DOYLEISM OF THE DAY: “If you are looking back, you’re in trouble.”

Since I’ve gotten involved with Twitter, it seems I don’t update my blog as much as I used to. On Twitter it only takes a few seconds to tweet your thoughts so it’s much easier. I started on Twitter as a lark but it’s a fun thing and I’ve got 334,000 followers. I’m not sure about those numbers but I’m sure more people read my tweets than read my blogs. Anyways, I’ll attempt to keep my blogs a little more current.

I did get some good news from Montana. In my last blog I wrote about my grandson’s dog getting killed by a pack of coyotes. Cash, a big lab, showed up after a week a little beat up but in pretty good shape. After he fought the coyotes off, he evidently got lost and couldn’t find his way home. My granddaughter saw him crossing the road 10 miles from home. Imagine the welcome Cash got when he went back to his house!

With my wife in Hawaii because of her allergies, I’ve been hanging around the house. Between taking care of my dogs, paying bills and trying to get my desk cleaned off, I’m going nuts. I’m afraid I’m not cut out for a slow paced lifestyle. I’ve been on the go all my life and really miss the poker action. I have gotten to play 3 times since Louise left and really enjoyed it. The game in Bobby’s Room was 4-8K for years but most of today’s players want to play much smaller. So we played 4-8 hundred mixed games, exactly 10% of the old limits. We had full games with people on the waiting list. If we can keep the limits down we will have games. I just like to play so I’m ready to lower the limits.

I had a nice hour long workout in the pool this afternoon. I swam 20 laps which is approximately 600 yards. That’s the best I’ve done lately, a far cry from the 100 plus laps I used to do. We have 25-30 cats without homes in our neighborhood and three of them came and sat on our fence watching me swim. I call our neighborhood Kittyville and the cats are really cute but they will cause a real problem pretty soon. I wish I could adopt some of them but my wife is very allergic to cats. I’ve called several agencies but nothing has been done.

Because of the structure of the tournaments at the Bellagio, the event is really suffering. The number of entrants in the early events is amazingly low and the players are very vocal in their disapproval. The economy affects everything and the present structure is perceived to be too high. There is nothing as bad as disgruntled, financially troubled poker players. I’ve always said poker is the best barometer of the economy that you can find, so this means times are tough and things aren’t too good.

After watching Obama shoot baskets at the half of the Butler- Mich St. game, I see why he screwed the health care bill up. He has been practicing his shot which, by the way, was pretty impressive. Even when I try to forget I’m a Republican, it seems Obama has had a terrible 1st term. Time will tell.

My sister married Jack Hale, one of my childhood friends. Jack is two years older than me and lost a lung 30 years ago in an accident. Now he has developed a “blep” on his good lung. I had never heard of a “blep” so I googled it and found it is a blister that happens with lung problems, usually emphysema. At some point, usually in 2-3 years, it will burst and is almost always fatal. The alternative is surgery and if successful, will cause Jack to use a respirator the rest of his life. My brother-in-law decided to forego the surgery and live his life to the fullest. I wouldn’t have expected anything else from him. So all you smokers out there, throw your cigarettes away or you might have to make your choice someday.

My daughter and I are going to Texas to visit with my sis and Jack this week. I’ve got lots of friends in West Texas and I’m going to have a reunion with some of them. After I moved out of the athletic dorm in college, I went to a different dormitory as a graduate student and found things were completely different. These guys really studied and made good grades and inspired me to do the same. I haven’t seen most of them since graduation, so a few of us are getting together. All of these men were successful in their chosen fields, a few of them were extremely so. For many years I was considered to be the black sheep out of the group. Now times have changed and it will be interesting to see how they feel now that poker is accepted.

There is an event called World Team Poker that will be played at the Golden Nugget the 19th of May. It is a $50,000 buy-in and consists of teams from different countries. Phil Hellmuth was the captain of the USA team, but he graciously deferred the captaincy to me. I will have 10 top American pros to choose from to play different games. The other countries and their captains that have registered are: Team Vietnam – Men Nguyen, Team Switzerland – Chris Bigler, Team Norway – Thor Hanson, Team Lebanon – Freddie Deeb, Team Israel – Eli Elezra, Team England – Ben Roberts, Team China – Johnny Chan, Team Australia – Jeff Lisandro and Team Korea – Kevin Song. Seems like this should be a lot of fun.

-DB