Managed to carve my bankroll almost in half in less than an hour earlier. Remember getting it in w/QQ v AK and thinking, "If I lose this one I'm going to snap-quit my diary, then immediately walk to the nearest monastery and spend the rest of my life chanting and growing vegetables."
Actually, that sounds idyllic - might do it anyway despite winning that flip.
Starting roll: £150 Roll: £114
That does sound tempting, I'll come with. Is it as easy as rocking up to the door and being welcomed in, though, or would it actually involve an exhaustive online application process followed by a lengthy in-house trial period?
You tried to chat to me once or twice (or maybe just said hello) at the tables a little while ago. I wasn't being ignorant. I have been self excluded from table chat for some time now (I rang customer services and asked for them to remove my table chat privileges, not entirely sure why, it was all a bit heat of the moment).
It's slightly embarrassing, I suppose, but it is what it is. Just thought I'd let you know in case we cross pots in the future and I 'ignore' you again.
You wait ages for a post from @MynaFrett and then three come along at once.
I did indeed pop up and say hi a few times. Think once I wrote something like, "hey mf! glgl" and then thought, "Is mf ignoring me because they think I called them a mf? Do the whole table think I'm calling them motherfuc*ers?"
Anyway, happy that you've cleared it up. I've thought about locking myself out of chat, not least because I've missed a few hands/spots recently talking about football, or croissants or peeling flops w/3rd pr or whatever and it's counterproductive. That, and sometimes I get fed up with people telling me to go and die in a grease fire or in a car accident or of cancer etc etc. That said, the benefits of exchanging pleasantries with people I do/don't know are just about swinging it at the moment.
Would be interested in why you self excluded but perhaps you (understandably) don't want to say.
As for a monasteries, I have no idea. Show your monkness, somehow? Maybe they would just take pity on me. Where I used to live in Spain there was a monastery up the road where you could stay as a tourist. Not sure if you could get involved in the vegetable growing/chanting though.
I do genuinely find myself hankering after a much simpler, less computer-based life, more vegetable-growing-based, more monastic life. Let's see, shall we.
There was a manager at my place. Horrible woman. She quit work and gave up all her worldly goods and went to live in a monastery She was replaced by a South African chap. He wasn’t horrible but he was rubbish. He didn’t give up his job to go and live in a monastery.
I can understand what you are going through with the depression, anxiety and tinnitus as I suffer with them myself. Take care and run well.
Mark
Thanks Mark, you take care (and run golden) too. Tinnitus is the pits, right? Depression and anxiety are no cakewalk either but I have more success (I think) in controlling aspects of them after a decades long rope-a-dope. Tinnitus causes (for me at least) are a lot more in the shadows and difficult to identify/control and after having a near-constant two months of it I literally want to punch my own head off. Probably quite hard to do that though and -ev.
I've just spent the last 15 minutes between writing that bit up there and this bit down here, reading about monastic brewing. Now know loads more than I did when I woke up so, you know, thanks.
There was a manager at my place. Horrible woman. She quit work and gave up all her worldly goods and went to live in a monastery She was replaced by a South African chap. He wasn’t horrible but he was rubbish. He didn’t give up his job to go and live in a monastery.
Is this a parable? It certainly feels like a parable. Is it a parable? I'm going to think about it for a while.
On previous challenges I've been lucky enough - and maybe even good enough - to double, triple, quadruple, or whatever-the-word-for-10X-is my roll in the first week or two. Not this time. After winning three and a bit buy-ins in the last half an hour, I've managed to just about squeak it over the £200 line. Didn't help that earlier in the week I chopped my roll in half. Playing badly at other times hasn't helped either. Nor has running bad. And a lack of volume. Must do better.
I've been doing a bit better at life this last week, though, running a bit better over there. Swimming in the sea every day this week has helped and while it may not be a panacea, I can already feel the benefits nudging into other areas of my life and feel tougher, healthier, more focused and more galvanised than I have done for a while. Maybe even a little happier, too.
As for getting laid IT'S ILLEGAL IF YOU'RE SINGLE so I don't have to worry about that for a bit. Good old laws.
