…it’s called poker, I believe?

The World Series of Poker kicks off tomorrow, and even though my best poker days are behind ahead of me, I’m still in love with the game. The problem is that bootstrapping two different companies means very few pennies left over for fun and games. That’s why I quit drinking when Happy Hour is over.

When I quit, I usually come home and go to work on my labor of love, Pokerati.com. DanM and I met probably half a decade ago, because he was basically one of the other five or six guys on the internet talking about poker, and it turns out that the boy was from Dallas. Which means I could mooch off of him for finding games, which I did, and legally-questionable poker rooms, which I did, and play really bad drunk poker at his weekly freeroll tournaments held in a titty bar, which I did con mucho gusto.

For whatever reason, Dan and I hit it off, and we’ve been working together off and on in a techie-journo combo for a while now, and as a result, we’ve been extraordinarily heads-down pounding out his new site for the last two months. It’s fair to say that I’m personally proud of having been a part of the effort, because I think the new look is pretty rocking, and I think we’ve done some really coolio shit there, too, like the (gayly-named) Citizen Stack Tracker. That little feature lets you text in your comments, posts, pictures, videos (o lord, let them all be over 17!) over the cellular tubes into the internet tubes and onto Dan’s landing spot. Which means Pokerati has a great big jump on a lot of far larger places in getting the wisdom of the crowds social networking hogwash essentialitiness going.

But my larger point is — the 2008 WSOP is starting up, and yet again, I wish I had the baksheesh and fortitude to go withstand it all, but I don’t, so if you’re like me, go ahead and bookmark little Pokerati.com to keep up with from a nice weirdo non-payrolled perspective. You know, like blogs used to be.

And there are other poker-blogger brethren of mine out there doing this. I’ve drank beer / played poker / eaten a hot-dog / squinted at the completely-unexpected morning sun with these fine people, so by all means, add them to your feed reader, too:

• Mean Gene Bromberg
• Poker Prof
• Otis
• Pauly

I have no doubts that there are some I’ve missed that I actually read, but I’m on my fourtheighth Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Hell, I can’t tell you why I’m drinking malt liquor — I’m just sick of beer and hard liquor really makes my inside organs hurt really bad really more than beer. That ain’t the point — I’m more than happy to throw a link at you if I missed you. Nobody reads this anymore, though, you should know.

Truly, there are no finer words than this to a cardplayer’s ears though: Shuffle up and deal!