Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Vegas, Baby, Vegas
So wow. Vegas in less than a month. Boo ya.
It's funny, reading assorted pre-Vegas posts by assorted bloggers. Especially in my case, as I'm still a completely unknown variable, never having met anyone in that thing known as real life before. (Well, not counting tobytoby, who I've personally seen impersonating both CatWoman and the color silver).
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about going to Vegas. Very, very excited. Mucho excited.
But, umm, here's the thing. I'm pretty shy, quiet, and boring. Really. I swear. I don't tend to talk much, especially in large groups. People often assume that I'm having a horrible time, or that I'm angry and inexplicably want to find and butcher Fluffkins, their beloved pet Pomeranian. When, in fact, more often than not I'm having a perfectly good time and enjoying myself a good bit.
I'm also horribly out of drinking shape. Getting married, working a full time job, plus the equivalent of a couple more full-time jobs pursuing assorted business ventures will do that to you. Or to me, at least. If I stick to beer or *gasp* ask for water, no offense is intended.
I also don't know how to play craps or Pai Gow. Shameful, shameful. I'm sure my live game has all sorts of holes in it, due to the fact that I haven't played a live hand of poker in nearly four years. And that's being generous and counting guts, acey-duecey, and Indian poker as "poker", which is a pretty large stretch of the imagination.
Long story short, be gentle. And believe me, I'll be having a good time. Really. Fluffikens is prefectly safe. I swear.
It's funny, reading assorted pre-Vegas posts by assorted bloggers. Especially in my case, as I'm still a completely unknown variable, never having met anyone in that thing known as real life before. (Well, not counting tobytoby, who I've personally seen impersonating both CatWoman and the color silver).
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about going to Vegas. Very, very excited. Mucho excited.
But, umm, here's the thing. I'm pretty shy, quiet, and boring. Really. I swear. I don't tend to talk much, especially in large groups. People often assume that I'm having a horrible time, or that I'm angry and inexplicably want to find and butcher Fluffkins, their beloved pet Pomeranian. When, in fact, more often than not I'm having a perfectly good time and enjoying myself a good bit.
I'm also horribly out of drinking shape. Getting married, working a full time job, plus the equivalent of a couple more full-time jobs pursuing assorted business ventures will do that to you. Or to me, at least. If I stick to beer or *gasp* ask for water, no offense is intended.
I also don't know how to play craps or Pai Gow. Shameful, shameful. I'm sure my live game has all sorts of holes in it, due to the fact that I haven't played a live hand of poker in nearly four years. And that's being generous and counting guts, acey-duecey, and Indian poker as "poker", which is a pretty large stretch of the imagination.
Long story short, be gentle. And believe me, I'll be having a good time. Really. Fluffikens is prefectly safe. I swear.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Activate
Allrighty then. Activate search for a new job in 3,2,1...
(I didn't quit or anything but this has gone beyond ridiculous, to the point where the embarassment involved in bowing and scraping to my monkey work master is more painful than the convenience of a cushy, mindless job with a nice paycheck.)
I've submitted a couple of resumes to assorted places, found a few other relatively promising leads. I've managed to not yet burn any bridges at my place of current employ, as there's a decently good chance that I'll not find anything else and still be there for awhile, bitching and/or moaning.
Anyone want to hire a degenerate gambler with a masters degree in creative writing?
*crickets chirping*
Anyone?
*crickets chirping*
(I didn't quit or anything but this has gone beyond ridiculous, to the point where the embarassment involved in bowing and scraping to my monkey work master is more painful than the convenience of a cushy, mindless job with a nice paycheck.)
I've submitted a couple of resumes to assorted places, found a few other relatively promising leads. I've managed to not yet burn any bridges at my place of current employ, as there's a decently good chance that I'll not find anything else and still be there for awhile, bitching and/or moaning.
Anyone want to hire a degenerate gambler with a masters degree in creative writing?
*crickets chirping*
Anyone?
*crickets chirping*
Stuck
Let's see. Where to begin...
Let's rewind to Friday. On the bright side, I telecommute on Fridays. On the not bright side, I was still stewing over my little "coaching session" on my inappropriate non-verbal body language.
I had about thirty-seven odd jobs I needed/wanted to get done. None got done. Couldn't get in touch with roofers for an estimate on possible hail damage, landscape supply place called to let me know that they didn't have the stone I'd ordered, wouldn't be delivering it, as the quarry hadn't cut it yet. Printer suddenly, mysteriously decided to crap out, about one-third of the way through printing up 50 or so CDs worth of tray cards, covers, etc. for one of my side ventures. Swapped everything over to my wife's computer, except I didn't have the MediaFace software installed on there. Found a serial key, downloaded it, set it up, only to find that my source files were in the ancient 2.0 format and the newer version didn't want to read them. Finally found the old version, got everything set up, only to discover that I had 3up CD labels and it was formatted for 2 up. Which is easy enough to fix, except the crappy-ass software exploded every other time you try to edit something. It literally took me over an hour of rebooting, holding my breath, making edits, rebooting again, holding my breath, making more edits, until it was finally done.
So I thought hey, you know what's a good idea? Let's play some poker.
Bzzt.
Found a nice £5/£10 6 max table on InterPoker, sat down, fired up GameTime+, won a nice pot early and was feeling good. It became fairly apparent that this could prove to be an interesting table, as one of the players (Raiser Von Raisealot) blew off £300 heads-up on the river, re-raising with less than the mrtal nuts (way less, as he had a J high flush, with the A and Q potentially in play). Another guy (we'll call him Cally McCall) was playing every hand and never folding, not once, until the river, regardless of the action.
Fast forward an hour. I'm stuck nearly $1,000 at this point. Cally has literally played every single hand since I sat down. He has raised pre-flop 0% of the time. He's up $750. Raiser has played 85% of his hands and is up $1,250.
