Legalize it and live and let live...

America's prisons are overrun with people who committed victim-less crimes. I have no idea how many tax dollars are spent prosecuting these crimes but I'm sure it's in the millions. The DOJ's recent indictment of the three major poker sites and the anti-online gambling laws are just one more way the U.S. infringes on peoples rights and freedoms.

So you want to legally play poker online, why should you not be able to. You want to smoke pot legally, you should be able to. Then there is prostitution, regulate it and tax it and protect the women. If someone wants to watch porn in the privacy of their own homes they should have no one trying to stop them but there are plenty of people who would stop this too if they could.

First off there is the tax revenue and keeping people safe with proper regulation. Can you even imagine how much tax money the U.S. could bring in from online poker, legalized pot and prostitution. I'm sure it would be billions of dollars a year. With proper regulation everyone who be much safer than they are now.

The point is whether you think these things are right or wrong is irrelevant, people are going to find a way to do these whether they are legal or not. Why not make them safe and make tax money from them. Our government needs to stop spending so much time and money trying to legislate morals and more time trying fix all things that are wrong in this country.

On a funny note, notice how all these things start with P, so...

Legalize it!

Pot

Poker

Prostitution

Porn

WSOP another year of no go...

Well I had hoped for 2011 to be my first year at the World Series of Poker but after April 15 and the shut down of PokerStars and Full Tilt my plans were aborted. After losing my job in October and then losing my second job, playing and winning online at PokerStars, there was just no way to swing the trip. This is the third summer since I started playing poker that I've watched the WSOP from afar. All I can do now is hope that "maybe next year" I'll make it there.

Hoping for next year is really getting old. I didn't get to one single live tournament I wanted to play this entire year so far. I'm hoping and planning to go to Tunica for the World Poker Open, which is actually to date the only tournament event I've ever been able to attend after going in 2009, so let's hope this one comes through.

Finished 3rd in the $1000 guarantee tonight on Cake Poker, first final table in awhile. I've just had trouble getting any momentum going since Black Friday. Maybe things will start to turn around soon. After all I'm sure I have earned quite a few Sklansky Bucks over the last 6 weeks with the crappy way I've been running.

My attitude has improved some after taking a week off from poker, but it's still hard at times not to get pissed off and fed up about this whole online poker thing.

Well here's to maybe next year and good luck to all who are lucky enough to make it to the WSOP this year.

Time for a change...

The title of this blog is not a pun on Obama's hope and change but seriously how is that hope and change working out for you. For me it isn't working out well at all. I've purposely avoided discussing my personal feelings about life after "Black Friday" but I guess it's about time I talk about it. Things have pretty much sucked since that day. I loved playing online poker and I loved playing at PokerStars. In the beginning of my poker playing days I chose to play on Players Only/Cake because at that time the Cake network was much bigger and better than it is today and I felt more comfortable playing there than I did on PokerStars and Full Tilt. For a new player the network was much softer and fields were much smaller so it was a great place to learn the game.

In August of 2009 I made my first deposit on PokerStars and then in September I deposited on Full Tilt. I was still a pretty big fish in those days so for the first few months I pretty much deposited, lost it in a month or two and made another deposit. Then in February 2010 things started to turn around on PokerStars and it was all uphill after that. That is until April 15, 2011. For more of how I began playing poker I cover it here in my first blog.

I had played on Carbon a little during the first year I played on PokerStars so it was an easy move there for me and I even had a few dollars on the site. I knew it wouldn't be the same but I never imagined how bad it would really be. I had advanced to the mid-stakes MTTs and MTSNGs on Stars and had a comfortable bankroll for those stakes. Now I'm not comfortable having much money online due to all the uncertainty so like so many people I'm back to playing low and even micro stakes and it's really funny how much harder it is to go backward than it was when I played those stakes a year or so back. Not to mention I've been running bad and just can't get in enough volume to balance the variance.

