Here he comes now

I feel like playing poker again. I have my patience back. One way to tell if I'm playing well is whether or not I'm folding my hands from the small blind. Playing hands from the small blind is lazy poker. You're out of position hoping to get lucky out with worse cards than your opponent.
Don't get me wrong- It's a ton of fun when it works. But it's not winning poker.

I played some 2/4 heads up tonight on that rake free site I've told you about. It was actually a six handed table but just two of us were sitting. After a couple of hundred hands I was down 6 bucks. But also getting 41 back in rake.

That my friend is what Steve Martin would call "a profit deal."

It's also the answer to the question "How do you turn negative 6 into positive 35?"

Meanwhile after a night on the internet I think I'm due for some long live sessions at the casino. We'll see if I can pull it off mentally but I'm planning to sit at some cash tables and fold for hours like a young TJ Cloutier.

As long as I'm being honest here, and I have no idea why I'm being honest, but as long as I'm being honest I should mention that I was just sober for awhile. From February 1st to March 24th. Over 50 days. Pretty impressive dry period for me.

So I finally break my fast on March 24th and the first idea that pops into my "over confident under the influence head" (you know that feeling when you get drunk or high after taking some time off and suddenly everything seems SO OBVIOUS to you) is that I need to go play poker as an Israeli character who is pushy and fights and flirts and talks to everyone. A Middle Eastern man who uses his personality to get people to call him when he wants them to call and fold when he wants them to fold.

It's so obvious. I watch the really good pros do it all the time. They say shit to you. And the shit they say gets you to do stuff. They can piss you off and get you to call. And they can scare you and convince you to fold.

The key here is to be one of the people doing the influencing and not one of the people getting influenced.

Or to put it another way, you want to be the person giving the stress test. Not the one taking it.

Now I'm not sure I actually have the chutzpah to show up at the poker room wearing leather pants, a sparkling shirt, sunglasses, a gold chain and a little too much cologne. But at least by writing it all down here the idea becomes a little more real.

Then again if you can't wear this outfit in Vegas where can you wear it? It's certainly not unheard of to play a character at the poker table. Phil Hellmuth plays his Poker brat character at every televised tournament he appears in. People do alot of acting at the poker table.
Some pretend they're drunk. Others act like they're inexperienced. The whole thing is a show. A con.

Why not take advantage of my years of performing experience?

And God forbid it turns out that I am able to run the table.

Now If only there was some sort of Middle Eastern guy I could play.