The 2012/2013 English Premier League football season came to an end on Sunday and with it my second season playing the official Premier League fantasy game. Out of 2.6 million people playing, I finished in 95,714th place with 2,072 points. I won the CardRunners mini-league by 65 points, but credit to Ryan Papa who pushed me the entire way taking the lead on several occasions. Those results were only a slight improvement from my first season where I finished in 109,691th place, with 2,034 points and eeked out the CardRunners mini-league win.

My approach this season was quite different from last year. Last year at this time I was deeply involved in every aspect of the game and its dynamics as I researched the possibility of establishing a daily fantasy version of the game. I eagerly invested hours visiting sites and processing all the data available. I wrote up my findings from my first season in 12 Things I Learned Living in a Fantasy World.

This season I purposefully invested much less time in the game. I visited only one fantasy football resource site regularly and spent far fewer hours each week in managing my team. I was still actively making personnel changes, but I relied more on my first season experience than the input and expertise of others.

Here are some brief comments on my season:

- I held two players the entire season (38 game weeks): Gareth Bale and Michu.

- Injuries, suspensions and rotation caused me to make more player rotations (48), which cost points, than I would have liked.

- My weekly scores fell in a narrower range this year, with more consistency (fewer real highs and lows).

- The overall value of my team didn't climb as much this year, probably because there weren't as many necessary template players with a set of more affordable players that took turns delivering decent points.

- I saved my wild card for the second half, giving me a boost as the season winded down.

- Prioritizing and planning for double gameweeks made the difference in pulling out the mini-league win.

- There remained tremendous variance in timing and selection (e.g. picking the right players, but the wrong week to captain them).

- This particular version of the fantasy game has some weaknesses in player valuation, turnover and scoring that need to be improved if they are to stave off future competition.

My last observation concerns the effect that playing the fantasy game has had on my viewing enjoyment of English football. I no longer watch Premier League games with nearly as much of a team perspective. I actively root for and against individual players that affect my fantasy scoring. While playing the game has deepened my awareness of the different squads, players and the league as a whole, I find less pure pleasure from the added complexity. I've often heard that people enjoy sports viewing more when they have some money on it. Thus far I can't say the same when playing the free fantasy game.

The draws on my dresser have been bulging for months. The reason was simple. There were too many clothes being stuffed into them.

I am to blame. I tend to hold onto things. From my childhood forward, the influences that registered most declared that if things still have value they shouldn't be thrown away no matter how old they are.

My wife had her own muses and wasn't burdened with that notion. Any time she gets new clothes, an equal amount are donated or thrown away. Her possessions are rebalanced to reflect the fresher influences.

While I still assert that things retain value as they age, their retention adds additional complication. Having more things to store is its own burden. In addition to wear and tear, everything naturally degrades over time. But the longer we hold onto clothes and things, the more memories become attached to them. There is a comfort associated with them. A familiarity with a former time. For the nostalgic, it becomes harder and harder to part with those memories, possibly more so than the actual items themselves. Prime example of that notion was a more than 20 year old tattered college sweatshirt that was one of the offending bulging dresser items.

I would consider myself a fairly typical example of a poker adherent during the decade that has followed the Moneymaker boom. I watched the World Poker Tour in the early years of the Travel Channel. I bought my fair share of poker books as I became familiar with the game. I joined poker training sites to advance my game and poker community. I soaked up any notable TV or online poker I could watch. In a desire to show their support, family and friends gifted me quite a few poker shirts.

Having acquiesced to the notion that it was time to purge, I decided that my dated and cliche poker wardrobe would be the part of my past sacrificed. I've included some photos of the stereotypical shirts that were given to me over the last decennium.

How many of these types of poker shirts do you have?

A. Poker slogans

B. Early days poker training sites

C. Former poker brand leaders

D. The most cliche gaming shirts

E. Sites you used to play on...

F. Hawaiin shirts go hand and hand with poker, right?

And lastly I'll share my most recent addition, which is the sole poker shirt remaining in the wardrobe...