Most days I just feel like giving up online poker completely but then what? It's also like admitting defeat and I hate doing that. I just feel like the cat who's been kicked to the curb. I really don't know what to do with my time and I'm just losing my love of the game. PokerStars was an amazing poker site with great customer service and terrific volume. The games were great, the guarantees were wonderful and it's so enjoyable playing there. No other site can even come close to comparing.

So for now I'm still trying to figure it out and decide what I want to do. So much is just up in the air. I honestly don't think that the site available now will be around too much longer for US players, I hate to say it but it just doesn't look good.

For what it's worth I believe strongly that Caesar's entertainment and their friend and puppet Harry Reid had a big hand in the DOJ going after PokerStars and Full Tilt. Reid has introduced a new bill that will highly benefit his home state of Nevada. By ridding Caesar's of their two biggest competitors, PokerStars (and their partnership with Wynn) and Full Tilt, the road is paved with gold for Caesar's when and if federal legislation is past. I'm amazed, disgusted and appalled that our government has become what it has and both sides are equally to blame. More about Reid's attempts can be found here.

For now I wait and see...

Coming Soon....

I'm working on a review of the remaining poker rooms opened to US players. I mentioned this in a blog I did on Wednesday but Blogger has been having technical difficulties and that last post seems to have disappeared.

I am waiting to hear back from Doyle's Room on a few questions and I need to find out a couple of things from Bodog and Cake and then I'll do the review after I've played a couple of games on Doyle's Room.

What's next?

The action of the US Department on Justice has had a profound affect on the lives of many poker players, as I and many have discussed many times since April 15th. At this point all that can be said, thought, speculated and surmised has already been repeated in many a blog. Myself and others have written about using this time to take our game to the next level by study and review. Many have written about having to move out of the country to continue playing online.

Online pros have lost their lucrative contracts with the three poker sites involved in the indictment and they are either having to leave the country or figure out how to continue to make a living doing what they love. Others still have large sums of money tied up on the two sites that haven't paid out yet. All this said, yet again, it's time to figure out what we do now.

I recently purchased The Poker Mindset by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger. I'm now three chapters in and I really wish I had purchased this book two years ago. Since April 15th my mindset has been anything but productive for my game. I'm so pissed off and feel so cheated that I tilt over the least little thing. Why, because I don't want to be playing on Carbon Poker or Bodog or any other site except PokerStars. PokerStars was my constant companion for the last two years. When I was down or upset PokerStars was there with thousands of players and hundreds of games to play to keep my mind off of all the things that were bothering me. I totally enjoyed playing there, well except maybe during the worst of my downswings but even then I still didn't want to play anywhere else. Poker seems to have lost so much of it's allure for me right now.

So to the title of this blog, nope I don't have an answer but I wish I did. I have no idea what's next. At this point I trudge on and study and work on my game. I try out the others sites in hopes of finding one I enjoy half as much as I enjoyed PokerStars. I study and read and review (if I could just find a site with a decent method of saving hand histories so I can review my games). I hope the DOJ doesn't decide to shut down the remaining sites but that is a possibility that we all have to be aware of. Most of all I stop and I realize this is yet one more bump in the road of life. I realize how many other things I have to be thankful for and most importantly I work on my mindset. I do my best to stop being pissed off and accept what has happened and do what I can to improve the situation while accepting that what I can do is minimal.

I've been asked quite a bit about other sites and depositing and rakeback and all the general questions. While I'm no expert in online poker sites I do know quite a bit about how to find a new site and deposit and get rakeback and all those things so my next blog will be a review of each site still available in the U.S. (based solely on my experience and opinion) along with how you sign up, get rakeback and deposit. Until that update if you are interested in Cake or any of the sites on the Merge network please go through Rake the Rate using my referral code (a girl's gotta make money where a girl can) here. Click on the tab that says Rakeback Offers and choose the site you're interested in and follow the instructions. Merge pays 35% rakeback and Cake 33% (I will tell you now I'm a bit leery of Cake) by using my link you get 35% (on Merge) of your rake and I get 4%. You can refer people using your referral link after you sign up and you will get 4% referral rakeback on any of your referrals and I will get 1% from everyone you refer, certainly a win/win situation for us all.

