Steve any chance of a short youtube vid of your tennis game? Could be fun.
Hope you're well bud.
Ha, my game in an omnishambles at the moment - have barely played since October and it seems everything my coach taught me has melted away. Planning on doing a youtube vid within the next month or so playing 50/100NL. That could (won't) be fun.
Humdrum update. I've been finding poker a little, well, humdrum lately and have barely played. When I have played, it's felt like a bit of a slog. I've earned fewer than 500 points two weeks running. Have I had enough of it? Has playing 300-plus days a year for the last five or six years finally taken its toll? Is this poker burnout? Hopefully not.
Any ideas, readers, for getting a bit of enthusiasm back? I keep finding myself drifting off during sessions and auto-piloting/cutting sessions off early. Have been deliberately putting myself in spots to see if I can wrestle my way out of them but it all feels a bit forced and gruelling. It's reached the stage where I've been casting glances at the four card game, thinking "Perhaps I should learn that..."
Take a break and come back to it when your in the mood to play again. Do something new for a bit and you will likely find your way back. Don't think these things can be forced and could lead to even less interest and bad decisions. It's meant to be a fun past-time.
Personally have went months without playing in the past and got back to it. Learning a new game can be fun too. Enjoyment > Goals, as long as you are getting closer to where you want to be then its all good.
Humdrum update. I've been finding poker a little, well, humdrum lately and have barely played. When I have played, it's felt like a bit of a slog. I've earned fewer than 500 points two weeks running. Have I had enough of it? Has playing 300-plus days a year for the last five or six years finally taken its toll? Is this poker burnout? Hopefully not.
Any ideas, readers, for getting a bit of enthusiasm back? I keep finding myself drifting off during sessions and auto-piloting/cutting sessions off early. Have been deliberately putting myself in spots to see if I can wrestle my way out of them but it all feels a bit forced and gruelling. It's reached the stage where I've been casting glances at the four card game, thinking "Perhaps I should learn that..."
Take a break and come back to it when your in the mood to play again. Do something new for a bit and you will likely find your way back. Don't think these things can be forced and could lead to even less interest and bad decisions. It's meant to be a fun past-time.
Personally have went months without playing in the past and got back to it. Learning a new game can be fun too. Enjoyment > Goals, as long as you are getting closer to where you want to be then its all good.
Best of luck!
Three migraines over the weekend have led to something of an enforced break. Hopefully I'll come back stronger, thanks for the message.
Steve any chance of a short youtube vid of your tennis game? Could be fun.
Hope you're well bud.
Ha, my game in an omnishambles at the moment - have barely played since October and it seems everything my coach taught me has melted away. Planning on doing a youtube vid within the next month or so playing 50/100NL. That could (won't) be fun.
Humdrum update. I've been finding poker a little, well, humdrum lately and have barely played. When I have played, it's felt like a bit of a slog. I've earned fewer than 500 points two weeks running. Have I had enough of it? Has playing 300-plus days a year for the last five or six years finally taken its toll? Is this poker burnout? Hopefully not.
Any ideas, readers, for getting a bit of enthusiasm back? I keep finding myself drifting off during sessions and auto-piloting/cutting sessions off early. Have been deliberately putting myself in spots to see if I can wrestle my way out of them but it all feels a bit forced and gruelling. It's reached the stage where I've been casting glances at the four card game, thinking "Perhaps I should learn that..."
Take a break and come back to it when your in the mood to play again. Do something new for a bit and you will likely find your way back. Don't think these things can be forced and could lead to even less interest and bad decisions. It's meant to be a fun past-time.
Personally have went months without playing in the past and got back to it. Learning a new game can be fun too. Enjoyment > Goals, as long as you are getting closer to where you want to be then its all good.
Best of luck!
Three migraines over the weekend have led to something of an enforced break. Hopefully I'll come back stronger, thanks for the message.
Ugh, thoroughly dreadful things, you have my sympathy.
Hope they soon clear up.
Here's a weird thing with migraines - 90% of the time they affected me ONLY on Saturdays or Sundays. It was related to relaxing after a period of stress during the week. (Work-related stress, that was when I had a proper job).
Some 40 or so years ago, when I suffered migraines weekly, I was having my hair cut in the local barbers one day, and he was a bit of a character.
He told me to cure a migraine, hold a pencil (the blunt end) tightly to the side of the forehead for 20 minutes & the migraine goes away.
I mean, it was utter tosh, quite apart from looking well silly, & I told him so.
So he said, "well, the only other alternative is to knock one out".
I kid you not.
