are penguins just pretending they can't fly so we don't get jealous?

i'm pretty much done for the month now, have just cleared the final stars bonus and may now need to concentrate on other things during this year so my play may drop off quite a bit.
last few days of this month i ran super hot as can be seen by graph below (didn't check results from when i saw i'd lost loads and been level for the month, until just now!)

mornings have been good poker wise but terribly scary in life =. last week i awoke to see a spider dangling from the ceiling mere inches from my face. upside no less. i think it was showing off.
this morning i was woken at six by a buzzing sound. i bolted upright and turned to my pillow to see a wasp casually strolling along it and away from me. by the time i got to the light switch and found my wasp catching device (ikea tupperware) it had disappeared. thus, i could not get back to sleep. in fact, i was worried i would never be able to sleep in my room again but i left the light on (obviously) and the wasp was attracted to it. i don't know why they are attracted to lights, someone should tell them they aren't moths.

also noticed the wcoop main event just finished. someone just won over two million dollars! much as i hate tournaments, that makes me want to play more

how far can you stick a cotton bud into your belly button?

i find 'wake schedule' to be a more appropriate description of hours i choose to be awake, instead of sleep schedule/cycle since i don't remember those hours as clearly.
i am experimenting with mine so that i will wake early (6-7am) do some wake things like throw cold water on my face and some cereal in my mouth. cereal, apparently, is not a proper breakfast. the story seems to go mr kellogs decided it's what people should for breakfast and luckily for him (and rather coincidentally it would seem) he had a cereal making factory which has made him lots of money.
still, i love coco pops.

i have managed to play some pokers recently. my frame of mind has been better of later and today i noticed i got really annoyed with a play i made. just got stacked twice on two tables but neither annoyed me at all. not  the marginal one where in a squeezed pot i bet called the turn with aq on an ahi 3 flush board, nor did the outdraw annoy me. instead it was a hand against a tard where i had jj on a aa3t board where i bet and he raised leaving himself $24. i called knowing he would bet the river. river was a 3, i checked he checked. i then realised thats why i have him labelled as a mong. i should have obviously either shoved turn or bet for him on the river. either way he would have called. and playing how i did cost me $24. some would say that's not much when you buy in for $400. but if your hourly rate is 5bb per hour (which is not terrible) then thats worth over 1 hours play. mistakes like this should be the easiest to fix since they are basic things. other than that i seem to be playing mostly well, running amazingly and not checking balance till end of the month which will be tomorrow for me since im busy rest of the week.

need to wake up early tomorrow too to play my remaining for hands to clear the wcoop bonus ($100! though i may end up spending it all at once. on chocolate)

how do they get ships into bottles?

computer games seem to be going the way of interactivity. not just voice recognition, but full body motion sensors, so for tekken you'll be able to act out all your moves (quite how they expect us to do head high reverse roundhouse kicks i am unsure). football games you'll be able to run around kicking imaginary footballs.
call me old fashioned, but if i want that i'll go outside. the whole point of a ps3 is so that can sit down and mash buttons without doing anything energetic.

reason #153 my flatemate is  a turdburglar
following house party i start clearing things up so i don't have to awake to a place that looks like birmingham. he just sits there and watches the sky tv he didn't even want. after 2 bin bags full i quit seeing as i refuse to do any more alone. i make joke how perhaps he's just waiting for a cleaner?
next day i go to school. i come back, flat is clean. oh, he got cleaner to do it. great idea. but why didn't he tell me before i started cleaning it all up?

cleared the 4k supernova bonus. got doomswitched and lost 4k in next session. having made supernova with little chance of 200k vpps, and no more bonuses it seems almost pointless to continue playing there. will look for new sites to play on. tried betfair. software so so bad it was as if they hired a genius to make it that bad.
not sure where to try next...
though somewhere with main traffic during european hours may be a priority

having just got used to my new desk also thinking of getting a whiteboard for my room. just to make it a bit more classy.

