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!

doomswitches don't exists

except for the one where you uncheck the post blinds box, and then get kk losing to jj allin pre ($1k pot) and pair and straight draw losing to flush draw who calls your 4bet shove on the flop. byebye $1.6k pot
aside from those two flips was today acceptable. a few too many badly played hands but focussed ok imo. helped that i didn't plan to play for the rest of the month means it feels like fun.

i had a funny moment when playing the other day to hear a car hooting like crazy driving down the road. i leaped to the window to see the car and what was happening. obviously they were hooting like mad at my deaf cat who likes to cross the road. being the unwitting daredevil that she is, she only looks one way when crossing the road. i tried to teach her to look both ways but it's difficult as she is completely deaf.

one would think that humans do a better job but it's all a matter of priorities.
i saw a lady running for a bus t'other day. i assume she has done this before and has perfected her technique for bus catching. what she does is look directly at the bus, and only directly at the bus and then run in a straight line to where ever it is. this includes traversing grassy knolls, pavements, and the middle of junctions, being sure to NEVER look away from the bus. clearly she is aware that if anything were to hit her, the driver would suffer great financial burdens of increased insurance and anguish and having hit a fellow human being. (or maybe that she was next to a hospital meant this case was a special case it was worth the risk)

up and down last few days

a couple of times i've gone 2k up only to finish close to level. this beats going 2k down and finishing level. whilst at the time the latter feels better, i'm pretty sure i prefer the former.

been running pretty weird. i think i'm running average, as my win rate seems to be around what it's been the last few months but i only got out of jail in one session today thanks to a weird hand. two whales at the table. first whale raises from cut off. i call button with a5 hearts. 2nd whale calls from sb, and bb folds. all playing 100bb effective.
flop is j74 two hearts. whale 2 checks, whale 1 checks, i bet half pot, whale two raises half their stack - over 7 times my bet. whale 1 shoves!?
i wasn't sure whether to call the first one (and by call i mean shove obv) but with the second dude in i couldn't fold. so i shove and we all see a 4 turn, and 3h on river. i'm rather happy to see they both had aj and that was a very nice pot.
sadly the session deteriorated when in quick succession to one guy on two tables i lose aq to 99 all in pre, qq to tt all in pre, and qq to kk all in on low flop.
been mixing in some 3/6 when i can too although there aren't a great many tables of that running. most action seems to be at the bot infested 20-50bb tables. if (when?) that news becomes public it's not gonna be gppd for the online game in general.
moving flat soon, once internet is setup i'm gonna get the 4k bonus, clear that whilst getting supernova which includes the 1k bonus and then probably start playing some at another site for of the rest of the year where games are allegedly weaker at 3/6-5/10.
still hoping for 90k+ in rest of year, (86 to go) gonna have to get my grind on after august 4th. (forgotten what happens on august 4th, but it must be something whereafter serious time efficiency will be installed in my mind. and yes, i mean installed, not instilled, i'm going for it matrix style. i think that would be a great superpower. akin to peter petrelli from heroes, if you could take powers from regular people too)
i'm taking it serious, i even bought a payg wireless internet thing as a back up.

reason #71.5 why i need new friends

friends facebook status "when in rome :)"
i write, "yes, please go on"
no one seemed to get the reference
i guess it was mostly their friends who saw it so it could instead be she who needs the new friends.


in other news, a momentous milestone has been reached.

my goal of getting into the +ve at 2/4 on ptr has been achieved!
after being close to -$20k on there (mostly due to four months of diabolical play) i am now in the green.
all that remains to turn green is 2/4 hu. im down quite a few buy in's there, and i want to get that positive also. it would probably also be good to get better at heads up play since i'm pretty bad at it. trouble is finding people that are waiting at tables AND want to play. so many just sit out. and i'm rubbish!

i'm pretty quiet at the tables these days. i think i'd like to chat some more in a humorous way. i'm gonna  try to get chat banned by saying non offensive things which sound much worse when they are first heard. things like:
i've seen turds uglier than you
does anyone even know what you're doing?

and if you have any more, add them to the comments, i'll phase them into my chat too.

i need to play a bunch more this month. moving house next week and will take a week or two to get broadband installed which is gonna be a pain considering i'm only halfway to my monthly target number of hands this month. next month when all is more settled i'm gonna need to double my play i reckon if i'm gonna get near 100k for the year!

in celebration of spain winning the world cup i've been reinstating siestas into my daily routine. i took one today and now i'm wide awake. possibly also due in part to some serious excess of sugar today. which isn't healthy when i'm about to start training for new football season. not sure i wanna play any more. training in the summer is ok, mostly due to the nice weather, but playing on waterlogged pitches with ref's who can't see and opposition players who are mostly polished turds isn't as appealing as it once was.

no job

and a new and way more expensive flat than i can afford

this leads me to now technically be playing poker as a sole income. i figure this will most likely only last till the end of the year so i must enjoy it as best possible, preferably by winning multiple dollars.

i am in life terribly indecisive and can only describe every situation i find myself in, thrust upon me, rather than through any fault of my own. luckily, i find most of these situations humorous. and good material for any future sitcom i may or may not write.

still have much actual work to finish, including a plethora of multi word reports. there is one i have been putting off for months that i must go finish now...

i like reading. sometimes more than sleeping. sleeping is kinda boring. i never seem to enjoy it whilst it's happening. i need more lucid dreams.

at first, i was angry. but then, i realised it was all for the best.

i am of course talking about a large helping of stupidity i saw yesterday. walking down the street i noticed one side of the road pay and display parking bays, operating from 9 -530. the opposite side, has free parking outside of the hours of 11-12. i was on this street between the hours of 12 and 530 and saw 2 people parked in the pay and display, with only 1 parked in the free bit. then another car comes along and pays for parking. at first i wanted to say "STOP. DO NOT PARK THERE. JUST DO A THREE POINT TURN AND PARK FOR FREE"
but i decided not to.

a few hours later when thinking this over (i really couldn't let it go) i realised it was great for two reasons. firstly, more room for me to park. and secondly because it's essentially a tax on stupid people. if you came out and said you wanted to tax stupid people most people would probably be against it. ironically i doubt it's because they think they're stupid (most think they're not) but because people would say it's morally wrong or something. (maybe it is?!)
but this way of making people pay for parking when they don't have to, is like taxing stupid people, and so i guess i am not so angry about it anymore.

here's an interesting hand of poker:
villain is an avg reg. i'm in the small blind. both start with 100bb ($400)
what say you?

