Stay Tuned

My Irongirl blog was originally created in 2005 to chronicle by poker hijinx both live and online. Since Black Friday 4/15/11, I haven't been able to play online poker so I haven't had much to write about. I left the meaty reporting on the demise of Full Tilt to my friends employed in the poker industry. Besides, I was and still am having too much fun with Phish and Furthur reuniting and touring once again. Once a hippie always a hippie

I had a health scare in 2011 after just turning 50: Over the course of two colonoscopies I had 14 colon polyps removed and pieces of a nasty rectal one taken out. The later showed the earliest signs of cancer and was surgically excised from my Rectum on Halloween 2011. (My friends can commence back door jokes now). I've been changing my diet working on going organic taking vitamin D and baby aspirin and working on taking off the weight I put on going thru the Change. Baby Steps. For the Record, they got it all and my first 3 month check up showed no signs of recurrence and I have healed nicely. Next month is Colo-Rectal Cancer Awareness month so expect some PSA's. Id like to personally thank one of the Wicked Chops Entities if he hadn't kept getting screened firmly planted in my mind I may have put it off well past my 50th birthday (the time your first supposed to get screened) and be looking at a bowel resection or worse.

Since I cant push stacks of poker chips around online I picked up a new hobby: Birding and I also have been volunteering at my local animal shelter. We have a cat annex at our local shopping mall. Sunday mornings I am over there cleaning kitty cages, feeding them and exercising/socializing with them. I even adopted another kitty and he has become great friends with Bailey.

I will be doing a Capital-District Community Garden plot this year using organic gardening practices. I also hope to participate in the next share of the only Community Supported Bakery or CSB in the area: ALL GOOD BAKERS which is an organic farm to table bakery. Ive really been trying to put a lot more thought into food choices as well as recycling, re-purposing, and composting. Remember to Love your Mother Earth.

I plan to either put this blog to bed or on dry dock until we can legally play poker online again. So, I will probably start a all new gardening/birding/life style blog. I use life style very loosely!!

In the meantime, I'm currently fascinated by the TIMES UNION series on a Multi-Level Marketing (MML)/Ponzi scheme of a life-coaching CULT that has its nucleus right in my own community and whose leaders live in my own development and which include the Bronfman Sisters: Clare and Sara. I encourage my local 518'ers to check out the SARATOGA IN DECLINE BLOG which has covered the NXIVM cult for quite some time

US Online Poker Ban - Some Link Dumps

From the NY Times: Foreign Money Fueled Failed Bid to Push Online Poker

From the New York Post: Payment Processor Pleads Not Guilty...

Bill Rini's Poker Blog : The Fallout From The Full Tilt / PokerStars Pullout

For some interesting insight into the legal aspects of the case read the last few days of blog posts on my friend CK's blog CK is an attorney although currently not practicing law.

From Change100's blog read: The End of the (poker) World as we know it. Change is not only a well-established member or the poker Media but she also shipped the Ladies PCA event this year at Atlantis. A good chunk of her savings and payment for work she has done is tied up online.

Quad Jacks.com has been having a marathon session of guests on a U-Stream feed ever since news broke. Guests as diverse as Scott Matusow (Mike's brother) to CK (above) to Shane Schleger (PokerSTars TeamOnline) to Todd Terry to BJ Nemeth have all been offering insight or what little they have and their perspectives on what has been going down.

First if I were in backer with deep pockets (which I'm not) I would set up poker hostels (I prefer that name to a poker boiler room, although I image thats what it would look like) overseas say in Vancouver, Costa Rica, Toronto, London etc. Basically, anywhere online poker is regulated free of the US Govt. Offer a room, and an internet cafe/station where residents could grind out their living and a concierge to assist our grinders in the local culture. Make the players take breaks. limit their stays to no more then two months at a time. They have to leave and can come back or visit another location. Force them to see the world. Offer classes in Bank Roll Management, ie wealth management. Offer onsite massage, a life coach whatever, offer day trips to the local attractions/museums. Better yet call it a poker spa. Treat it like Poker's version of Semester at Sea.


With the above "hostels" established US Online Grinders could ex-patriate themselves for stretches of time & continue to grind out a living online. If I were a young pro who wanted to continue playing online I would move out of the country, but have a plan. Example: Make this much money and then retire or go to college. Part of that plan would also be to transition to live play if I currently didn't play live. I'd also get outside and see the freaking world while I was overseas. The structure of my poker spa would encourage a well balanced education.

