Busy Week

This is not a “real” blog post.  It’s a blog post to explain why I have no blog post for you.

As the title indicates, it’s been a busy week for your humble scribe.

Let’s start with this past Saturday.  I didn’t play poker.  Instead I saw my friends, LM & Woody.  And then, during the day, we walked into a Verizon store and I ended up with a new phone.  So did Woody.  It was totally unexpected.  LM just wanted to ask a question and so I figured I would check about getting a new phone.  I wasn’t quite “due” for one yet but frankly I was seriously unhappy with the phone I’ve had for nearly two years (you can see here for the story of how I got it).  In fact, the phone I was using was actually the second LG G3 I had, as the first died about year into my two-year contract.  The replacement had a different set of problems.

Anyway, much to my surprise the folks at Verizon were much more accommodating than they had been two years ago and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I decided to get a new phone right then and there.  It’s the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.  Woody got the same phone.

Well you know how it is when you get a new phone.  We spent hours in the Verizon store getting things set up.  Part of the problem for me was that I had no idea I’d be getting a new phone that day so I was quite unprepared.  When we were done, there was of course the process of setting things up and learning Samsung all over again after being used to LG for a couple of years.

This took a considerable amount of time not only Saturday night but on Sunday as well.  It was actually a miracle I was able to find time on Sunday to write the post I got up then.  But the phone took away any time I had to get started on another post on Sunday, which was my original plan.

Then came the work week.  And I have been swamped at work of late.  Both jobs hitting me hard this week.

The big summer series are all set to start in Vegas right about now.  That’s a busy time of year for me, as I have to enter all the info on all the tournaments for every series into the PokerAtlas data base. That’s a lot of tournaments, folks. Now in a perfect world I would have gotten all this entered a long time ago.  But as you all know, we don’t live in anything close to a perfect world. 

Since all of these events pretty much start at the same time, it would be nice to have the all the info I needed to enter them at least 2-3 months early so I would have time to enter them one-by-one, without any deadline pressure.  Sounds reasonable, right?

But I am at the mercy of the poker rooms running these events.  Some got me the info timely—even early.  But this year, a few rooms were late with their info.  Some were very late.  Some were very, very late.  Now, it doesn’t matter how early they announce their schedules.  I can’t really enter the tournaments until I have the structure sheets—or at least all the info that one would normally find on a structure sheet.

I am not going to call out any poker rooms for being less than prompt in getting me their info.  That would be impolite.  It would be bad form.  It would be unprofessional.  And if you dare to guess which rooms I am referring to, I will steadfastly refuse to confirm or deny.  But let’s just say that with minutes to go before the summer—poker wise—officially starts in Vegas, I was still working on getting everything listed before any series in fact is underway.  Actually, I’m writing this on Tuesday night, and I certainly hope to be finished by the time this is posted.  Crossing my fingers. 

As a result of this backlog, I am putting in more hours than usual trying to beat the deadline.  This leaves less time for writing blog posts. 

Another reason this is a busy time for me is that this is the time of year that Ante Up moves up its deadline a week so they can go on hiatus for the (partial) summer.  So instead of the deadline being next Friday (6/3) as it should be, it is this very Friday.  That means I have to spend a couple of evenings this week writing my column instead of working on the blog.

Phew.

I tell you, I’m going to be a happy camper when the weekend finally gets here.  I might even find some time for some poker.  Hopefully that will give me something to blog about it.

Speaking of which…..well, my less frequent Vegas trips have left me a bit short on blogging material.  So I guess I’m going to have to keep digging into my archived notes to find things to blather about. This is probably less than ideal, but what else can I do?  I don’t want the blog to go dormant.

By the way…another thing taking up some of my time is watching the NBA playoffs.  The NBA is my favorite sport and I’m taking a few hours a night to watch the games.  OK, not really that into the Cleveland-Toronto series, but I’m totally into the Warriors-Thunder.  And honestly—who the hell saw that coming?

Anyway, since I don’t have my usual 100K word blog post for you are, I’ll leave you with a couple of links to some interesting reading.

The first is a post by my friend Kat Martin. Kat and I go back to the glory days of the AVP forums and you no doubt have seem his comments here on some of my posts, usually offering great insight into poker and my game and trying his damnedest to steer me in the right direction.

Anyway, he wrote a contrarian piece explaining why, as a cash game grinder, he hates WSOP time in Vegas.  You have to read it for his reasons why, agree or disagree.  As with most of Kat’s work, it is both insightful and extremely funny.  Here’s the link to it.  Read it and enjoy.

The other piece is from Poker News and discusses the changes they’ve made in the big Colossus event at the WSOP, which is next week.  It discusses the new structure (almost a turbo structure) and is absolutely required reading for anyone planning to play in the event, or contemplating it.  I actually talked about the structures getting a little less player friendly last year, but this year it has accelerated. The article explains this in great detail and suggest how to best deal with it if you decide to play.  That link is here.  Even if you have no intention of playing in the event, I think you'll find it quite interesting.

I feel this is not quite the blog post my loyal readers deserve, so I will pad this with a few pics I’ve come across that I suspect at least some of my readers will find stimulating.

Now I gotta get back to work.

(Edited to add:  It's Friday night, 5/27, and I just sent off my column.  All the tournament series are complete, subject to last minute changes or corrections.  I can now breathe!)