And our number 1 choice for online professional poker players wanting to raise a family is...

1) Dallas, Texas:   It's funny we decided on the northern/western Dallas suburbs because about a year ago, GrandMelon was complaining on 2+2 that he was bored out of his mind in Dallas.  But the schools are pretty good and the houses are dirt cheap.  There are over 40K homes for sale around Dallas, many of them less than a decade old.  Think about that - FORTY THOUSAND homes.  You can get a relatively new 4,000 sq ft home for a little over $300K (probably averages $400K).  I was shocked that the houses seemed reasonably well-built - all stone exteriors, nice wood floors, etc.  The houses were kind of chintzy with the kitchen appliances, but I guess not everyone gets *that* into cooking.

Half the fish counter

The food scene there seems pretty good and reasonably priced.  Relatively safe, pretty well-educated, and decent ethnic mix (depending on the neighborhood).  And the Korean supermarket there was the best I've ever seen.  They must've had like 20 different kinds of WHOLE fish neatly displayed on ice.  I practically wet my pants when I saw that.  Thank god for the Depends.

And some of the strip malls were some of the nicest and biggest I've seen.  The size of some of the bookstores was probably close to half a Manhattan bock.  I'm a pretty big guy, but the sheer size of the city made me feel like a midget.  So maybe I don't have to lose any more weight.

The main drawback is that it gets brutally hot in the summer.  Mrs. Fly and D will be happy with that, but G and I are sweat machines (later post).  It was almost 80 degress in the winter and I was sweating. But fortunately, I don't plan on being home in the summer (since we'll be traveling), so we'll only be around to enjoy the nicest weather of the year.

It's going to suck being a Giants fan and having to go into Texas Stadium.  But the plus is that I'll get to see one game every year.  And the Yankees should be coming to town once a year.  The Texas Motor Speedway is there, as well as pro basketball, hockey and soccer.  It's not like I go to that many live sporting events anyway.  And let's not forget the Six Flags theme park and the new LegoLand that's about to open.  And I can just taste the fried butter at the Texas state fair.  Yum..  (Seriously tho, that sounds pretty gross)

Oh, and as a bonus, the Winstar World Casino is a little over an hour away, and they supposedly have a decent poker room.  Not sure about the rake tho.  I'm mostly interested in MTTs tho, since I'm going to need some live practice for when I finally show up at a WSOP.  It actually looks like a *real* casino.  Next month, they have Air Supply, Jay Leno, Kool & the Gang with Morris Day and the Time, Tommy James & the Shondells, Duran Duran, Jason Aldean (Who/What TF is this dude?!?), and Harry Connick, Jr.  Not a bad line-up for an old geezer like me.  And Choctaw Casino (smaller) is 1.5 hours away and seems to offer some WSOP satellites.  God bless those Indians.

At this point, we haven't decided between the Southlake / Colleyville area in the west, or the Plano / Frisco / McKinney / Allen area in the northeast.  The Dallas-Fort Worth airport is on the west, so outdoor noise could be problem.  It seems there's a battery recycling plant in Frisco that may have a lead problem, so if we go that way, I'm going to have to be super-choosy about location.  But all in all, the air quality is *STILL* 2x to 50x as clean as the NYC suburbs, and we currently live like 10 minutes from a regional airport now, so it's not like we'll be that much worse off.  I later found out that CNNMoney did their own analysis and decided three of the Dallas suburbs were in their Top 25 places to live - McKinney (#5), Allen (#16) and Rowlett (#24).

I'm 95+% sure we're moving to Dallas later this year.  Stay tuned...