And here's the thing - any activity which accelerates the bloodstream through the veins DOES help. (In a migraine, the veins dilate).
Not sure I was up for that, to be honest. And as for, you know, doing it properly, who fancies humpy pumpy when you have a blinding headache? It's usually an excuse NOT to partake.
Some 40 or so years ago, when I suffered migraines weekly, I was having my hair cut in the local barbers one day, and he was a bit of a character.
He told me to cure a migraine, hold a pencil (the blunt end) tightly to the side of the forehead for 20 minutes & the migraine goes away.
I mean, it was utter tosh, quite apart from looking well silly, & I told him so.
So he said, "well, the only other alternative is to knock one out".
I kid you not.
And here's the thing - any activity which accelerates the bloodstream through the veins DOES help. (In a migraine, the veins dilate).
Not sure I was up for that, to be honest. And as for, you know, doing it properly, who fancies humpy pumpy when you have a blinding headache? It's usually an excuse NOT to partake.
I shall leave you to muse on that.
GWS mate, you are much missed by many here.
The "knocking one out" remedy was suggested to me the other day by a (female) friend who also gets migraines. The thing is, both the causes and cures can be so multifarious you can find yourself just prodding around in the dark trying to sort them out. I've heard lots of positive things about feverfew and, although sceptical, am going to give them a whirl for a month or so.
Thanks for your kind words - hoping to get the diary somewhat back on track soon, as there needs to be a grand finale in June. Peace out.
Some 40 or so years ago, when I suffered migraines weekly, I was having my hair cut in the local barbers one day, and he was a bit of a character.
He told me to cure a migraine, hold a pencil (the blunt end) tightly to the side of the forehead for 20 minutes & the migraine goes away.
I mean, it was utter tosh, quite apart from looking well silly, & I told him so.
So he said, "well, the only other alternative is to knock one out".
I kid you not.
And here's the thing - any activity which accelerates the bloodstream through the veins DOES help. (In a migraine, the veins dilate).
Not sure I was up for that, to be honest. And as for, you know, doing it properly, who fancies humpy pumpy when you have a blinding headache? It's usually an excuse NOT to partake.
I shall leave you to muse on that.
GWS mate, you are much missed by many here.
The "knocking one out" remedy was suggested to me the other day by a (female) friend who also gets migraines. The thing is, both the causes and cures can be so multifarious you can find yourself just prodding around in the dark trying to sort them out. I've heard lots of positive things about feverfew and, although sceptical, am going to give them a whirl for a month or so.
Thanks for your kind words - hoping to get the diary somewhat back on track soon, as there needs to be a grand finale in June. Peace out.
I did ask a quack about it & it IS true, though I used a slightly less direct turn of phrase, obv.
However, as you say, causes & cures are person specific & we are all different.
It's a horrible affliction, though so are so many other things. Dementia & the like is my biggest fear. I'll know I've been afflicted when I strat speeling baldy.
You sound really down. We miss you here right now, too, we badly need some positive input to counteract the usual Freeroll negativity.
Banging stuff, thanks Teacakes. I'm down, but not too down, perhaps just a bit of life/poker ennui that I reckon I can swim and tennis (and maybe poker) my way out of. I'm temporarily off the booze, too, and it's the longest I haven't had a drink in decades (since last Sunday, crushing it) so there may be a bit of detoxing/neurological righting going on. Or something. Who knows. Happy weekending.
On Friday, I sent an email to Tommy "Elements of Poker" Angelo. It went like this:
Hello Tommy,
Thought this might be of (at least some) interest. I'm collating a bunch of previously published poker columns for a book and came across this (you may want to skip to the last couple of paragraphs, unless you like reading about Gene Hackman beating people up and/or suckouts). If you noticed a spike in sales mid-late 2012, it was probably me. Probably.
All the best, keep up the fine work.
Steve
And this was the column I sent (I'd only been playing poker a few months, so please excuse any "strat" talk):
Note 29. On having a computer that doesn’t break.
I’m sitting in a softly lit room, drinking wine and playing poker and half keeping an eye on the television where Gene Hackman is beating the **** out of someone. I’m very happy. Gene Hackman’s very happy. The bloke who he’s beating the **** out of isn’t very happy. There are two tournaments on the go and I’m above average stacked in both as we approach the bubble.
