorted Euros so it's a very easy decision for them to make as far as banning US players, but obviously not the best of news, either. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the Cryptos follow suit, as far as booting US players out the door, as a few haven't been accepting US players all that long to begin with and can't be getting too much revenue from the US. Again, until we see a major operator with significant income from the US ban US players, the sky isn't quite falling yet.

One nice thing about acting like a degenerate donkey is that I tend to get lots done immediately after, via my own particular brand of self-flaggelation that usually involves tackling some lingering project that needs doing around the house, that I've been putting off. So I've spent the last few days transforming a big concrete planter the previous owners built near the driveway/street into a big saltillo-tiled planter. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, as it was fairly irregular with all sorts of weird cuts and sloping angles and what-not, which I managed to not botch too horribly.

Knock on wood, but we're scheduled to finally close on the house today. More douchebaggery has been going on but apparently all remaining hurdles have been cleared. I'm not going to get too excited until things are actually signed and I have the keys in my grubby paws, but all signs point to go.

Which is good timing, as we're taking a mini-vacation to Ruidoso, NM over the weekend, leaving on Friday and returning on the 2nd or 3rd of August. ScurvyWife's family used to own a cabin there and vacation there a good bit, and she's been campaigning for us to visit for quite awhile. Apparently the Inn of the Mountain Gods Casino has a poker room and it's ten miles south of Ruidoso, so I may hit that up at some point.

I'm probably going to take a bit of a break from online poker in the near future, and try to formulate some sort of a plan that I might actually stick to. Part of my aimless results of late is that I really have had absolutely no long-term plan whatsoever, no goals, nothing really other than the idea that I'd like to make money. Which isn't really conducive to actually, you know, making money or extracting much fun or satisfaction from the game.

I'm leaning towards setting my sights on 2-3 tournaments/festivals (probably something in Tunica and Las Vegas, but maybe Aruba or some other more exotic locale) throughout the year, with the goal of using online poker play and bonus scheming towards paying for the buy-ins for whatever live events. Freelance and affiliate money goes into ye olde piggy bank, but there's no reason to keep hoarding every penny I extract from the degenerate system like I have been, especially if I roll it back into something enjoyable, like taking trips and playing in bigger buy-in tournaments. That should also serve to establish reasonably decent goals, too, as far as winning X amount of dollars by Y date, as that'll determine how many events I can play, etc. Hopefully that sharpen ye olde focus a bit, instead of having me get distracted by shiny things and donking off money for no good reason at all.