I manage to keep losing, despite dragging in a £350 pot at one point. Cally keeps winning. He literally plays any two cards and calls until the river, at which point he folds or calls. He never, ever raises. He even simply called with the obvious nut straight at one point.
I tell myself that I can't get up, as long as these two are in the game. So I play for three hours and finish stuck to the tune of -$3,289, which pretty effectively wiped out the bulk of profits I'd booked for April.
Which brings us to the point of this sob story. Well, sort of the point. I turned off the computer, went out to dinner with my awesome wife, and pretty much managed to forget the whole damn thing. Because, really, them's the breaks, and what the hell else can you do.
Moral #1 of the story is that I was pissed off when I sat down to play, and, in a backwards way, was almost looking to lose money, to validate some sort of larger feeling that the cosmos was jabbing a fork in my eye for some reason. I shouldn't have played a single hand of poker that day but I did.
Moral #2 is that there are games that are good for blowing off steam when you're pissed ($25 PL Omaha/$25 NL Omaha) and games that are bad for blowing off steam (any mid/high stakes shorthanded limit game). Pick the right game to blow off steam in.
Moral #3 is that some days just ain't your day. Don't let seemingly juicy conditions keep your ass glued to a seat when all you can do is bleed away chips. Yes, I know, I'm venturing into the land of superstition and luck here. Yes, I know, it's all variance and math and cold, hard logic. But some days you just get bent over. Over and over and over, no matter how good the game appears to be, no matter how well you control your amotions and keep bringing your best game. The only thing I know to do is to abort the mission, turn off the computer, and try again tomorrow.
Had a pretty decent weekend, though, all in all. Played in the WPBT satellite last night, got bounced out in 30 something place when my flopped two pair didn't improve against the flopped straight of the eventual winner. I played okay, weaked out in a few spots where I could have milked a few more chips out of hands, but all in all I played decently, just got no help when I needed it.
Let's rewind to Friday. On the bright side, I telecommute on Fridays. On the not bright side, I was still stewing over my little "coaching session" on my inappropriate non-verbal body language.
I had about thirty-seven odd jobs I needed/wanted to get done. None got done. Couldn't get in touch with roofers for an estimate on possible hail damage, landscape supply place called to let me know that they didn't have the stone I'd ordered, wouldn't be delivering it, as the quarry hadn't cut it yet. Printer suddenly, mysteriously decided to crap out, about one-third of the way through printing up 50 or so CDs worth of tray cards, covers, etc. for one of my side ventures. Swapped everything over to my wife's computer, except I didn't have the MediaFace software installed on there. Found a serial key, downloaded it, set it up, only to find that my source files were in the ancient 2.0 format and the newer version didn't want to read them. Finally found the old version, got everything set up, only to discover that I had 3up CD labels and it was formatted for 2 up. Which is easy enough to fix, except the crappy-ass software exploded every other time you try to edit something. It literally took me over an hour of rebooting, holding my breath, making edits, rebooting again, holding my breath, making more edits, until it was finally done.
So I thought hey, you know what's a good idea? Let's play some poker.
Bzzt.
Found a nice £5/£10 6 max table on InterPoker, sat down, fired up GameTime+, won a nice pot early and was feeling good. It became fairly apparent that this could prove to be an interesting table, as one of the players (Raiser Von Raisealot) blew off £300 heads-up on the river, re-raising with less than the mrtal nuts (way less, as he had a J high flush, with the A and Q potentially in play). Another guy (we'll call him Cally McCall) was playing every hand and never folding, not once, until the river, regardless of the action.
Fast forward an hour. I'm stuck nearly $1,000 at this point. Cally has literally played every single hand since I sat down. He has raised pre-flop 0% of the time. He's up $750. Raiser has played 85% of his hands and is up $1,250.
I manage to keep losing, despite dragging in a £350 pot at one point. Cally keeps winning. He literally plays any two cards and calls until the river, at which point he folds or calls. He never, ever raises. He even simply called with the obvious nut straight at one point.
I tell myself that I can't get up, as long as these two are in the game. So I play for three hours and finish stuck to the tune of -$3,289, which pretty effectively wiped out the bulk of profits I'd booked for April.
Which brings us to the point of this sob story. Well, sort of the point. I turned off the computer, went out to dinner with my awesome wife, and pretty much managed to forget the whole damn thing. Because, really, them's the breaks, and what the hell else can you do.
Moral #1 of the story is that I was pissed off when I sat down to play, and, in a backwards way, was almost looking to lose money, to validate some sort of larger feeling that the cosmos was jabbing a fork in my eye for some reason. I shouldn't have played a single hand of poker that day but I did.
Moral #2 is that there are games that are good for blowing off steam when you're pissed ($25 PL Omaha/$25 NL Omaha) and games that are bad for blowing off steam (any mid/high stakes shorthanded limit game). Pick the right game to blow off steam in.
Moral #3 is that some days just ain't your day. Don't let seemingly juicy conditions keep your ass glued to a seat when all you can do is bleed away chips. Yes, I know, I'm venturing into the land of superstition and luck here. Yes, I know, it's all variance and math and cold, hard logic. But some days you just get bent over. Over and over and over, no matter how good the game appears to be, no matter how well you control your amotions and keep bringing your best game. The only thing I know to do is to abort the mission, turn off the computer, and try again tomorrow.
Had a pretty decent weekend, though, all in all. Played in the WPBT satellite last night, got bounced out in 30 something place when my flopped two pair didn't improve against the flopped straight of the eventual winner. I played okay, weaked out in a few spots where I could have milked a few more chips out of hands, but all in all I played decently, just got no help when I needed it.
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