Raising The Blinds

There is a new phenomenon on the internet and that is poker! It is growing so fast that soon it will overtake porn as the dominant force on the web. Okay, maybe it will not take over from porn, but it will soon take over from Star Trek as porn's biggest challenger in cyberspace. After all, if someone asks you how long you spend on the web every day and you say "Oh I don't know, four maybe five hours" you'd better have a better follow up answer to what you are doing than "Arguing over who was the best Captain of the Enterprise and wanking." (Hopefully not at the same time.) Poker could be that answer (I know it is for me). It somehow has legitimacy as a pastime without making you seem like a total loser (Trekkies take note).

As well as playing poker, you can adopt a number of other poker related pastimes to fill the space in your life that would otherwise be spent watching soap opera's you don't give a damn about because your partner wants to watch them (if you are a girl substitute football or car programs). You could start a poker related blog (just don't make it better than mine, okay?) or join a poker forum or community. If this is the way that you want to go, then you could do a lot worse than following the raising the blinds link (Right hand side of the screen, just below the archives) and checking out the sites that form this excellent community. Started by the poker academy in the UK and pokerplasm in the US, it is quickly growing into one of the best and certainly most interesting online communities available (without having to pay anything) today.

You can get advice on how to play (there are several professional players who use this community as well as lots of very good non-professional players (note I do not say amateur. Many of these guys are good enough to go pro but want the more stable life of conventional work and play poker for fun/beer money. If you want to know how good some non professionals are, ask Greg Raymer or Chris Moneymaker who both won the world series of poker main event whilst holding down "daytime" jobs.) Get sympathy for your bad beats and have a laugh at some of the tales and antics of other players. There is a diverse society out there full of interesting people who come together when you say "shuffle up and deal" and they are ready to welcome you into the fold. So what are you waiting for, an invitation from Captain Kirk?

As for me, well as we say in poker "I'm all in" already!