Dealt to Hero [  Qh As ]
3 folds
Villain raises [$12.00 USD]
Hero raises [$38.00 USD]
1 folds
Villain calls [$28.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 4h, Th, 8d ]
Hero bets [$44.00 USD]
Villain calls [$44.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 7d ]
Hero checks
Villain checks

** Dealing River ** [ 6c ]
Hero checks
Villain bets [$120.00 USD]
Hero raises [$312.00 USD]

reasons for disliking the tube

i was sitting down, waiting for my train. i notice someone i vaguely recognise walking towards me. we make that eye contact where you both know you saw each other but both try to avoid it. about three times.
then i get a head nod. head nods in cars are fine. in person, they are not when you don't really know each other. we had to say hi. we said, i recognise you. we say, i'm not sure where from. maybe football.
then we sit in silence not just on the platform, but there were only two seats on the carriage. next to each other. neither of us wanting to walk to a different carriage as it would be rude. and we're British. we can't do that.
so we sit in silence till it's time for him to leave. we say goodbye, i'm not sure why.
i don't think i'll be forgetting him in a hurry.

a new month

and half way through the year which is a good time to look at my goals imo

firstly, monthly graph.

i think i still have tilt issues

halfway through the year and profits are at a measly $10k or so. i think my aim was to be £25k now with the rest to come later in the year. i revised it to $ instead of £ a little while ago. i think it's still feasible. my aim was $75k in the second half of the year so now it's 90. not so far removed. i think i would also like back to back 10k months to show myself i can be consistent. upping volume in last three months should help.
speaking of which i finally upped my volume and have hit pace for supernova by end of sept to avoid losing status. 15k hands a month from now on in should suffice.

feeling pretty tired all the time now. a friend mentioned it might be the heat. if anything, it's the heat from my computer. i really should open it and remove the dust that's no doubt clogging up the fan. it pumps out an enormous amount of heat. one day i'd like to switch to a noiseless water cooling system. that would be nice.

journalists

if i wanted your opinions i would read editorials
when i read your articles, i want facts
and when i want to laugh, i read the bbc website.
eg today's story about Russian spies in America, they interview one guy who worked with one of these so called spies and he says
"I'm either very, very bad at second-guessing who is a Russian spy or he hid it very well."
Seeing as those two concepts are mutually exclusive, i'm going to add a third corollary,
you're a moron.
spies are probably good at what they do. and you're clearly bad at guessing who are spies.

i also was thinking today that if i was (or when i will be) a dictator, i will be less concerned about things like censorship and saying bad things about me. the things i will be concerned with are:
1) no eating like animals
2) no driving like selfish turds
3) no doing anything like a selfish turd
4) i will also implement an iq test. before taking it you will have to guess your own score. the closer you get, the more money/benefits you get. however, unbeknown to these people is that anyone who guesses their score to be 20% higher than their actual score gets evicted.

anyways, i'm off to reread quincy

i forgot the point of my entire last post was simply to say i once again went to sleep with the birds singing

birds singing is usually nice unless you want to get to sleep. or just want to enjoy some peace and quiet. and for beauty purposes, the noises that pigeons make it not beautiful. they are the vuvuzela's of the poultry singing world.

anyways, i was roped into playing some live poker last night. a 25 runner satellite for some comp in europe i'd never heard of where winner could choose either bulgarian coast or barcelona for a poker tournament.
i decided to go because i was very hot sitting in my shorts and the great danes had been not so great in losing to a japan team of very nippy players. it seems that they must have a reputation for nippiness cos we recently played a team of japaneses at 5 a side and they battered us using nippiness as their greatest strength.

but i digress. i ran like a beginner (very well) and found myself on the final table. here is where it got interesting since as usual i don't call (unbeginner like) but prefer bet/raise.
so when i 3bet the same guy twice in one orbit his eyes looked ready to pop, in a very threatening manner which i knew would be aimed at me. so to clarify, i got the feeling he wanted his eyes to pop out his head just so he could have something to hit me with.
i don't know why people get so angry with me when i play. the only two things i don't do that they do is
1)dont show my cards at the end of a hand
2)don't call incessantly
in fact i saw one person, with a 5 big blind stack, sitting in the big blind, call a raise to 3 big blinds pre flop and then check fold the flop. brilliant.

so the dude who hated me folded both times and both times i wanted him to call. the irony of his hate filled looks when making what were good folds didn't escape me.

anyway, long and boring story short i got heads up with a 2-1 chip lead, made a deal to give 10% of person who went to runner up along with some cash. it was already close to 2am at this point and whilst i didn't really wanna deal i was happy to have done so as i played like a retard heads up and lost.

this post has begun to bore even me. i'm in a massive hole for the month still and am hoping to play 10k hands more before the end of the month to see if i can dig my way out. which always reminds me of Chief Wiggum's advice when in this spot, "No, dig up, stupid"

it was a sunny evening

on a short midsummers night. the day had been spent like every other of late, watching all the games of football my telly could throw at me, and i was satisfied.

what better way than to round off the last 30 hours of my weekend than to include some poker.

oh what a mistake that turned out to be. not only did i have a remarkable lack of patience, i was blissfully unaware of the cold red mist that has descended upon me. less than 24 hours, and 2 sessions of poker later i had shot much of my online account, somewhere upwards of $7k. both sessions started off badly, got worse before i recovered. both times i considered quitting (at -$2k and -$1.2k) and both times i thought of soldiering on to win some monies back. and both times a downward spiral ensued, so fast that it had all turned to shit before i could notice and stop.

in the past, my newest biggest ever loss always annoyed me greatly that sleeping that night was almost as difficult as playing again immediately. and this was by far by biggest loss in a 12 hour period.

so come sunday night i decided the best cause of action was obviously to fire up the tables. expecting disaster i managed a breakeven session (thanks to two terrible calls by me towards the end, i would won otherwise!)

things i've learnt:
1) i still tilt like a coke machine being attacked by thirsty chavs. the coke machine now has cctv to 'protect' it, but that's only a deterrent, and even then it sometimes turns itself off.
2) i no longer care as much about money in my online roll. this is good as i can sleep, but bad, because i should care more than i do to prevent losing
3) i really really really have to try to not look at winnings/losses during a session
4) folding = winning money.
5) games are pretty bad now on stars outside of weekends. 
6) the recession is hitting everyone hard. crows, which are intelligent, have begun to attack pigeons. i know this because i saw it happen a couple of days ago. i do not, however, know why. i saw it fly after it's victim, landing everywhere it had just been, before finally nailing it's victim with it's claws and taking a chunk of feathers/flesh.
7) not everything i learn can be related to poker.

i had to send off a voucher for cashback; due by Thursday i sent it on Monday. It went to a freepost address and got me thinking. what class does freepost post fit under? i hoped it was first to make sure it gets there fast. but maybe it was 2nd class which would take longer. but how does second class take longer? do the postmen look at the 2nd class stamp, laugh at the people not wanting to pay more and just throw it to the side of the sorting office, purposefully delaying it by a day or two. if they could just put the post on the same truck as the first class post then it would all arrive at the same time.
except then you wouldn't be able to get second class post. so it seems to me that they delay it on purpose for no real reason, other than to punish people for not paying more. or to ensure people pay more to send it first class. either way, something doesn't quite add up.