one final thank you to the person who found my blog searching for "what number haircut does vinny chase get"
i am considering choosing only blog post titles which could be the answers to questions people ask google.

at first i thought it might be a bit harsh

but now i'm pretty sure that it's not. i am obviously referring to listening to other peoples opinions when it comes to film and movie reviews. and how you shouldn't. i first noticed this effect when i read a review for teh film flight club in the evening standard. i read it after seeing the film and noticed that he either didn't watch the film, or it was one looong typo. i hope it was the latter.
sadly, this does not clarify the real reason why you shouldn't listen to most people. it's because people like different things, yet are wholly convinced their opinion is best. the only people you should ever listen to are ones you already know have good taste (similar to your own obviously). if you don't know what taste they have, just mention films you liked and see whether they did. if not, just ignore an recommendations they give you.
films and tv, however, do not let you see into the soul of a person. just because they like the simpsons, family guy, pizza and flight of the conchords does not mean they are not going to be a massive pain in the hippocampus to live with. i can guarantee it won't guarantee that finish things you own neither asking nor replacing what was used.

in much more scary news i awoke the other day to see a spider hanging upside down inches from my face. spiders are scary at the best of times and having one in my face when waking up was a most unsatisfactory experience.

i've recently bought a desk for my computer, and hope to shortly by a whiteboard to make my room even classier. when buying my desk i walked past an orchid by the checkout. it called out to me like an rspca rescue kitten so i bought it. people say orchids are really tough to look after. apparently you only need to water them once a week. this seems rather easy to me. makes me wonder how infrequently you can water other plants? maybe catii's are the best plants to own since you can go years without remembering to water them and they should survive. that's judging by their desert performance but maybe i'm wrong since i know nothing about them except their amazing ability to get their little spikes in your skin when you've walked less than 3 feet but more than 2 feet from them. (that's >24 and <36 inches in case you aren't sure what feet are)

feeling bad

been away and no feeling pretty ill

coming back to this didn't help

will post when feeling less sick

vulnerable

i started playing some bridge recently. it's an interesting game, but i think it lacks something to it. too much of it seems set in stone. there is always a correct bid, which is just saying what you have in a round about way. and there's always a correct way to play. having gained a basic understanding though, i do find some of the evening standard's bridge hands interesting in a way i guess a beginner would as it shows the more creative things you have to do in order to win where it would be very tough to see it for the first time. kind of how mating someone with just a knight in chess after trapping their king with their own rook is beautiful in chess and would be pretty tough to come up with without seeing it somewhere else first (for me anyway)

so it turns out in bridge you are vulnerable when you're closer to winning. but i was most vulnerable the other day when i was sitting on the toilet and a wasp flew into the bathroom. unable to move, obviously, and a wasp flying closer and closer to me i felt briefly like a stripper with shame would feel. if any existed.

i have also had serious difficulty of late with my new desk. it has one of those slide out sections for the keyboard but the entire desk is so high that even in my high up chair on it's highest settings when i type my wrists are angled so far upwards it hurts to type or use the mouse. i can't see why anyone would build a desk at this stupid height and if it wasn't so difficult to repack it i would send it back. but i can't. so i need to find a solution before my wrists fall off.

best player in the world

so a las vegan sat at the table and this is what he said

Kru: im going to be splashing a lot of chips around
Kru: i am the best player in the world
Kru: my skills are unprecedented, my play is unmatched
Kru: im an elite player, a warrior if u will
Kru: a true master of the game
Kru: before it is all said and done, all of the chips will be in my grasp
Kru: its not my fault im the best player in the world

first two hands he folds, then this happens:

