Poker
My other great addiction is poker. I am particularly fond of Texas Hold'em. While poker has thousands of variants and each has certain merits, I like the Texas Hold'em family of games because I personally think they offer the greatest returns to skillful play, and the biggest opportunities for show downs.
As with the Go page, the basic idea here is simply to offer some online resources:
Software
One of the best ways to quickly build up the more analytical side of your game is to first play a fair amount in isolation with a really good poker program. I started out with a simple program that I purchased from Best Buy:
Bicycle Casino Games: This package is a basic Microsoft game that allows you to play a wide variety of casino games at your choice of three Vegas casinos (I think they use the Bellagio, Mirage and Treasure Island). This package offers you a good opportunity to become very familiar with the basic working rules of a wide variety of games, including Hold'em. However, if you are at all thoughtful as a poker player you will soon notice that you are accumulating a staggering pile of chips. The reason is simple: the simulated opponents in this package play far too loose.
While it of course feels good to see wee mountains of chips in front of you, the wins come too easy. You are now ready for some serious poker software that will challenge you and ultimately elevate your game. I recommend:
Wilson Software games. Wilson produces a wide variety of poker games, and their packages are dazzling. The software offers a range of different simulated players (tight, neutral, loose) so that you can develop your style against a number of different types. You can actually even simulate different types of play across thousands and thousands of hands (I found this very important to understanding the long run implications of various strategies, as well as to developing my analytical sense of the implications of different styles of play).
Poker Sites
Just as with Go, there really is an international poker community. Here are a few sites that I visit often:
PokerPages.com: a good collection of articles, poker columns and other resources.
Poker.com: a good site for online poker games.
The Poker Forum: a site with an amazing amount of poker resources, somewhat along the lines of PokerPages.com.
Home Poker: a site for the home player.
A poker glossary
Steve Badger's site This one is heavy on useful strategy tips.
Planet Poker: Another decent online poker room.
Phil Hellmuth: The John McEnroe of poker. Still, he is in fact one of the greatest living players.
Ultimate Bet: another online cardroom.
And yes: I once caught the Dead Man's Hand. Once.