Poker, Life and Polish Pricks

Sunday, October 14, 2007

This week marked the one year anniversary since I surprised Laura by dragging her to Paris to ask for her hand in marriage. A heck of lot has changed in our lives in the last year and particularly since the summer when I quit my job to give poker a go. If I'm being truly honest I think we'd both agree it has been one of the worst and most difficult times in both of our lives since.

I haven't made a bean from poker and in fact, have lost money at the game and only break even due to the rakeback I have accumulated. Poker in itself has been hard but we are not yet relying on drawing down money from it. However, it has been 2.5 months now and it's not like I quit with a years living expenses tucked away. In short, I don't really have the luxury of another 2.5 months of break even play. In fact, what am I saying 'not really'. Simply, I don't.

It isn't just poker that is the cause of heartache and anguish in our lives. I do feel a lot happier on a day-to-day basis than I did when I worked and Laura definitely picks up on how much more chilled out and relaxed I am. It's the other things in life that have happened since the summer that are getting to me/us. For example, I get myself set up for pro play and a few days later my monitor packs in. It's a total write off so I'm now stuck with a behemoth CTR until such times as we have the money and can justify a replacement. The other night Laura's laptop decided to pack in and it was £25 to get it temporarily patched up. Additional costs will likely follow since it seems the hard drive is buggered.

These are all varying degrees of minor inconvenience that make professional 'breaking even' taste that little more bitter. But then came the biggy. Laura had noticed she was decidedly more lethargic than normal since a very bad bout of food poisoning in early August. She's also been suffering a little hair loss and doesn't 'feel herself'. So, after trotting off to the doctors for a few blood tests she has subsequently been diagnosed as having celiac disease. To give you a quick crash course, her body's immune system reacts to gluten in her small intestine and attacks it as it would something foreign object in the system. This damages the lining of the intestine leading to problems in absorbing nutrients from food. Left unchecked, the body will continue to harm itself and can result in difficulties later in life such as bowel cancer and, in the meantime, she would continue to suffer the symptoms.

The only solution is for Laura to lead a strictly gluten free diet for the rest of her life. That means no normal breads, pastas, cereals, wheat, cakes, biscuits, etc. There are gluten free alternatives to most of these things but you are looking at considerable extra cost and difficulty in getting the goods. The burden of this is obviously on Laura who will have a greatly restricted diet and will have to completely change her eating habits, but it will ob affect me also. Neither of us are "eating out gurus" but we do enjoy a nice meal out every now and again. This will be considerably more difficult in light of Laura's dietary requirements and will make holidaying abroad really difficult as gluten is found in many products you might not expect. It'll be difficult enough to ascertain from an English speaker if food on a menu is absolutely gluten free but near impossible from someone abroad.

At the moment Laura is awaiting further tests before she is referred to a dietician. She is still eating as normal but soon enough that will come to an end and we are both worrying about the impact it'll have on ours lives.

So that's pretty shity! The girl I love has a very annoying illness that will affect and restrict her for life. However, we have the wedding to look forward to, right? Well yes, but god knows how we are going to fund it. Estimates are that its hit £12k already and we know that other inputs are probably good for about half of that. There is around £7000-7500 equity in the Subaru and we had earmarked the money from the sale of the car for the wedding. In recent months I've spent hours and hours cleaning and machine polishing it to greatly increase its appearance and I've spend money getting it through its MOT and to a standard fit for sale. As you might imagine with it looking so good and being in such great shape I've not been driving it much, but this weekend we were taking Laura's laptop to a repair shop so I figured I'd give it a run.

The car ran well and once warmed up I was even given a schooling by a motorbike in what straight line speed really is. The bike turned off and I sat at lights waiting to go straight on up a dualled road. On green I drove off and about 20m up the road a piece of shit wine coloured 1980-whatever Cavalier tried to pull into my lane without looking and smashed into the side of me forcing my other alloy into the kerb. The driver then drove off but as I had 315bhp at my disposal he got nowhere fast and eventually pulled off to a side road where I approached him in order to gauge if he was going to accept liability. I quickly clocked that he was Polish or Latvian and, of course, he gave the whole, "I no speeky zee English" chat (total bullshit, they all do when they need to). I told him that in light of the circumstances I wanted police present at the scene and made the phone call whilst Laura tried to get insurance documentation off him. Whilst at his car he produced an MOT and part of his V5 form but nothing relating to insurance. At around this time, said immigrant fuck concluded he was up shit creak without a paddle so brushed past Laura and he and his buddy sprinted off over some wasteland. I was a little slow in the uptake but took off after them and gave chase for a few minutes before they lost me in a maze of streets and paths.

The police arrived shortly afterwards and took statements from us both. Surprise, surprise, numbnuts didn't have insurance….or tax for that matter. So that will count as a claim against my insurance and will affect future premiums for the next 3-5 years. Joy. It is also the case that the Subaru will have to be withdrawn from sale until such times as it is put straight. The hassle factor is high! For example, if the alloys can't be refurbished then god knows what the insurance company will do because they are as rare as rocking horse shit in the anthracite colour. I guess I have all the admin relating to the weekends accident to look forward to tomorrow!

Sigh.

On the poker front I hit two targets on Friday:

1. Took the Full Tilt proportion of my roll back above $6000

2. Earned over 50,000 points and ordered the 8gb ipod nano

I'm now going to experiment with different sites and different times of the day to try and ensure that I'm always playing the weakest games available.

I also took part in the blogger tournament on Pokerstars and got off to a nice start early doors with AA and QQ scooping me decent pots and taking me to over double average chips. I was then dealt a heavy blow when it folded to the BTN who limped at 200/400. I raised around pot with AA from the SB and he called for a head up flop of Qc,Qs,Jc. I bet 2/3rd pot and he called. At this point I only have just over a pot-sized bet back and the turn completely bricked both our range. Tournament rust set in and I really didn't know what to do but I figured him to have K10 a flush draw Jx or Qx. I checked to allow him to bluff with the drawing/beaten part of his range and he took a free card. The river was a low club and I checked again, villain bet about a quarter of the pot so I made the crying call to be shown a flush. Clearly I made a mistake on the turn by not betting but I feared that if he has a queen my tournament was over if I bet out on the turn. I was however amazed at him limping and then calling a pot-sized raise from the player at the table that has played precisely two hands and shown down AA and QQ respectively. I can't imagine that sort of play is standard when it folds to a good player on the BTN with suited connectors but you have no idea how rusty my tourney memory is. That hand crippled me and I finally went out 511th with AK vs QJ all in pre-flop.

I also played some $0.15/0.25 PL Omaha tonight whilst I was playing the tourney on stars. I have literally no more than 5 hours life experience of Omaha and by god am I a fish! I just have no concept of the relative strength of my hands! I lost a buy in when I called a raise with two 10s and some other nice cards. The flop was A,10,5 rainbow and my other two cards were into nothing. Villain bet pot and I called. I was fairly sure he had AA but had no idea if against the sort of range I should expect for a tight preflop raiser if I should raise the flop or not. Turn was a low brick and he potted it again so I called. River a brick and he pushed and I stacked off to AA. Lol, I'm such an Omaha fish!

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