Hella Hold'em

I think I figured out why I'm bored with online poker. I've hit a wall. Sitting there grinding it out at $.50/1.00 or folding folding folding at a $25NL table does not work my poker brain. I am not trying on any new theories for size. Not falling into any relelationary moments.

I need to read some more.

Yup. That's it. I need to restock my brain with some more food for thought, and THEN go back to grinding so that I can hopefully pick up on some of the new ideas and angles I learned in my poker academic pursuits.

So, that is what I will do. I had started reading Sklansky's Theory of Poker (which I started reading after I started Hold'em for Advanced Players, which all too often references the Theory book. So I dumped the Hold'em book until I can finish reading the theory book!) I will go back to the Theory book and dive in.

I think there's a fine balance between learning time and practice time. I myself can only learn so much before things start sounding like the teacher's voice in the old Charlie Brown cartoons. Blah blah blah blah... if I don't get out there and practice what I'm learning, it all starts to get jumbled up in my head. But - as I'm discovering now - if I focus on practice and have too long of a drought from learning anything new, the practice becomes quite boring. So, I shall move forward, alternating the two. Learn some new stuff, then try it out and practice. Go learn some more, then practice some more. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I thought about playing something different for a while (I'm a big fan of Omaha - but purely recreationally. I haven't actually studied it). But I'm not ready to stop playing hold'em. I still love it. The way my brain works, I can't flip flop around to different games like some people can. My mind must be immersed in one game for anything to sink in and commit to memory. So I will continue with hold'em.

In other news... I just got myself a new Blackberry 7520 cell phone/PDA (Nextel). It kicks so much crazy major ass that I can't even begin to describe it. I love this thing - and I haven't even started playing with any of the cool Bluetooth or GPS stuff yet. The only nuisance is that I can only receive inbound text messages/SMS - I can't send outgoing ones. That's a bit annoying, even though the only person I ever text message is Randy. But, I like being able to text message when, for example, I want to tell him something but don't want to wake him up or bother him with the phone ringing. I suppose I will survive without it, especially now that I have real-time email and instant messaging right on my phone, and a thumb keypad that makes it so much easier to input messages than my old regular phone. Today I added a poker game and a blackjack game to its software - you know, to kill time when I have time to kill.... ahem. :) LOVE this Blackberry.