Word travels fast....

....When you post a blog and the whole free world can read it.....

I have had several people that I didn't expect to know anything about my blog come up and mention stuff to me about it. It certainly caught me off guard a little bit and made me realize that I better be careful about what I post in there. Not that I have any secrets to hide really, but in general I don't really like talking to people about poker...especially people outside of the poker community. It gets boring answering the same questions over and over. For some reason (even when it isn't poker related), I have always had a deep hatred for having to tell the same story many times. For instance, it drives me crazy when the following situation takes place:

Person A: "Hey, have you heard the story about such and such?"
Person B: "No, I haven't. What happened?"
Person A: "Hey Pat, tell them that story, you tell it better than I do."

Since I am posting this blog pretty regularly I am actually creating this type of situation for myself by accident. People are now asking me about stuff that I wrote about in my blog. Since I have already told the story in my blog once I usually don't feel like telling it again. After I went back and re-read what I just wrote it makes me feel a little bit like I am anti-social (probably not too far from the truth, haha). I guess I should feel grateful that people are interested enough in my goings on to take time to read my blog in the first place. Just to save us all some time in the future I will go ahead and get the most common questions I am asked out of the way. Hopefully, this will at least force people to have to come up with some original questions to ask me.

1. Q: Where is your favorite place to play?
A: Bellagio, I probably play 90% of my live poker there and the other 10% is split up between Wynn, Caesars Palace, and The Venetian. I also play online a lot at Full Tilt and a little bit on Poker stars.

2. Q: Do you where sunglasses when you play?
A: Of course not.

3. Q: When am I going to see you on TV?
A: The real answer...never. The answer I always give...maybe one day. People just don't want to here me say "never" so I just pacify them by telling them maybe they will see me on there one day. The reason the answer is never is because I play almost all cash games and no tournaments and they only put tournaments on TV.

4. Q: Have you ever played with anyone famous?
A: I played in some promotional tournament with Jennifer Harmon and David Bennymine. I also played a cash game with Jerry Yang. Usually, the people asking this question aren't even going to know who those people are anyway and really just want to know if I have played with Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, or Phil Ivey. No, I haven't, sorry.

5. Q: Do you actually make money playing poker?
A: Yes, it is what I do for my job. They already know I play poker for a living or they wouldn't be asking me this question in the first place, but for some reason people always feel compelled to ask it anyway. I have decided it is because for most people it isn't fathomable that someone could actually make a living "gambling".

6. Q: So do you just travel around and play tournaments then?
A: No, I play mostly just cash games and hardly any touraments. This is usually the exact order that the questions are asked and as you can see I have already answered this question once, but people don't understand the difference between cash games and tournaments to begin with so they feel they must ask again.

7. Q: What do you do for housing?
A: I rent a house with some other poker players. I think people only ask me this because in the back of their mind they still think playing poker for a living is some shady business and they are just hoping I will say something outlandish like "I just bounce around from hotel to hotel" or "I rent a 10 X 10 room from an ad I saw on the back of one of those prostitute magazines the mexicans hand out along the strip". Think about it...when was the last time someone asked YOU what you did for housing after you told them what your job was? Well, I get asked it almost everytime and the only logical reason I can think of is that they are trying to get a read on the shadiness level of playing poker for a living.

8. Q: Tell me something....how much money will you make this year playing poker?
A: Does anyone EVER ask non-poker players this question in such a blatant fashion? Of course not! Like I said before, I don't have much to hide in the first place, but it is
hard to know how much I will make anyway so I usually just tell them just that. There are many more questions that are routinely asked, but these are the ones that almost always get asked. If you can manage to steer clear of re-asking these questions I will be impressed and we can mostly likely have a discussion about poker where I won't be forced into giving "cookie cutter" responses.


*In poker news....I played PLO at Aztar all day (about 6 hours) today and won exactly 3 pots for a loss of $27. That game has such great action it is simply amazing. I look forward to playing in it a few more times while I am home for sure. It is not uncommon for 8 players to see the flop for $30-50. That usually means I folded preflop and someone else is going to the bathroom. People just don't fold down there! The crazy thing is, I think I will still get action when I do play and happen to make something. It didn't happen today, but thats just the way it goes sometimes.