Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Borderline

LEBOWSKI: Your "revolution" is over, Mr. Lebowski! Condolences! The bums lost! ... My advice is, do what your parents did! Get a job, sir! The bums will always lose -- do you hear me, Lebowski? THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS--

--The Big Lebowski


Nick and I pulled up to the border patrol station as we were re-entering the United States yesterday on our way back from Montreal.

A gray-haired, cranky border patrol agent asks for our driver's licenses and starts asking questions.

"How long were you in Canada?" he said.

"Since Thursday," I said.

"And what do you do for a living, to be able to afford this vacation," he asked.

"I'm a journalist, but I'm kind of in between jobs," I said. Nick told the guy that he was a freelance web developer.

"So you're both unemployed," the border patrol asshole said. "Where do you get money?"

"Umm ... I play Internet poker," I responded.

"You make it to the casino?" the border patrol said. "Pop the trunk. I'm going to have to search your bags."

It was funny. We were two guys traveling to Montreal for a five-day weekend to visit a friend who we knew from Germany and Chile. I guess we look like bums to the border patrol.

And yes, we did make it to the Casino de Montreal! It was a pretty nice place, but they don't have any authentic poker games. They did a very brisk business of other games though: blackjack, baccarat, slots, roulette, war. All the usuals. Just no hold 'em or stud. I tried to get into a blackjack game, but the wait was too long to be worthwhile. So eventually, I just went to the cashier's window and bought some of their chips as souveniers.

Now I'm back to my home court, with a lot of poker action to look forward to. I just put some money in my Party Poker account, and the games are as fishy as they ever were. It's so much better to play there than against the few remaining sharks at the ex-Party Poker sister sites (Empire, Eurobet, etc.) And I can open as many as 10 tables now! Yay!

You win this battle, Party Poker.

Later this week, I'm excited about playing in the new Emory game with Daniel. He said it was uber-fishy, and I love busting college kids. Maybe I'm evil?

Back to Internet poker news: PokerAce HUD is now out of beta, which means that there's a new version of it that you have to pay for. It costs $25, but I think that price is well worth it. PokerAce HUD is far better than Gametime+ and PlayerView.net. It displays opponents' hole cards at showdown. It's faster. It's very customizable to display the stats you want.

I also wanted to recommend this post from The Cards Speak poker blog: Shoulders of Giants. The posts he makes reference to are a treasure trove of poker information that you won't find in any printed book.

Good luck at the tables!

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