i40.com

It seems, over the last 12 months, when my life has joyously been filled with Bottles, Diapers, Minivans, and life as a new dad, poker has exploded. Sure I thought I knew this. Just watching every minute of the WSOP on ESPN showed me how many people were into high stakes poker.

I've heard rumblings of poker coming to North Carolina. The Indians want to bring it (Apparently they still need the states permission for anything other than video gambling) to their Harrah's casino in Cherokee There is a group in Durham trying to get Poker legalized as a game of Skill(legal) and not chance(not).

One Monday night in early January, Cheryl and I were out to dinner, and on my way to the men's room I spotted several felt topped tables, and stacks of chips. Apparently I had stumbled onto the first night of a free roll tournament with $100 cash prize to the winner. I finished 4th and had a blast and was re-bitten by the poker bug. The quality of play was almost as good as nickel and dime cash home game, that is to say WAY better than on-line play.

The second night I went I didn't make it to the final table because they changed the format midway through the first round, and put me on tilt*. I could have coasted to it, but didn't see the fun that.

The next Monday night, while Cheryl and I were out to eat at another sports bar I noticed MORE felt topped tables. When I asked about playing the guy laughed at me! "You need to sign up 3-4 days in advance to play were full, 100 players".

Apparently there is a company out of Chapel hill brining poker games to neighborhood sports bars across the state (and NJ, MD, and several other states). World Tavern Poker helps organize free roll tournaments (80-100 people) at sports bars. They educate the staff, sell chips and felt, allow people to register for each tournament on-line, keep track of player points, and even host city wide tournaments (with a national tournament hinted at). A nice little niche business (they get $500 from every participating bar every 6 weeks for the service). and poker does seem to fill up the bars on otherwise slow nights.

Cheryl and I have both signed up, and if we can get a sitter, we are dying to play!

Is all this a good sign? or just another sign that Moneymaker real has killed the sport?

-Jason

*1/2 way through the first round they announced that at 11pm the top
two players from each of the 5 tables would go to the final table, and their chip counts WOULD BE RESET! It was 10:15, I was the chip leader at my table with only two other people left. I could/should have just sat on my hands, and coasted (I had 40% of the chips at the table, no way for the other two chaps to both have pulled in front of me) but kind of pissed that the chip count would be reset, and that they wouldn’t be consolidating tables (who wants to play at a short table for 45 minutes with no reward for success)

EDIT: I have Since moved off of dreamhost. They were completely unrlieable, tech support was slow and never actualy addressed the problems (They just wanted to clear the ever growing queue of issues). See this post about my new host.

The move to the new web service provider Dreamhost.com is complete. (You can't beat 77 cents a month, and a free domain name registration 2.4 gb storage and 120gb transfer. Select their "Crazy Domain Insane" hosting plan, with prepaid for a year and enter Promo code "777" ).

Now that I have much more room I will be able to do some exciting things with several of my domains (i40.com, mp3mystic.com, mysticserver.com, and jrdev.com).

-Jason