insideSTL.com Readers To The Rescue

If you read my column yesterday or heard my appearance on The ITD Morning After on Team 1380, you may have wondered if someone needed to put me on alert for depression.

I won't lie: I'm still pretty down about busting out of the WSOP the way I did.

As mentioned in my columns and on the air, I really did feel like I let people down, because so many people (we had 13,148 unique visitors to this site Tuesday) had gotten on board with the World Series of Poker run. Many St. Louisans seemed to be taking pride in "having a horse" in the race.

Honestly, I felt like I let (a small segment of) St. Louis down. And, once again, honestly, that really bothered me. And, yesterday, based on the number of emails and quality of emails I received from so many people...many of whom I have never met...I understood why I feel the way I do about St. Louis and why I felt so bad for "letting people down."

The emails were overwhelming. They really were. I want to publish some of them here, but I also want people to know that some of them were so kind and so flattering that I'd feel absurdly vile if I put them on here. But, to those of you who sent them...and I believe I responded to each one (I surely hope I did)...thank you. You have no idea how helpful it was.

Tim,

 GREAT Showing............and relax man. YOU ARE being so hard on yourself.

 
Take a step back. Enjoy the fact you GOT to go experience it. YOu have a beautiful, cool, awesome wife; a great family; a perfect job; a successful business; people like you; a great home (minus the crime!); and a life worth getting up in the morning for.

 
You did well, got to do what most of us could only dream of doing (no, not seeing andy dick nearly naked) and you had a cabana full of hotties----  while we sat in STL, listened to Tony whine over Edmonds like a true pussy, and did our humdrum jobs,...................rinse and repeat.

 
Proud of ya brother.................

 
Robert Rooney

Tim,

   Reading your experiences on day 2 gave me goose bumps like watching Mike Dermott play Teddy KGB in the movie Rounders at the last poker game.

   Thanks for giving us an insight to the WSOP because the mental issue is so intense. It has to take a lot of intestinal fortitude to go through the grueling sessions in Las Vegas. I hope you don’t beat yourself up to bad because it looks so tough with everything going on during those games and having to keep up on the chip count and fast math. Hope you can take another crack at it next year. Good luck again.

Darren Geisler

Tim-

Sorry to hear you got knocked out.  But I hope you lift your chin up soon and realize how slim the odds are of even making the money… to even make it to Day 2 is an accomplishment.  And for your first WSOP run?  Incredible.  I know you’re upset, b/c you feel you could have controlled the outcome better… but two hands later, a run of bad luck could have taken you down just the same. 

I was playing an old WSOP video game I dug up last night… a video game, for God’s sakes… and it was ridiculous how bad I was doing.  I had completely forgotten how much skill and thinking goes into each individual hand when you’re at a table with 6-10 people… whether they be real or on a TV screen while playing PS2.

I really hope you stick with this and play in the World Series again in the future.  Hearing you talk about poker, and reading you write about poker has me convinced that you’re not just some guy who plays poker… you are a poker player.

I’ve liked you and your radio show since I started listening last fall/winter… but this experience has really given me a new level of respect for you… it’s an entirely different aspect of who you are.

You haven’t let anyone down or disappointed anyone in St. Louis… we’re all thrilled that you even made it out there and survived into Day 2.  And you got beat by a pro, at least… not some beginner riding nothing but luck and his own ignorance.

Hope you stick with it, and cheer up…

-Chris Hoffmeister

Tim,

Don't be so hard on your self. You had a great run and with your updates and pictures you made allot of us feel like we were along for the ride. On the way home from work I'm yelling at the radio to give an update on how you were doing, it was like a Rams game when their down by 6 pts with under two minutes to go and no time outs left and I couldn't wait to see what happens.

I get home from work and the first thing my wife said was how's Tim doing, and the kids in their best Cajun "Water Boy" voices are saying " Tim You Can Do It".You did something most of us can only imagine so keep the chin up and follow the dream!!

I 'm already looking forward to next year.Football,baseball, and Tim's poker run!

Good Luck.

Rich B.

Tim,

Keep your head up.  You can't get to the top of the mountain without having some defeats. 

Just look at what you have done with the radio show starting at 590 and now where you are at with 1380.  Think about the choice that almost sent you to NY. 

You have the website and are doing thing you appear to love to do.  From your stories you have been through times like this only to learn from it and get to the top.  You will be back there and you will make it that much further from what you have learned.  I think it is awesome what you accomplished no matter where you finished.

Mark Hessel

Tim,

(Here are two quotes for you):

“It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled and fell, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause; and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that he’ll never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”  - teddy roosevelt

"Quit being a pussy."  - dan kertz

Outstanding stuff.  I found "losing" very publicly to be cathartic.  Now I'm like, "Bring it on."  I hope the same for you.

djk

The New insideSTL.com Message Board And An Addition To The STL Nightlife Section

It's been a long time coming...but the new insideSTL.com message board will debut today...some time in the mid-morning.

For some of you, this means absolutely nothing. For others, it's a moment of monumental importance.

I take full responsibility for the first message board being a disaster. When it gets down to it, "the buck stops here," as a famous Missourian once said...and if I had been more involved in the developmental process of the new website, this wouldn't have happened. That's my fault. No excuses.

However, the new message board will be quite similar to the "old/current" one. It's built on vBulletin software, which may mean nothing to the vast majority of you...as it meant nothing to me when I first heard about vBulletin a couple of years ago...but it's the same software the "old/current" one uses.

So, for those of you that have been using the old message board, you will now need to use your insideSTL.com 2.0 registration and password, which most of you probably already have. And, for those of you that have never ventured into the addicting world of the freedom of expression that is the insideSTL.com message board, I recommend you give it a try.

Also, today, we're debuting a new feature of insideSTL.com's STL Nightlife section. Many people are big fans of the new site's Nightlife section, which allows visitors to use Flash to go through the pictures of people at St. Louis bars, clubs, and events. However, some users liked the old insideSTL.com layout of STL Nightlife...which displayed the pictures in a gallery layout, and you could pick which pictures you wanted to enlarge.

Well, at the same time the new message board debuts this morning, the new STL Nightlife will become active on insideSTL.com, and you'll have the choice of using Flash to see the pictures...or you can look through them the "old school" way. It's your choice.

Hopefully, this will serve all of our users' needs and preferences.

I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to log-in and post below, or you can email me at tmckernan@insidestl.com.