As for the accusations against the Big 3, the charges of money laundering are severe. Breaking the law is breaking the law and that appears to be the biggest problem the three major sites are facing. As a friend of mine who is a NY State policeman once said to another friend who got a speeding ticket when she passed another vehicle. "If you exceeded the speeding limit, even while passing its still speeding".


I'll post more interesting links as I find them.

The apocalypse of Online Poker in the US

I have no idea what is going on as I just opened up my twitter feed to see that the United States DOJ has indicted 11 of the owners of Full Tilt, PokerStars and Cereus (Absolute Poker & Ultimate Bet) for fraud and money laundering and illegal gambling aka your basic racketeering charges. I would assume bank officials who allowed the payments to be processed are also going to be herded up soon.

Sucks for my friends grinding out a living online.

Here are links to a few of the articles I rounded up but didnt read yet:

Wall Street Journal
Eleven Charged in Federal Crackdown on Online-Poker Companies

Business Insider Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry

CNN Money Online poker companies indicted for fraud

Also Check out Pokerati for breaking news. Pauly is currently in Lima Peru covering a LAPT event for Pokerstars but he did have time to scrape this together on Tao of Poker

I just saw 2+2 moderator and former Pokerati contributor, Kevin Mathers tweet that the 2+2 forum had its highest number of people on the forum at one time a little while ago looking for information.

As of a few minutes ago i could still log onto Pokerstars but i didnt actually attempt to try to play anything. Edit**** US Residents are banned from playing any cash games or tournaments

Retirement to Costa Rica is looking good.

Trey Anastasio - Acoustic/Electric Videos

I shot a ton of video of Trey Anastasio's Acoustic & Electric performances at the Palace Theater on Saturday Night. Saratoga Springs musician Tony Markellis has been a long time member of Trey's touring band aka TAB Classic.

Check out the videos on You Tube under Irongirl99. Be sure you see the re synced version of TAB performing the Gorillaz "Clint Eastwood". The previous night Trey covered Outkast's Hey Yeah.

I just noticed my prior post count was 420. These days I'm 420 friendly but haven't smoked in years. I joke that my retirement job will be moving back to Colorado to become a grower. I got a mean green thumb.

And big congrats to fellow poker blogger/pro Shane Schleger (and fellow New Yorker) who recently was named to Pokerstars Team Online. I've never met Shane but we have some mutual friends/acquaintances. I've followed his career thru the ups and downs for years and glad to see his hard work pay off.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY

Happy Chinese New Year - The Year of the Rabbit.

This poster is actually hanging in my house. I'm pretty sure I purchased it at the old Psychedelic Solution located in NYC's Greenwich Village. It's by artists VEGETABLE & ERICKA and was done in 1987 to commemorate the Grateful Dead Shows held at San Franciso Civic Center January 28-30th 1987.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY - Live long and prosper.

Dr Pauly and the 2011 WSOP Schedule

Dr Pauly best known for his Tao of Poker, Tao of Pauly, Tao of Fear and Coventry Music Blogs as well as a contributor to Bluff Magazine and author of Lost Vegas Book just did a guest post for the Poker From the Rail Blog:

Please check out his fine contribution here:

Dr Pauly and the 2011 WSOP Schedule

Full Tilt Poker will once again be offering satellites to win your way into the 2011 WSOP you can download Full Tilt Poker by clicking on the link to the right.

And if you haven't read Lost Vegas Book yet it is now available on Kindle, Nook, and from Amazon.com and Lulu.com

New England Forecast 2/1/11

This is pretty funny, I'm an outlier on this map about 45 minutes west of Pittsfield just north of Albany. Think we already have about 6" on the ground from this storm in Southern Saratoga County, with another 12" expected tomorrow. This is on top of the snow already on the ground.

Thank goodness I telecommute.

PokerStars WBCOOP - 2011

I'm a little late in finding out about the 2011 WBCOOP. For some reason didn't get an email about Events at Pokerstars on this.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: XXXXXX 377993

2011 - IG's Odyssey

During 2010 I posted vary little on this blog. My Irongirl Blog started back in 2005 chronicling my low limit grinding as a poker forum rat playing freerolls and low limit MTT tourneys. I played very little poker in 2010. I think I can count 4 times I played live last year. Last new years day and over 4th of july at the APL, last April during the NAPT over at Mohegan Sun where I ran deep but missed a cash by a few spots in the ladies event. And during October of this year I played a charity tourney for the Mockingbird Foundation which is a Phish related Charity. There were a few years where I played poker every day. I banged out lots of hands, read lots of books, forum threads, poker strategy articles etc. I lived and breathed poker. I played online, joined a league, frequented underground card rooms and although i didnt burn out, poker eventually lost its grip on me.

