shitfest

i have to write a bunch of reports for this course that i am on. the sort of business management course that rewards retards and those capable of spouting endless amounts of verbal diarrhoea till they have broken the will of everyone around them.

i only survived these courses by finding one other person there who had a soul. for example, it was set in the outskirts of edinburgh. having never been before i thought it would be good to actually go to edinburgh in the evenings. only this one other person also had this thought process. the remainder spent the entire 5 days cooped up in the hotel.

the marketing/business speak i was attempted to be brainwashed with was pretty bad. i resisted by gambling with my new buddy about how often certain words or phrases would come up. this led to cheers and cries of anguish at apparently random intervals to everyone else. we also attempted to make each other laugh at inappropriate moments. i only once managed to make him burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

however, the worst part is that i have had to write reports following these shitfests. in the region of 3000 words. they decided not to mark any of them (yes, they get marked allegedly) when i sent them, but all at once to make sure that i would have to redo them all at once, and not one at a time.

here is an example of what i have to put up with.

i wrote in my first edition of the first report that i send weekly reports to my supervisors by email and get feedback
i got told off for not saying HOW i get feedback
so i have amended my report to say ....

THEIR RESPONSE WILL BE IN ONE OF THE USUAL FORMS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION. THIS WILL BE EITHER AN EMAIL RESPONSE, VIA TELEPHONE, OR SIMPLY THROUGH CONVERSATION SHOULD WE HAPPEN TO SEE EACH OTHER.

too much?

scientists of the future

GCSE(16 year olds do this!) Science (2006 exam)

Our moon seems to disappear during an eclipse. Some people say this is because an old lady covers the moon with her cloak. She does this so that thieves cannot steal the shiny coins on the surface. Which of these would help scientists to prove or disprove this idea?

A) Collect evidence from people who believe the lady sees the thieves

B) Shout to the lady that the thieves are coming

C) Send a probe to the moon to search for coins

D) Look for fingerprints


i have also realised that they don't teach english here very well. the only grammar i was taught is the definitions of nouns, verbs and adjectives. i learnt a bit when doing french at school. nowadays, only remnants remain in my mind of past perfect tenses and conditional things. and now i am learning (mostly through guesswork) some more through russian.

for example, in russian 'i work' and 'i am working' are said in the same way. i don't even know what this difference in present tenses would be called in english!
also, adverbs are made by taking the adjective and changing the ending, eg, excellent to excellently.
however, the word for excellently also means 'it is excellent'. so sometimes it's an adverb and sometimes it isn't.

so i got to the end of lesson two and can honestly say "i speak a little russian".

poker: played some hands this week finally. ran good. made some monies. best month ever. gonna play today and hopefully not lose lots.

i did tilt one hand yesterday shoving the turn with 88 on a 49tj board cos i had just been 3 outered for a $1600 pot. but then i remembered tilting is bad so i stopped tilting. i'm not even sure it was such a terrible shove with the game dynamics at the time so i'm not gonna count it in my months tilt count.

body clock

i have never been a morning person and have come to the conclusion that i never will be. i decided to be a bum today and didn't get up till afternoon. have so much work to do these next few weeks and convinced myself i would work from home today. i didn't really do very much. and now it's 130 in the morning and i'm not that tired but know i should try to get some sleep so i have some hope of getting out of bed by 815. odds of this happening judging by the past 4 weeks would be about 19-1.

the worst thing however, is being woken up on sunday morning after only a couple of hours sleep. then sunday is like a zombie day for me. watch football (the pointless 30mins they now have between the 2 sunday games annoys me immensely), eating foods, grinding pokers and as usual i start to wake up mentally at about 7 and have no desire to go to bed till well after 1.

i used to be able to survive on less sleep (4-6hours a night with one good night sleep each week) so my only conclusion is that i have become lazier.

should really go to sleep now.

no online pokers played yet this week. not really feeling it and only need about 3-4k hands to get the required points this month so no rush...

live pokers

i'm continually amazed at how i lose at live cash games.

live tournaments i do ok (well, the standard of my nearest card room is similar to play money tables) but cash games i just lose endlessly against the very same hygienically challenged humans.

reasons this could be the case:

1)i go on super subtle massive tilt due to

a) playing approx 10hands an hour, rather than the 500ph online rate
b) the extreme retardation levels of opponents
c) the things that live players do including but not limited to:

- the showdown game where you have to take as long as possible to showdown your hand in a non slowroll way because you want to see the other persons cards
- eating the greasiest food you can find with your fingers before wiping them on the cards
- the nightly competition to see who can say the most retarded thing. i am yet to work out if it's one massive level, or if they actually believe what they say. forget being unable to work out pot odds etc, these opponents have difficulty recalling the flop from the previous hand after someone has just told them what it was
-taking 3 minutes over each and every decision
(feel free to add your own in the comments)

2)i'm actually much worse than all these players i come up against

3)it is in fact just a game of pure luck and i am less lucky than these players

I'll spare you the beats cos they aren't very interesting.

my favourite hand + comment of the night was when i got all in on the turn on a 10862dd board in omaha with 101097 and paired the board on the river to win.
my opponent claimed to have 97 with a flush draw. obviously he won the "show me yours first game" so even though he was called he didn't show his hand. later in the night he accused me of outdrawing him.

in other news my weight gain program is going well and i've added 3kg (7 pounds) in a couple of weeks. i ate 500g of ben and jerry's ice cream in last two days so hopefully that will add some fat to my belly.

russian learning is cool. i have realised one lesson a week from my book is too optimistic. i have forgotten how hard it is to learn lots of things which invoke the power of my memory since i have neglected this aspect of my brain for a while. it took me a week just to remember about 30 words, and now i have to remember some conjugations without forgetting the other stuff.

customer complaints

these are allegedly real customer complaints from british holidaymakers

i think my favourite is the hairdresser one

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/5005019/20-ridiculous-complaints-made-by-holidaymakers.html

"The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"

why?

i went to town today (literally)

my friend and i were in the v&a museum and noticed a sign on a door saying:

lecture theatre
lifts
toilets

i noted this to be an almost perfect sentence.
i pointed out that the lecture theatre, not something usually associated with strength, has done well to lift the toilets.

he replied "why would they do that?"

not, "clearly it's not true," or "how is this possible", but "WHY?"

it doesn't seem so funny in writing does it? it was a lot funnier when we were there. i guess i'll have to get it reconstructed on the radio or something.

tilt count

this month
2
monies burned
$4k

year
8
monies burned
$14k

it's only money (repeat to fade)

almost tilting

well, i say almost, but i did tilt. only a little probably throwing away $1k. if i don't tilt again this month i'll have done good imo.

need to make sure i keep my focus at all times. half way to the $4k supernova bonus which will be nice. i'll probably withdraw that especially if the $-£ rate is still good. i don't think that counts as part of my roll really since it's not money made from winning at games, which is what i want to use to determine what level i should play at.

non poker wise been boring atm. have decided to get fit and learn russian. have a book with 20 lessons in, which i want to do complete once a week. i think i can fit 30mins of that, and 30 mins of weights each day. started that last week. i can now say russian is a very difficult language. in russian.

the best thing about speaking russian is that to pronounce the accent correctly is to sound exactly like a bond villain.

a hand of pokers

last i opened up 3 tables of 2/4, and 3 of 3/6 thinking i would concentrate better like when i played 5/10. seeing as how im also playing well i would think it's a good time to up steaks. though the real reason was because there was no 2/4 tables without a 10 player waiting list. i do find it hilarious that people see 9 players on a waiting list for a 6 seater table and join. one has to actually manually select a table, then click the join waiting list button. someone is table selected on the basis of what a table was like about an hour before they will join. bizarre.

so i'm playing 3 tables of 3/6 and two of 2/4 whilst i was first in line on another 2/4 table. the 2/4 tables are uneventful, but the 3/6 tables are hitting me with some nice cold decks. i ran kk into aa and qq into the same guy's kk in pretty much unavoidable spots. i tilt called someone with pretty much the only hand he beat. he had aq, on a qjxxx board, i had kq (sooted)

so i was stuck 3 buyins on this table, and about 1.5 on the other two tables. not great. i managed to build my stack up to $1k when this 3way hand went down.

i find most hand histories boring so i'll put in my thought process (or lack thereof)

Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: superhero ( $1018.00 USD )
Seat 2: ratholer1 ( $114.00 USD )
Seat 3: ratholer2 ( $115.80 USD )
Seat 4: villain ( $845.00 USD )
Seat 5: ratholer3 ( $111.00 USD )
Seat 6: donkvillain ( $1198.00 USD )
ratholer1 posts small blind [$3.00 USD].
ratholer2 posts big blind [$6.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to superhero [ Ks 4s ] - this is actually the nuts
villain calls [$6.00 USD]
ratholer3 folds
donkvillain raises [$18.00 USD]
superhero calls [$18.00 USD] - slowplaying pre. risky, but hey
ratholer1 folds
ratholer2 folds
villain calls [$12.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Js, 3s, 9h ] - practically the nuts
villain checks
donkvillain bets [$51.00 USD]
superhero raises [$151.00 USD] - thought i'd make them both pay now in order to get all the stacks in
villain calls [$151.00 USD]
donkvillain raises [$1129.00 USD] - oh noes. not part of my plan.
superhero calls [$849.00 USD] - i have outs. probably.
villain calls [$676.00 USD] - little does he know i have the nuts.

