It’s very, very hard for me to write about losing, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There’s no lack of it in this blog, because I try to be honest with readers as much as possible. If you only write about the winning sessions, and leave out the losing ones, you’re lying to yourself as much as you are lying to everyone else. Pretty soon it becomes simple to glaze over the bad poker and not make serious effort to plug the obvious leak in your game.
PokerGeek made the above comment in a post and I wanted to respond because I was just thinking about this very thing the other day as I clicked cancel on a post about a KK vs. KK hand I was in the other night. I’m assuming my site has been up over a year. I don’t know for sure because I’ve had the site up as a weblog for many years but I think I started posting mostly about poker about a year or so ago. When I first started posting, everything was pretty new and so I wrote about sessions quite a bit. I still cringe when I go back and read some of my own posts. What the hell was I thinking playing that hand and why did I think that I should have won?
But today, I don’t write about sessions because . . . it’s boring. I might write about a particular hand because it’s of particular interest or it illustrates a point but I’m at a spot where posting about hands seems pointless. I know what I did well and what I did poorly. I’ve had bad beats and laid some bad beats on others. So what? When I get bored writing about it, I’m sure people are tired of reading it.
HDouble and I had a similar conversation a few weeks back. With literally hundreds of poker bloggers it’s difficult to come up with something original to say. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not giving up. It’s just that there seems to be an evolution to poker players as HDouble posted and there’s a similar evolution in regards to poker bloggers.
In the beginning stages you rush to your blog after every session wanting to post about your great plays and the suckouts. You find the blog both therapeutic as well as somewhat educational.
The next phase takes you into a deeper level of thinking where you post more about strategy and less about hands. You question, praise, and bash certain poker authors or gurus as you use the blog as a way to advance your own learning by doing the difficult task of clearly articulating your views in a way that others can understand.
The third phase seems to be where you have trouble coming up with stuff interesting enough to post about. You have to define a style that suits you and that’s difficult. Iggy has the uber-post. Pauly’s got his original writings and blogger roundups. Al Can’t Hang has his getting hot chicks to paint his blog URL on their stomachs. Mine, hopefully, is a jumbled mash of stuff liberally sprinkled with a little comedy, insane musings, and irate rantings.
Is there a fourth phase? I don’t know. If there is, I’m sure Iggy will lead the way and It’s sure to be interesting!
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The fourth phase consists of writing about making love to donkeys, and other large 4-legged mammals.
It’s a zone that very few enter.
I just happen to be one of the fortunate ones. I can help you, but it will take time, William.
The 4th dimension is out there.
I prefer to call it the 4th dementia.
You’re one sick dog, Daddy!
Daddy’s fucking hilarious.
—
I’m right with you on the evolution of poker bloggers, Bill. I sometimes stare at the blog and think I should write something, but really I have no idea what I’d want to write about. So usually I just post some garbage or ignore it.
I totally agree. A lot of my uncertainty over what to write comes from not being especially sure of my readership. Most of the people who I know to be readers of my blogs are much less experienced poker players then me, so I find myself making a lot of ‘instructional’ posts, which leads me into the dual problem of not trying to sound like too much of an ‘expert’ (since I’m a just relatively competent player, which is really all it takes to beat low-limit online games and tourneys) and also not talking down to my readership.
Of course, the other half of the time, I just make fun of the two guys I run the blog with, so that’s fun too…