Friday, June 05, 2009
Really? It's WSOP time again? Here's how woefully behind I am: I still have 2 new episodes of the 2008 WSOP on my DVR to catch up on. Where does time go?
As is obvious by the crickets around here, my spring trip to Vegas led to me losing my meager bankroll, and I haven't been back to the casino since! Now that my summer schedule is opening up a bit, hopefully I can change that sad, sad fact.
I've seen a handful of poker bloggers post lately about losing interest in poker. It's understandable. The "new car smell" has worn off, and the buzz has hit the bug zapper. In some cases, it's a matter of priorities; it's hard to find the time for poker when so many other things appear higher on the list. In other cases, I think some people just get sick of losing. Not everybody can be good at poker, or even break-even at it, and losing over time gives a good beating to the psyche and the wallet.
Me? I'm still interested. I do struggle to find time to play, and I do struggle to find money to play (those other "priorities" often result in me spending my bankroll on other things). But, on the whole, I still enjoy playing, and I still enjoy learning new things about the game. I still think about the game and its nuances, and still study books and the players on TV and hand histories. I just don't do all those things as often as I did a few years ago.
Home games don't come around as frequently as they used to. Friends that used to run regular games now run them annually, if at all. The lousy economy has busted up the chances of getting a pick-up game together in my neck of the woods. Tough times. Still, there are a handful of us that still love this game and savor the opportunity to get together and throw some chips around.
And maybe that's how it should be. The world sort of filters out the player base for us.