Seat 6 is the button
Seat 1: SB ( $482.40 USD )
Seat 2: BB ( $510.50 USD )
Seat 3: utg ( $696.00 USD )
Seat 4: utg+1 ( $404.00 USD )
Seat 5: co ( $210.00 USD )
Seat 6: Kru ( $400.00 USD )
SB posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
BB posts big blind [$4.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to utg+1 [  8d Ad ]
utg folds
utg+1 raises [$12.00 USD]
co folds
Kru raises [$36.00 USD]
SB raises [$82.00 USD]
BB folds
utg+1 folds
Kru calls [$48.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 8h, Jh ]
SB bets [$104.00 USD]
Kru raises [$316.00 USD]
SB calls [$212.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ As ]

** Dealing River ** [ 9h ]
SB shows [8s, 8c ]
Kru shows [Qs, Qh ]

he didn't say anything on the way out

meanwhilst... about 2 hands into my session i found myself 6 buyins down. i contued hovering between 6 and 5 buyins down. mainly courtesy of ridiculous runner runners
luckily i outdrew lots of people and ended up 1 buy in down

have now hit supernova and just wanna clear the 4k bonus by the end of the weekend.

i've noticed i'm becoming more able to play longer sessions without losing my focus. this is great except i forgot i should sleep a little tonight.

table abuse

this is what a fish said to me last week after i raised him

'i could win i tell ya dude u doin reases like a noob'


after which he folded.
we than had a frank discussion about reases. which i thought were an american chocolate. iirc, he hit a straight vs a bad reg's two pair, and then cold called  my 3 bet with 23, flopped a 456 against my pocket fours, stacked me when i should have folded the river, and then ran away. i guess he had the last laugh. after all, he who laughs last, thinks slowest.

in other news, following many national and international announcements on the subject, i too will be follwoing suit and banning vuvuzela's from my abode. just the mere thought of someone bringing one here, which has never happened in the history of the united kingdom, has thrown my body into shock and i will be enforcing this ban with the appropriate punishment of 8 months tinnitus should you be caught with a vuvuzela about your person. this may lead to terrible jokes such as 'is that a vuvuzela in your pocket or are you just trying to get away with bringing it in here' but that is a small price to pay.

this month i can't tell the difference between nightmares and good dreams

this graph is why i hate month defined goals.
i have
played the most hands i have managed in a month
endured my worst ever downswing
played phenomenally bad
been battered by deepstacked coolers (set under set, nut house into quads deep grr)
been running way above all in ev during this time, as if to rub in how terrible i am
suffered my best day according to ptr
and it all started so well:

the peak early was at +$8k, and the bottom of the green money dip was below $6k

so a 14k downswing which i can definitely attribute to some highly dubious play on my behalf. i noticed another mental leak i have, where if i don't get any good cards after about 500 hands i lose it completely. this happened tonight. that last dip (just double checked, it's a 4k dip!) in the graph was tonight. following that, i decided to not play anything but aa/kk/ak for 300 hands. and for the most part i stuck to that. and then reverted back to playing well.

next month will be interesting. i expect to be playing not much, but i will at some point probably have to break to my house mate that i am succumbed to gamblor . i'm not sure how he'll take it. he does not like football, take inordinately long showers, leave clothes lying around the lounge, and nag about things like house parties. so it would seem that at the same time i will have to break the news to him that he is possible a doughnut puncher (thanks south park for that euphemism). not that there's anything wrong with it, i'm just not sure he is aware.

in one moment of lucidity this past weekend i watched  'whatever works.' a film starring larrry david as a physicist. my favourite line in the film, is when he says to this lady
"if i can understand quantum mechanics, i can certainly comprehend the thought process of a submental baton twirler"

i would give this film a 10/10. go watch it before you do anything else (include finishing this blog post. so i'm gonna stop writing since you should have stopped reading)

i havne't complained abotu running shit for years

but the last four days have been notably diabolical.
i confirm it's a mix of playing at a skill level i would rate generously at 0.1/10 of capacity and running real bad (set under set deep stack many a time) whilst at the same time being above ev!
i do not know what is going on. all i know is that future cards have no memory of past cards and i too will wipe my brain clean of these few days men in black style.

