my first ever coup and curfew…

Yesterday there was an earthquake in Makati, and I missed it sitting in an emergency room in Macau. This is quite ridiculous as I’ve always wanted to be in an earthquake.

So I’m bored most of the afternoon today, with no clue there is a coup attempt underway only a few blocks from where I’m sitting in my Makati apartment.

The first I heard of it was when Mischa called me to warn me about the curfew tonight and, of course, I got very excited. I raced down to the Peninsula Hotel only to find, much to my disgust, that the army had stormed the hotel and arrested the Senator, the Brigadier General and their soldiers - all the fun was already over.

It turns out the coup was something of a botched attempt, but a coup is a coup and I’ll take my coups where I can get them.

Coups are pretty common here in the Philippines but this is my first one so I was giddy with excitement. There doesn’t seem to be much stigma attached to failed coup attempts here, with previous failed coup leaders going on to have successful careers in politics.

Desperate to prolong the excitement I spoke to some locals about the coup, and everyone I spoke to was mostly excited that they get the day off tomorrow (public holiday). Almost no one cared about the coup in the slightest. But I suspect there is a bit more to this coup than meets the eye, as the MPs who were supposed to be guarding the Senator and General (who were both on trial over a failed 2003 coup attempt) left with the politicians and took up arms inside The Peninsula. I have a feeling the politicians were given some promises of support by military personel that were not delivered on. Or perhaps it was a setup. Also, I was told this was the first time the government has issued a curfew after a failed coup attempt, so there could be more going on here than it would appear at face value.

The BBC might have this one right:
“The mutineers did not appear to expect that their action would actually cause the government’s downfall. In a country so in love with the cult of celebrity, that kind of showmanship seems somehow quite natural.”

You get the feeling the leaders of this coup, particularly the young popular Senator (elected to Senate whilst in jail for previous coup attempt), could well end up being prominent in the political sphere in time. Name recognition is very important in politics here, with many voters just voting for a name they recognise as there is widespread adoration in any form of celebrity, even D grade celebrities.

If the Senator and General thought the public would join them in an uprising, they are just silly. Very few people care about politics here. When corruption is so rife at every level of politics and culture, there is widespread apathy. If the army threw their support behind the coup attempt and overthrew GMA, I seriously doubt there would be many citizens who would care. Not enough to put pressure on the army anyway - there would probably be no serious civilian demonstrations - they just don’t care.

This could explain the comments of the bridegroom who had his wedding interrupted by the coup leaders and entourage taking over the hotel. Asked if he was angry at the rebel soliders, he said:
“I have to fix so many things, I have no time to be mad.”

Or perhaps that is just classic sitting on the fence Philippines diplomacy…

In my last final act of revolutionary spirit and caught up in the excitement of it all, I decided I would break curfew tonight. I ran around the block and quickly back to my apartment. No one keeps Baby in a corner. …

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antibiotics are a gift from buddah…

“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

This will be my longest ever post but as I’m probably not going to do another till Xmas and I suck at editing, you might as well grab yourself a hot Milo and a raspberry bagel, lean back and lol at the joke that is my life.

Every once in awhile I am sent on a path of random events so ridiculous, I cry uncle to the gods of the sky and beg forgiveness and make solemn oaths about how I will do this or do that if only the madness stops. This week in Macau was one of those weeks.

I really did not want to go to Macau as I found myself going to Macau but with tourney entry, hotel and flights all paid, I figured I did not have much choice. This was a mistake in hindsight - I should never have gone.

I quickly busted out of tourney in unnoteworthy fashion but that was only the trigger for an awesome soul-rocking run of bad luck which culminated in my honestly thinking I was on death’s door early this morning.

But let’s go back a bit to a few weeks ago when my eyes started burning in Melbourne. Rather than get better they got steadily worse over the last month, to the point where I was getting very worried in Macau. The muscles around the eyes started spasming and twitching and I started getting shooting pains when I blinked and migranes. I tried to see a doc a few times but got frustrated with their lack of English or, more correctly, my lack of Mandarin, so I tried to hold on until I could get back to Manila to get my eyes checked out.