8) i have weird thoughts.

fuck

fuck
fuck
fuck

im a fucking tilting idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well that last one was a long post.

i just shaved without using a mirror. i wonder how terrible a job i did. will no doubt wake tomorrow morning/afternoon and reshave.
shaving is such a waste of time. if the body can automate breathing, blinking etc, why can't we automate shaving, eating etc?

speaking of annoying things i had a great idea today for an invention that hopefully hasn't been done. if not, i will get inventing. if it has, i will share with you my awesome idea (that has already been stolen) so you can bask in my nearly glory.

back to the grind of online house hunting. they say moving house is very stressful. i think looking is the most stressful part. but maybe that's what they mean? usually i get bored after 2/3 viewings so i have to make sure the first few i see are good quality cos i will end up picking one of them

i also got a new camera recently (it's old but new to me) which hopefully will lead to some awesome pics. i noticed with lots of digital camera i've used in the past few years they don't 'see' reds, like in sunsets. my first one from years ago did, so not sure why technology has gone backwards. anyway, this is an slr so should be good. has lots of dials though so gonna have to work out how to use it properly (trial and error obv - the manual is about 200 pages long!)

losing focus

of late, when i first sit down, i have been really unfocused and losing lots in the first few hands.
no change there tonight, and i concentrated enough to grind lots back.

gave about $1k to two different people. one is a massive moron, the other a massive nit, and i played badly against them all night. luckily enough people were donating that i finished up a little for the day.

been getting lots of headaches when playing recently. a combination of tired hungry and thirsty doesn't help. i really should eat drink and sleep properly. i also find my monitor way too bright now, and been trying to turn it down but it still seems to bright....

in other news, my flat hunting took me to gumtree and i found an ad that sounded too good to be true. awesome area, 80% of general market rate, but i still emailed the guy. and his response was, well, judge for yourselves (some street names changed for no good reason)


Subject: Re: Reply to your ad: GOOD LOCATION   -- -- --  NO EXTRA FEE - -- -- FULLY FURNISHED ONE BEDROOM FLAT

ello
Thanks for your mail. I am a very young comfortable professional,26 who works in a recording company as a studio manager.I would like to rent out a double bedroom Garden Flat with Broad Band Internet to a very easy going person at 700 per month including all bills.available now for you to occupy.not shared apartment..My apartment is very comfortable fully furnished flat of brand duplex flat.Located in quiet residential area { XXXXX} B street is located between area A and Abc Avenue and is therefore well placed for tube station (Jubilee Line) underground station and the shopping and restaurant facilities of Finchley Road.is fully furnished with digital home cinema, hi-fi system, VCR, DVD player, phone, fax, computer, cable/satellite, internet access, wardrobe, cupboard, Hanging wardrobe, safe deposit box, radio alarm clock, hair dryer, fully air-conditioned, central heating, intruder alarm, fire
alarm and more. Large fully equipped kitchen, 2 toilets and unlimited wireless internet.
I don't want any problem for myself.., i need to know the person that will occupy my apartment that is, the person that will take care of my apartment like theirs because am letting the flat out because am presently in Manchester working. It is not compulsory that i rent out the flat but if i can get a reliable and tidy person that will take care of my flat for me i can let it out.so i need to know them better i.e what you and your partner do for a living.

Rent Includes

Electricity
Gas
Water Charge
Council Tax
Lease
internet

Waiting to read from you.

 Well, that's a nigerian sounding email. and yes, they did start and email with 'ello' and end it with, waiting to read from you!
i thought i'd probe further with an email:

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

As you probably guessed from my email address i'm a student at the moment, just finishing and will be writing my work up over the next few months.

Looking for somewhere at the moment to be able to concentrate on my work and yours stood out - seems almost too good to be true! If you're around sometime in the next few days it would be good to see the place and meet you as i'm sure you'd want to meet any potential tenants too.

Also would be good to know if there is the potential to get a parking permit for the streets around there?

Look forward to hearing from you,

well, then came a pretty quick reply:

Subject: THINKING ON THE VIEWING OF THE FLAT


Thanks for the reply.I would love to meet you, get to know you and show you round the flat so that you can see what you are renting but I have been having problems with time wasters who could not keep to there end of deal.Its really time wasting because i am a very busy person and do not really have much time to waste. To me, every seconds count.because i am presently  in the studio doing some live recording and icant make or receive calls due to the nature of my job,but have my Laptop here to reply to emails.viewing will not be a problem, Anytime during the week in the evening would be a good date for our meeting.
The rent is still very Low considering the current economic climate in London..

Can you please answer the following questions?
-Are you really serious about the renting the flat?
 How many are you to occupy the Flat?.
-If you love the flat when you see it, will you make the payment to hold it against your move in?

why I am asking these questions is basically because of my experience with my last tenant. Morgan moved into my flat in JUNE:2008,on commencing the tenancy, he paid a total sum of £537.50 in rent hoping that he would pay up the balance  unknowingly  he provided a fraudulent employers reference to convince me of having a stable job!
Although i served him with Section 8 and Section 21 Notices and obtained a Court Order for possession of the property, he was reluctant to move out or pay any of the rent arrears.County Court bailiffs got him evicted and his total debt to date is £1,263. (Quite much).
 I will prepare all the necessary documentations i:e Contract Form:which we will both sign after being satisfied with the flat.
Payment will be made after signing the contracts and keys will be handed over to you once contract is made.
Please,understand that i am NOT asking you to pay me BEFORE you view the flat.The neighborhood is safe and i guess you have heard much about this area?it is a safe, clean area.

-Your rent begins on your move in date..
-Viewing is never  a problem.
-Proof of ownership and Documentation will be shown upon viewings.
-There is no minimum or maximum stay.
- Rent include Council Tax,electricity,gas,internet, e.t.c
-Its 700pcm and 700 refundable deposit.

Kindly get back to me about an idea on what we can do so that we can arrange a meeting for viewing.

