I haven’t played much poker in a long time, and for some reason right now I have almost no desire to start again. After a few months of intense play earlier in the year, this is something of a shift for me. I’ve gone, in a very short space of time, from playing four tables at a time, 200 hands an hour, for several hours a day, to a month in which I’ve managed probably 300 hands maximum, which is about an hour and a half to two hours of play in all.

I’m really pretty pleased that I’ve been able to make this transition so easily, because I was starting to worry that the game was taking over my life a bit too much, and since I was going through a pretty lean spell, I wasn’t even enjoying it all that much. What could be more disheartening than feeling compelled to do something that should be making you money but isn’t, and has turned into a chore rather than a hobby?

The biggest benefit of my semi-sabbatical must surely be that it has finally meant that I’ve got this web site up and running. Even if I end up writing only sporadically, and even if I fail to tell people about it, and fail to get visitors, I won’t care. I’ve learnt more about CSS, I’ve started learning php, and it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

But back to the poker. I played drunk on Saturday night. That wasn’t a good idea - it turns out that while you can be quite drunk and yet still win the jackpot on pub quiz machines, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the same level of inebration will lead to success at the table. Who would have thought…

Today I played a few hands fully sober, and even managed to enjoy it for an hour or so. Winning with set over set in a Kill pot aside, though, it was a case of fold, fold, raise and bet through, fold, fold etc. Perhaps short-handed or OH8 is the way forward. Current plan is to chase a couple of bonuses at Poker Room, then cash all but about $200 out and rebuild from that. We’ll see.

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