WSOP-Bound

'Tis pretty much looking like a done deal, so hopefully posting particulars won't jinx anything. I've managed to luckbox my way into a gig covering the Main Event for PokerRoom.com, as part of their push to expand their general poker content and tournament coverage. So I'm off to Vegas from July 5th-July 18th, launching myself headfirst into the insanity of wading through who knows how many thousands of unwashed poker masses, trying to make sense of it all with some scribblings here and there.

Obviously I'm pretty excited about the opportunity, for all sorts of reasons (even with Harrah's already making things far more difficult and painful than necessary as far as securing a press pass of any sort.) Not so psyched to be away from home and wife that long, but I'm really looking forward to the chance to be out there and simply throw myself into writing.

Despite the fact that I run roughly a kajillion websites and blogs and that my day job title is essentially "Editor", I feel like it's been many, many moons since I've actually written anything. While much of the work for PokerRoom will be the standard fare, as far as tracking the progress of players who have qualified via their site, general recaps of each day's action, related color, etc., I'm planning on ripping off a page from the book of Pauly and putting up more Writer McWriteyPants stuff here.

I've been feeling the writerly itch a bit more strongly of late, to the point of dusting off some old fiction projects I've been poking at for forever, so hopefully this gig will not only be a great experience as far as poker and blogging go, but also a kick in my ass in general, as far as writing.

The timing is a little less than ideal, though, as far as my real estate wheelings and dealings. I'm going to have to increase the busting of ass to get the investment property I bought fixed and sold, as I'd rather not have to worry about that while in Vegas in July. I'm also losing a chunk of time to our Vegas vacation later in June, plus my mom is flying out this Thursday for an extended visit, so I don't have quite as many free days to work with as I'd like. Not much I can do about that now, though, other than get my ass into higher gear.

As far as ye olde poker, I've managed to donkfish my way back to a decent online roll after a 1st and 7th place finish in decent sized MTTs at Full Tilt, after being on life support for a bit there. I'm not sure that it's healthy that I'm generally bemused by my lack of success at teh poker the last year or so, but I think it's likely better than employing convoluted Waffles-eque logic to convince everyone that I'm a winning player, despite constant talk of blowing through deposits and ad money deposited into accounts.

I'm down about $1,500 or so since the UIGEA shit hit the fan, which is pretty sad, but also fairly indicative of the fact that I've been chunking a few hundred bucks into my account here and there, playing mostly $33+3 SnGs and MTTs. Haven't been in the black, either, at any point, so we're talking about a fairly long run of donkitude there. Which, in the end, is what it is. I haven't played that much volume-wise and tend to jump into tournaments on a whim, when I find something decent looking in the lobby and actually have a few rare, spare hours to play.

The bemusement is multi-faceted, mainly from looking back at how high I was playing at one time (50/100 and, on a few occasions, 100/200) and more general as far as how much self-worth I used to attach to poker results, compared to the miniscule blip that they register these days, on the self-worth scale. I'm not saying I don't care about the results or play with only half my ass, as I definitely do and always play as hard as I can (or get pissed and surly at yet another ridonkulous suckout), but it's just such a different endeavor these days for me.

Which probably, to some extent, dooms me to be a break-even player, at best, but also makes poker in general a lot more enjoyable, sitting there firmly in happy-fun hobby land, instead of where it used to reside, in occupying-far-too-much-of-my-life-and-mindspace land.