Hiatus from poker

As most of you know (or should know) by now, the face of poker changed drastically Monday morning when Party and Pacific said they would ban US players following the Senate's passing of a bill that prohibits US banks from transferring money to online gambling sites. The first few days were pretty chaotic, with people exclaiming "this is the end of online poker!" But it seems as though things are starting to calm down a bit now. Party and Pacific didn't make things easy on us, and scared us all to death by making us think this was the end. But then came other sites like Full Tilt and WPEX, who more or less said, "fuck you US government." Stars is still waiting to make a statement, which doesn't surprise me since they have always tried to make its customers feel comfortable. Daniel Negreanu wrote a good opinion piece here.

So with 2 of my 3 sites shutting me out, I've withdrawn about 85% of my bankroll for the time being. I've been playing like crap, and I've only made 1% of the goal I set out to make for 2006. It's been extremely disappointing to say the least, but in some ways I've brought it on myself. I gave up long term goals to try for the WSOP, and with work starting and moving to Chicago, I haven't had a huge desire or level of energy and concentration to play lately. So I can't say I regret it, as money isn't everything. But I'm going to take some time off and see how things pan out online, maybe play a little at Stars, and enjoy spending some of my bankroll on a new LCD TV. It's a great opportunity for me to start fresh, plug my leaks in MTTs, learn to play more 6-max NL cash games, and hopefully improve my results for the last few months of the year. I may post some hands to analyze from previous months when I was tanking to see what others think as well.

Hopefully the US government will get off its moral high horse and realize nobody will care about this law when they go to vote in November. But now it's time to get geared up for UM-MSU. GO BLUE!!!