Thanks while hoping to read from you.
Regards,


Well, the thing that sealed it (95% scam surely?!) was that the subject line of the email changed. no real person does that surely?
also he referred to our meeting as a date. that scared me.

i took my tv off my wall. when i first put it up i noticed it was a bit high (not like that) but was too lazy to redrill holes and move it. plus, i never used it much.
but now with the world cup on it's painful to look at so high so i took it down and moved it to my desk. right now i also have my laptop on my desk along with my monitor. one would think my desk be massive to cope with this but right now i can see my monitor, much of my laptop and almost none of the telly (and it's only a baby telly vision). this will take some rearranging if i'm going to watch the world cup whilst working and surfing the interweb.

i should probably begin by clearing the books (there are 9 i have to read, one is by nabokov and boring, and one is my learn russian book which is ongoing, but that's still a lot of reading) and random foreign change off my desk. and probably also my degree certificate. it's been there for years.

anyways, this week i was sent to coventry and had some time one evening to meet an old young friend i hadn't seen for years. amazingly, she suggested the casino as the best place to get drink. and happily i knew where that was. so i drove there, had some cheeky pints too many and when she left i realised i was a bit too pissed to open the car door let alone drive. so i did what any gambler would have done and sat down at the poker table to reclaim my roulette losses. (or vice versa)

my aim was to tilt the life forces out of everyone whilst also lasting long enough to not be too pissed to remember where the hotel was. it could have started very bad. i sat with just over £100 in this 1/2 game. woo, i'm a shortstacker. first hand i play is a few hands in (i have no patience for live games anymore) and raise k4o in late position. only one of the blinds call. (read: old man, likely to be rubbish).
flop: 9JQ
i bet half pot he call
turn:A
i bet half pot again, he call
river 4
he check, i shove for about 50, he tanks for eternity, i give off caro strong tells in case he's read a book. unlikely though. he tanks some more, and folds face up J9 lol. ty. table talk down my end puts me on kt. more lols to be had.

then the fun begins. i call a raise from a big stack with kt spades. he had a big stack so i assumed he wasn't just bad, but also lucky, so proceeded to play with caution. old man from hand 1 comes along.
flop is q92, two diamonds, one spade
checks round
turn is 7 spades
old man checks, big stack bets £10, i raise to £30 knowing he has nothing, old man calls (!?) mr big stack folds
river is 5 spades
old man checks, i stick £60 or so in, he tanks for 1/100th of the last tank and calls with aq dd!!
this tilted him enough to leave. 1 down, 8 to go.

i don't play for a bit so when i see 72o in late position i figure this is a good hand to get to showdown with. i raise, 3 callers.

flop is 89t, 2 clubs, and all check to me. i check
turn is a j. checks to me, i bet pot, 1 caller.
river is A of clubs. i figure i'm likely to get called by worse but wanna be sure to show this down so i check. he tries to play 'show me yours' and announces two pair.
i turn over my hand to not much surprise. maybe they have me pegged already.

i made a bad river call later with k7 on a 7733A board against nit of the century when every street was checked to the river when he bet small, i raised small, he 3 bet big. i convinced myself he could do this with any 7 but no, obv A7.  i think i'm lucky it wasn't quads.

7's were obviously being lucky after not coming up on roulette so when i got 74 on the button in a straddled pot i called. big blind was previous kid who lost to my 72.
(initial read: under 18, can't cash out as likely has no i.d., playing to lose.
current read: unchanged)

flop is 743
he checks, i bet small, like £5.
turn 4
he checks, i bet £15.
river 8
he checks
i bet £42. he pretends that he's thinking and then calls. again trying to instigate a game of show me yours i don't give him the pleasure by turning over 74 to a look of broken despair. he literally jumps over the wall next to the table to get away from me.
2 down, 7 to go.

not much else happened for a while, and then i noticed it was after 3am, having played about 30 hands (awesome live poker) so i cashed out and went to get a couple of hours sleep.

online has been boringly breakeven but with mountainous swings. for almost 20k hands. need to play better and run better imo. at least i'm starting to play lots of hands and keeping this up maybe retain sn status by august.

just when i thought i was out...

they pull me back in

just two days ago i was saying how nothing interesting or funny had happened. and then yesterday, bam, a gargantuan mong strikes out at me.

i went to my uni's print office on friday to see if they could make me a poster by tuesday. the 'lady' (definitely in caster semanya's genre of 'lady') said "probably, but we can't be sure"
brilliant. you've got no work whatsoever as it's the summer holiday for pretty much everyone and you can't even be sure to do a simple ctrl+p on your computers within 3 days.
so i had to get the local print shop to do it. and as a bonus they deliver it. i told them to call me when they get here, and i'll meet them at the print office (since it's a part of campus that they know, and also it's round the corner from my office)
monday rolls along and i get a call that they're here. so i go to the print office to meet them. for some reason they were waiting inside but i gathered they knew the 'lady' who works there since printshop man is here most days apparently. i say hi to him, get poster from him. and then 'lady' comes out her office to where we were and starts abusing me by shouting "we're not a deliver service you know!"
"ok, i replied, i wasn't using you as a delivery service, i was just meeting him here cos it's where he knows and i'm ..."
"WE'RE NOT A DELIVERY SERVICE!!!!!!!11"
"ok, i replied, not using you as a delivery service, i'm just meeting him here, my office is round the corner, it's an easy place to meet..."
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WE AREN'T A DELIVERY SERVICE!"

at this point i wanted to ask her if she was deaf or stupid. cos it had to be one or the other. but i knew if i asked i would just get interrupted again. so i just said ok and walked out with printshop man as she continued a random barrage of abuse and bizarre points to about how terrible it was that someone should meet in 'her' building.
as we left we talked and laughed about it, he didn't understand what the problem was either so i'm not going crazy just yet. though i was thinking of ordering some random things and sending them to her department, labelled for anybody else. perhaps even some labelled to her, with a message inside asking her to make a personal delivery to someone else in another department....

ps massive breakeven stretch on poker. due to playing stupidly bad. take two days off (enforced anyway) and gonna use that time to mentally refocus.

discoveries you make that turn out not to be your discoveries as other poeple already thought of them

i remember when i first discovered, serendipitously, and only a few years ago, that putting a bit of toilet paper into the bowl before dropping the kids off at the pool prevents splashback. i thought i was a genius. the first to have realised this. sadly, it seemed more well known than i had thought.

these are better moments than when people tell you about their negative discoveries. and by that i mean things they point out to you which lower your quality of life because you wouldn't otherwise have noticed them. for example, wagamama's seats are really bad for posture and leave you with a stomach ache. but only after you know about it! (sorry). and also that when eating meat for dinner you often end up with the meat sweats, being really thirsty for the rest of the night no matter how much you drink (sorry again). i'll stop now.

anyway, things have been nicely quiet out here for me.
i've found poker increasingly boring to talk to most people about over the past few years for various reasons. and sadly in the past week it's been the most interesting thing i can think of that's happened, yet no one would understand what i was talking about.

played four sessions this month for ~1k hands each time which is decent volume for me. though laughably little for anyone who takes it semi seriously. the last two session started off disastrously. yesterday i flopped the nuts with qj on a kt9 board, got all in against 99, river was a 9.
that was followed up with aa losing to kk aipf, and a few hands later against the same kk guy on another table aa losing to jj aipf.
today didn't start much better. 78ss flopped 9tj with 2 clubs and got all in on the flop vs...78cc (river club!)
that was shortly followed by simultaneously getting qq against aa and qq against aa.

in the end yesterday i finished 1k down, and today 1.5k up so i can't really complain, i guess i'm running well enough even though all in ev disagrees telling me i'm running bad. been working hard on not checking results during play, and not checking ptr of myself at all. hopefully at end of month will be recorded as +ve at 2/4!

