How would you like to be staring a cross the felt at an opponent witha mountain of chips, but instead of it being a smirking, arrogant person, you find that your getting taken out to the cleaners by this…

OK, maybe there is no reason to be that dramatic but its the first image that popped into my head after I read this article.

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I hadn’t played any home games in a very long time. The guys that I first got into poker with when we were young teenagers had stopped getting together for a while so I was left without a fun home game atmosphere to indulge in. But recently, they have started up again, although still infrequently and it has been a lot of fun. I’ve find that playing a leisurely game with friends whose style you know and are between fairly and highly skilled is a lot of fun. Some have significantly more advanced technical skill in the game than I have. I’ve been able to hang with them over the years with a combination of unorthodoxy in my play, friendly intimidation, and off the table gamesmanship (see an earlier post entitled such). The point is, that this kind of environment, at least for me, is a way to keep the game fun and connect to why I became interested in it in the first place. It was an ENJOYABLE challenge.

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I was thinking recently about how poker becoming televised has affected the game. I don’t mean the community at large. Obviously that has changed a great deal. I never even knew of a professional poker circuit before ESPN started making a big deal out of the world series. The number of players and spectators is astronomical compared to when there used to be only 100 players.

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