Meanwhile, I started getting what I thought was tonsilitis. I used to get tonsilitis (which is a bitch of a little illness) about 3-4 times a year awhile back but haven’t had it for a few years. Penicillin is a magical drug and whenever I feel tonsilitis coming on, I hit up penicillin and it just pwns tonsilitis every time. This time however, the penicillin didn’t really seem to work but I assumed this was because the penicillin was 3 yrs old and again, I thought I could hold out till Manila to deal with it.

Meanwhile, the internet was disconnecting at my hotel every half hour leading to mega tilt. I asked to change rooms, they said I was in good spot for wireless and room change would not improve so I stayed. Before long, it was no longer an issue as my laptop started wisping smoke and then would no longer switch on. I am not tech savvy but I’m guessing the prognosis is not good.

Bored out of my mind with no net and no cash games (except for a PokerPro table with 20 name waiting list at all times), I turned to house edge and proceeded to dump a fairly large amount on bacc and craps, which always tilts me as I don’t bet house edge often and I also don’t really bet big but I run amazingly bad (50k down house edge last 18 months betting only here and there and never betting big like those Melb Hog Rollers).

Tilt was gradually building the whole week not just because I was getting pretty sick but also at the almost complete lack of English in Macau. Someone pointed out why would they bother with the Western world when they have 1 billion Chinese gamblers over the border which is a fairly valid point. Nonetheless, not being able to communicate can be quite frustrating.

A few other little things happened which added to my frustration. Stuff like I offer to buy piece of Emad in 15k event but he wisely not sell - then I see he has chip lead with 6 left in 1,000,000 prizepool and I cry a little, whilst still hoping he wins ofc. As I was cheering him and Eric BLESSadourian on to glory, my eyes started going completely haywire and a migrane kicked into gear so I crumbled and raced off to the emergency room of this amazing private hospital I hadn’t tried yet. This little hospital was the most amazing medical experience I have ever had. Scared and a little panicked, fully expecting no English-speaking doctors, I stumble in with blurred vision to find a wonderful world of buddah-sent competence. The receptionist spoke English and was amazing, shipping me right in to see an English-speaking eye specialist. I started rattling off my list of symptoms but only got as far as “eyes burning, muscle twitching…” when she interrupted me and rattled off all my other symptoms which is always a great sign. Turns out I had inflammation from staring at computer monitors too much. Before I could even catch up, she’d given me 2 bottles of eyedrops and said “You’ll notice improvement within hours.” This sounded a little far-fetched to me after 3 weeks of eye pain (I’m a moron for not seeing a doctor early), but I was glad I had found someone so obviously competent. I drop-dropped away and within the hour, my entire face settled down and my eyes started healing beautifully. Amazing.

I was so relieved about the eye cure, I forgot to hit up a doc about my ‘tonsilitis’ whilst I was there. Nevertheless, my spirits were high as I returned to the casino only to find poor Emad had run stiff to finish 5th but Eric was tearing up the table. I watched Eric put on a little final table CLINIC for the title and then we all headed out to a club for a final night out.

I was still a little bit sick and was making noise about getting an early night. I got caught up in the festivities however, drinking heavily as Miss Australia bounced around the party.

Fun times were had by all and I collasped in hotel room at 5am totally smashed, only to awake a few hours later wondering if the curtains on my life were being rapidly lowered.

I spent a few hours in pure fright and panic, too weak to move or even phone reception as a fever gripped me and I started getting some freaky ass symptoms I had never experienced before, including crawling burning sensations in my lower throat. I was having a lot of trouble attempting to create and control logical thoughts as my mind raced while the fever seemed to just be going nuts. Things were not looking good, and perhaps it was largely fevered delusion, but a few times I wondered if housekeeping would find me later that day stone cold dead.

I drifted in and out of sleep/consciousness over the next few hours, finally waking up around 1pm feeling like total ratshit but much better than I had felt during the night. I checked out and raced down to the hospital but the taxi driver took me to the wrong one, a big public hospital. I figured one hospital was as good as another and things were taking a turn for the worse again, so I skipped into emergency room, taking my place in the queue which didn’t look all that long.