I removed the newspaper from the protective plastic sheath commonly found during the rainy months in Oregon. As I unfolded the newspaper, I saw the disturbing lead story on the main page "Portland poker rooms face shutdown under bill at Oregon Legislature." I braced myself for yet another assault on the liberty of American poker players. This time in my own back yard.

A quick glance at the large accompanying color photo gave me some hope to battle the articles apparent poker scene negativity. Pictured was a young, attractive woman playing poker at a local Portland poker room. The description indicated that she was a 29-year-old lawyer who enjoyed playing poker in her spare time. In selecting that particular picture, the newspaper revealed their sentiments. They could have chosen some grisly older veteran gambling away his family's fortune or some compulsive underage teen sneaking into a club, but they chose to demonstrate that talented, hard working, educated, and even attractive women also enjoy playing poker. Poker is ingrained in American culture and shouldn't be demonized unnecessarily.

Oregon's elected officials would be wise to look objectively at the facts before trying to further limit poker. There are nineteen poker rooms throughout the state of Oregon. Four of them are larger Native American owned casinos beyond most limits of the state. The remaining 15, nine of which are situated in Portland, operate under antiquated legislation that "make such games legal only for religious, charitable and fraternal organizations." The new speaker of the state house has given the okay for the proposed legislation to go to committee in an effort to reign in their claimed "explosion" of gambling.

The reality is that most of Oregon's poker rooms have been operating for years in modest circumstances. They charge no rake, generating revenue from a daily entry fee that typically runs between $5 and $10, tournament fees and the proceeds from food and alcohol sales. Except for a couple smaller poker rooms, they all have between five and fifteen poker tables available for play.

The poker room owner interviewed in the article explained that he averages 150 players a day and employs 15 people. He feels they are bringing a lot of value to the city. The poker room works hard to create a welcoming and safe environment for their players. City and state officials assert that complaints have been made regarding broken rules and have closed down some poker rooms over the last few years. But the fear of abuses at clubs and secret high stakes games are largely unfounded gossip. The local club owner asserts "It there weren't places like this, basically all the games would go underground. That's where you have the sleaze."

If the goal of future legislation is to improve oversight of clubs, transparency of the game and further protecting players, then they will find little opposition. But elected officials should be careful to not shroud their arguments behind moralistic purposes that ultimately reveal their hypocritical tendencies of representing the powerful state lottery, horse-racing, and Native American interests who would like nothing more than to press their advantage. Oregon is a progressive state that has resisted the heavy hand of government in the past. Oregonians desire the freedom to make their own responsible decisions of whether to bet or fold. Even the attractive young female lawyer types.

During the first six months of my new job, the term "crowdsourcing" has been bandied about repeatedly. The term didn't even exist until 2006, when it was first used in a Wired article by Jeff Howe. He indicated that crowdsourcing involved outsourcing a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Nowadays, crowdsourcing is becoming a ubiquitous modern business practice.

Companies like Yelp and Open Table utilize crowdsourced restaurant reviews to populate much of their restaurant sites.

Many major companies create contests and promotions around crowdsourcing things like a new logo, creative endeavor or even a recipe.

Samual Adams had a popular promotion where they crowdsourced the most popular elements of a beer (e.g. body, color, clarity, yeast, malts and hops), then combined the winners in each category to create a new beer.

Kickstarter is a business concept built off crowdsourcing fundraising.

Crowdsourcing is seen as a way to harness the power of the community. Instead of creating something in-house, you are using the collective efforts of the passionate amongst your community. It also works to engage the public in your product where they feel a sense of ownership by participating in the process.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, Youtube and Reddit all act as vehicles to reach, engage and elicit crowdsourcing efforts.

Just tonight on Twitter, I saw a 4chan link to crowdsourcing efforts to find suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.

The potential of crowdsourcing is vast. But when I thought about it some more, I realized that the poker community is already quite familiar with the concept of crowdsourcing.

1) Each poker forum's strategy sections are utilizing the collective intelligence and experience of the community to analyze and determine optimal poker plays.

2) Much of the credit for identifying superusers and cheating on sites like Ultimate Bet, Absolute and individual instances on many other sites were discovered by the collective efforts of members on popular poker forums that pooled their research and resources.

