Kitty cat razor

"When you can be this -- for as long as you have to be -- then you're a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors, because if we don't, we don't survive. And then we don't have the luxury of being a simple human again. Do you understand me?
-Battlestar Galactica: Razor preview

It's been a year since the UIGEA bill went into motion and the major systems -- Party, the Cryptos, etc. -- started to fall. It was a lot like the storyline of the cylon attack on Caprica -- I fled with the few brigades I had left.

And largely, I was unprepared for what was to come. I lost huge chunks of my bankroll online and then at the December bloggers, which opened up with me losing a horrible Fuel hand, a boat -- aces full -- to a 1-outer quad deuces held by a fishy guy at Paris Las Vegas.

I faced at that time, with only three weeks left in the year, a losing year for the first time in the 3 years that I had been playing. A nice run on 'Stars before New Year's Eve kept me from that inglorious fate.

The difference was that I retooled -- I was forced to. With a lot of other players on the run, the fishy games were gone. It was tougher, I thought then. At least tighter.

So I turned to Gnome, who told me about Cardrunners. I started watching videos. And learned I could take only a brigade into Vegas and come out with a profit. I became a better player. I reduced my variance. I can tell you (and some of you know, lol) why mistakes are being made in hands because I have a good idea of what to do now.

It's been a year now. The games are coming back, are being better, than a year ago and my bankroll is growing. That's why I'm impatient sometimes when I see horrible hands or bad play -- we've weathered a hard first year and now are being rewarded with people who want to play because they're back in school, or want to see some hands in between college and pro football games.

Should you still be playing? You should know by now. You have no idea whether your success 100,000 hands ago was a fluke, or whether the next 100,000 will be. But you must show up for work every day, as sharp as a blade can be, willing to evade toasters and cut them down, for as long as you have to.

You have either become a razor in this time period, or you will not survive.