Let us trudge on and hopefully prosper.

Lives turned upside down!

I'm trying to put my best effort forward and move on since the dreaded April 15th but it's getting harder and harder. I've been playing on Carbon Poker and basically getting nowhere fast. The games are not plentiful so it's very difficult to get in enough volume to beat the variance and it's just not much fun. Nothing imports correctly to PokerTracker. The only way I can review my games in through PokerTracker and that's pretty painful. All in all nothing is the same.

I've read many blogs about the effects this poker crackdown has had on people and it's heartbreaking. People are having to leave their families and friends to move out of the country so that they can keep playing and making their living. Others don't have that option and we're stuck trying to figure out if there is anyway we can make money on the sites left. Many have just stopped playing online and are playing live but not all of them have the option of playing live. I can't tell you how many people I've heard of who are in someway disabled who played poker to make a living rather than living off the government and tax payers. Many have physical disabilities and some have mild mental disabilities that prevent them from holding down a regular job. Through online poker they were able to make a good living in the privacy of their own homes at a pace that was comfortable for them. Now they have no income and no choice.

It angers me when I hear back from my congressmen and senators and they refer to poker as gambling and inform me that it's illegal. I don't consider myself a gambler at all. I don't even play the lottery. When I go to casinos I rarely play slots or table games and if I do it's only for a very small amount of money. I play poker because I can win money at it and I enjoy it. Court after court has ruled that poker is a game of skill not chance yet it's being lumped in with all online gambling and being held prisoner by our justice department. When will this insanity stop?

I urge everyone to email your congressmen and senators and the white house. First send the canned email from the PPA but then follow it up with an email telling your own story. Explain how the crackdown has effected you personally. Let them know that you are poker player not a gambler! Then send them the same email once a week. If you're in a position where you can try to get your story in the local media in someway please try to do so. The best way we can get legislation and regulation of online poker is by continuing to be a very loud and squeaky wheel. Start squeaking loudly please! Below is the link to the PPA take action page please start sending emails now!

http://theppa.org/takeaction/

The Rug...

I've waited over a week now to write about the happenings of Black Friday (the day the online poker world stood still) because I didn't want to write yet another blog expressing anger or whining. So until I had time to take everything in and process it and get over being so angry I decided not to write anything. Am I still angry, yes of course. The rug has been pulled out from under me and I'm still trying the figure out how to proceed. Did I shed tears over this, yes I did and I may continue to. Neither of these emotional response will actually accomplish anything though so I'm doing my best to put them to rest.

What now? One of my earliest responses was one of my best responses and that was oh well now I'll have plenty of time to catch up on all those PokerVT videos I haven't had time to watch because I've been spending so much time playing. I've seen several people quickly react and cancel their training site memberships and decide to quit playing online for now. For me I plan on doing the opposite. I'm taking this time to work on my game as much as I can. There are still online poker rooms where I can play and as long as they're available I will continue to play online. I won't be playing too much, nor will I ever keep much money online but I will keep playing enough to get the practice and continue to improve my game.

I think improving my live game at this point is important as well. I've always wanted to start playing in a nearby bar league but with trying to keep my star status and increase my online game volume I never seemed to have time, now I have plenty of time. Bar league play is very much like freeroll play from what I've heard but I've always enjoyed freerolls :-). The league near me has some decent prizes and live packages to play for so hopefully the play won't just be terrible. I also figure I might meet some people who play home game tournaments and maybe I'll get invited.

I think, or at least hope, that poker legislation and regulation will happen and hopefully it will happen soon and when it does I hope to have taken my game to the next level because it will create some more fishfest for those of us who've taken this opportunity to improve to really make some money.

Today I read Dusty Schmidt's blog "Keep Going" and this is basically what he is saying as well. We can do as Dusty says and ride the escalator going down or we can ride the one going up. I choose the one going up!

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."
Harriet Tubman