Poker - she's got wood
November 6, 2008 | 06:38PM | maudie dot b - gmail d c | |
Five. 5. V. Sixty months. Six-hundred and twenty four weeks. One-thousand six-hundred and twenty five days. And change.
That's the time between the first post of this blog and this post.
Five years ago, I launched this experiment which, for all intent and purposes, was merely a test of some newly acquired web-design skills.
Five years ago, Web Logging (which took less than a nano-second to be truncated to Blogging) was a fairly nascent phenomenon.
Five years ago, the poker boom was rippling around the world following the million dollar triumph of Every Man - Chris Moneymaker at the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event.
Paving the way to that moment, were the revolutionary broadcasts of the World Poker Tour which lifted poker out of the depths of ESPN late night, sporadic World Series summaries into the light of hole-card cams, celebrity and jaw dropping prize pools.
I was one of many who relished the spotlight being focused on the game. Having been a kitchen table poker hobbyist for many a moon, witnessing the game being welcomed to the party was a joy. I couldn't get enough.
My bookshelf soon swelled with purchase after purchase of poker strategy books - Super System leading the way, followed by Sklansky, Miller, Caro, Harrington, Schoonmaker, Hellmuth, Cooke, Carson... and that's only a partial list.
The internet provided a welcome opportunity to apply the skills gleaned from my reading - on the heels of the WPT phenomenon was the online poker rush. One twenty-five dollar deposit on Party Poker and I was hooked.
It seemed the perfect topic for my newly launched blog. Something to write about while I became familiar with the medium and tweaked the design. I'd found a couple of other blogs via a few poker forums I'd visited and so thought, why not, throw it up there and see what happens.
What happened is well documented. What was just a handful of us five years ago has grown into a metropolis of poker bloggers far too numerous to count. We gathered for tournaments in online poker rooms. Then we took it off the page and gathered in the mecca of poker - Las Vegas - where fast friendships were formed and a tradition was established.
A little more than five and a half years ago, my life was pretty routine. I was a confirmed couch spud, content with a solid work week, capped by weekend time with friends, evening time with the TV and my books.
Poker... well, poker knocked me out of that rut. This blog... this blog spun me down an unfamiliar, exciting, twisty and turny road that had me flying solo into a city I once vowed I'd never visit, to meet a group of people known only to me by vague screen-names and blog posts.
Because of this blog, in five years I've been to Vegas six times, to Cincinnati once, Philadelphia/Atlantic City twice, Kansas City, Tunica twice, Greenville-SC, Dallas-TX and Key West. I've formed lasting friendships with people I never would have known otherwise.
After five years, the tide has ebbed. Our blog voices have thinned a bit, and enthusiasm for the game has cooled, the passion tamed. The poker industry is experiencing some growing pains and it may be some time before we see which direction it goes.
I don't play as much as I once did. I no longer rush home to log online or to grab the bankroll and head to the casino. I no longer have the all consuming drive to play I once possessed. I also no longer have the desire to write about it. But, I still love the game. That will never change.
But, oh what has happened in five years time. I was speaking with a dear friend a while ago, a dear friend found by way of this blog, and we remarked how life changing this phenomenon has been. And, oh how glad I am for that.
I'll see you in Vegas in a few short weeks.
Keep those cards in the air!