1. tennis, volleyball. a softly hit ball that falls just over the net. 2. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Southeast Asian, especially a Vietnamese.
Glad to hear you're running better in the game of life of late and that the run bad in the game of poker hasn't prevented you from moving the roll in the right direction.
Like you, I had no idea that term had insulting connotations. Have you come across any other words which get rejected by the filter for no reason you can fathom? (Has anyone else?). When telling someone which football team I support one day I discovered that F.o.r.e.s.t is a banned word... anyone know why that would be? Only thing I could think of was that the person compiling and inputting the list of banned words (is that how it works?) might be a Derby County fan...
Hang on, I just did a little research and found this;
It was a name, 'Forrest', first with an ancient Greek translation of "Large ****." When looking for a name for a "large woody area," the English adapted what they already knew had "large wood," to the slightly altered spelling, 'forest.' Basically, Forrest is a name for a person with a huge ****. - "Wow, that guy was hung like a Forrest!"
Who knew? Case closed.
You asked about my self imposed chat ban and I have just explained that (sort of) on another thread I started yesterday (it's worthless, don't bother looking) so I will lift it from there and place it here for you.
The short version is that I'm emotional and not very good at dealing with abuse at the tables (two big 'X's on the poker players requisite skill sheet right off the bat for me). I could just ignore or mute the offenders (like most normal people probably do) but I can't (couldn't) trust myself not to answer back and get embroiled in a debate which would take precedence over all else and see me timing out on tables, finding myself seeing flops with no idea whether I had been the pre-flop aggressor and generally just making bad poker decisions because I had lost focus.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening and good luck next week (in all the games).
The roll's nudged up ever-so-slightly but have hardly played in the last week or so. Think I have fewer than 50 poker points so far this week and it's almost certainly Thursday. I say 'almost certainly' because days seem to have taken on this hazy, liquid-like quality where I barely know what's going on.
It's the tinnitus, see. I've had it on and off since around (I think) 2011 and while it's sometimes bearable, sometimes almost not there, there are times where it just kind of gangs up on you and goes for the throat. Now's one of those times.
For me, I have massive issues getting to sleep with it and my sleep pattern gets severely compromised. When sleep deprived I get though the days with (too much) adrenaline and then the adrenaline/anxiety gangs up on me at night so I can't get to sleep - even though exhausted - and the tinnitus goes into overdrive and my mental health frays that bit more and on and on and on until I become a squawking, cannoning mess.
The thing is, there are times when I don't mind being a squawking, cannoning mess but the tinnitus makes literally everything unpleasant. I could be having a threesome whilst simultaneously hoofing lines, turning a gutshot after 3-betting the flop, and with series two of the Sopranos on in the background and not get a moment's pleasure if my tinnitus was at its worst. Fun times.
So, yeah, not really been in the mood to play poker. Some good things have happened though - it's not all bad around here. Firstly, I've chanced upon the Alexander Technique and have just started practising that for my posture/general health - it's very, very early days but does seem to help with some of the issues I've been having. My neck, back, shoulders are chock-full of tension and having some of that tension released has been a mini-joy.
Secondly, I think I may have discovered what I want to do with the next few years of my life - like, a wholescale change. Thinking about what I'd like to do has made me happier than I could have imagined. More on that next time, perhaps. In the meantime, have any readers completely changed their career in the mid thirties/forties (or mid-anythings)? How did it work out for you? I'd truly love to know.
Thirdly, it looks like it's not illegal to sleep with strangers anymore. To be honest, it was a great excuse for not getting laid but the pressure's back on. Might have to lobby my MP with a "are you sure it's right to be relaxing this rule?" type letter.
OOh, a couple of hands to follow in a sec. Don't know how to grab from HH while writing a post. Also, does anyone know - @mumsie, perhaps - a quicker way to censor names in HH's that doesn't involve going through a mountain of text removing names?
- thanks very much for the comment @MynaFrett - that is precisely my experience w/chatboxing and why I'm tempted to turn it off. Good luck to you, too.
