Not much play lately, as I haven't worked out "a home game":http://www.homepokergames.com/arizona.php yet, although I might have an in for one this Saturday night (even though it sounds like a lot of dealer's choice garbage, there also was talk of some straight Hold 'Em). I've puttered a bit online, but trying to stay away from that as I don't want it filling up my spare time, as I seem to have a lot more of it now. I did take my first stab at two $20+2 SNG's on PartyPoker, and bubbled (i.e. finished the highest non-money spot) in both. Guess I'll stay away from those for awhile. I've been doing lots of reading. I'm pretty much done with Super/System, and the one I'm reading now is "Zen and the art of Poker", which is philosophy as opposed to actual strategy. It stresses patience, even emotions, and general Zen. As I like to consider myself having a bit of an Eastern bent, philosophically, it meshes well. Detachment at the poker table is a hard thing to do, but I'm trying.

Seems like the home games in Pittsburgh are "picking up":http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/2004/09/poker.html a "little bit":http://thisamericanstrife.blogspot.com/2004/09/labor-day-weekend-at-new.html of "steam":http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/2004/09/i-love-this-weather-now-i-know-that.html, which is awesome. I was especially happy to see that David cleaned up last night. He improved vastly from when "we first started":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001029/, but sometimes played a bit loose, and had the _worst_ luck with pocket Kings. ;-) Nice that he finally caught some cards and was a big wiener.

At some point I'm going to have to check out the local casino action. "Desert Diamond":http://www.desertdiamond.com/ apparently has some low buy-in tournaments running pretty much all the time (and I feel like my tourney play is pretty strong right now), and "Casino del Sol":http://www.casinodelsol.com/ sounds like they have a nice poker room. Maybe I'll check that out this weekend. It would be fun to do like a once a month thing, go bring $50 and see what happens.