3) Numerous poker players have participated in beta testing for various poker sites and online poker rooms, which is essentially crowdsourcing the bug testing and usability of a new site before it's released to the general public.

4) Poker players have historically sought to sell pieces of themselves to friends and fellow players. That process has evolved over the last few years where players can sell significant action on popular forums like 2+2 and PocketFives, or going to sites like ChipMeUp, iStakeu and PartTimePoker where they can crowdsource the selling of their action.

While some may look at crowdsourcing as a lazy shortcut to doing the work themselves, many recognize that managed properly employing the collective efforts of a large community can accelerate and vastly improve the potential results.

The man looked too clean cut and straight laced to be an ardent modern African art collector, but he feigned interest in the sculptures while I processed the only other customer in the gallery. When they departed he casually made his way towards the counter and engaged in some small talk. His questions and comments weren't art specific. He was clearly probing, but for what? I quickly sensed he was testing me and my character. Was I a law and order type? Did I believe in justice and righting wrongs? How did I feel about my employees? After receiving enough positive confirmation, he started to reveal his true intentions.

Unexpectedly, the very next day I saw him walking the busy avenue my gallery was located on. He was visiting a business neighbor of mine to arrange a photo shoot. I called the FBI agent's number and his office informed me that the agent was unavailable. I explained the urgency of the situation, having spotted the fugitive and not sure when I might see him again. They explained that the agent was responding to a bank robbery case and that I should try to lure Etienne into my gallery to delay him until agents could respond. I walked out into the street and called out in a friendly manner. I mentioned that I hadn't seen him in weeks and that we should catch up when he was free from his appointments. He said he would stop by the gallery when he was finished with his meeting.

This week, the Zimba blog pushed over the 1 million views mark since CardRunners reset it several years ago. The previous version of the site racked up another half million blog views in the early years of CardRunners. Although I don't blog for views or any form of compensation, I do want to say thanks to those that have kept stopping back as the weeks, months and years have gone by.

Since I began my position with PokerTrip Enterprises in October, I've been responsible for the smooth operation of both their sites; AllVegasPoker.com and ThePokerAtlas.com. Much of my time has been focused on improving the core information and the team that provides the information for both sites. Lately, I've been ramping up our poker tournament schedule coverage in North America so we are without a doubt the most accurate and complete provider available.

Having recently put together a report on our coverage, I thought it might be interesting to see what is the poker community's awareness of the state of live poker in North America while at the same time gauging the opinions and priorities of live tournament players.

The first seven questions are factual in nature, with the answers provided at the bottom. The last five questions are seeking feedback on what information is most valuable to you. Please leave your answers (can be multiple answers) to the second five questions in the comments section.

1. How many US States currently offer licensed live poker?

A. 5

B. 15

C. 25

D. 35

E. 45

2. How many of Canada's 10 Provinces offer live poker?

A. 2

B. 4

C. 6

D. 8

E. 10

3. Rank these states in order of how many licensed live poker tables they have (most to least)

A. Florida

B. New Jersey

C. Nevada

D. Washington

E. California

4. How many live and licensed poker tables are there in North America?

A. 1,000-2,000

B. 3,000-4,000

C. 5,000-6,000

D. 7,000-8,000

E. 9,000-10,000

5. What poker brand (not corporate owner with different brand names) has the most casinos that features poker rooms in the US?

A. Isle Casino

B. Ameristar

C. Hollywood

D. Harrah's

E. Station

F. Horseshoe

6. Name the only four poker rooms in North America with over 100 poker tables?

7. How many licensed poker rooms are there in North America?

A. 150-250

B. 350-450

C. 550-650

D. 750-850

E. 950-1,050

8. What is your favorite North American focused poker tour to play?

A. WPT (World Poker Tour)

B .HPT (Heartland Poker Tour)