Hand 1. Villain is (perhaps) a new reg and seems nice and solid - possibly even a rock - who's not opening many hands and has only shown down value in the small amount of time I've seen them. They probs know I flat a lot IP w/a wide range but can also 3b any pair, suited connectors/two-three gappers, AXs, ATo+ and a few other things. Actually, I can't think of other things I 3b.
Think my main question is about the river - we have to go for value, right? Anyone do too much different on the flop/turn (looking back, turn seems not right but v this player ... idk). Anyone just checking back river (!)?
How did you get Tinnitus Steve? Must be horrendous. Is there any kind of medication or hearing aid that can take the edge off or is it something you just have to try and live with?
How did you get Tinnitus Steve? Must be horrendous. Is there any kind of medication or hearing aid that can take the edge off or is it something you just have to try and live with?
Great question(s), thanks Ryan.
First, it is - or certainly can be - pretty horrendous. When it first started, it seemed to come from outside of my head/space - I remember trying to get to sleep early one morning thinking it was the boiler or an outside generator or something making this low, humming sound. It was actually almost soothing. Well, maybe not quite soothing but it wasn't particularly bothersome and I even managed to write about it with some knockabout jocularity, here:
Since then it's steadily worsened and has gone from a faint low humming-type sound to an all-encompassing, loud humming-type sound on one side and a high pitched squeal in the other.
As for hearing aids/med/other it all gets a bit cloudy. I do listen to white noise a lot and always have the radio or music on to drown it out. I've been recently taking lots of (prescribed) diazepam (the gold standard 10mg ones), meditating, yoga-ing, exercising and some other-ing to try and help with the (possible) underlying causes but nothing is sticking. Diazepam is pretty awesome in the short term in getting rid of anxiety but I'm spinning a lot of plates at the moment and don't want to deal with a benzo addiction on top of lots of other things.
There are various avenues that I have and am going to explore but like with a lot of these neurological conditions, I feel like I'm poking around in the dark somewhat. It could be too much stress, it could be too little. It could unconnected to anything and random. It could be from going to raves and dancing by speakers too much as a teenager. It could, as mentioned above, be related to posture. A couple of years ago I had three weeks of Victorianing: cold water bathing in October, no social media, a Victorian diet, mobile phone switched off, no sugar or caffeine etc etc etc and the tinnitus evaporated. I tried the same techniques for a few weeks a year or so later and the tinnitus was as bad as ever.
I feel a bit like pigeon three in that experiment. Pigeon one was given grain to eat when it pecked at a lever. Pigeon two was given grain to eat every second time it pecked at a lever. Pigeon three was assigned grain completely randomly, whether it pecked at the lever once, twice, eight times, twenty times and so on. They then stopped any grain being available to pigeon three. The pigeon continued to peck away at the lever and out of frustration ended up pecking itself to death.
Whoah, that was a bit bleak. And I've really blathered on. I'm hoping this posture stuff and brighter future stuff will work alongside some buddhist-style "Oh, okay, that's just my tinnitus" thinking but we shall see. For the time being it's maddening - which is precisely the right word for it - but just about bearable.
Comments
That does sound tempting, I'll come with. Is it as easy as rocking up to the door and being welcomed in, though, or would it actually involve an exhaustive online application process followed by a lengthy in-house trial period?
All the best.
You tried to chat to me once or twice (or maybe just said hello) at the tables a little while ago. I wasn't being ignorant. I have been self excluded from table chat for some time now (I rang customer services and asked for them to remove my table chat privileges, not entirely sure why, it was all a bit heat of the moment).
It's slightly embarrassing, I suppose, but it is what it is. Just thought I'd let you know in case we cross pots in the future and I 'ignore' you again.
glgl
I did indeed pop up and say hi a few times. Think once I wrote something like, "hey mf! glgl" and then thought, "Is mf ignoring me because they think I called them a mf? Do the whole table think I'm calling them motherfuc*ers?"
Anyway, happy that you've cleared it up. I've thought about locking myself out of chat, not least because I've missed a few hands/spots recently talking about football, or croissants or peeling flops w/3rd pr or whatever and it's counterproductive. That, and sometimes I get fed up with people telling me to go and die in a grease fire or in a car accident or of cancer etc etc. That said, the benefits of exchanging pleasantries with people I do/don't know are just about swinging it at the moment.
