I had a bunch of things not worthy of their own posts so I thought I would mish-mash them together into one post.
First off, someone on 2+2 recommended this blog as a good poker blog but he complained that I often write too much about travel. Hmmm . . . I get tons of email asking me to post more about travel so it looks like I’m between a rock and a hard place on this one :-)
Unfortunately, I have bad news for my new fan . . . I’m leaving Friday for a wedding in Bangkok (no, not mine. don’t worry ladies). At least one travel related post is sure to find its way here.
A co-worker brought me in a copy of Poker Player Magazine, a UK magazine that had this humble poker blog listed in their Best of the Blogs section. I’m right up there with Ed Miller, Annie Duke, and Phil Hellmuth.
Click on the scan for a full size image.
In an effort to save my server some grief and shed readers I’m going to get behind Wicked Chops’ efforts to drive Cliff away from poker blogs by posting a photo of Shannon Elizabeth that has nothing to do with this post.
Stand strong guys. Don’t let Cliff pressure you into reducing your SE coverage.
A lot of people have expressed a lot of views on the recent death of Brandi Hawbacker but I’ve pretty much kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t know Brandi other than through her posts on 2+2 and NWP. Some have expressed regret that they didn’t reach out to her but I’m not one of those people.
It’s not because I’m some heartless a-hole – though that may be true – but because most people who did seem to reach out to her seem to have gotten burned in the process. While I may feel sorry that she saw her only way out of her pain was through taking her own life, the only person who could of helped her was herself.
Similarly, I truly believe that in some part the attention she received on forums like 2+2 may have made her problems worse. It seems that once she found these mediums that would shower her with attention (positive and negative) she became addicted to the drama. Of course, I didn’t know her before she landed on 2+2 so perhaps this was nothing new but at a minimum being able to draw hundreds or thousands of people into her drama was something she seemed to crave.
Unlike those who have again flooded the usual message boards to express their sorrow over her death I really don’t feel sorrow. I think it’s sad but no more sad than hearing about some rock star or actor who decides they can’t cope with the pressure of their stardom. I didn’t know her personally so it’s difficult to look at her recent public life and death as anything more as some strange blip in the poker world.
I’m sure there are many people in her life that only saw the good side of her. Either they overlooked her troubled behavior or they were shielded from it by only infrequent contact with her. Those are the people I feel sorry for because they are the ones left to battle with the question of whether or not they could have done anything to help.
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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.
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