Still A Whore

Sir Leigh Teabing: You and I, Robert, we have observed history. We are in history now.

"The DaVinci Code"

The Distraction and I went to see the movie everyone is talking about, having both read the book. Honestly, I can't see why there was such a backlash about it. It wasn't anything brilliant, but it certainly wasn't worth 6% on Rotten Tomatoes (which is where it was before we went to see it, it's in the 20s now). Paul Bettany is still awesome too.

So how has the poker thing been going? I haven't had a live game for a while, so the home game is back on this week. We'll see how everything goes. I have been getting back into the online game of late, again to clear some bonuses that I have been neglecting. You can take the boy out of the bonus whore, but you can't take the bonus whore out of the boy.

I feel dirty.

Alas, I am grinding through a massive amount of raked hands to clear this bonus, and I have been forced to revert back to the limit game to do it. I couldn't do anything right at the Pot Limit tables. Yeah, I have no idea what I was doing at a PL table to begin with. Anyway, to make a long story short, I had TT loose to QQ, TT loose to AA, aces over threes loose to a pocket threes four of a kind, and then finally TT lost to AKs. Yeah, that table just didn't like me.

I made some of the lost back on the limit table, where I have to admit to hitting a few hands. Sure, some of the luck followed me, and some of it was my own doing – like hitting my flush on the river that also filled somebody's boat. Lucky there that they didn't decide to raise and just called, for whatever reason I'll never know. Actually I saw that happen a few times last night – people with the nuts just calling. A sign of poor players, but I just couldn't take advantage of it.

Well, I earned some pots so it wasn't all bad. It is a bit of a worry for me when the limit game is holding up the other versions. Something I am definitely not used to.

Thanks to another new advertiser over there on the side, I've had a little spending spree on eBay, due to the payment being through Paypal. Firstly, and here is a Captain Obvious moment – how fucking huge are Paypal's fees? Man that sucks. No wonder those eBay guys are making money hand over fist. Due to the large fees I would be forced to pay if I tried to withdraw this money – on top of the fees I had already paid in order to receive it – I decided that I would instead use it as a spending splurge on eBay. Sure, they would still get the fees (and probably more of them) but at least I would be getting something for it, and the fees would be officially charged to someone else.

But back to the theme – usually I would use this little windfall to get the latest poker DVD's, some more decks or other such poker paraphernalia. Then I looked around and realised, there isn't another poker thing I could really use. I have everything I need for home games, I have supplied enough cards and chips for a tournament of 40 players, I've built two poker tables (and am smart enough now to know what I would want in a third) and I have bought and sold every WSOP and WPT DVD set there is. And not once did I spend a cent of my own money. I spin out about that from time to time.

My first purchase was a footy DVD, the 1989 Grand Final between Hawthorn and Geelong. If there ever was a spectacle that showcased just why Australian Rules is the greatest game on Earth, this was it. So many legends were made that day, including on the loosing side.

I was also gracious enough to allow the Distraction to have a small shopping spree herself on the old eBay. It's funny, we are always saying how we could use this or that, want this or that, and when we have the money to spend on it we couldn't really think of anything we wanted.

It didn't take long though before the money was more than accounted for, with a few things still remaining on the wish list. My list of free shit that poker is responsible for is growing still.

And that's what I love about poker. The free shit.