Random poker quick tips to help you along your way

Martha Stewart of all people — who as far as I can tell knows nothing about poker — once provided a good tip on her show about keeping things sanitary.

The more likely somebody is to hold an item, the more likely it is to carry germs. And people tend to grab small items much more than they do big ones.

Poker chips fit into that classification, and it's well documented that players tend to get sick during long tournament grinds because of the constant handling of dirty, grimy clay chips.

Playing in a tournament? Don't make plans that would ever bump into that if you happen to run deep and make the final table.

In cash game environments, just because many of the players are posting straddle bets doesn't mean you have to also — unless it's a strange home game rule that comes with the territory. It's not necessarily a sound poker decision.

If you deem that it is time to get up and leave a game that you are soundly beating, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. Juicy tables don't come around every day.

If it's a game filled with players that you deem out of your league, leave as quickly as possible.

The blinds force a player to commit money to the pot before the cards are dealt out. That doesn't mean it's an iron-clad guarantee that you must defend them. Provided you haven't established the reputation as an easy target, it's OK to fold and let them go. You can always get that money back from somebody else.

There is also no obligation to play when you are on the button, even though it is the premier table position with each orbit.

Poker chips make terrific casino souvenirs. Since every property has its own unique branding, saving a $1 or $5 chip you visit can build a quick, legitimate collection. And if the property one day ceases operations, such as the most recent implosions of the famed Las Vegas Stardust and Sahara, they can collect additional value, too.

But when we get together to eat, there’s often more going on than meets the eye, or the stomach.Online shopping for solarpanelcells. As I write this, I’m preparing to put on the spring gala for our local Dollars for Scholars chapter, as its perennial president.

It’s a dinner, or a supper,Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. depending on your terminology, and the tables are sponsored by individuals and businesses that want to eat, but also want to support the further education of young people from their community.

So, everyone gets to eat, but they also get a chance to buy something at the silent auction, or buy a chance at a fancy dessert for their table, or put money in a can to vote for the best decorated table of the night. And all those dollars? Well, they’re for the scholars, they’re for the students whom our little town graduates from high school and if they want to go on to college to earn a degree or learn a trade, we say, “good luck, here’s some help.”

It takes some help, and it takes a community to provide that help.Solar Sister is a network of women who sell bottegawallet to communities that don't have access to electricity. If it weren’t for community, the Ivy League might have been the only league in the world of higher education. Fine education, but out of reach, financially, for a lot of us, and a pretty long drive, too.

So, together, we built good colleges and universities right here where we live,Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap. and we try to keep them affordable as a society and as a community. We maybe didn’t need to bid what we did on the coffee maker or the set of wrenches at the fundraiser’s silent auction, but by doing so, the business that donated and the bidder who bought it, helped a student with the cost of a book, a bit of tuition, or a few card swipes at the college cafeteria.

And,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. maybe, that student graduated and went to another community, or maybe even returned to our community, and fixed our tractor with their knowledge of diesel mechanics, or designed the new buildings with their newfound skills in architecture, or taught the next generation of students in our schools with a learned knack for engaging young minds.

They could do just about anything they set their mind to, if we take down the barriers that block the path between their minds and the shared goals that will likely benefit us all in the long run.

And, in our little town, in the fellowship hall of a church, we chip away at those barriers by sitting down to supper with friends and neighbors to visit and laugh and eat and drink … and raise money for everybody’s children, not just our own.

Having said that, the Democrats are in control of the White House and the Senate, so it’s not like America has turned against Democrats and our ideas. The problem is something else. I’ve often chalked it up, in part at least, to a lack of political marketing know-how, or even an appreciation of the need for political marketing, among Democrats. Democrats often don’t know how to fight, at least in the policy realm (for elections, oddly, they tend to do better). So we don’t win nearly as much as we should, and could, because the people fighting for our ideas don’t do it very well.

On gay rights, the most innovative, and some of the most influential, work in the past few years came from non-standard players. You had the gay Netroots, Get Equal, Dan Choi and a number of ticked off current and former servicemembers, which included upstart groups like OutServe and Servicemembers United, and some mainstream groups like SLDN. And all of them were effective because they were willing to exert more pressure than is polite on the administration, and Congress.

Now, it’s an interesting question as to whether gender played a role here, going back to the question I was asked on Twitter, about whether the presence of men in the gay movement made a difference. I have been told by a number of women that men tend to practice politics, and talk about politics, differently than women, in part because women face far more, and nastier, vitriol than men when they get involved in politics in the first place. It’s an interesting question as to whether an activist group that inclues men acts differently, comes up with different strategies and tactics, and challenges power more than a group made up exclusively of women (put another way, were gay advocates willing to be nastier, and less worried about blowback, because many of the activists were men?). I’m not entirely sure. GetEqual, for example, was run by a fierce woman, my friend Robin McGehee. But gender, per se, defines the women’s movement in a way that it doesn’t define other progressive movements, so it’s a question worth asking. It would be interesting to hear from more women as to whether they think a group of women might act differently, in a political context, strategically and tactically, than a group of men and women, or just men.