Life has a way to putting us to task.  Sometimes we jump right into the harness and even if we’re running uphill, we put everything we have into making it work.  Other times it’s like one of those dismal spots in the rearview mirror and the picture in the headlights is filled with dark pavement with an oil-slick sheen in the rain and there is no bright light to guide you forward.

So…here I am.

The end is my time with PokerWorks.  It is coming up in the next few months and I have mixed emotions about it and have had for some time.

PokerWorks.com was my baby.  I had no clue when I started the website back about 1999ish.  I can’t tell you I know a lot more about the programming or inner workings of it now.  I know how to work in CMS, I know if there’s a problem how to report it to the support team, I know how to alter html (peering intently until it gives me a headache trying to catch a [ or /b or something that is mucking up the plateau), I know how to link and what affiliate codes are but as far as marketing and all those things that make a poker site send in actual revenue, color me dense here.

If I had had a brain back in the day, I would have hired a programmer and split the profits with him because the cash was rolling in at the rate or $50K and up with the right exposure and marketing, but my ‘overview’ never hit overdrive in those days.  I was a ‘mom and pop’ site that didn’t offer much.

I started blogging but it was in the way of articles that were written like stories because I was terrified that someone I dealt to would find out I wrote about them and punish me when I was in the dealer’s box.

Eventually I sold PokerWorks.com to Tony G and we worked out a deal where I would write for the site.  It ended up that I wasn’t just the writer, I sort of had charge of what was going up as far as content and I started picking up a few writers. Still…my overview wasn’t what it should have been.  I had no guide and no way to really figure it out on my own, I was still dealing poker and trying to jockey life around everything.

The programmers were in Lithuania and they put everything up on the site at first.  They had a four-day weekend every month and two actual days off a week.  Sometimes trying to explain something to a few of them left me wanting to rip my hair out — and they were up working while I was sleeping and vice versa.

I got into a huge argument with one of them that told me the word Cosmopolitan was not a good name for a section we were talking about creating.  He told me that there were 6 programmers in the room and none of them had ever heard of it before.

I just about shit!  OK, so 6 people in Lithuania haven’t heard a word so it’s nonexistent and has no meaning to the rest of the world?  Oh drear!  Try Google, hun! That’s just an example of many other issues and obstacles, like when they wrote content but most had no grammar or spelling skills in English.

Then as my plan to make PokerWorks the poker blogging capital of the world (great, well-known bloggers in place) and hits and cash were rolling in, one guy gave the order to do something stupid and PokerWorks fell out of grace with Google search engines and the rest of the world. It was nowhere to be found unless you had bookmarked it.

Another programmer came in as lead and it took about 6 months to get it back into Google.  My blogger-go-to-capital-of-the-world fell apart.  The bloggers that were in place and had just started writing were removed from the payroll.

PokerWorks.com was never a news site, it was more like an eclectic ocean of events and online poker pimping that I felt might bring readers.  I still had writers available and picked up a few more over the next few years.  I don’t believe I was a horrible editor, I just don’t believe I was as good as I should have been to pull PokerWorks out of the deep water and keep it floating.

Tony G’s main concern was PokerNews.com and the majority of funds and programming work went there.  Nope, I’m not bitching, you have to go with what pays the bills and is trending in the markets you are trying to appeal to so PokerNews got all of the attention and PokerWorks slid further downhill. I love Tony G.  He makes me laugh, he reminds me of my boys — except none of them are politicians. Whew!

I left Bellagio in 1997 with plans to go on the road in my fifth-wheel towed by my silver steed and keep writing and working on PokerWorks.com — even hoping to stop in some small towns that had a back room poker game and sit in on a few sessions or see if they’d let me deal a down or too and give the tips to the dealer I sat in for.  But then diesel magically jumped to over $5 a gallon and my old digs didn’t sell which meant I had a horrific house payment every month.  And the housing market continued to slide…..

All manner of things happened, iBusmedia became the controlling company for PokerNews.com, PokerWorks.com and other sites. I really had no idea how bad the revenue for PokerWorks was but one day I got a Skype call and I could either quit or take a drastic reduction in salary. This was a hard day.  I took the cut and before I knew it, I was the only writer for PokerWorks and did all the cms publications, etc.

I’m not a strategy writer, I couldn’t possibly carry all the tournament reports that many sites carry, and quite frankly, my role at PokerWorks felt like a dark hole because how could I even begin to compete with the majority of the sites out there that run poker content? The problem I have with writing is that if I’m incensed or inspired, I can spin out some words, if I’m not, I can barely find three sentences that go together so in essence, I suppose I’m really not a writer.

Now I’m at the cross roads again, only this time I believe I will be completely finished with PokerWorks in the next few months.  It is not a harsh parting.  iBusmedia has been gracious and there is no feeling of anger or irritation from my side of the beginning of the end.  This is the beginning of my ending with PokerWorks, I will be there a few more months and then step into the harness and move off in another direction.  Thank you iBus for giving me time to sort out a few things and for the help the programmers gave me in sorting out image issues with my blog in its new location.  And also for those great guys that handle subdomains for iBusmedia, Dan Whiting and Johan Hällegard — both have been a pleasure to work with. Matt Parvis is pretty cool too.

Now that we all understand more than we really need to know, let’s talk about TableTango.

I have always said it was my personal blog, even though it began and revolved around poker for a number of years, it is my personal blog.  While its home was on PokerWorks, I felt that I needed to include poker content and I also wanted to write about some things but felt that they didn’t belong on a website that’s main function was to try and promote poker as a business. All of the content in TableTango is mine, as are all the pictures in the posts that don’t have a ‘image courtesy of’ tagged to them.  I do not know if iBus will remove Table Tango from its server but for the moment, a link from the old pages will point here.

My future plans for Tango are to write about whatever springs to mind at the moment — and some of it will be about poker because poker has been a huge part of my life for the last 37 years or so.

My suggestion for anyone that may find their name on these pages that does not like what they are reading, you should go somewhere else.  I wish I could sugarcoat the world and make it all happy and light but that isn’t the way it is. And if you’re one of those  turd-burgler freaks that live in the murky slime just at the edge of deep water, just face up to it and either change your style or be prepared to read about yourself as I view you.

I see the harness, I lift it over my head, I feel the bite as it digs into my shoulders and my breath grows heavy as I start the steep climb up the next hill. Goodbye PokerWorks – hello TangleTango unabridged.