C. WSOP-C (World Series of Poker Circuit)

D. MSPT (Mid-States Poker Tour)

E. DPT (Deepstacks Poker Tour)

9. What information do you most appreciate in a tournament description?

A. Breakdown of the buy-in (what goes to prize pool, house entry fee, staff fee)

B. How many starting chips you receive

C. Blind level lengths

D. Details about any late entry, add-ons, re-buys, re-entry, bounties

E. Prizepool guarantee and/or first place guarantee

10. What most attracts you to play a live tournament?

A. Buy-in size

B. Prizepool guarantee

C. The structure (e.g. longer blind lengths and slower increases in blinds)

D. % Return (low overhead of house and staff fees relative to buy-in)

E. How many people entered in the event?

F. The reputation, prestige or location of the event

11. What's the best way to briefly communicate the structure of a tournament?

A. Starting chip stack and blind level lengths

B. Starting chip stack and starting blinds

C. Starting chips stack, blind level lengths, and starting blinds

D. Typical length of the tournament

E. Something else - suggest something

12. What additional tournament information do you really value?

A. When are the breaks and how long do they last

B. When is the dinner break time and the length

C. How many levels are being played that day

D. When will play end for the day

E. Something else - suggest something

A friend and work colleague excitedly called me from New Jersey Thursday afternoon. He had just won the Borgata $90 buy-in Green Chip Bounty tournament. A few hours later, I received a text that he had chopped the 7pm Bally's $55 buy-in $2.5K Guaranteed event three ways. He was clearly on cloud nine. In discussing his outright win, he admitted he had won more than his fair share of races. But when pressed on what had made the difference, he said it was the hands he had decided not to play that made the difference.

His comment reminded me of a poker quote by Dan Reed that I had featured recently on PokerCurious.com "You will show your poker greatness by the hands you fold, not the hands you play."

As I am apt to do, I like to relate any poker wisdom to real life situations and vice versa. I'm a strong believer that what differentiates your life is as much what you choose not to ultimately do as what you do do. You can visualize, fantasize and plot any number of actions, but rashly acting can have serious repercussions. There have been so many times in my life where I've thought of a destructive action, but not acted on it. There have been so many times when I wanted to tell someone off, curse, swear and vent. It wouldn't have served me well. The actions I might have taken would have caused greater harm than good.

Put a different way and rephrasing a Shakespearean quote, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

I know my friend was really glad he didn't overshove his 6's into the two late position raisers when he got short in the tournament. He has several more tournaments planned this weekend in Delaware and with his current momentum and calculated acumen applied I expect to hear more from him soon.

- When my daughter came to me recently and indicated that one of the things she wanted most for her birthday was a Duck Dynasty t-shirt, it caught my attention. Both my teenage kids rate Duck Dynasty as one of their favorite shows to watch. Now obviously they aren't hunting fans, duck decoy aficionados or have a penchant for the southern backwater lifestyle, but the quirky show connects with a lot of people by how genuine, nice and family oriented they are despite their eccentricities. Several of the main characters communicate with a child-like innocence that doesn't carry the knowing cynicism and disillusionment of modern American culture.

- On Tuesday, Electronic Arts released their latest and greatest version of the popular SimCity series. The game introduces limited city spaces to develop while requiring a constantly connected internet connection to play and save your game in the cloud. The seemingly unprepared EA servers have been overloaded this week creating many interruptions to play and losing precious hours of player's city development thus creating many disgruntled SimCity fans who had been quite eager to try out the beautiful graphics and sophisticated game elements introduced in this latest version.

- Unable to find the right streaming movie to watch on Wednesday evening, I wandered over to Twitch.TV where I was immediately intrigued by the convergence of both the above stories. A young man from rural Washington state, who could have been straight out of Duck Dynasty with his long dark flowing hair and beard, was commanding an audience of over 7,500 people who were watching him play and commentate on his various SimCity developments. He spoke with a similar rural simplicity and matter of factness that belied his obvious gaming experience.

