Well, its been awhile since I last talked about poker. So I guess I will have to now won't I? For the record, I've been playing online poker for almost a full year now. I started playing .5/1 tables, and it didn't take more than a couple months for me to do better than break even. I lost about $30 at party poker whilst getting my chipset, and then I broke even (not counting the sweet $300 bonus) at the gaming club. After that, I started making money at each site I played playing .5/1.

I've since started trying to move up in limits to 1/2. I'm sad to say that I have not had near the same success here as I did at .5/1. I think part of my problem was that I got myself into a little bit of a downward swing, and then frustration would cause me to lose more than I should have. This happened at a couple of sites and its taking me awhile to analyse my game and read some more about the game before I started to feel like I've got my game back. Now, I'm almost finished digging myself out of the hole I made, and am feeling a whole lot better about my game. Hooray!

Keeping this in perspective though - my downward swing was not dangerous in any way. It was only endangering money that I had won at lower limits. My neteller account holds the money that I've won - the money I initially deposited is sitting safely in a USD savings account, and I don't expect I'll ever need to pull money from it again.

I find myself wondering what people think of my poker habit. There's a lot of people out there who view and gambling as a negative thing. I can't quite imagine what Diane's mom would think, for instance, if she knew how much money I was wagering in online poker. I'm not too sure if it matters that I'm up around $1400 US in a year's worth of play (not counting my winnings in that CPT event in January, nor does that count the several hundreds of dollars worth of PSO gifts). I don't think it even matters that I'm taking a studious approach to the game - an approach that requires some heavy reading. The underlying problem though is that Poker is gambling, and thus it is bad. Its odd, and even more odd that it kinda makes me feel guilty for playing. And yet, that guilty feeling has no practical basis!

I guess the main thing is that poker will never be more serious for me than it is now. At the moment, its a fun game that I can spend some of my free time playing and studying. I think everyone in my situation ponders the idea of playing pro ... but that is way too far outside my realm of reality that there's no way I'd ever consider it. I'm pretty sure that the game would lose its fun value the instant it became a job. Plus, I like to do other things besides play poker :)

Oh, and I hit a royal flush the other week. Its about time! I'll post a screenshot sometime soon.

Heraldk