I hope you all had a great holiday weekend.

I am back from Florida, where I got my Mom’s condo cleaned out and up for sale, mostly thanks to Betty the wife, who worked like crazy to get it ready. If you want a 1-bedroom, 1.5-bath sixth floor condo in a nice 55+ building with pool, clubhouse and so on, let me know (soon, as I already have an offer). asking $124, 900, less than the appraisal.

More on Florida later in this Thought. First, more frustrating book news. The book exists and is on its way to America. It will be here in 2-3 weeks. In the meantime, Amazon has decided, for no known reasons, to declare that is has been delayed and has written to all advanced orderers asking if they wish a refund. *sigh*. It has not been delayed, it is on its way. Hopefully, my publisher (D&B) will straighten this out rapidly. If not, you will be able to get the book from many other sources, including, cardplayer.com, conjelco.com, professionalpoker.com, and here . I will be offering full price copies plus shipping for autographed copies personalized as you wish them. Details will be posted as soon as I have enough copies…probably three or so weeks.

OK, back to Florida. I did not play any cards, but I have been informed that the new laws now allow no limit hold’em to be played. Thereis a $100 limit on the buy in for any game. In spite of this, they seem to spread $1-$2, $2-$5, and, amazingly, $5-$10 blinds. The latter is clearly an all-in fest, with players bringing multiple buy-ins and pushing to build up big stacks so they can play deeper. I find this weird, but I live in Las Vegas, so I get the benefit of 37 competing cardrooms with few legal restrictions on poker at all.

A gripe: Betty and I took a two-day cruise to Nassau. I take lots of cruises, mostly with cardplayercruises.com, and this was far from the loveliest (and was not with CPC). They did have a poker table in the casino, spreading $3-$6 hold’em. And this is where the gripe comes in. Not that they never spread it. They took a list but had no way of calling it or scheduling the game. So no one ever played. That was OK, as I had no need to play.

The gripe was one of the rules that Betty pointed out to me. She had played poker on a different recent cruise, with the same stupid rule, so it must be a cruise thing (uniform casino-cruise poker rules?). Say you are playing and get up when it is your blind to hit the restroom, or run to the buffet, or check on the kids, or whatever. The dealer gives you a blind button. Now you return and wait for your blind again. When it is your turn the dealer will ask you to post the big blind as usual, and a dead small blind. Of course, on the next hand, you will post the small blind again, live.

I never heard of this before, so it took a long time to sink in that they ask for a small blind as penalty for missing your blind. Two more remarkable things about this:

1 - It is OK to get up, pick up your chips, return to the game, put them back down, and only take the big blind (in fact, there seems to be no rule about putting back the same number, as you are a new player every time you sit down again!)

2 - On the previous cruise, Betty objected tot he rule, and spoke with the manager. He told her (I am not making this up) that this is the way they do it at Bellagio!

Anyway, if anyone reading this has an influence with the cruise casino industry, please try to set them straight. This missed blind penalty is quite out of place, as is carrying your chips around the ship to avoid it.

End gripe. We will need a new admin for the forum, as we wil be opening it to new members very shortly. I will post more on this in a few days. Thanks for visiting my website, and I hope to have real good book news soon.