This young man's back story was also quite interesting. Lethalfrag, as he is known online, was on day 428 of a 731 day (2-year) Livestream Challenge to live off his earnings from publicly broadcasting his game play. He had cashed in his savings to be able to afford to make a run at creating this new lifestyle. He was now making money off every commercial that ran (once every hour for 3 minutes), every subscriber to his channel and those passionate few who donated to his cause in appreciation of his teachings, his company and the overall entertainment value. He was employing an HD cam with green screen technology to superimpose himself at the bottom right of the game play. I also learned that the beard was part of the challenge; not shaving for the entire challenge.



I ended up watching Lethalfrag play and comment for several hours; partly out of fascination for understand the workings of this new game and partly to understand his persona and appeal to this large online audience who had many other gamers they could have watched instead. The whole night was encapsulated in a statement made earlier that evening by the principal of my son's soon to be high school who shared that AP Psychology was the favorite class amongst dozens offered in the high school curriculum. People have an innate curiosity to understand how other people think and act.

This past Sunday I played a couple online poker sessions. In the first, it was short-handed and I rarely ever had the best hand at showdown bleeding off three or so buy-ins. A little later in the day, I sat down at a full six-max table where I started making hands and quickly racked up a four buy-in win before the table dissolved. What was remarkable was not my poker, but how detached and frankly spacey I felt while playing. Throughout the sessions, I felt as if I were in a meteor shower of fragments of my existence. These tidbits from my past shot by leaving their trail of influence on my poker perspective.

I'll share a few of the fleeting memory comets, with my brief poker interpretation in bold...

As we climbed into the back of the Bedford truck heading off into the barren northern Kenya savannah, our teacher instructed us to remove all vestiges of our culture. If we were to truly understand this new Samburu culture of semi-nomadic pastoralists, we must remove comforting and coloring elements of our culture (i.e. possessions, money and even our music). We must focus all our pure senses on appreciating their world with as little influence from our own. To fully immerse yourself in poker, its language and art, one must abandon previous perspectives.

After two days journey, we stood at the precipice. The sheer rock outcropping dropped off more than two thousand feet before us. How I had arrived at this point was a mixture of purposeful and haphazard steps. Each had brought me to this point. One misstep now and I would be at my peril. There was an incredible thrill and rush as the wind and rain blew over us threatening our comfort and safety. There is a very visceral feeling to poker, to winning and losing, to competing that isn't matched in many areas of our lives.

I was tired from the day's unexpected hours sequestered in a local police station due to my expired visa. My body was angled away from my captor. At the point when the captain reached out his hand in a firm but forgiving gesture that I could go, I lazily reached out my left hand to meet his. A flash of anger came over his face as I unthinkingly extended an insulting left hand to meet his. Unfamiliar with the local culture, frustrated by being locked up, and too lazy to be properly formal I almost undermined hours of hard work to get released by my gesture. No matter how much careful hard work we put in, in no-limit hold'em one is always at risk of ruin with one miscalculated or thoughtless misstep.

The young toe-head boy found the family dog burrowed deep under his parents bed. Despite the murmuring growls, he crawled under the bed face first to retrieve the dog. What he received for his trouble was a dog's paw scratching at him and scar on his eye that could have left his sight impaired for life. If a situation gives the signs of being precarious, heed the warnings and don't venture too far or pay the price.

The dusty and dented country bus throttled towards them on the pothole filled tarmac. Every inch of the bus, inside and above it were filled with every type of human and their wares. The bus was so crowded there were people with limbs that couldn't fit in the bus. The bus came to a stop in front of us as they toot urged us to join the melange. We chose not to cram ourselves on bus, seeking another less crowded and risky ride. Life is not a race. It's not who gets there first, but who gets there at all. It's better to pass up some opportunities if they seem unwise.

A campground worker offered to give the two of us backpackers a lift in his pickup out of the small town to an area where we could try to catch a ride to the nearby national park. There were no structures there, no other people, not even many sounds at that time of the day. Only a lone bulbous Baobab tree in our proximity. Few cars passed and none stopped as we awaited a ride. Then I heard a sound, like a heavy stick hitting the ground. There was nothing that would have naturally caused this as the air was very still. Then I sensed something, turning to see a short thick puff adder snake recoiled and starting right at us. It had dropped out of the tree at the sight of potential victims. Even when the environment seems calm and clear, keep your senses keenly aware of everything around you. You never know what danger lurks.

