Poker Blog Roll, part V

http://www.subjectpoker.com/, a blog-cum-newsite, officially closed but curiously still left up after several years, serves as a reminder of many things. First, excellent, attractive design and strong writing make for a killer site. You would expect this from sharp guys like the SP founders, listed here. The frequency and interest level of their reports attest to their initial enthusiasm. However, such an endeavor requires a real plan because it’s a serious commitment to take on. As far as I can tell, only “Diamond Flush” really had the will to make this work, and carried on her writing after SP quickly flamed out. You can learn all about several poker scandals from this site. Its layout and plan, easily emulated through WordPress, are waiting to scooped up. (Take note, Poker Fraud Alert.) SP is a simple reminder that the next poker scam is right around the corner – and that might be why it’s still there.

Posting Frequency: Finished

Design: Excellent

Writing quality: Reportage

Overall rating: 99

14.

http://roadztotomorrow.blogspot.com/

This blog is among the most important poker web journals currently in existence. Its author, “Flushdraw,” is buried deep in his obsession with the cards. Like TBC, his priorities are questionable and his central meme is suffering, but unlike TBC, Flushdraw is much more prone to wrestle with his demons while also acting on the strong need to justify himself with argument. He takes the time to repost and answer his many commenters in new posts, nevermind as a postscript at the bottom of a page. In other words, like his choices or not, he is profoundly engaged in the performance art of a living journal. Because of this, one gets the feeling we might have an active voice in how things turn out for him. Consider his current predicament:

Massive blood clot in the right lung which has in fact killed a part of the right lung, part of it is dead, but he didn’t tell me what percentage so I get the feeling it’s a small percentage.  So many other smaller clots in the right lung they couldn’t count them all on the CT scan.

Flushdraw answers some strong concerns:

One thing that needs to be remembered is it’s not just that I’m grinding micro stakes I am currently grinding micro stakes in pursuit of much much much larger rewards down the road in  which I want to be able to be actively obtaining of larger REWARDS on a daily basis and to get to that level I must grind the micro stakes for now for many hours a day.

Sentences like this require a double take. The battle within, the battle of a man past middle aged, living on disability, while squabbling for pennies in one of the few things he enjoys, is true human story. When is the future for Flushdraw? What are we supposed to root for? We want to wish him well, but he is in command at a precarious moment, and we can only wait for the next post to know if he has a roof over his head or is even alive. (That pregnant misclick after “road in” seems revealing.)

I don’t have a death wish but it might be said that I do push my body to extremes to go after my goals and quite frankly, as I told a friend earlier today, if it killed me then I be with my late wife so no matter what happens or how you look at it its a win-win.
win-win

Echo. Who is listening? It seems we don’t actually have a vote, after all, and both the readers and the author are hostage to Flushdraw’s destiny. Solitary, he confronts the trouble of all human detritus – the secret is that it can never be looked at in the face for too long. It’s quickly, therefore, back to the updates poker players seem to love to give, their cynicism slow playing their optimism:

Poker at the cash games continues to goes horribly bad.  Dropped yet another buyin yesterday at the $20 tables which now puts me in the red after playing over 20,000 hands…. Yestetday I call a raise from an aggrodonk with AK, the flop is ace high, he bets and I raise the flop about 4x which he calls, I fire a 1/2 or three quarter bet on the turn which he calls with his A9o and three outs me on the river and my AK went down in flames.

Flushdraw is the guy you sucked out on and thought you had forgotten about, but the blog is his revenge and memory. The obscure life of a Nevada grinder, not even rolled for live cash in a quasi third-world hellhole, flat on his back, living on medicine, oxygen, cigarettes, and Red Bulls; fighting it out indoors for pocket change (which is all he needs, so you can’t criticize him for that) while the sun smiles unseen, is a portrait that should be painted in shadow, and the blog is indeed all white on black, the unfortunately and classically hard-to-read format. Card suits line the outside borders of his text, the gross echo of the soulless streets of tourist Vegas, like the falling digits of the Matrix, and his results in that film’s sickly computer green are updated like a character’s life points in a video game (but this is not a game). This uneasy design, however, is perhaps appropriate, as looking into a life like this should not be a breeze; however, I’m selfish, a heavy internet reader, and would prefer to save myself the squinting.

Fare thee well, Flushdraw.

Posting Frequency: Stellar

Design: Obscurant

Writing quality: Pure

Overall rating: QQ

Update – Flushdraw has since improved his website’s design drastically.