Poker Blog Roll, part VII

The web is a dream and a nightmare for the curious person. If you are looking for online poker writing, you have to get through the detritus, which is unfortunately front loaded.

For instance, if you search for “Poker Blogs 2016,” and follow a link for Best Poker Blogs of 2016, you end up with this grinning marshmallow offering her opinion.

It’s from 2014.

Poker, for better and worse, is akin to a giant pyramid scheme. I can’t, therefore, blame those who are trying to profit from your enthusiasm. However, you really should be sharp about the game both on and off the table, because most people are trying to trick you into something. By doing this, they clutter up everything, including cyberspace.

One of few to break through the clutter is soft-porn aficionado Rob, a lovable low stakes grinder in Vegas we’ve already reviewed, but the rest of the top links are not much different than promotional content.  Today I’m going to get through the number one Google entry for recent poker blogs. (I plan to review as many as fifty blogs, we’ll see later if I should count this as one or more.)

16.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-blogs

Posting Frequency: Weak

Design: Control Panel

Writing quality: Varies

Overall rating: K10o

This is not one player’s blog, but Cardplayer’s directory of house bloggers. These are all established names in the poker field, so if that’s your thing, this is an all-purpose link. However, if you are indifferent to celebrity culture, as I am, this site is a mixed blessing and its lack of contemporaneity disappointing.

We start with the “Card Player Free Poker Blog”, which has to be one of the strangest names for a blog, but I discovered that it is in fact a promotional timeline blog for online free play. This must be one of the types of rooms the notorious “mentally disabled homosexual” SD from the Pokersesh gathers points on.

The Daniel Negreanu blog is well worth a read. He is a consistent writer and often presents a singular point of view, which is probably the most important aspect of any blog: we want a unique voice that stands out from the crowd. That he is one of the most famous players in the world does not hurt – this is no D-lister. His effort to be honest is commendable.

Some, if not most, of the blogs are simply dead and dated. Phil Hellmuth’s, for instance, saw its latest post in 2010 (confirming his departure from UB, there’s a career highlight). Some, such as Casey Jarzabek’s, of Tournament Poker Edge, BigDogpckt5s, and live streaming masturbation fame, simply don’t post often enough to even count as a blog. Others are random updates on their Donkament grind, which I assume even their mothers didn’t give a flying fig newton about. Lots of pure filler. Doyle Brunson and others have some stretches of commentary.

A much more interesting one is Shannon Schorr’s. He posts every few months and has interesting life experiences. His latest, on attending Burning Man, is a worthwhile read.

One that has potential but needs follow through is Xuan Liu’s.  She is young and earnest, a woman in, yes, the donkament equity lottery scene. Her opinions are not yet interesting. She informs us that Miley Cyrus “twerks around unapologetically” – as if the twerk should be presented with more grace and shame, and that “your body is a wonderland” – yes, more clichés, please. However, her unique position in the game and clear writing style could make her a real communicator.  She seems to very high IQ; I could imagine her scoring very well on a verbal SAT with that intractable writing program English. You can do a lot with that kind of background. She could be giving us a story of growing up in poker and having her eyes widened. Her last post, on immigrating and realizing the vapid nature of social political discourse points to good things to come from her.

Posting once a year is not going to do it, though, and that’s the theme for Cardplayer’s blog page. Aside from the energetic Mr. Negreanu and the engaged Mr. Schorr, this is a storefront that takes up all of the strip mall yet doesn’t offer much inventory.