Thank you CD poker and thank you blind monkey!

The one thing I’ve found to be the same throughout these three years time is the amount of time I spend playing online poker in the winter vs. the summer.   I think there are two reasons for this.  The winter months I can spend more time playing during the evenings.  Second, The darkness outside and the cold weather makes it not very enjoyable to venture outdoors.  Therefore, I can either take up a less profitable hobby, watch tv or play poker.

When spring rolls around my playing time decreases according to the length of the days.  I play less as there is more to do outside, around the house, in the house, etc.

It’s an interesting phenonmon that i’m learning to deal with.   By the start of spring i’m usually trying to finish up bonuses. While clearing a bonus I often wish I was outside. Or I feel guilty that I haven’t finished the bonus before going outside.   When the summer rolls around it is warm enough to take the laptop outside which is an occasional activity.  However, the playing time remains at a low level.

Now that spring / summer is officially here I’ve absorbed the fact that I won’t be playing as much online poker for the next few months.  I can’t say I really miss the poker.   Summer is such a great time with many outdoor activities.  Plus, the summer also provides me with a refreshed look at my poker game and what i’d like to achieve / learn in the coming months.

Big slick held up for Feldman in his heads up battle with Davidson Matthew, who held A4 and got it all in on a A K 10 flop.

The 29 year old Feldman has made quite a name for himself in recent years, with 5 cashes in major tournaments in 2006-2007 and a cool $916,741 in winnings.

While the jury may still be out on whether paid blogging gigs produce a better experience for readers (or simply a diluted, fractured one, as many of the bloggers above are still maintaining their personal blogs that brought them to the attention of PokerWorks in the first place) congrats to all of above bloggers for ringing in the new year with the fame and fortune they deserve.

What exactly does one do when crushing the games for many grandusands of American dollars comes to a halt, for whatever reason, and poker has been the primary means of supporting oneself?

It’s a difficult question, especially when you remove the schadenfreude aspect of it from the equation, that many of us working stiffs are prone to when reading about such a “dilemma”. I honestly have no idea what the hell I would do, if I’d been supporting a very comfortable, enjoyable lifestyle playing poker, with no other job history, training, or specialized education, and was suddenly faced with having to replace that. It’d suck. Mightily. As there’s really no equivalent out there, as far as the freedom and potential monetary upside, and the fact that the only barriers to entry are a brain, a computer, and an Internet connection.

I do know, though, that much of the advice offered to people willing to openly discuss such dilemmas is usually pretty god-awful, although entertaining. The frequency with which anyone uses the phrase “passive income” is pretty much inversely proportional with their experience or ability to create passive income; if someone keeps causally dropping “passive income” around it’s safe to ignore them.

The same holds true for anyone that suggests investing in real estate (especially rental property) to someone looking for a career option to playing high-stakes poker. Sure, there are always exceptions, but the ability and inclination to succeed in one pretty much always excludes success in the other, as they require completely different skill sets.

Lots of people suggesting pursuing trading jobs on financial exchanges, and there’s a decent track record of success in cross-over there, so that’s definitely a viable option. But it’s still a job, with a boss, and required working hours, which seems to be the primary cause of chafing and what, ironically, was the initial motivating factor in many young poker pros turning to poker in the first place.

While there’s no easy answer, as far as replacing poker with (insert some method of supporting oneself), it’s also hard to feel too worried about most of the pros facing this dilemma. If you’re smart and resourceful enough to crush high stakes games (and have some money in the bank), odds are that you’ll land on your feet and find some way to keep the lights on and the train running, whatever the ultimate form is.

On the virtual tables cmitch at O-Poker won a seat to the WSOP Main Event, Hoyazo won just shy of $10,000 in a Party $40K Guaranteed tournament, and Dave the Donkey Hunter won another seat at a WSOP event, to go with his previous seats won into the $50K HORSE tournament and the Main Event.

Related Link: Poker Guide German

Feldman took home $532,950 in prize money, with Smith winning $293,930 for second place.

Feldman plays professionally (primarily online under the handle Nordberg) and this was his first victory in a major tournament. He’s no stranger to brick and mortar tournaments, though, having cashed previously at the 2006 Borgata Winter Open for $73,914, finishing 7th. His poker blog can be found at Nord’s Poker.

BadBlood primarily specializes in $100 NL and $200 NL and regularly posts instructive hands from both online and live cash games, largely to illustrate broad, strategic NL concepts.

He also posts frequently about the struggle for balance that so many poker players wrestle with, attempting to juggle job/career/family with the desire to improve and grow as a poker player.

Iggy specializes in the “uber post”, which serve a pretty unique role in the poker blog universe. While occasionally heavy on the copy and pasting from other sources, Guinness and Poker serves as a useful tool for exactly that reason, allowing people to get their poker fix from a variety of sources in one central location.

While he doesn’t post much strategy or actual hand histories, Iggy does provide very valuable insight into someone who has made the transition from working in the corporate world to playing poker full time. And he does it in brutally honest fashion, doing nothing to sugar-coat or shellac many of the downsides and pitfalls involved in being a poker pro.