… XD has completely hijacked the blog!

So, I’m in Minnesota - Twin Cities, for those keeping a closer count - and I’m avoiding the Evil Outdoors as much as possible, because it’s COLD out there. Around 10F (-12C). So I’m staying indoors, keeping myself busy with a pile of recently-purchased poker books, including Caro’s Book of Tells, Small Stakes Hold’em (Miller/Sklansky/Malmuth) and Doyle Brunson’s SuperSystem2. They’re all great books, and I’m looking forward to putting my thoughts about them into print in reviews.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to play while I’m here (not that I couldn’t theoretically install a client on my mother-in-law’s computer, but the computer is in her bedroom and I don’t feel comfortable sitting in here for hours on end), meaning that I’m stuck with just reading the literature and itching to go make use of the nuggets of wisdom I pick up. One thing I’ve come to pass my time doing is watching Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo, and looking at the actors to try and find the corresponding tell in Caro’s book. Intuitively, I would have thought actors would have fewer tells than ordinary people, but I can’t help but think that they’re even more explicit than Average Joe. Perhaps - and this makes sense, I suppose - precisely because they ARE actors. They do the whole “I’m no threat, don’t fold, pay no attention to me” routine much more vividly, because they’re used to acting. Joe might WANT to act innocently, but isn’t really sure how. Anyway, it’s good fun. I wish there was a switch I could toggle so I didn’t have to see their hole cards all the time. It would make it a lot more interesting.

I’ll go back to my books now.