Hello.  You may know me from some home game instructional Dvds such as as “Don’t be a Pussy” and “Will Puts Me On Tilt, So I’m Glad He Lives in Russia Now.”  Tonight, I’ll be entering Event 31 of the 2009 WSOP, $1500 HORSE.  For those of you (all of you, apparently) who only play No Limit, here’s a brief rundown of the structure of these LIMIT games.

H – Hold’em. Probably the first game you learned, before you found out that NL was the cool game.

O – Omaha High-Low. a “split-pot” game, meaning there’s a high hand and a low hand pot each hand.  Win both and you scoop.  You get counterfeited a lot in this one.

R – Razz.  Stud backwards.  The “lowest” hand wins the pot.  A2345 is the best possible hand.  Only drifters from St Louis like this game.

S – 7 card Stud. 2 down, 4 up, 1 down. Used to be popular, now it’s only played within 50 miles of Boston.

E – Stud H/L. The “E” stands for eight-or-better, meaning you need at least an eight low to win the low pot (as in Omaha H/L.)  Like the “O” game, except with the stud structure.

The tournament starts at the ungodly hour of 8pm Eastern/5 Pacific.  No idea why.

At some point I’ll clue you in on my poker shenanigans over the past year — they are few and far between.