i'm sure there were some other things that have been happening but all i can really remember about the past few days is that it has been pretty hot here, and in fact on friday i almost melted. not that i'm complaining. after the coldest winter in bloody ages it was nice to be overly hot.

last, but by no means least, i find that facebook seems to get rather a bad press, but really, there are some moments that make it worthwhile.

i just ate a whole clove of garlic with some parsley

hopefully these weird smells will allow me to fit in with the degenerates that frequent the local poker club and they won't look down on me like an outcast.

so there's been some iPoker (nothing to do with apples) tournament series with an overlay. i managed to get logged on to william hill after a palava including having to use a different computer to download the software and speak to live chat to get my account information after i had tried and failed the online auto generating  reset link by virtue of telling them a fake birthday when i first joined. obviously this makes it very difficult for anyone else to get into my account, but equally difficult for me.

i finally got in ready to make a deposit, seconds after the tournament started. and they don't have late registration. that probably saved me lots of money, so a hearty thanks to their slow live help.

later i fired up some tables, with only a couple to begin with that seemed ok. just as i sat down, and before playing any hands, i noticed an all in for a $1200 pot, only for both players to split it with Ak. i thought that was a bit loose with 150bb till i realised it was a 3/6 table, not a 2/4 one. obviously, i couldn't back out now having sat down so played there for a while. i added a few 2/4 tables too to keep myself from boredom. as it happened, almost nothing happened for the first 500 hands. that used to annoy me enough to tilt but this time i just kinda sat around still waiting. lost a bit at 2/4 (further into the red on ptr, grr - which i'm not gonna check myself on more than once a week) and won a bit at 3/6 but all pretty uninteresting. managed over 1k hands which is nice. that's my daily target i think. 3 times during the week and 4k over weekends.

more interesting was a 5 a side game of football where a couple of opponents went mental shouting threats at us, leading to unmitigated violence on their behalf including but not limited to head-butts. according to the ref, there is no need to do anything about this. i guess it's acceptable when your losing, as seen on t.v.

they say necessity is the mother of all invention and following my lunch today i have surmised there is a need for a new name for eggs where you make them somewhere between fried (over easy) and scrambled. the ones where you intend to make fried eggs but are too hungry to wait for them to cook so you mix it up, but only a little bit.

ps spoke to boss, officially unemployed. here's to watching all the world cup games!

i have a pen that i can't work out how to open

maybe i should take a picture of it and see if anyone can help me. clicking the top makes it talk like napolean dynamite. there are no twisty bits, or parts to click in or out, and i cannot for the life of me see how to get the pen part to come out it's shell for it to write. any guesses greatly appreciated and rewarded by a steaking of highstack into a stars tournament where he has to comically abuse the opponents on every occasion where he beats them in a hand.

i meant to play tonight but forgot. my aim of becoming +ve on every level on ptr took a step closer earlier when i won money at 2/4 combined with them not tracking a bunch of losing hands. sadly, a few poor sessions put me back in the red there for now....

and without further ado, here's the month's graph:

follow much reader feedback i've decided to include some more crazy swedish photos.
here are some of the icebar from the icehotel in lapland:

just in case you weren't sure whether it was ok to smoke in a building made of ice

and a view from inside. they cheat by using reindeer rugs everywhere so it's only 99% ice

if you're bored of those here's a picture from a seemingly standard underground station over there.

and if you weren't bored of icehotel photos let me know, i have a few of the rooms too....

also gonna see my boss tomorrow to check i have officially entered to the world of the jobless. except i'll still have stuff to do, it won't be as hectic as it is now and it'll allow me time to write things up that i've needed to for a while....

i found the luckiest man

sadly, all his luck was directed at me

all heads up pots
kt vs aj        kqt flop
t5 vs q3dd   tt9dd flop turn flush
k8 vs 99      k98ss 5 8s

and a 3 way tilted aq vs ak (and ak)

so thats todays graph. obv the coolers above aren't included in the ev line.

as if i wasn't already tilted enough from yesterday when i had people in front of me on the escalator (a family with little kids) and when they got to the top they just stopped inches from the end. just to look around. with people right behind me i almost knocked over one of their kids. a part of me can understand these energy wasting humans not caring about other people but surely they should protect their kids from being walked into?

then on my journey home i had my least favourite driver type.  the one that cuts you up - clearly in a rush to get somewhere? no, just wanted to get in front of me and drive slowly. 

again, i can understand if you wanna drive slow, and can somewhat understand if you need to cut me up dangerously if you're in a rush (not that i agree with it!) but to dangerously get in front of me only to then drive slowly? it's almost like i'm in the truman show and they're testing me. (which would mean you're in on it too. you bastards)

i find it offensive that my own blog makes me fill out a captcha to comment

i wouldn't mind so much except i still get spam comments!

though they are cool spam comments with wise sayings.

tonight i decided to inflict a great pain upon myself. that's right, i cashed out of stars. fully aware of the myth of the cashout curse, i concentrated on not being struck down by the hoodoo.

sadly, i lost out. i won't bore you with the details and .... what's that i hear? you wanna know? sounds like schadenfreude. but i don't want to disappoint you. so here goes.
jj vs qq
qjx flop
bye bye 300bb pot
aj vs kq, he calls me all in on flop of a10x lol. turn j. lol more.
99 vs a5dd again im called all in on turn with a board of 2284dd
aa vs k2hh called all in on flop of 373hh
and the final straw was i had AcAs against 9s10s and flop was 678sss turn Js. lol thanks.

that said, i played pretty bad and made some shocking mistakes which is what i really try to concentrate on avoiding.

i've also had some terrible life news, in that i've literally been sent to Coventry. after being asked to go i had a 'yes man' moment where i thought if i said yes to everyone i would get zooey deschanel. only after putting the phone down did i realise it was a book first and not a film. and everyone knows you can't trust everything you read. another schoolboy mistake.

i want one of these

i'm not yet sure what for, but definitely do want

a busy week of spiders, hotels and things i have forgotten

i've seen on tv that spiders lay billions of eggs and then they all hatch at once and run out like horny trance addicts on crack shooting white stuff everywhere.
never though did i get into my car, only to see them performing their newly hatched ritual on my wing mirror and window. once i'd got into my car, i found it very difficult to get out.
thankfully my passenger was braver than i and casually despidered my car on my behalf.
that was a close encounter.

then i find my flat (not really my flat, just where i was temporarily sheltering from the heat) had no central heating or hot water. so i had to go to a hotel to shower one night. i had to go to town, ending up near tottenham court road since i booked it last minute and they were the cheapest (and it was a 4* woooooo)
only to arrive at 1am and get told by the check in man he has good news. sweets perhaps i though to myself. but no, just an upgrade to some king sweet or something. kinda passed me by till i walked into a room i decided i could definitely live in forevermore. sadly i was getting it at one fifth the real price and forevermore would equate to 3 weeks looking at my bank account.

