Three seconds

Every three seconds a child dies in Africa of hunger or preventable disease. That is thirty thousand children, every day. Thirty thousand children.

How about we try to improve this planet for those children, rather than bringing more of our own little vanity projects into the world? I am thinking long and hard about how I use my time and some of my immeasurable wealth at the moment.

Meanwhile, poker content:

The film 'Cool Hand Luke' has some personal significance for me. You probably know the line 'Sometimes nothing can be a pretty cool hand', and I've enjoyed winning a couple of pots with nothing recently. I won a monster early pot in Sunday's tournament with seven-high (missed flush draw versus a missed tiny straight draw), and last night I managed to scoop a three-way pot limit Omaha8 pot with just a Queen to pair the one on the board. That was particularly nice.I haven't had a losing day since the debacle two weeks ago (hm, did I write that yesterday?), so that's good.

Twenty time better

How long can you keep waking at an ungodly hour and schlepping into an office - even a fairly pleasant office - day after day? Especially when you have never had, and never will have, the the career ambition gene; the ability to actually give a shit about what you do at work beyond the fact that showing up pays the rent.

Most certainly, if I got into a rakeback deal and put in the hours and played with discipline, I could squeeze a living out of poker. I guess deposit bonusses are not to be ignored either. I do have an issue with joining new sites due to the fact that I cannot use credit or debit cards at present, but I am quite certain I can make arrangements with a co-operative friend or sibling.

Incidentally, I've been reading around a little bit, and some sources lead me to believe that you are deemed to have contributed to rake even in hands to which you have not contributed a cent; eg. the rake is simply divided by the number of players at the table. Can that be right??

Anyway, that little dream won't die. I'm not in the camp that feels I would need to earn 'serious' money to make it worthwhile. A living wage with a little extra on to save up toward holiday and sickpay would be enough for me; I put the quality of life and freedom of schedule higher than making a fortune.

I bought a new MP3 player yesterday. It is about twenty times better than the one I bough nine months ago, and cost only £30 more. I bought that other one at a really bad time!

Vanity Project

"Coupled life and family life bring out everything that's childish in everyone involved" - Philip Roth, 'The Dying Animal'

I read a nice little interview/questionnaire with a very good poker player yesterday, but the line about his new young son bugged me. It was along the lines of ‘A bad day at the office and bad beats in poker are put in perspective’.

Now, I hate to come over all misanthropic, but does anyone really need to embark on the vanity project of bringing yet another life into the world, in order to ‘put things in perspective’? I find it quite easy to put things in perspective just by opening my eyes and taking a look at the fucking world. I don’t know about you, but I live in an over-crowded city in an over-crowded country in an over-crowded (with humans anyway) world. I think there should be a moratorium on any new births for a calendar year.

I know I sound like a miserable bastard, but something about that shining-eyes ‘my little boy’ crap you get from new fathers really makes me want to puke.

Of course, it could be that I’ll reach my fifties and suddenly tire of the meaningless life of unattached self-gratification, and feel really stupid.

SS2

Well, I have to say that ‘Super System 2’ has been a little bit disappointing. I suppose I didn’t make enough allowance for the fact that many of the sections just don’t interest me that much. I am open to playing a variety of games, but really the likelihood of me playing triple draw lowball is extremely low.

The PLO section was a let-down, with perhaps one little point that made me think. I do like Doyle’s section on No Limit, but it is virtually unchanged since the first edition and I read that section in Borders a few weeks back.

Actually, for simple reading pleasure I found the online chapter entertaining, and was amused by Doyle’s suggestion that if there were a button to tip the virtual dealer then many players would actually use it. I think he might be right, although I wouldn’t touch it myself. Actually, I am thinking hard about value for money; my site has raised its rake slightly - or rather is raking more pots - and I am minded to actually look elsewhere, particularly somewhere with rakeback possibilities. Seems to me rakeback makes an enormous difference to your bottom line, and I feel like a monkey for currently missing out.

I’m still playing nowhere near enough hours, for social and private reasons, but continuing to win every time I sit. I made another good run in the Sunday night multi that I won two weeks previously, and really felt good about my chances of making the final table again. However, I lost a chunk with about 70 players left and then went bust with AK versus AA, perhaps earlier than I needed to. Still, I am not interested in playing without a really big stack any more and I would have gone broke on the hand however I played it, with both an Ace and King on the flop.Last night I got bad beat out of a reasonable PLO pot, and also took a bit of a beat to only come third in a PLO sit n go. What struck me was that those were the first bad beats I can recall in the past week or so.

Oh, I liked something Jennifer Harman said in her recent Cardplayer interview - one of the only things I’ve ever read that actually helps psychologically with bad beats. She suggested looking on beats as a business overhead. That really clicked with me.