How to pull stunning women

I always enjoy Boy Genius’s blog, despite the almost complete lack of poker content. I think it provides me with a dose of ‘everyday life’ blogging that helps prevent me becoming addicted to dozens of ‘personal’ blogs (most of which would be female, no doubt). Personally, I like a bit of personal stuff in the poker mix; I know others don’t, but poker is supposedly a ‘people game’, so it makes sense to be interested in the person behind the check-raise.

Anyway, my eye was caught by BG’s comments about his apparently gorgeous neighbour, a girl he described as ‘out of his league’. Well, it is my opinion and experience that there is no such thing as ‘out of your league’. Once you get that self-fulfilling prophecy out of your head it is amazing what girls you can end up with… OK, I am not saying there is NO limit to it, and yes it will still be harder to pull stunning women than average ones, but if you really fancy somebody then never let that ‘out of my league’ bollocks stop you having a go.

There are many reasons why a gorgeous girl may go out with an average-looking guy. First, she may go for a particular physical type. I spent a summer seeing a very beautiful natural blonde and never really understood her attraction to me. But seeing a couple of her other boyfriends (one later on, and the one she was with at the time I was seeing her) I could see that she went for a particular colouring and build.

Secondly, she really might be not-shallow enough that your charisma and wit overshadow your looks in her eyes. Or a noble or impressive gesture might do it for you; I had a brief affair with a gorgeous girl after ‘rescuing’ her from the unwanted attentions of a sleazy older guy by pretending to be her fiancée.

Finally, she may not think or realise that she is as beautiful as she is. It was a girl like that who removed the scales from my eyes on this whole ‘out of my league’ myth. She was absolutely stunning, and my friend and I went for a meal with her and her sister with no intention of trying to pull them because, yes, we thought were punching above our weight. Later in a club, emboldened by lager but still with no intent to seduce her, I told her that she was ‘so beautiful’ and she started crying.

‘Nobody ever tells me’ she sobbed, and I could believe it because you would look at this girl (who could have been - but wasn’t - a model) and either be intimidated or imagine that she was full of her own attractiveness. So I spent the evening dancing and smooching with her in the club while she laughed off the occasional advances of bigger and better-looking guys. It was an eye-opening experience. Nobody is out of your league*.

As for poker, I can’t write anything about it today because I still haven’t played since Friday night, which currently feels like it was about three months ago. My phone line should be connected tomorrow morning and should herald the start of a new era of putting in a lot of good hours.

I have this curious urge to play limit at the moment – I blame all you damn limit-playing bloggers. I keep thinking it doesn’t sound that difficult, which is a laugh given my experience level.

I played some great snooker last night, I seem to have finally settled into a stance that works and that I can ‘find’ each time I play. The consistency of my last three sessions has been very pleasing and I now expect my breaks to start getting bigger and bigger.

I continue to smoke in fits and starts. Damn, it’s a devilish habit; you can go most of a day without any problem and then the cravings just hit like a train.

Tomorrow morning I should finally have my telephone line. Please Lord let it be so.

*They may not be interested in you, but they are not inherently out of your league.

Answerable to nobody

I played on Friday evening for a couple of hours, and made another small profit – just $14 – between a lost sit and go and a PLO8 game. The snooker champion showed up in the Omaha, first time I have seen him in a while. He plays very tight so I was pleasantly surprised when he paid off my nut-nut hand to get me into the positives after a bad start.

PLO8 can be a maddening game. Chips get shuffled around a bit, and you perhaps get one chance per session to really get your chips in with a big expectation AND get called. Those pots play a huge role in determining your results. Friday I got rivered by the over-aggressive player I spent all night waiting to trap, and lost my first buy-in. Later I had to settle for half of a $120 pot against two opponents when I had a 50/50 shot of scooping – those are the hands I am talking about.

The good thing was that I kept my equilibrium after the early bad beat and just continued plugging away, my play unaffected. I might be wrong, but I feel like I have started to become a better gambler; more sanguine, increasingly able to accept the vagaries of fortune and and just keep putting the chips in with the best of it.

All of which makes it quite maddening to be in an enforced break from poker. My contingency plan (for the few days until my phoneline gets connected) fell through, so I have not played since Friday night, and have another two evenings to endure. I am trying to look on the bright side, since I have a rare opportunity to play my football management game and watch a couple of DVDs, but it really rankles to not be able to play poker in utter privacy at last. Plus, I really need the money.

Anyway, moving into my place has made me very happy, despite the lack of poker thus far. I am now answerable to nobody in my living space, and can lock the door and hide without feeling rude. I have gone from living a bus-ride away from town in a crappy village, to being 10-15 minutes’ walk from just about every bar and amenity in the town centre. My snooker club, my favourite drinking places, a bar with every live televised football match (plus some illegal ones), Indian restaurants and fish and chip shops, newsagents, the railway station, an excellent supermarket, a cinema… all this and more is within walking distance, and even closer by bicycle.

I’m surprisingly excited about shaping my room the way I want it. I never paid much attention to décor or furniture in the past – my ex used to decorate and move furniture around and I was totally uninterested – but in this space that is 100% mine (and needs to be utilised effectively) I am looking forward to creating the environment I want. At the moment I am still half in boxes, but I do have the TV in place and my Playstation set up for the first time in about two years.

Valentine’s Day was sort of predictable. A nice meal, then an argument (at least partly about my feelings for my ex) and a frosty night in bed. That was probably 2/1 second favourite in the pre-game betting.