"All things Sane and Excellent...."

"Mookie the Tournament.. that is, the life sucking slit that hoards all things sane and laughs at excellence!"- Riggstad, 2007


First of all, anyone not playing in the "Battle of the Bloggers", the 27-game tournament series hosted on FullTiltPoker.com, has got to be...ok, i'll say it....has got to be 3 cards shy of a full deck.


Consisting of 3 weekly 'qualifier' tourneys, "The Hoy"(Mon's.,10pm),"The Mookie"(Wed's.,10pm), and the brand-new "Riverchasers Online Tour"(Thurs's.,9pm), this growing gem of a series, co-named "The Aussie Challenge", has the balls to offer up a grand-prize so 'grand', so brash and so dead-on-the-money, you'd be a complete and utter slit to miss it....! Suffice it to say, the winner and a guest will be livin it up down-under and completely over the top. If that doesnt make any sense then you are obviously smart enough to follow some of the links i mentioned to check out the details and to get your ass to the dance!

Now, aside from that aside, or preamble if you prefer, i want to draw your shrinking attention-span to the quote i posted at the top of this blog edition..the one by Riggstad..and ask you to pay a particular and close(for those of you who dont bother with words that have 4 or more syllables)mind to the visualizations that pop-up in your head. No, the blowjob fairy isnt dancing the Nutcracker on Christmas eve, but that's just me...
What I'm shooting for here is the visualization of a tournament that has taken on an identity larger than itself and, ahem,..in the larger sense, an identity at all that causes one to wax poetic or philosophical or even nonsensical, if you will, ascribing torturous and confident actions to a digital mirage of a real entity..(take a mental breath-me, not you).And even then, that isn't the LARGER point, the one i've been struggling to reveal up to this point of the story..(little help would be nice...Al, a little Soco perhaps...) Where was I?

Oh, the LARGER point. Right. The initial thought that came to mind when reading this quote wasn't so much about nonsense, but rather the often overlooked residual of these fantastic poker tournaments and the bloggers who play them on a regular basis. I considered all the 'prose' and the 'puns' and the 'syntax' of differing styles of play and how, if looked at in the proper frame of mind, it reveals a beauty, if you will, that goes beyond fold, bet or bluff. Often there is a symmetry within the game and within the games within the games' that begins to reveal itself the more you tend to watch and learn the nuances of this fine game of skill. As in any enduring contest, there is tragedy, victory, bitching, moaning and the ever-present whiff of burnt skin, the kind one might associate with an overabundance of self-promotion and/or self-immolation,depending on which side you emerge.
However, if you follow the thread even further, you find a large group of talented and expressive writers, of all things, writing various essays on every conceivable angle regarding this grand old game. When that begins to occur, what you reap is more than the individual has sown- that is, you reap a gift from the collective, something aesthetic and fulfilling, something enduring, even something...sane. And, if you are really lucky, something excellent, if only for brief moments. And if you listen long enough and hard enough, sometimes you may even begin to feel connected to this subset, and if everything goes your way, or, as in this case, it doesn't, you may even hear the haunting laughter of a new entity as it mocks you before it kills you...