I had expected to play more poker in 2010 largely because i would be turning the big 50 and would be eligible for seniors events. But a bunch of my favorite bands returned to touring and Furthur, Phish, Max Creek and my new favorite band the McLovins found me attending a ton of concerts and music festivals and my head behind a video camera instead of a pile of poker chips. I also resumed exercising in 2010 and although i didnt run, I did take (and still am taking) a cardio dance/hip hop class 2-3 times a week which saw me lose a few pounds over the year.

I saw Phish 10 times in 2010 in three States, Furthur (former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh) 5 times in two states, the McLovins about 5 times in two states and Max Creek about 5 times in three states and I also saw 7 Walkers and the Rhythm Devils (the other two original surviving grateful dead members offshoot bands). I even tried to go see a Midnight Ramble at Levon Helm's studio but got shut out when My Morning Jacket was announced as opening act.

I started a Facebook page up largely at the urging of my friend Carol who is the Manager of the McLovins and the mom of Jake the drummer. We happen to be co-workers but in different offices. So Facebook was a way for us to keep in touch because we arent supposed to use company email/instant messaging for personal business. Because of Facebook, I rekindled tons of old friendships in 2011 and made a whole bunch of new ones and in this day of social media its easier to keep in touch with people. It was also kind of cool when I got introduced as Irongirl people would know me from my music videos or posts on Coventry Music rather then my online poker handle.

I rang in the new year with Change100, Dr Pauly and Benjo in New York City. Pauly is like a kid brother to me so that makes, Change my sister-in-law. Even though I am closer in age to her parents then she is to me we still have an awesome time together. Shared loves of music, Broadway shows, shopping, cooking etc easily bridges generation gaps. One of my favorite memories will be looking at Change and both of us doing Jazz hands to end certain Phish songs. We were doing the Jazz hands well before we knew Phish would be performing their song MeatStick and turning it into a Broadway show complete with chorus line and dancers. I always get asked why I didn't write about my adventures on Phish tour with Pauly and its largely because I value the private time I get to spend with him and Change so I just keep it off limits. And thats all I will say about that.

Now I just need to get over the mild Wook flu I have which is a hazard of tour and which I think all of us came down with post YEMSG. Im not sure the Wookies started it because some non-Phisheads also got sick with similiar symptoms at the same time.

I reckon and hope, I will play more poker in 2011 then i did in 2010 and i reckon I will see more shows.

Merry Christmas

The fat man wishes you a very Jerry Merry Christmas to you and yours. May there be Phish and Furthur tickets in your stockings. May the day be filled with joyous noise however you choose to celebrate it.

Ive met a ton of people and made lots of new friends this year on the Phish and Mclovins scenes and rekindled old friendships from my Grateful Dead and Max Creek days including some very special people I had lost touch with. Some of you cross over into both worlds. Some of you no longer are able to get out there. For those of you that can't Im glad I can keep you in the loop via my videos, blog posts, phone calls, emails and texts.

I'll be ringing in the New Years in New York City with some of the Coventry Music crew. And cant wait to see a lot of the phish twibe in the Big Apple.

I apologize for the lack of regular blog posts. I had a busy run of concerts during the month of October. I came back from Phish's Atlantic City run over Halloween to find my cat Rags, had gone blind. He was the neighborhood stray/tom cat that someone either abandoned or abused who showed up in my neigborhood sometime in early 2008. Not knowing his real story and if he belonged to anyone. I didnt begin feeding him till Xmas of 2008 when I found him hanging around a neighbors porch and huddled under a chair with a tarp on it. It took me a couple of months before I could even pet him. I had had him neutered in October of 2009. By November 2009 he would finally stay behind a closed door. It took me a good 10 months to redomesticate him and get him to trust people and it took a lot of love, food and kindness

After a trip to the emergency clinic, after driving home 5.5 hours from Atlantic City with a stop in Riverdale, NY and a follow-up visit to my vet, He was diagnosed with diabetes, regained some of his vision and was doing good with his twice daily insulin injections. At the end of November he began to lose the use of three of his legs and by the first weekend in December he wasnt really eating like he used to and try as me might he couldnt make the three steps to his litter tray from his bed. Although I didnt run the tests, the vet and I were pretty sure he had cancer of some sort that was effecting his central nervous system, as he had lost a ton of muscle tone over the last month. I made the humane decision to put him down as his prognosis was bleak. He was my good Karma kitty as I put a lot of time into making him loved his last year with me.


Here's to a wonderful happy healthy 2011

Namaste.