BBT5 Begins, Betfair Interview

Hello, Friday. Has been another busy week here. I haven’t had the chance to play a heckuva lot lately -- just short sessions here and there -- although I always tend to do better when that is the case, so I ain’t complaining.

One bit of news this week was the launching of the Battle of the Bloggers Tournament 5, which gets underway this weekend. I’ve landed a spot in the invitational portion of the sucker, which means for the next few Sunday nights I’ll be playing some deep-stacked no-limit hold’em tourneys against my fellow scribes in the hopes of winning a seat into the Tournament of Champions that happens at the end of May.

There are other events associated with BBT5, too, to which all are invited to participate, with a bunch of goodies -- over $50,000 in cash and some WSOP seats -- up for grabs. Click here to read more about BBT5 and see the full schedule. And look for updates here regarding my efforts in those Sunday tourneys.

In other news, earlier in the week I enjoyed talking to the poker author and player Matthew Hilger. I interviewed Hilger for Betfair -- check it out.

Hilger runs a publishing company, Dimat Enterprises, which has put out several quality strategy books, including Hilger’s own Internet Texas Hold’em, a limit HE book of which I am a big fan.

Hilger also co-wrote The Poker Mindset with Ian Taylor, another book I like and have written about here before. A few times, actually.

Hilger and I discussed his books, the Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand a Time series by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet, and other forthcoming titles from Dimat, including Jeff Hwang’s next PLO book. We also talked a bit about the state of poker book publishing, generally speaking.

I’ve really enjoyed the interviews I’ve done thus far for Betfair. I had done a couple for PokerNews previously as well. I am thinking at some point perhaps pulling together a list of the various interviews and articles I’ve written for other sites and posting them here somewhere, if only to keep track of ’em all. Always interesting to talk to the pros to get their insights and thoughts, and I also get a special kick out of talking to authors about the writing/publishing game, too.

The BBT5 awaits. Now I’m realizing I should’ve asked Hilger for tips on deep-stacked NLHE tourneys. I suppose patience will be in order. I think I’ll only open with suited pairs until the antes kick in.

Enjoy the weekend, all.