Steve Albini, the Jungleman of Razz?

Albini: Rock & Roll razz teacher.

That\’s probably a stretch, referring to any Razz player as Jungleman … but hey, as of this moment he\’s the most skilled and accomplished Razz player I\’ve ever met studied on a training video. Or actually, maybe his sidekick, Brandon Shack (aka Oscillator) is the better player. It\’s hard to say, but they seem to have rather different philosophies on playing the game that most of us got to know from a single Final Table hand in 2004 — you know, the one where Howard Lederer and TJ Cloutier taught us that Razz could indeed be a painful game?

(That hand, of course — they had the same low until the river — led me to my first and only bracelet, in Razz, in the 2005 $1,500 event on the PlayStation. I should clearly be in the TOC!)

Anyhow, that\’s why I liked this video. And though I still have no plans to ever add Razz to any 1/2 NLH/PLO game I\’m pimping, getting in the middle of an intense poker convo about the nuances of Razz does leave me feeling a bit better prepared should I ever end up in the game Vegas-local aggro-nit Rex really wants to host – NLH/PLO/Razz:

Albini, btw, is a rather interesting dude — a guy who comes to poker from the music biz. He worked as a producer on albums by Nirvana, Bush, the Pixies, Flogging Molly, the Jesus Lizard (Chris Ferguson, lol?), Helmet, Cheap Trick, and Robert Plant. Apparently he became quite the badass legend amongst producers in the underground-alt scene. Neato.

Reminds me that I\’m glad I\’ve signed up to get this type of specialist poker training for free from CardRunners with their Truly Free Poker Training.