Doing the wrong thing

This week has been so bad. I came down with the flu on Wednesday morning. Then on Wednesday afternoon my computer breaks down. Repeated attempts to fix it in my woozy state failed until I finally got it stabilised enough to get all my important data out and reformat on Thursday. Spent the whole of today trying to bring the computer back up to 2008 standard.

What really gets me is the behaviour of my pets. You watch Animal Planet and all these dogs and cats are supposed to sense when their owners are ill and dial 999 with their tongues or something. But not only does my dog bother me incessantly half an hour before dinner while I'm shivering feverishly on the bed, she goes and pees on a floormat which I now have to handwash. Bloody ingrate. The cat insists on sleeping with me at night which makes the backache I have from the fever worse. No empathy whatsoever.

To top it off, I'm losing at poker, partly because I'm waiting for my Pokertracker key and partly because I'm just too woozy to play my top game but too restless to do anything else. Damn.

0 votes

Comments (6)

There's a class reunion tomorrow which I have decided not to attend. Since I graduated from the triple science class, half my ex classmates are doctors. Everytime I meet them at weddings they're all talking about the throats they've peered down and the arses they've peered up.

When all the doctors start talking about their colonoscopies and what have you, that's when I should be leaning over to one of the prettier ones and saying, "you know what? I'm a real big asshole. You can look me up any time."

But my wife always goes along, so...

Pokerwise, I learnt a new phrase today: dämlicher hurensohn! Sure is going to come in handy around 10pm CET!

Since going to mass last Sunday I've been running very hot... overall I'm running at over 6ptbb/100 since I started NL50, and that includes a really horrendous 5.5 buy in downswing when I first started. Moving to NL50 from NL25 really feels like moving to NL5 from NL2... just the same standard of players with more cash to throw around. I don't feel like I'm really WORKING for my money... I'm sure eventually my winrate will drop a little to something more sustainable, but I'm very sure I can beat this level with no problems at all.

0 votes

Comments (1)

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday.

So there I was, a miserable sinner, taking my first real shot at NL50 this week while dowloading porn via bitcomet. Yes, gambling, pornography and copyright infringement all at the same time. Bad beats and coolers came nonstop until my poker graph looked like it was tracking the value of the Aussie dollar.

I was ready to throw my keyboard out the window in disgust when I decided to change the music I was playing in the background to... the Hallelujah chorus. And then my luck just turned around.

Imagine a chorus singing HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! as the perfect flop hits. Imagine FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH ringing out as your hand holds up.

+ Show Spoiler +

And then to the jubilant declaration of

KING OF KINGS!
and LORD OF LORDS!

I inflict grevious harm on a multitabling villain with a nasty, heaven sanctioned cooler.

+ Show Spoiler +

In a rush of religious ecstacy I continued with "Angels We Have Heard on High", appropriately sung by the Law Vegas Masters Singers accompanied by the Las Vegas Philharmonic. As the hymn's distinctive chorus rang out,

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!

this hand happened:

+ Show Spoiler +

I'm sure nobody calls PF 4 bets with hole cards like those without divine intervention.

The track ended and I immediately ran into this hand:

+ Show Spoiler +

But it was not long before "Come All Ye Faithful" was reverberating from my speakers. As I roared out "GLORY TO GOD, GLORY IN THE HIGHEST" I came storming back, delivering the smackdown (smitedown?) to win a big chunk of it back.

+ Show Spoiler +

The rest of the session continued in that vein. When I finally stopped, I found that my download speed had dropped to 6kbs and I had won back the 6 buy ins I had lost and a whole lot more so my overall winrate is now a decent 3ptbb/100.

I'm definitely attending evening mass tonight and giving a hefty donation.

0 votes

Comments (13)

After a 13K breakeven stretch, I was forced to take a break from poker because of work commitments. After more than a month, I returned on Saturday and won around 550bb in 2.5 hours, running at about 40ptbb/100. That takes my bankroll past 1,000 and I'm going to start taking shots at NL50.

Excited by the prospect, I broke my rule of only playing if I had 2 or more hours to spare (I feel it's a waste of time and money to get to know all the players and then have to leave before you can exploit them) and played for an hour or so. Had a ton of suckouts, but overall the standard of play seemed the same as NL25, so hopefully this weekend I'll have the time to devote half a day or so to really getting into NL50.

