It’s here. The New Year has drawn out on the old year and everyone’s still playing.

First an issue that has to be addressed. You’re probably wondering what Linda and Chanzes have in common.

1) We both hate whiners. Get the hell up, look life in the face and address the issue. It’s not the world that has a problem, it’s you.

2) Poker is a common denominator using chips and cards and the basic structure of the game being played. Everything else is the whimsy of mankind and how they relate to it.

3) People make poker what it is; the game, the wins/losses, the structure, it’s all relative.

4) If you can’t handle the heat or the beat, go home and turn on the TV…there’s probably some lifeless melodrama there waiting to bore you to death.

5) Men are great. The stronger the face, the tighter the ass, the more ‘yahoo’ that goes into rattling their cage when they play poker. How do their wives relate to that? Who cares! She can learn to play poker too if she wonders what he’s doing with all those hours away from home. There’s more than one game being played at the table.

6) We both hate the same things in players and dealers. Lots of dealers just can’t figure it out. Perhaps there’s a school for dealers that sit in the dealer’s box and are still lost…in other words, they can’t figure out what their job entails. But they would flunk out of this school anyway. If they can’t figure out what the job requirements are, like “paying attention”, “shut up and deal”, “customer service”, how in the hell could they graduate from the school? Yet they are everywhere, in all poker rooms, filling up the dealer’s chairs with their stupidity and bad dealing attitude and they are tolerated by management and players. Players? Well most players are doing what they are supposed to do.

7) We are both slightly crazy and mentally ill with life so certain factors that you might find to be offensive just crack us up because we look at the overview. We admit that we are mingling with the mind mix of the lost and delusional, stirred with a few cups of self torment, and tossed with shredded loser. We are entertained by the whole picture. Maybe you would have to be there….

Time to move on or a quagmire, black hole, spiral effect may occur. Blackouts are known to occur when there is no rhyme or reason for certain actions and effects.

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A couple of notables from the year 2002. Andrew, a Brit, that plays the $15-$30 Holdem at Bellagio and used to play $10-$20 at the Mirage, (although he plays no limit and pot limit tournaments), put in a raise on Christmas Eve.

He phrased it this way, “A Christmas Raise. A gift!”

It was extremely cute and appropriate. Oh yeah, he won the pot so it really was none of he above but it sounded so cool.

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Layne F. while playing in a No Limit Holdem Satellite – down to Layne and his opponent. Facing a raise, Layne raised. The opponent stated, “You’re going against the odds!”

Layne replied, “I’ve already beat them. I made it to 30.”

Love that guy! How can you not love that daring smile, the devilish light in those eyes and the constant chatter that always makes his opponent believe that he can never win even when Layne has the worst of it?

More on Layne at another time.

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This post is done by Chanzes – during the time period that I took a break from posting in the Diary.