Would be interested in why you self excluded but perhaps you (understandably) don't want to say.
As for a monasteries, I have no idea. Show your monkness, somehow? Maybe they would just take pity on me. Where I used to live in Spain there was a monastery up the road where you could stay as a tourist. Not sure if you could get involved in the vegetable growing/chanting though.
I do genuinely find myself hankering after a much simpler, less computer-based life, more vegetable-growing-based, more monastic life. Let's see, shall we.
I can understand what you are going through with the depression, anxiety and tinnitus as I suffer with them myself. Take care and run well.
Mark
She quit work and gave up all her worldly goods and went to live in a monastery
She was replaced by a South African chap. He wasn’t horrible but he was rubbish. He didn’t give up his job to go and live in a monastery.
I've just spent the last 15 minutes between writing that bit up there and this bit down here, reading about monastic brewing. Now know loads more than I did when I woke up so, you know, thanks.
On previous challenges I've been lucky enough - and maybe even good enough - to double, triple, quadruple, or whatever-the-word-for-10X-is my roll in the first week or two. Not this time. After winning three and a bit buy-ins in the last half an hour, I've managed to just about squeak it over the £200 line. Didn't help that earlier in the week I chopped my roll in half. Playing badly at other times hasn't helped either. Nor has running bad. And a lack of volume. Must do better.
I've been doing a bit better at life this last week, though, running a bit better over there. Swimming in the sea every day this week has helped and while it may not be a panacea, I can already feel the benefits nudging into other areas of my life and feel tougher, healthier, more focused and more galvanised than I have done for a while. Maybe even a little happier, too.
As for getting laid IT'S ILLEGAL IF YOU'RE SINGLE so I don't have to worry about that for a bit. Good old laws.
Happy weekending all, peace out.
Starting roll: £150
Roll: £203
2. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Southeast Asian, especially a Vietnamese.
I genuinely had no idea. Like, zero.
Glad to hear you're running better in the game of life of late and that the run bad in the game of poker hasn't prevented you from moving the roll in the right direction.
Like you, I had no idea that term had insulting connotations. Have you come across any other words which get rejected by the filter for no reason you can fathom? (Has anyone else?). When telling someone which football team I support one day I discovered that F.o.r.e.s.t is a banned word... anyone know why that would be? Only thing I could think of was that the person compiling and inputting the list of banned words (is that how it works?) might be a Derby County fan...
Hang on, I just did a little research and found this;
It was a name, 'Forrest', first with an ancient Greek translation of "Large ****." When looking for a name for a "large woody area," the English adapted what they already knew had "large wood," to the slightly altered spelling, 'forest.' Basically, Forrest is a name for a person with a huge ****. - "Wow, that guy was hung like a Forrest!"
You asked about my self imposed chat ban and I have just explained that (sort of) on another thread I started yesterday (it's worthless, don't bother looking) so I will lift it from there and place it here for you.
The short version is that I'm emotional and not very good at dealing with abuse at the tables (two big 'X's on the poker players requisite skill sheet right off the bat for me). I could just ignore or mute the offenders (like most normal people probably do) but I can't (couldn't) trust myself not to answer back and get embroiled in a debate which would take precedence over all else and see me timing out on tables, finding myself seeing flops with no idea whether I had been the pre-flop aggressor and generally just making bad poker decisions because I had lost focus.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening and good luck next week (in all the games).
It's the tinnitus, see. I've had it on and off since around (I think) 2011 and while it's sometimes bearable, sometimes almost not there, there are times where it just kind of gangs up on you and goes for the throat. Now's one of those times.
For me, I have massive issues getting to sleep with it and my sleep pattern gets severely compromised. When sleep deprived I get though the days with (too much) adrenaline and then the adrenaline/anxiety gangs up on me at night so I can't get to sleep - even though exhausted - and the tinnitus goes into overdrive and my mental health frays that bit more and on and on and on until I become a squawking, cannoning mess.