here are some pics of magnificent room

As for the thing i forget, well i remembered that i had something else funny that happened, but that is all that i can remember. which is probably worse than just forgetting it.

you only tilt when you're winning

i once wrote a post about how i should stop looking at how much i'm winning/losing as it affects my play. i mostly was thinking about the losing side as this gets most coverage. obviously it's tougher to keep going when you're losing and it can cause bad play which causes more losses and this spirals into a decimation of money in account and less sleep in bed.

however, something i had completely neglected until recently was how winning affects me. i recently read someone else mention that winning can cause you to 'tilt'. i never realised how much this phenomenon affected me until last week. i really noticed that i also cared less about each decision when i was winning as my mentality was 'this hand doesn't matter, i'm winning loads even if i lose it.'
that was a session  set to be my best ever till i gave away half the winnings and didn't really care.
as such, it's another compelling reason not to check winnings/losses at least during the session. something i finally managed to do (or not do!) tonight.

i also need to stop obsessing over ptr and daily results. gonna try to check ptr once a week at most (and then cut down to once a month if i can)

after being 6k down in the year (twice) tonight i hit +5 figures which feels pretty good. hopefully i can start putting some volume in and see where it takes me.

kinda forgot my plan to try to include a picture with every post. here was my facebook inbox a couple of weeks ago.

i wonder if facebook is stealing other people's messages too?

getting my head checked out

so i went to the doctor to have a look at some wierd growth on my head. i couldn't see it, but others told me it was was some weird little thing and those are supposed to get looked at.
i turned up at the docs and casually mentioned that i also thought i was losing hearing in one of my ears. he checked out my ear and said it seemed fine. i told him when i was listening to music and things with headphones i couldn't hear well in one ear.
however, his most pressing concern was that i didn't make this point about hearing when booking my appointment at the gp, along with the abnormal head thing. no concern whatsoever about the rapid coordinated degradation of my body. merely, the protocol i had so seemingly spectacularly abused.
anyway, another happy ending as i realised a few days ago that in fact my headphones were faulty and one ear is quieter than the other. i'm not falling apart just yet.

some days

are clearly good.
some are clearly bad.
most are a mixture.
though usually i think one's frame of reference is more based on your perception of things which (allegedly) is easy to change.

that said, i think today was good. i officially retired from the world of 'work' and will finish up by the end of the month. at that point i will start looking for another house to rent (great timing).
other news from today - i have a 15th follower. this is a magnificent development and is a much more well rounded number than 14. so thanks to all my followers (including me)
other magnificent report from today was playing 5 a side. not only did we manage to finish before it started pissing down but i also managed to make a wonderous reaction save with my nose. on top of that i also managed to add some beautiful red patterns to the top i was wearing at the time. don't tell me i can't multitask.

my dreams are weird. i don't mean the ones when i'm awake. those are also weird but understandable. e.g. today i dreamt of following the car in front of me back to his house. i would wait for him to go inside, and in that time i would write a note. when he leaves his car i would go to it and take both wing mirrors, pick the lock and also take the rear view mirror, leaving my note which says "well, if you're not gonna use them, i might as well take them"

this seems to be a very big mix of thoughts. my last of which is that amazon's recommend thing is obviously broken. i bought *** ** *** **** on my account for a ladyfriend. obviously i've never watched it, nor do i intend to but it now recommends to me all manner of diabolical tv shows. i need to turn it off. or perhaps by many manly things to balance it out, like motor oil and guns etc

scoops

not ice cream, but stars's super tournament fest.
after complaining that tournaments tilt me i could do nothing but enter a couple yesterday. one was a 200 runner winner goes to south africa for the football thing where i busted 40somethingth.
the other was a scoop mid buy in winner goes home (or stays sat at home in his/her pyjamas) with many billions of dollars. (or maybe just one hundred and seventy thousand of them for company. i forget which but it was too many to count in one go).

4500 runners started and i had beat off over 4400 but with my sore hand, tired mind and no more chips i could no longer continue and went to bed with a profit earnt (/won?) at a mere few dollars per hour. over 10 hours of play, but i'm not too disappointed. i think i did ok considering i don't know what i'm doing and i wasn't far from making lots in one fell swoop.

but now, having gone to bed at close to 5am and getting up before 9 (ok, waking up close to 8, and getting up after 9) i am tired. i think i would like to work at google where they have a nap area. i miss that about the early years of primary school. siesta's. only the spanish kept up the idea of a national siesta every single day. almost makes me want to move there. that, along with the fact that the hot women can't say thirty, but instead pronounce it dirty. tempting...

a tied election

what do you do when a local election is tied?
you recount the votes.
4 times.
still tied.
now what?
cut a pack of cards. best of one. high card wins.
welcome to english law.
proof

tor(na)ment

i have decided that playing in tournaments tilts me. not the losing, the beats or the hours of play for a lower wage then you can get walking the streets looking for change. i just find the act of playing them to be boring and painful and just should not play any.
today, of course, i decided to play a few, some freerolls, some not free rolls. playing these alongside each other is bizarre. in some games you're fighting against people who quite possibly think that they are playing snap. or war. or a combination of war and snap they just invented in their heads.
at the same time you're playing people who have a semblance of intelligence and understand that there are no jokers in the deck. when playing many tables it is easy to lose track of which is which.
that actually made it more enjoyable till i realised i was treating every game like it was pretend money.
i think i managed one cash for what could was about 15c. every little helps.

then i decided that i should play cash. i spent most of my time reading the internet and watching telly vision. this did not bode well. i played truly awful and somehow ended up level. as soon as i realised i was not able to snap out of my mental state where i believed people would do what i was telling them to do out loud i decided to quit and eat a steak.

this cheered my up and now i lie here bloated, happy that i didn't lose, but sad because really i did lose since i should have won lots. and instead of playing snap in my mind against myself i am trying to formulate a plan so that when i choose to sit down and play i can get myself in the right frame of mind and achieve a enlightened state of focusness. i believe this to be possible as i am a yellow belt in the world of NLP. having cured my arachnophobia with just my brain i am sure i can fix this problem too.

as for today's pic, it's a photo of a building. a building that won awards for its beauty. voted most architecturally beautiful building in all of sweden. i was taken aback when i first saw it. what say you?