There were other fragments that streamed by that cosmic Sunday, but those are the ones that have remained with me. I've always enjoyed how poker can act as a metaphor for life and as this blog exemplifies how life's experiences can provide lessons and metaphors for how to approach playing poker.

One of the most comforting feelings in the world is being "in the know." Whether it's knowing where you stand in a relationship or all the dynamics at your work, being aware of your surroundings breeds confidence. Without that information and assurance, our human nature often inserts uncertainty, doubt and negativity disproportionately. Even if being "in the know" means being aware of challenging news, we are better able to process and respond to it than facing the unknown.

Other areas we enjoy being "in the know" about are the subjects of our passions, be they rich, famous, athletic or entertainer. We revel in their details. We marvel at their lives, mixing varied parts of judgement and admiration. We get to live vicariously through them. We get to compare their lives and decisions to our own.

A good example of this enjoying being "in the know" phenomena can be seen in the current popularity of the book "Ship It Holla Ballas! How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker's Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew" The book recounts stories of Phil Galfond, Andrew Robl, Tom Dwan, Peter Jetten, Jonathan Little, David Benefield, and Travis Rice as they came up in the poker world living fast and brashly. Anyone who has been involved in the online poker world the last decade knows these players and some of the heights that their poker acumen has taken them. Fans eat up every juicy story and tidbit from their youthful indiscretions and degeneracy.

The being "in the know" concept also applies in the world of commerce. This week there has been a very heated reaction to Caesars properties beginning to abandon a long standing practice of not charging resort fees on all their bills. They built a reputation of steadfastly being against those pesky and unnecessary charges. They built a loyal following which feels deceived and cheated. Similar would be the rage if Southwest Airlines, who has carved out a strong business from resisting the urge to nickel and dime their customers with baggage fees and seat fees and food fees etc., were to join the other feckless airline companies. Customers like to be "in the know" on what they consider fair charges. The companies themselves are woefully poor at explaining a reasonable purpose for why they aggressively court customers with one advertised price, then constantly surcharge their customers into annoyed and alienated submission.

I'll use an example of keeping your customers "in the know" from my days running my art gallery. We imported art from Africa. Immediately, many people would come into the gallery assuming some model of exploitation because you were representing Third World art. If all they knew was that our marked retail price was often 10 times what we paid the artist, they would likely righteously rebel. But instead of some slick marketing approach built around deception, I tried to share a transparent story with them so they could be "in the know" about how our art world worked.

In a typical local art gallery the art is all consigned, so there isn't any heavy investment or risk if the art doesn't sell. The next month, a fresh new consignment of art is exhibited with little regard for the prior month's stock. In our gallery's case, we traveled half-way round the world to purchase and arrange shipment back. A process that could take 6 months or more. Due to the challenge of securing the art, it couldn't be returned. We owned the art and paid significantly to get it out of the country and back to the U.S. where we would remain with the art forever, until sold. Unlike most artists, the Zimbabwean stone sculptors were paid in cash up front. They gladly accepted a lesser percentage knowing they didn't have to face any wait or risk in some hoped for eventual sale. The strength of the U.S. dollar was also a powerful negotiating advantage both for the buyer, and the receiver of the foreign currency in a struggling economy rife with inflation.

So while the stated retail price was often 10 times the original purchased price, it didn't reflect the cost of the art for it to arrive in the gallery. The marked retail price also didn't represent the final sale price as most art collectors relished aggressively negotiating the final price of their selected sculpture. What customers could respect was my revealing the historical distribution of the art in our gallery where one-third of the eventual sale price represented the true cost of the art, one third covered the overhead of running the gallery, and one third went to some theoretical profit or at least compensation of the gallery owner, me. Even with that seemingly reasonable ratio, there was a pressure on the gallery to turn over a certain percentage of the owned art or risk sitting on negative returns. Whether they eventually bought or not, customers felt "in the know" about the process and could get behind why there was a need to charge what we did. As informed consumers, they could feel comforted in understanding the process and motivations from all parties.