** Dealing Turn ** [ 7s ] - didn't even wait for the river.

** Dealing River ** [ 5s ] - i hope no one has the ace

donkvillain shows [Jd, 9d ]
superhero shows [Ks, 4s ]
superhero wins $346.00 USD from main pot
superhero wins $2541.00 USD from main pot
villain doesn't show [3h, 3c ]
donkvillain wins $180.00 USD from main pot


now i feel like i run good even though this is how my all in ev is just back to level for the month

omaha

i often hear this is the future of poker (well, i read it twice)

i have played hilo a few times and find this quite interesting. i remember one time sitting at a table and getting dealt some great starting hands. i'd had one or two showdowns but small pots and not won anything.
about 14 hands in i finally get a chance to go all in with the nut low and nut high draw. i miss the high yet see the whole pot go to my opponent. only now do i notice it's an omaha hi table, not hilo. oops.
i wondered what the others at the table thought of me. people say that players do crazy things online as no one can ever feel embarrassment in the cyberworld. i can categorically say that this is incorrect.

i started trying omaha recently, on purpose. i'm fairly useless at it. but i think it would be nice to be good at that too.

things ive noticed

radio

songs come out in america about 1 year before england

eg mgmt have only just begun to get played on radio here. i think i first heard them about 12 months ago.
currently iglu and hartly (in this city) is on american radio. i predict it will be on xfm in about 6-12 months.


anti drugs/drink adverts

they make drink and drugs seem quite fun imo. i'm pretty sure this isn't their intention. at least, i hope it's not.

the IT department at my uni

is to retards what light is to black holes. ie, they get attracted there, never leave, are unable to think and time has effectively stopped for them.
i cant be bothered to go into the details today. suffice to say they wasted one day of my life through not telling me the most simple of solutions to my problem which i had to figure out for myself.

stealing from the small blind

is awful you can't actually play post flop. luckily most people combine the stealing with the awful play.

some advice

1) do not under any circumstances use deep heat (neither the spray nor the gel) on
a) your groin
b) your eyes

i'm not sure which is worse. the eyes are bad, i imagine it's like being maced. when used in the groin region it makes your balls feel like they are shooting out fire. on a similar scale to the sun.

2) do not drink pure ribena. the sugar hit you take in conjunction with the insane amount of flavour in one go sends your brain into overload. probably like taking all the drugs at once.

when you spit out the offending drink it looks, to someone who's just walked into the room, like a crime scene.

retro

following on from reminiscing over day of the tentacle i stumbled upon some salt and shake crisps in the shop. obv i purchased them only to realise my error.

firstly, salt alone is not really a flavouring for crisps. salt and vinegar, yes. salt, no.

secondly, for those that aren't aware, the salt does not come on the crisps. inside the crisp packet, there is a little blue packet filled with salt. this is invariable on the bottom of the crisp packet (which ever way you end up opening it). thus it is a pain to see and reach. then when you open it, the salt does not really disperse very well so you have to shake it yourself. as indicated by the name. this is a complete waste of time when you can buy ready salted crisps.

thirdly, you're left with an empty torn blue piece of paperish thing that you need to dispose of separately.

the novelty of these, which i had not seen since i was a child soon wore off. i ate some ice cream to cheer myself up. as usual, food does not cheer me up. this is probably a good thing.

speaking of emotions, the final thing i have been working on of late is removing all emotions from poker. again, lack of emotions here will again be a good thing.

i also just watched the carling cup final on the telly vision. i wanted neither spurs nor man utd to win it. as a result, i was always going to be both sad and happy at the end of the game. it was a very dull game so by the end i almost didn't care. i think man utd fans will care less about winning this cup than spurs so i think i preferred the result this way round.

anyways, it's march the first, summer is nearly here, the air smells nice (well it did when i went out last night) so i think i might plan some more holidays.