Category: reviews

The poker dream, they call it, although no one is quite sure what they mean by “dream” anymore. Contests of intelligence for prizes? An insecure and unsteady wage? Retirement at twenty-nine? Endless scams and bullshit personalities? An easy way to make a hard living? What does it mean to you? For me it was about being outside the normal industries and careers, ones I wouldn’t accept. One […]

You may not know much about the poker podcasts you don’t listen to. Nearly all available guidance to the market is click-bait. Google’s and Spotify’s overwhelmed algorithms promote long-dead pods while burying some of the best. That’s okay, though: if you were to repeat my research, you’d realize most poker podcasts are simply duplicative, recycling the same guests, same questions, and same subjects. Yet that’s good news, […]

Is it valuable to know where we are in the hierarchy, whether we are the metaphorical king or knave? Something in between? As young people, we often made lists of the things we liked, to tell us and to tell others who we were and who we wanted to be; definition is important when we could be anything. Later, we might think we’re over such literalism, but […]

I’d love to overwrite another piece, really home in on the meaning of the hilarious world, or as they love to say, “space” – emphasis on vacuity – where poker and non-fungible tokens meet, but I just can’t do it. I can’t take it! This stuff is too stupid, and I am weak from laughing. Plus, I have to move on to new things, real things, hard things. […]

I’m going to review the new film The Card Counter from immediate memory; usually the opportunity to watch again, especially those key moments where a theme or even just a detail the writer’s argument can lean upon requires exact knowledge. However, I think in this case it will be fine; after all, Bill Tillich aka William Tell, the protagonist played by Oscar Isaac, lives a life half […]

There are apparently quite a few poker novels out there. As far as I can remember, I’d read none until this past month. Seemed like I should get started. The issue for me (and for many others) was never really poker novels, per se. I’d always looked forward to reading a few. I’d tried to contact the author of The World According to Cinch, which sounded like […]