i am 10k vpps from supernova and want to win $10k by the time i reach it, not inc the $1k milestone.. this is my goal. shortly thereafter i will also get a $4k fpp bonus.

this style of mental focussing helped me last year at this time and i hope it will once again do the same. will add box on blog when i remember to do first update on challenge tonight (early hours of morning)

and my preparations will begin like all good preparations. a siesta.

ps if you retweet your tweets on twitter, will their severs break in an infinite loop of <140 characters?

edit: can't be bothered with a box thing, will just update at end of posts after sessions.
2k hands tonight. $2k profit. 7.3k vpps from supernova

fas;dgn

so it looks like my caving in has lead to massive spewtiltmonkey sessions. last two nights i've played and lost around $6k total. whoops. doesn't help when this happens:

Seat 1: nit1 ($543.90 in chips)
Seat 2: nutsack ($422.90 in chips)
Seat 3: fish1 ($400 in chips)
Seat 4: fish2 ($87.60 in chips)
Seat 5: hero ($1005.40 in chips)
hero: posts small blind $2
nit1: posts big blind $4

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hero [Kc Ks]
nutsack: raises $8 to $12
fish1: folds
fish2: folds
hero: raises $32 to $44
nit1: folds
nutsack: calls $32

*** FLOP *** [3s 9s Ts]
hero: bets $48
nutsack: calls $48

*** TURN *** [3s 9s Ts] [Th]
hero: checks
nutsack: bets $330.90 and is all-in
hero: calls $330.90

*** RIVER *** [3s 9s Ts Th] [Qd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
hero: shows [Kc Ks] (two pair, Kings and Tens)
nutsack: shows [Qc Qh] (a full house, Queens full of Tens)
nutsack collected $847.80 from pot

the worst thing is i was on such tilt i didn't even realise it wasn't a one outer!

i caved

yeah, i didn't make it to the end of the month without checking my p/l
i twice noticed the cashier by mistake (when reg'ing for a tournament) and after my last two sessions i wanted to see how i was doing. i noticed myself checking results at the table and figured my stubbornness was becoming more of a hindrance than a help.
my last two sessions which caused it were really weird. first one i ran terribly bad at 3/6 and terrible well at 2/4
then last night it was the opposite.
turns out first night i lost $2k, 2nd night just $500
and the month so far, i thought i was up 6k and down loads in ev. turns out i was up only 5k and up 2k in ev. i lost a few ridiculous pots last night so i must have won some corkers recently. i remember only a couple, and am looking through hem now to post the the best suckouts.

hmm, it appears there were only 3 hands i have won all month where i've had less than 35% equity moving in. and they were all standard boring hands. twice my flush draws vs sets and one over pair vs set.

seems most of my +ev comes from hands holding up which is nice.

one last thing on my mind is new flatmate and his lack of knowledge that i play poker for money on the interweb. i wonder how to tell him. i was thinking win a tournament then round around like crazy at 4 in the monring. after winning lots people will probably accept it more. but i think it would be funnier to lose a couple of thousand and then go smashing things up.

either way i'm not looking forward to the conversation that will follow and comments such as 'stop before you lose it all' etc etc

internet drops

when the internet dies midway through hands whilst youre multitabling it is infuriating. this has no equivalent to live play. if there was it would be akin to being kicked in the nuts as the turn comes down for 8 consecutive hands and having to run to the bathroom to check your balls aren't bleeding cos thats how much it hurts. i think i prefer being online and just disconnecting to that. but then there weren't any big pots when it disco'd. if there were i my anger state would have not just raised to 'sharp breathing' but to 'mist in front of the eyes'

all this whole episode has done is make me stop playing for the day. just as i had the thought that i need to play 1-1.5k hands per day it happened. and i'd only played 700 hands.