The thing is, there are times when I don't mind being a squawking, cannoning mess but the tinnitus makes literally everything unpleasant. I could be having a threesome whilst simultaneously hoofing lines, turning a gutshot after 3-betting the flop, and with series two of the Sopranos on in the background and not get a moment's pleasure if my tinnitus was at its worst. Fun times.
So, yeah, not really been in the mood to play poker. Some good things have happened though - it's not all bad around here. Firstly, I've chanced upon the Alexander Technique and have just started practising that for my posture/general health - it's very, very early days but does seem to help with some of the issues I've been having. My neck, back, shoulders are chock-full of tension and having some of that tension released has been a mini-joy.
Secondly, I think I may have discovered what I want to do with the next few years of my life - like, a wholescale change. Thinking about what I'd like to do has made me happier than I could have imagined. More on that next time, perhaps. In the meantime, have any readers completely changed their career in the mid thirties/forties (or mid-anythings)? How did it work out for you? I'd truly love to know.
Thirdly, it looks like it's not illegal to sleep with strangers anymore. To be honest, it was a great excuse for not getting laid but the pressure's back on. Might have to lobby my MP with a "are you sure it's right to be relaxing this rule?" type letter.
OOh, a couple of hands to follow in a sec. Don't know how to grab from HH while writing a post. Also, does anyone know - @mumsie, perhaps - a quicker way to censor names in HH's that doesn't involve going through a mountain of text removing names?
- thanks very much for the comment @MynaFrett - that is precisely my experience w/chatboxing and why I'm tempted to turn it off. Good luck to you, too.
Opening roll: £150
Roll: £212
Think my main question is about the river - we have to go for value, right? Anyone do too much different on the flop/turn (looking back, turn seems not right but v this player ... idk). Anyone just checking back river (!)?
First, it is - or certainly can be - pretty horrendous. When it first started, it seemed to come from outside of my head/space - I remember trying to get to sleep early one morning thinking it was the boiler or an outside generator or something making this low, humming sound. It was actually almost soothing. Well, maybe not quite soothing but it wasn't particularly bothersome and I even managed to write about it with some knockabout jocularity, here:
https://pitchingtheworld.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/bones-vs-slugs/
Since then it's steadily worsened and has gone from a faint low humming-type sound to an all-encompassing, loud humming-type sound on one side and a high pitched squeal in the other.
As for hearing aids/med/other it all gets a bit cloudy. I do listen to white noise a lot and always have the radio or music on to drown it out. I've been recently taking lots of (prescribed) diazepam (the gold standard 10mg ones), meditating, yoga-ing, exercising and some other-ing to try and help with the (possible) underlying causes but nothing is sticking. Diazepam is pretty awesome in the short term in getting rid of anxiety but I'm spinning a lot of plates at the moment and don't want to deal with a benzo addiction on top of lots of other things.
There are various avenues that I have and am going to explore but like with a lot of these neurological conditions, I feel like I'm poking around in the dark somewhat. It could be too much stress, it could be too little. It could unconnected to anything and random. It could be from going to raves and dancing by speakers too much as a teenager. It could, as mentioned above, be related to posture. A couple of years ago I had three weeks of Victorianing: cold water bathing in October, no social media, a Victorian diet, mobile phone switched off, no sugar or caffeine etc etc etc and the tinnitus evaporated. I tried the same techniques for a few weeks a year or so later and the tinnitus was as bad as ever.
I feel a bit like pigeon three in that experiment. Pigeon one was given grain to eat when it pecked at a lever. Pigeon two was given grain to eat every second time it pecked at a lever. Pigeon three was assigned grain completely randomly, whether it pecked at the lever once, twice, eight times, twenty times and so on. They then stopped any grain being available to pigeon three. The pigeon continued to peck away at the lever and out of frustration ended up pecking itself to death.
Whoah, that was a bit bleak. And I've really blathered on. I'm hoping this posture stuff and brighter future stuff will work alongside some buddhist-style "Oh, okay, that's just my tinnitus" thinking but we shall see. For the time being it's maddening - which is precisely the right word for it - but just about bearable.
Good grief. That Bones v Slugs is a truly splendid read.
You really should write for a living.