In one, I call from the big blind with K-3 against an early position min-raiser. The flop saunters down K-10-5 rainbow. With the blinds at 600/1200, I lead out with 3,000. Player X calls. The turn is a rag that I don’t remember and didn’t note. I stick in 6,000. Player X, sinisterly, calls again. The river is a malignant-looking ace. I check. My opponent, who may also have a television humming away in the background and is perhaps inspired by Gene Hackman beating the **** out of someone, tries to beat the **** out of me by shoving all-in. But the bet is too big and flappy. Perhaps, though, he wants me to think it’s too big and flappy and call. But it really is too big and flappy and, Hackman-like, I refuse to be pushed around and so do indeed call and am relieved to see queen-ten.
In the other tournament good stuff is happening too. Then bad stuff starts happening. First, I’m dealt pocket aces on one table and kings on the other. This in itself doesn’t qualify as bad stuff. But this does: Someone goes all-in against my aces and before I get the chance to act my computer freezes. I can’t do anything. All I can do is sit and wait for it to right itself. That, and swear at it and punch it and at one point glare at it until it starts to work again, by which point the opportunities on both tables have swanned past.
Great, isn’t it? You feel my pain, don’t you? You shouldn’t, it’s my own fault. Last summer I went to Paris to write a book (this was also my own fault) and whilst there bought a plug adapter from a newsagents. “NOT FOR LAPTOP USE!” blurted the packaging. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, it’ll be fine,” I mumbled back and over the following weeks and months my computer kept crashing until it reached a stage where it wouldn’t work at all. I eventually took it in to be fixed but the man didn’t fix it – despite him saying he’d fixed it – he only semi-fixed it. So for some time now I’ve been playing online poker with a computer that crashes intermittently. This has not been good for my nerves, mind, soul, digestion, and, most importantly, my attempts to become a poker tour-de-force.
So I’m going to get my computer fixed by someone who can go beyond semi-fixing computers and actually fix them. In the meantime, you’re probably dying to know what happened in those two tournaments. In one, I went out eleventh after shoving my pair of kings into the big stack, who called with a ridiculous pair of sixes that became less (and more) ridiculous when another six popped up on the board. In the other, I reached the final table and was up to second after my ace-king held against ace-ten and ended up finishing fourth after a 20-minute computer breakdown.
Was I annoyed? Yes. Was I as annoyed as I would have been a month ago? No - in fact, very little about playing poker phases me since reading Tommy Angelo’s splendid Elements of Poker. I suggest you give it a whirl. He talks a lot about breathing in there. He also says things like: “At poker, resistance is not only futile and painful, but also expensive. If only we could be like water. When water moves, it follows the path of least resistance. Water would be good at poker.”
If I could give you one piece of advice (via Tommy Angelo) this week, it would be that: Try to be more like water when playing poker. That, and try and play with a reliable computer.
This morning I got an email back from Tommy that began, "I'm glad you wrote. We have so much to talk about," and he then went on to offer me free coaching. Hopefully Tommy doesn't think this free coaching is going to lead to paid-for coaching. If he does think that, I'm just going to have to point him in the direction of my bank balance.
You feeling any better - you know, those migraines?
Yo, thanks for the welcome back. As for the migraines, I knocked out all booze and caffeine for a couple of weeks and started taking Feverfew and haven't had a migraine since. I started to get the beginnings of one a week or so ago but it just...evaporated. Am delighted. I celebrated on Saturday by getting drunk.
Comments
Hope you're well bud.
Personally have went months without playing in the past and got back to it. Learning a new game can be fun too. Enjoyment > Goals, as long as you are getting closer to where you want to be then its all good.
Best of luck!
It will be fun - can't wait for this.
(Not a*s*d about the tennis)
Hope they soon clear up.
Here's a weird thing with migraines - 90% of the time they affected me ONLY on Saturdays or Sundays. It was related to relaxing after a period of stress during the week. (Work-related stress, that was when I had a proper job).
A quick migraine anecdote for you @SR23
Some 40 or so years ago, when I suffered migraines weekly, I was having my hair cut in the local barbers one day, and he was a bit of a character.
He told me to cure a migraine, hold a pencil (the blunt end) tightly to the side of the forehead for 20 minutes & the migraine goes away.
I mean, it was utter tosh, quite apart from looking well silly, & I told him so.
So he said, "well, the only other alternative is to knock one out".
I kid you not.
And here's the thing - any activity which accelerates the bloodstream through the veins DOES help. (In a migraine, the veins dilate).
Not sure I was up for that, to be honest. And as for, you know, doing it properly, who fancies humpy pumpy when you have a blinding headache? It's usually an excuse NOT to partake.
I shall leave you to muse on that.
GWS mate, you are much missed by many here.
