Poker's Black Friday

So while I was offline I didnt have a chance to talk about poker's Black Friday, April 15th 2011, when the Dept of Justice effectively shut down the 3 biggest online poker operators in the US. All there is to say really is that it sucks. Even though I never had any huge scores online I was in the black on both sites, and it paid some bills here and there. But learning to play online was absolutely instrumental in my education as a poker player, because you get to see so quickly how certain adjustments you make to your game improve it, and your leaks become readily apparent as thousands of hand histories build up in your database in a matter of hours.

Ive been trying to improve at Pot Limit Omaha and mixed games playing online, and now that opportunity for rapid improvement is gone. Mixed games in casinos are rarely spread at stakes low enough to make learning the games affordable, and the speed of live play makes the learning process much slower. Im fairly weak at stud games like Razz and 7 Card Stud Eight or Better, and pretty much clueless about games like Badugi and 5 Card draw which arent even spread live, and given the evaporation of online poker for US players, its highly unlikely Im going to improve at them anytime soon. Thats really unfortunate as I feel like my growth as a player is being halted artificially.

So Im going to do what most American poker players are doing - just get back to old fashioned "sit at a table and stare the man across from you in the eye and guess whether he has it" poker. The NYC poker scene is pretty good and hopefully I will start motivating for more trips to Atlantic City. If any of you are looking for a game, shoot me a line :-)