300 posts

a landmark, allegedly. mostly of my survival.

i like photos and am gonna try to put one in every post from now on. today's is a tongue twister which i recently took whilst on a ferry. i was on a train but then the train drove onto the ferry:

whilst traversing europe i rediscovered the 500 Euro note. this is worth a lot of money. all in one monopoly-esque note. i would hate to lose one. i hate losing a £5 note. but i do love finding the odd note in a jacket or trouser pocket i haven't worn for ages. imagine the joy at finding a 500euro note!


i don't have any (more) wise words or tales to regale you with on this magnificent occasion. but i will say this:
weekends in poker are either VERY good or VERY bad. there is no middle ground. last week i ran/played bad and wished to shoot myself in the vagina.
this weekend things went first very very good, then very very bad, but i quit before i wanted to do myself any harm.
what could have been, and for a short time was, my best ever day at the poker tables, turned into a very average day.


i realised i still have lots to learn in playing my best and putting in volume.

i also have to quit my 'job' this month so i can do things with my life. like watch every game of the world cup.

i'm narrowing down the things i don't want to do in life in case my acting career falls through. i've firstly decided that even though house is amazing, i don't want to be a doctor. i don't think i'd be very good.
this is on top of knowing i don't want to be an accountant. or a computer programmer. or a recruitmenteer. and definitely not a politician. they are lying turds.

most of my ideas of what jobs are out there come from watching tv shows. the latest show that i am watching is 'the thick of it.' it's written/made by armando iannucci. there was a spin off film from it called 'in the loop'.
i think he is one of my favourite comedians. he is genius. there was a sketch show he did, the first thing of his i saw, and i was hooked.

month's end

i'm done for the month. i almost didn't hit the supernova minimum of 7.5k points. this minimum requirement is down from 10k last year which for me is both good and bad. good because it's easier to hit each month. but bad because the monthly target to hit is lower, yet i still need 100k by end of sept. which would be 11k per month. and as of now i'm on about 40k which is slightly behind they year target even though i haven't yet missed a month.

anyways, here's a graph. a couple of horror session where i'd like to blame variance or something, but really i know i'm to blame for them.

now the boring bit is out the way, there is something very painful i went through a couple of days back. i got  bought a new shirt, and wore it when it was nice and warm. i find it rather presumptuous that other people both assume i need something new, and that i will like what they buy me. luckily, they have good taste.
so, it was warm enough to be naked under said shirt. i left my house and after about 10 minutes of strolling around i realised that the shirt was slowly ripping my nipples to shreds. too late to turn back and change, i had to suffer uncontrollably that evening. the pain only got worse and getting to sleep that night was tough; they still hurt lots the next day. so much so that i spent the whole day trying to ensure that day's t shirt didn't come in to contact with my nipples. i must have looked a bit of a tit.
i've never experienced this before and i was wondering whether anyone tested this shirt out before they decided to sell it to the unsuspecting masses.
i mentioned this to a lady who told me bra's are great for stopping this effect. she did stop short of suggesting i get one. just. but who knows, may she'll be presumptuous and just go out and by me one instead.

i need your comedy help

but first, i would like to vent my hate at all retarded drivers who think using their indicators = right of way.
you are a useless human being. up there with most people who have been on big brother.

anyways, here is where i need your help. i saw this superb note in the toilet at school today. if someone knows of a good response, please leave it in the comments and i will put it up on the wall (and take a photo of any forthcoming response) below this beauty:

i came up with a few, select your favourite if you don't come up with your own

1)whoever the filthy person is who keeps throwing away my paper coverings of the toilet seat, could they please stop?!?!11?
if you are dirty enough to touch something my bum has touched one would assume you enjoy it.
this is a university, i think (and therefore it is, or something).
i doubt anyone else takes dumps here, so i expect to see my paper seat waiting for my morning dump the next day. please stop interfering with my routines. are you not educated enough that you clean up after my shit?

2)i can't stop, i might catch AIDS off you

sweet charity

i have a charity poker tournament this weekend i half intend to play in. the top prize used to be a trip to vegas which i won once. now it's just cash. probably a bit less than the vegas trip would cost, but it doesn't seem so much fun when you can't win a holiday. i guess it's for charity so i will probably go anyway.

in order to warm up i thought i would play some tonight. i started off pretty horrendously (convincing i was practising my giving to charity) and ended just as badly. after unchecking all the post blind boxes, the penultimate hand was this

6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: utg ($412.70 in chips)
Seat 2: utg + 1 ($804 in chips)
Seat 3: hero ($743.35 in chips)
Seat 4: btn ($677.35 in chips)
Seat 5: sb ($400 in chips)
Seat 6: villain ($416 in chips)
sb: posts small blind $2
villain: posts big blind $4

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hero [Ad As]
utg: folds
utg + 1: folds
hero: raises $8 to $12
btn: folds
sb: calls $10
villain: calls $8

*** FLOP *** [7h 6c Kd]
sb: checks
villain: bets $24
hero: calls $24
sb: folds

*** TURN *** [7h 6c Kd] [Tc]
villain: bets $52
hero: calls $52

*** RIVER *** [7h 6c Kd Tc] [Ac]
villain: bets $128
hero: raises $527.35 to $655.35 and is all-in
villain: pauses


pauses



timer starts



pauses some more






calls $200 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($327.35) returned to hero

*** SHOW DOWN ***
hero: shows [Ad As] (three of a kind, Aces)
villain: shows [8h 9h] (a straight, Six to Ten)
villain said, "lol"
villain said, "nitrolling"

seeing as his stats are 19/17 i assume that means he has happy to be a nit who slowrolls?
if i'm wrong, someone please let me know.

as for his chat, if i knew him personally i think it would be quite funny. seeing as he is a nonymous, i do not understand what he was trying to do.



i saw the south park that has now caused lots of controversy. aside from the irony in trying to prove you're peaceful by threatening people's lives, it also hilarious because in an old episode (pre denmark cartoons) they had a mohammed character - an episode which still reruns on comedy central!!

the great great british return

i don't really understand most people's complaints about having their holidays extended. sure, families esp with little kids and people who only had small budgets for holidays get hit hard; most people i met though, were on business and weren't too fussed by an extra week off work, all expenses paid!

i'm gonna have to fight airlines and insurance to get flight monies (should be easy), hotel monies (less easy), train tickets monies (even less easy) and hopefully a sustenance allowance (much less easy)

moron of the day was found in a newsagents at 5am in cologne. she asked a shelf stacker if he knew when she'd be able to get the next train to london on eurostar. he said he didn't know and that she should try the information people. she replied "I spoke to them and they couldn't help so I thought I would try you"
really, you couldn't make it up.

i think i took some funny photo's but will have to check and put some up.


have almost forgotten how to play poker and have 10 days left this month to play at least 6000 hands. really need to aim for 1000 hands per day (and double on weekends) starting from this weekend.

but first i have a couple of episodes of house to catch up on.