Thanks for your kind words - hoping to get the diary somewhat back on track soon, as there needs to be a grand finale in June. Peace out.
However, as you say, causes & cures are person specific & we are all different.
It's a horrible affliction, though so are so many other things. Dementia & the like is my biggest fear. I'll know I've been afflicted when I strat speeling baldy.
You sound really down. We miss you here right now, too, we badly need some positive input to counteract the usual Freeroll negativity.
GWS mate.
On Friday, I sent an email to Tommy "Elements of Poker" Angelo. It went like this:
Hello Tommy,
Thought this might be of (at least some) interest. I'm collating a bunch of previously published poker columns for a book and came across this (you may want to skip to the last couple of paragraphs, unless you like reading about Gene Hackman beating people up and/or suckouts). If you noticed a spike in sales mid-late 2012, it was probably me. Probably.
All the best, keep up the fine work.
Steve
And this was the column I sent (I'd only been playing poker a few months, so please excuse any "strat" talk):
Note 29. On having a computer that doesn’t break.
I’m sitting in a softly lit room, drinking wine and playing poker and half keeping an eye on the television where Gene Hackman is beating the **** out of someone. I’m very happy. Gene Hackman’s very happy. The bloke who he’s beating the **** out of isn’t very happy. There are two tournaments on the go and I’m above average stacked in both as we approach the bubble.
In one, I call from the big blind with K-3 against an early position min-raiser. The flop saunters down K-10-5 rainbow. With the blinds at 600/1200, I lead out with 3,000. Player X calls. The turn is a rag that I don’t remember and didn’t note. I stick in 6,000. Player X, sinisterly, calls again. The river is a malignant-looking ace. I check. My opponent, who may also have a television humming away in the background and is perhaps inspired by Gene Hackman beating the **** out of someone, tries to beat the **** out of me by shoving all-in. But the bet is too big and flappy. Perhaps, though, he wants me to think it’s too big and flappy and call. But it really is too big and flappy and, Hackman-like, I refuse to be pushed around and so do indeed call and am relieved to see queen-ten.
In the other tournament good stuff is happening too. Then bad stuff starts happening. First, I’m dealt pocket aces on one table and kings on the other. This in itself doesn’t qualify as bad stuff. But this does: Someone goes all-in against my aces and before I get the chance to act my computer freezes. I can’t do anything. All I can do is sit and wait for it to right itself. That, and swear at it and punch it and at one point glare at it until it starts to work again, by which point the opportunities on both tables have swanned past.
Great, isn’t it? You feel my pain, don’t you? You shouldn’t, it’s my own fault. Last summer I went to Paris to write a book (this was also my own fault) and whilst there bought a plug adapter from a newsagents. “NOT FOR LAPTOP USE!” blurted the packaging. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, it’ll be fine,” I mumbled back and over the following weeks and months my computer kept crashing until it reached a stage where it wouldn’t work at all. I eventually took it in to be fixed but the man didn’t fix it – despite him saying he’d fixed it – he only semi-fixed it. So for some time now I’ve been playing online poker with a computer that crashes intermittently. This has not been good for my nerves, mind, soul, digestion, and, most importantly, my attempts to become a poker tour-de-force.
So I’m going to get my computer fixed by someone who can go beyond semi-fixing computers and actually fix them. In the meantime, you’re probably dying to know what happened in those two tournaments. In one, I went out eleventh after shoving my pair of kings into the big stack, who called with a ridiculous pair of sixes that became less (and more) ridiculous when another six popped up on the board. In the other, I reached the final table and was up to second after my ace-king held against ace-ten and ended up finishing fourth after a 20-minute computer breakdown.
Was I annoyed? Yes. Was I as annoyed as I would have been a month ago? No - in fact, very little about playing poker phases me since reading Tommy Angelo’s splendid Elements of Poker. I suggest you give it a whirl. He talks a lot about breathing in there. He also says things like: “At poker, resistance is not only futile and painful, but also expensive. If only we could be like water. When water moves, it follows the path of least resistance. Water would be good at poker.”
If I could give you one piece of advice (via Tommy Angelo) this week, it would be that: Try to be more like water when playing poker. That, and try and play with a reliable computer.
This morning I got an email back from Tommy that began, "I'm glad you wrote. We have so much to talk about," and he then went on to offer me free coaching. Hopefully Tommy doesn't think this free coaching is going to lead to paid-for coaching. If he does think that, I'm just going to have to point him in the direction of my bank balance.
Yay, welcome back Cold Shower Bloke.
You feeling any better - you know, those migraines?
I miss poker a la 2012.