If you break down my career poker stats by location, there is a clear outlier in an otherwise pleasing, standard looking distribution:  the Borgata. 

I keep meticulous stats on my play, so I can confirm this fact easily.  Looking at a breakdown of my stats by location reminds me of one of my old favorite childhood pastimes:  studying the backs of baseball cards.  That is where, of course, the career statistics of each player were located, in a series of rows that each represented one season.  I remember being puzzled by some of the good players’ statistics:  often there would be a lenghty list of productive years surrounding one unsightly, disgusting year wherein that player simply sucked.  Maybe that year the player fought through an injury or a divorce or a drug problem or god knows what.  But for whatever reason, he plain old sucked for a full season during what otherwise would have been the height of his career, thereby irrevocably marring his baseball card.  On my poker card, I have one of those rows.  It’s labeled “Borgata.”

Virtually everywhere else I have ever played, I have either enjoyed a lot of success or at worst been about a break even player.  But not at the Borgata.  I have played there for a combined 98 hours since I turned pro.  I’d prefer not to disclose the exact amount I’ve lost there, but suffice to say it would have been easier, less painful and less time consuming to have walked to the end of the steel pier with a duffel bag full of $100 bills and dumped it into the ocean.

It’s a shame because the Borgata is easily the nicest casino/hotel in Atlantic City, and a terrific place to play poker.  I just get destroyed there.  Imagine the movie Groundhog Day, but with a new plot.  Instead of walking around Punxsutawney every morning, Bill Murray wakes up and gets punched in the balls.  That’s me at Borgata.

Back to the online grind…