The Good of Poker

I had a quite unintended interaction on Twitter last week that ended up having a great outcome - not only for me personally, but for one other person I'll likely never meet, and for a worthy charity.

It all started when I happened to notice a re-tweet by Ike Haxton, a pro I follow.  Apparently, an EPT Live viewer had won a deck of EPT cards signed by Haxton, and decided to auction them off via Twitter with the proceeds going to Lung Cancer Canada.  I checked out the auctioner's profile, and saw the bid sole bid at the time was $25.

Sure, why not, I'll play.  I bid $30, expecting to be quickly outdone.  It took a while, but there was another bid, for $31.  Since it was going to charity, I decided to play along.  At this point, the tweets themselves tell the story best:













After that, there wasn't a lot of action, though I kept expecting to get outbid at any time.  It wasn't until much later that evening that the a resolution was reached:



At the end of the day, I was able to start my 2014 charity giving, some kid in Britain got a sweet deck of cards that he apparently really wanted, and $166 was raised for a good cause.  I also gained another Twitter follower when Fleming_clan followed me shortly after his last tweet.  Not sure who it is, but the list of people that follows him includes a bunch of Vegas blogs, a couple casinos, and Scotty Nguyen himself.

So, it was a good day as it stands, but it may be even bigger in the grand scheme.  When I decided to write about this experience, I debated as to whether it should go here on my poker blog, or on my personal blog.  I decided to place it here because this is, to me, what I want my involvement with poker to be like.  Playing the game, I've realized, is almost tangential to what I really want to achieve.  I want to get my name out there, but more than that, I want to be know as someone who is not only respectful to the game and it's players, but uses whatever skills he has to help other people.

How exactly I can do that, I'm still working out.  I already committed, starting last year, to tithe 10% of all casino winnings, above and beyond my normal tithing.  I have the thought of taking an additional 10% and giving it to a poker-related charity, perhaps Poker Gives. That is something I am going to research a bit more in the coming days and weeks.

Either way, I am committed to figuring it out.  I want my $35 to Lung Cancer Canada to be only the top molecule of the tip of the iceberg.

The Followers

I found myself again in a rut.

Not only had I not played a single hand of poker since the SFPT finale, it seems like I hadn't been interested in even reading or watching about the game, much less playing.  I'm not sure why. 

But, unlike the last time, I had confidence that I would be able to climb out of feeling that way. How it would happen I wasn't sure; I figured it would be the act of actually playing some hands, or coming across some coverage on TV that sucked me in.

I did NOT expect what actually happened.

Any time I am in one of these ruts, the one aspect of my poker playing/fandom that does NOT go away is keeping up with Twitter.  I follow any number of poker players, along with God-knows-how-many poker news outlets, media members, and the like.  Only rarely do I interact with anyone I don't know; I can probably count the number of times I have done so on one hand.  I've been trying to branch out with that recently, and in doing so I got a huge surprise.

Searching through my timeline a few days ago, I saw a post from online pro Katie Dozier, which promoted a book she had co-authored called "The Superuser".  I checked it out on Amazon, decided it looked cool, and added it to my wishlist.  As a wannabe author, I know how much even the slightest bit of positive reinforcement can help my psyche, so I fired off a quick tweet:

Imagine my surprise when a few minutes later, Dozier "Favorited" the tweet.  Hey, cool - unexpected for sure, and nice of her to acknowledge.

Then, the shocker:

Wait, what?  I'm still confused as to why she would follow me - there's nothing in my profile or tweets that would be interesting for a poker player, I don't think, except for MAYBE the list of people I follow.

Either way, very cool, and somehow, I feel motivated to get back in the game.  I now officially have the eye of a legit poker pro, and while I don't know if it'll last, it's cool.  (People clean out their "follow" lists all the time for many reasons.)

Some reading of "Bluff" this morning at the gym enhanced that feeling.  I was hoping to play some online today, but work isn't letting me.  Damn it.

I will get to it before Turning Stone in a little over a week, and while there, I want to remember to tweet some results so I have some legit poker in my timeline, and see where that brings me.