I realize it’s been a few days since I blogged last, but I’ve been busy. Busy, busy, busy. There were two large parties this weekend, the first one (on Friday) that I was the toastmaster for; my company’s christmas buffet. It was altogether a great party, even if it was problematic keeping 165 people quiet enough to actually hear what we tried to tell them. As compared to last year, this one was a lot more… Well, fun. The general mood of the party was a lot higher this year. I think part of it is because this was the second year we had the party at the same place which meant people generally knew more about what was going on and could perhaps relax more. Another reason is likely that we’ve hired something like 30 new people since last year, and most of the new employees are still in their 20s. Young people party more.

My favorite moment: The senior manager who wanted to buy me beer as a thank you for hosting the party, who had to give me cash instead so I could buy it myself because he wasn’t welcome in the bar himself.

Saturday: Gently hungover. Slacked off, mostly. Wisely stayed away from the poker tables. An old friend turned 30, and had a party a few miles outside of town so we drove out, took a cab home after the party, and left the car there overnight. The theme of the party was a cruise ship, so I dug up my old sailor’s outfit to wear. I bet you didn’t know I used to be a sailor. Below is a picture of the ship I worked on for a whole six weeks.

That’s a big boat.

My favorite moment: falling over while dancing wild foxtrot and bringing my partner down with me. A night of dancing should be spent at least partially on the floor.

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I’m a big fan of Ed Miller, and was pretty happy to see that he’s turning a lot more attention to his website, www.notedpokerauthority.com, and is now blogging there almost daily. His blog is entirely strategy based and puts any other strategy advice blog currently on the web to shame. Including this one, although I haven’t added any strategy posts here in quite awhile. His site is definitely worth a bookmark.

It’s also worth a comment. Ed writes somewhere in one of his introductory posts to his blog that a lot of the strategy advice he finds on the web generally makes him cringe. I’m paraphrasing, because I’m in a hurry to get to lunch and I can’t find this particular post right now. Now, given that I’m one of the people who have posted strategy advice online, chances are I’m one of the ones who make Ed cringe. I hope not, but I very well might be. In that case, I apologize for the cringing and I will add a disclaimer:

When I post strategy advice or tips or pointers or whatever you want to call it, I do so more for my own sake than for the reader’s. In the process of writing stuff down, I learn more than I do from just thinking about it. I’m probably often wrong. I might mess up numbers left and right, and I might make logical skips that would make Lori slap me if she saw me doing it (she’s the mathematician, not me). The important thing for the reader is to realize that I’m not infallible (and I doubt anyone would give an unknown amateur from the CardsChat boards that much credit) and that I’m still learning. So call me on the stuff I say that might be wrong or stupid.

Please.

Anyway, head on over to Ed’s site now, and backtrack through his posts. This is the man most responsible for the money that I’ve won over the past year, and he deserves all the credit I can give him.

Cheers,
Fredrik