i think i'm gonna add a supernova pace thing to the right of this blog. and i need to be as close to it as possible by end of the month. gl me.
(current total: 82k vpps - 100k is target)

when i was younger

i used to be able to function well on 4-6 hours sleep per night, with maybe one good sleep per week. nowadays, that doesn't seem to be enough usually. though i think it's more to do with a heightened sense of laziness more than anything else.
others seem to note that doing exercise helps them in this respect and i finally need to make a real commitment to doing some work out six days a week.
the other problem is i don't like getting up and have had this ingrained into my mind over the past many moons and now i know there's a psychological barrier to getting up on a weekday. on weekends when i dont need to get up i feel ok when i wake, but during the week i just want to lie in till after noon.
perhaps when i get my personal chef/butler/pa/fixer (one person doing all of that obviously - is this what wives are for? that would make sense although do they still do happy endings after being given a diamond?) i would want them to not be bored so would wake up early to ensure they can make me breakfast every morning.

dead set

just finished watching this series. it's about a fictional big brother series which follows the contestants whilst a zombie outbreak occurs in the real world. i laughed many a time. the producer of the programme is clearly the star of the show. i don't want to ruin any of it since you should be watching it though he reminds me of malcolm from the thick of it. just watch it and know it gets better and better as the series progresses.

just had a car crash online session. played twice today. did well the first time, terribly the second. still not looking at how much i win/lose though i did notice my cashier today when i went to get the 4k bonus. i think i know how much i had at the start of the month but not sure. will be a nice surprise at end of month. i think todays dip will be very noticeable in end of month graph. need to play most hands ever this month although only two weeks to do so. also need to stop talking about it and just do it.

3d is amazing

sitting in the cinema, trying out the glasses through the 3d trailers and my friend turns to me and says "wow this 3d is amazing" noting the lifelike qualities of the lady on the screen. except she wasn't on the screen. she was standing right in front of us. he reminds me a little of karl pilkington. he also said they should do noisy food in the cinema. speaking of which the guy next to me was eating his popcorn like an elephant monkey - a full hand scoop to the face. over and over. he was but a third of the way through his dumbo sized container when he dropped the contents over the kid in the seat in front (accidentally). i hi fived my friend, knowing i would no longer have to put up with his poorly timed home made sound effects.

i finally moved into a flat and have internet. this means i can play poker and no longer have to resort to live tournaments. i played an event at the luton gukpt and it mostly served to remind me why i hate live play. to top it off i lose a bunch in the cash games too. in a standard reminiscent of 1p/2p games i used to play when i was 5.
it all started off badly when the casino told me my timberland shoes were trainers and i wasn't allowed in. nor could i wear my hoodie. after finally getting in i notice about 50% of the bums moseying around are wearing actual  trainers. like running shoes.
at least i picked up some useful nuggets of information from these live players. pre tournament i heard one giving advice to another "just be careful when looking at your cards. the 5 looks like a 6."
brilliant.
i also saw a hand where the board ran out ajj44 and a guy with a8 who folded preflop saw the winner take it with a7 and said "even if i called it would have only been a split"
took about 20 seconds for someone else to work out the 8 plays, and this guy had to be told 3 times, still didn't understand but said "oh yeah, err, i see, split pot" in acting so bad neighbours would sign him up.
so what i'm saying is i lost to people who don't even know what hand ranking is.

on that note i need to go to sleep. played a bit of poker today. still no idea how much p/l so far this month. i am though now 20k vpp from retaining supernova status, and want to clear more of it this month as i think i'm gonna be away a bunch in September.

the food situation has been remedied as i have now bought chocolate and meat

some final things which imo are more urgent and still not complete are internet and sky; they should both be in by the end of the week allowing me to waste my time online once again, and stop reading all these 'books'
i have managed to sneak in a few online poker sessions and so far this month have not looked at profit/loss or cashier at all. although i know in today's first session i went from about +8 buyins to finish about level. but not knowing for sure is less painful than knowing.
the only way i can keep track of how much i've played is vpp count. and these next two months i need 21k to reach supernova. so as soon as internet is in i can buy the $4k bonus and hopefully clear that (28k vpp) in just over two months.