Wish me luck!

0 votes

Comments (8)

I've managed to get some of my orchids to bloom =) I'm pretty happy about that, naturally.

0 votes

Comments (1)

I've heard several people say that reservist training is a "good break from work". These people need to start looking for alternative employment, because if you think that sitting (or walking) in the jungle without a change of underwear for three days is a "good break from work", you are definitely in the wrong job.

Anyway, this particular round of reservist training turned out to be pretty okay... I didn't do much and it was comparatively comfortable. The enforced break from poker turned out to be good for my mind. I didn't realise how tired I was until I got out of reservist. I feel a lot more refreshed now. My mind feels clearer and the pressure to play and play has lifted.

I've made a couple of changes to my routine which have resulted in me playing even less than I usually do, but which I think will play dividends in the long run. Basically, fewer tables, more thinking about what I'm doing, more trying to predict the likely consequences of my actions and so on. I don't think I was doing that very well before my reservist training because my mind was so tired (not just from poker but from work as well).

I also try not to play unless I have at least 1.5 hours to spare... Because I have so little time to play I used to play many short sessions, but I think that's counter productive because I barely have time to understand the players before having to run.

With the little time I have to play each week I think it will take a long time before I move up, but I guess one can't expect to just zip through NL25 as if it were NL5.

0 votes

Comments (0)

I have about 9 hours to go before my reservist training (in Singapore, all males serve in the army at 18 for a couple of years, after which we have to report back once a year for a number of years for reservist training) and I am in trouble. My camoflauge trousers are obviously far too effective for peacetime as I cannot for the life of me find either pair anywhere in my house. Or my mother's house, for that matter.

It's all very comforting that during times of war, wearing those trousers will render my lower half completely invisible if I choose to hide in a wardrobe, but right now, I really don't want to have to walk into camp with my balls hanging out.

I think I'm going to have to pull out an ancient pair of camoflauge trousers - the pair I wore when I was 18 - and wear that to camp, and then buy a couple of new pairs while I'm there. The trousers are the button fly type - 4 buttons down the front, and I can comfortably button up 2. The trousers must have shrunk, obviously.

I'm not allowed to blog about anything that happens during training, of course, but I don't think I'll be playing poker till I'm done (about a week from now). Darn. I'm going to miss that.

0 votes

Comments (3)

6 buy ins gone in 1,000 hands. And the last asshole who sucked out had the cheek to TALK to me.

"Should of folded your QQ" he says, after rivering a straight with his 77.

YOU DUMB FUCK, IT'S "SHOULD HAVE", NOT "SHOULD OF".

The only thing standing between these lucky bastards and their certain death at my hands is my monitor.

EDIT: Oh God, I have reservist training on Monday and I can't find my trousers. Fuck, fuck, fuck... just what I need to round off my day.

0 votes

Comments (7)

As my winrate plunges like a supermodel's neckline, I can't help but think of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene I, when the Prince of Morocco says

If Hercules and Lichas play at dice
Which is the better man, the greater throw
May turn by fortune from the weaker hand:
So is Alcides beaten by his page;
And so may I, blind fortune leading me,
Miss that which one unworthier may attain,
And die with grieving.

0 votes

Comments (3)

Over the three weeks I've been at NL25, I've noticed that the weekends seem really swingy. They're not humongous swings, they're just swings of one or two buyins up and down every half hour or so so that by Monday, I'm back almost exactly where I was on Friday. It's irritating because weekends are supposed to be God's gift to poker players. It's probably the way I'm playing.

Earlier I lost 4 buy ins in a couple of minutes, back to back suckouts. I don't have a stoploss though, because I think losing four buy ins at 25NL really shouldn't be a big deal. If I were to quit everytime I tilted I wouldn't be playing very much, so I just forced myself to untilt and play through the pain. Made 2 of those buy ins back in the next half hour in time to catch the last bits of the 2x FPP/VPP promotion.

I amuse myself by trying to rate my weekends on my swing scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Asian breasts (not swingy), 4 being Tarzan (moderately swingy), 7 being Count Basie's Big Band (very swingy) and 10 being Christmas at the Texas Temple (yeehaw).

0 votes

Comments (4)