Iceland

SO WHEN THE UK ASKED ICELAND TO BE PAID THE MONEY OWED IN CASH, IT SEEMS THEY MISHEARD.
AS WELL AS NOT BEING ABLE TO TYPE IN LOWER CASE IM STUCK IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE WITH NO IDEA OF WHEN OR HOW I'LL BE BACK.

a brag that's really a beat

back in profit for the year at 2/4!

next target, back in profit at 2/4 on ptr

here's a graph showing some awesomely terrible ups and downs.

 it's quite funny (but only in hindsight. at the time it's about as funny as stabbing pains in the brain) how sharp the downs are. especially that massive one in the middle. that vertical down line essentially means it would have been slower to lose money by setting some on fire.


so spring is here, women are walking around with less clothes on, i've seen the sun for two days in a row, i'm also gonna leave my 'job' very soon, (to finally, officially, become a bum) and have a holiday this week.

all that's left to do is start writing my sitcom.

went to the dentist last week. i dunno what it is about old people in dentist waiting rooms but they like to talk to everyone else in there. last time i had someone from mauritius, this time was some old dude with a pony tail. talking about how the dentist is always behind schedule as said dentist walks into the room. but old people seem to have no shame doing things like this. i wonder why not, and whether i'll be like that.

as for the dentist, when he found out i didn't have an electric toothbrush he was surprised and then told me off. but he wasn't as shocked as my friend, who thinks i'm the laziest person since that fat mexican who couldn't be bothered to get out of bed. i do wonder why i never got one. i think i should have. after all, i think all the pavements (sidewalks to my american cousins) should be replaced by those travelators/moving walkways/flat escalators that you see in airports.

oh, and if anyone knows a good electric toothbrush lemme know, thanks.

time to update

i know when it's time to update my blog because either
1) someone has commented and therefore at least one person has read it
or
2) i'm the last one to update on yakshi's list of blogs, and then i feel like i'm letting them all down

luckily, i do have a couple of things to say

firstly, i have definitely improved my poker skills as i finally received some abusive comments on ptr. something along the lines of
you ****ing suck, you're ****. why are you playing at 2/4? you ****ing suck.

thanks to the villain who wrote that, mainly for their generosity. if everyone paid me thousands of dollars to dish out a line of abuse i would happily take a few more lines of anonymous internet abuse. but only if you paid well.

secondly, i would like to offer some poker advice. not because i want to share, but because what i am about to describe annoys me so much; and i very very often hear/read people talking/writing about making a play due to how much (or little) they have invested in the pot.
this myth is dispelled in poker 101 namely:
money in the pot is no longer yours
how much you have put in the pot is wholly and totally irrelevant. the only thing that matters is what odds the pot is offering you, and how much equity you think you have against your opponent.

it's also a poker lesson that can be transferred into real life.
how much time/money you have invested in something shouldn't affect your future decisions, (as that is effectively money in the pot which is no longer yours), rather how your future will be affected by the current decision is all that matters.


it's halfway through the month and i've played about 3 hands. i'm away for the week next week as i will be hunting moose (and shooting them but only with cameras) on snowmobiles in Sweden, so will have to get 15k hands in this and next weekends.

mutha flippers

i often have lots of well constructed, thought out posts that i start writing in my head. sadly, i never get the chance to write them down because i'm doing distracting things like driving, showering or trying to fall asleep.
last night however, i decided to make some bullet points of thoughts i had. how they will look in the clear light of day is anyone's guess.

the first thing i thought of was how i won a big flip last night when i played. utg min raises (added a note at this point to say he was a fellow retard), i 3 bet to $24 or so, and button who is a terrible reg 4bets to $92 or something. he's playing 450 and i cover. retard folds and it's back to me. i figure if i shove he 1)calls with small pairs because i must have ak if i shove, and 2)i didn't wanna play qq oop because an ace always flops. so i shoved. he superduper snap called. with ak.
ace on the flop, thanks stars. queen on the river. thanks stars (non sarcastic the second time)

this reminded me of the halcyon years of poker before anyone knew what they were doing. and this was the time i discovered you could three bet with anything in position and get called pre, followed by a check/fold from your opponent on basically any flop because you had to have aa to 3 bet. good times.
i even played on a table where one guy said in chat "i know what you're doing, i'm gonna catch you" and then he continued to play in the exact same way.

anyway, then i started thinking about how much better i am at most things than i was one year ago. and one year ago i had the same thought about previous years. then i started thinking about how i'm probably becoming less awesome as time goes on as i tend to a status of true awesomeness. but then i realised, that such a state is impossible to attain and what it actually happening is each year i am improving less and less as a human  - which is probably me becoming old and stuck in my ways etc.

i can't remember what i called this concept but it did imagine drawing something i called an improvement derivative involving graphs, differentiation and integration and how it leads to a decreased rate of becoming more awesome. then i realised if i tell anyone about this they'll think i've been eating too much fruitcake since, after all, you are what you eat.

and in case you were wondering the title is a homage to the flight of the conchords. if you haven't yet seen it, you must! but only season 1, and the second half of season 2.

jinx?

sometimes i avoid talking about the rungood when i rungood as i don't want it to end and fear that writing about it will end it. that's pretty high up on the retard list. just below tabloid horoscopes, and just above me.

when i last wrote
since then i've employed the -$800 target which i am yet to hit. 
I did take my time to consider whether or not i should write it at all. of course, the results were that i did indeed write that sentence.
and the very next session i hit my target spectacularly, and kept on playing. i did somehow manage to stop pretty soon after though, down about $1200.

so i finally hit my target! hi 5. 

i once read that thinking about something (which you're at least partially in control of) can affect its outcome. kinda like a kriss akabusi pma (positive mental attitude) advert which i remember from childhood but can't find on youtube - and if it's not on youtube i'm beginning to think it never existed.

recently i've been watching a lot of house so considered buying a motorbike. when i asked my friend about his motorbike and if he'd ever crashed (he said only once and it hurt), and then he crashed a week later i felt partially responsible for implanting that thought into his head.

i can't tell if that's insanity or genius. they say it's a fine line between genius and insanity although i don't think  the two are mutually exclusive. i think it's just some genii (if that's not the plural it should be, how cool that word does look) appear insane to everyone else. and maybe if you can't tell the difference between insanity and genius that's why it looks like a fine line.
i'm pretty sure i'm rambling nonsense here so i'm gonna stop.

pma's all round

end of month!

this month has gone pretty pretty fast and i only played about 11k hands

halfway through the month got someone to look at how badly i was playing this year.
whilst i kinda knew the two major flaws in my game (had already mentioned them here a few times) having someone else tell me to stop being retarded helped immeasurably.

here is graph. left of red line is pre 'coaching'. to the right is post. one bad spell where i played in a terrible state of mind. sometimes i just sit down thinking, "i've been doing so well recently i'm surely due a time to lose." and then obviously i lose when i think like that.
so since then i've employed the -$800 target which i am yet to hit.

anyways, here's the graph.

today is april first. i slept till after noon so missed if anything interestingly fake happened. a few years back i left a message just after midnight, for a girl in a quiet whispery voice, saying something along the lines of "they're here...they've finally come to get me. get help...." before hanging up, turning off my phone and going to sleep.