Niagara Falls

Time for a proper update.

I spent last week in Canada, staying in several expensive hotels, visiting Niagara Falls and Toronto and generally living well - none of which cost me a penny. I won’t excite you with the details of that particular arrangement.

It was my first time in North America, and very enjoyable. My impressions included a feeling of much more space everywhere; wider streets where the stores or houses don’t loom over the road, and therefore more sky. I was disappointed that only a few of the cars were the big, square automobiles that us ‘limeys’ (I got called that by an obnoxious gay guy) associate with America. I was amazed by the cheerful smiles and greetings of checkout girls and fast food servers. Actually I was perturbed by that, it can’t be natural. I think I prefer British surliness from my customer service encounters. Similarly, getting into elevators and having other people start - ugh- making polite conversation with me I felt like saying ‘Haven’t you got any manners!? Leave me alone!’

I was also struck by the unashamed attitude to commerce. Over here, big luminous signs by the road or banners declaring your steaks to be ‘the best in town’ would be considered a bit tacky, a bit brash. Over there, it’s the norm.

Oh, and Niagara Falls were great. They were something I had always wanted to see, and having a 21st floor hotel room overlooking them was very pleasant.

I picked up three poker books whilst I was over there; ‘Championship Omaha’ by McEvoy, ‘The Real Deal’ by Phil Gordon, and ‘The Making of a Poker Player’ by Matt Matros. I’ve started the Matros one, which is okay so far. I don’t have particularly high hopes of the other two, but I couldn’t resist getting one of the very few Omaha books around.

My own poker has been disappointing since I got back. Basically, I went on full tilt on Sunday night, my first session back. I was ahead, took a few beats, and then proceeded to throw chips into the pot in terrible, terrible situations out of frustration and anger. I can blame booze, tiredness, probably some jetlag, but it was a very poor performance.

Since then, I feel I have played very well for three days without really getting rewarded. Tuesday I took a ton of bad cards but kept my head to record only a tiny loss, then came back later and won nicely; the small loss was more important than the decent win. Yesterday sucked. I lost two or three pots that went from my scoop to my opponent’s scoop thanks to four-out rivers. I also bubbled in a sit and go which I played really, really well.

Oh well, the lesson of the last few days is mental control. If I can keep losing the minimum when things are going bad, then the good sessions will be truly valuable rather than being wasted in clawing back needless losses.

I would like things to go well, and to prove to myself that I can avoid tilting, because work is getting to me very badly. I despise my job. I loathe it. I would live on bread and water to get out of there. I would dearly love to get sacked tomorrow.

I am not tiring of these google referals:
how long to get phone connected
romantic nights
worst episode ever
‘caught without a train ticket’