i recently watched the film adventure land. i can't remember why i watched it but the bird in it was hot. so i checked her out on imdb. turns out she's in this twilight malarky. a little bit of my feels dirty. sticky dirty.

i've also found a photography competition. i get to enter one photo. so far, i think this is the best i've taken. but i might try to go to a park at dusk to take some more...

does it look good to you?
(not sure about etiquette, but if i'm supposed to put the camera i used i think it was a canon eos 350, with an 18-135mm lens - if anyone cares that is)

Food I have in my flat

This is not a sample. This is a comprehensive list

3 tubs ice cream
Half packet of cereal (coco pops)
1 beyond ripe banana
1 apple
4 clementines
Gaggle of tea bags (tetley's)
1 pint of milk (frozen)
4 tins tuna
1 packet pasta
1 packet rice
10 eggs
2 sticks of gum
8 phone numbers of take away places

end of month blah blah blah

forgot the month ended. this is good. i don't want to be constrained by arbitrary time periods.
 last months graph looks like this

you can clearly see a sharp drop at the end. that was a couple of beats and three monkey tilt platonic spews (technical term it would seem)

once again i have an unrealistic plan for the month which mostly involves not once looking at how much i'm winning or losing during sessions or after sessions. this is to tame the aforementioned monkey tilt.
obviously after getting in the positive for 2/4 on ptr i decided that i didn't like change or the unfamiliar. this resulted in returning to the red.
hopefully i can play lots this month and win lots and be so far positive i won't ever return to the negative. i still have 24000 vpps to get by the end of septemeber so thats about 17k hands for two months in a row. that should be manageable if i can ever get the internet installed. currently running off a mobile broadband dongle in an area with no 3g signal and a laptop that takes 35 attempts to connect to any signal at all which is infuriating and not really good for playing poker i don't think. so my mostly enforced break continues. i'm hoping that it'll finally get ordered on monday and up and running next week but bizarrely it depends on a bank address since you're not allowed to be generous and can only order internet where you bank statement is registered.

my body clock has also started playing tricks on me like waking me up at 8am every morning. this is unacceptable and i think i need to drink it into submission to stop this abomination. it's like a self fulfilling prophecy too in that i get tired far too early and go to bed at a normal time thus leading to another early wakeup. i fear this is the beginning of the end and i am rapidly ageing to a point where i'm one day gonna look down and see i'm wearing slippers. i am afraid.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffs i still tilt

how is this still possible that after so long of knowing that the worst thing that i do is tilt, i still continue to do so on an alarmingly regular basis.
last night i obviously decided that playing was too boring so i thought that burning money was the new thing. turns out it is, but whilst it's fun at the time, it's not fun in the cold light of day.
whats weird is that I was playing 2/4 and 3/6 last night and i only tilted at the 2/4 tables. so im thinking i should start to play higher. not because my raises will get respect, or because im chasing loses, but so i concentrate and play properly.
anyways, im taking a(n enforced) break until i get internet installed and then im gonna play on stars for the next two months, clearing a $4k bonus (also get the remaining 1.2k milestones for reaching supernova) and then think about where to play for the rest of the year.
i need about 25k vpps so hopefully can up my volume and am aiming for 2 10k months. if i don't tilt i think it will be quite possible especially as i will be playing 2-3 times as much as usual (i hope).

in other news i think my new flat has a wasps nest in the wall. they try to get inside and then for some reason at night are attracted to lights. everytime i tried to go to sleep wasps would fall out of the (horrible and cheap) lightshade onto my bed. this is not conducive to relaxation before sleep.
then the lights in my office aren't working cos of building work to replace the windows (there's a logical connection?) and working on boring stuff during the day in the dark is conducive to sleep.

one other thing that makes me laugh about the building people is that they have two temporary portakabins. one above the other. one is a canteen, the other is their office. obviously the one with easier access at ground level is the canteen. the office, out the way and up the stairs!