At triage, I was placed in Category 3 which is basically the “Wimp Category”. I tried to canoodle my way into Category 1 by sweet-talking the triage nurse but she was having none of that, firmly explaining to me in Mandarin English Hand Signals that Category 1 is for major trauma and instable vital signs, fully implying I was nothing but a little girl with a sniffle. Rigged. I took a seat and began to wait.

I was No. 4 in the queue and that’s where I stayed for the next 3 hours as ambulances started pouring in from everywhere, obviously taking preference over my little complaints. I assume there is a major war being fought nearby, so I check out the incoming patients being raced into emergency from the endless stream of ambo’s. They didn’t look too bad to me, most appeared to be comfortably sleeping on their stretchers. Some had even gone to the trouble of splashing red paint over various body parts or pretending to have broken bones. They may have fooled the sympathetic Hippocratic medic suckers but I was onto their scam. I quickly realised these old coots were craftily outplaying me by having the smarts to arrive in an ambulance instead of a taxi.

I was starting to hallucinate as I watched 80 year old after 80 year old cruise past me in style on their stretchers. Maybe just a little delusional, but I could have sworn one old lady opened her eyes as she passed me, whispering “pwned noobie” with a cheeky grin.

Too weak to even begin to consider transferring to the private hospital, I had begun to give up all hope of being alive for the weekend. I started to write out my last will and testament on my mobile phone as well as compose an apologetic letter to Erin McNaught for giving her a fake room number the night before. She a nice girl and deserved better than that. I should have just told her I wasn’t interested instead of sending her on a goose hunt for a room that didn’t exist. Poor thing.

I was making my peace with God and with Buddah when my name was finally called 4 hours after the rigged triage. I was pretty delusional by this stage and was having serious trouble communicating with the doc, who spoke only very broken English. With a variety of hand movements, I was able to communicate my symptoms or perhaps he just took one look at me and got to work. I heard the words “throat infection” and “pneumonia” as he wacked me on an antibiotic IV drip, telling me to wait 20 min in case of negative reaction to the antibodies.

I realised I was rapidly running out of time to catch the ferry to Hong Kong for my flight home and I forgot all about his warning. The emergency room was chaotic and he moved on to other patients so I raced off to the pharmacy to fill another script he had given me, with the plan to return to pay my bill and then race to the ferry for Hong Kong.

As it turned out, the pharmacy was about 1km away and down a long set of brick stairs outside. I raced down the stairs only thinking of my desperation to get home near English-speaking doctors when a little voice inside my head said, “better slow down”. I was too slow to react. Nausea and dizzyness overtook me and I crashed in a heap on a landing near the bottom of the staircase, emptying my stomach onto my shirt and then continuing to dry retch facing upwards, a first for me and a style of dry-retching I cannot recommend. Antibodies are bitching strong. As I lay on the brick landing, heavily brusied staring into the sun with spew all over me in a foreign country knowing I was going to miss my flight, I could only think “It just does not get better than this.”

After a few minutes, I rose and staggered into the pharmacy to fill the script, apologising to the lady behind the counter. She did her best to remain professional but she was obviously disgusted. I have only the utmost respect for anyone who works in the medical industry, coming across sick wretches like I was today but facing them every day - they deserve more money.

I caught a taxi back to the hospital as no way was I going to make it up the 7 flights of brick stairs. The biggest mistake I made all day was not telling the taxi to wait. They cleaned me up inside the emergency room, I spent 20 min trying to pay my bill, then realising I still had a very slim chance of catching my flight if I nailed the ferry launch time, I ran to get a taxi. The line was 15 people long, and no taxi came for 10 min so I ran back down the stairs to the pharmacy and no cars passed that road for 20 min, meaning my first taxi was a total fluke. Panicking, I see a main road about 2km in the distance down the mountain and begin to run for it, obv not thinking clearly as I was never going to make my HK flight. At this stage, logic was no longer a part of my arsenal and I was moving on pure desperated adrenalin.

After 1km of running, a taxi passes me and I tell him to race for the hotel (for bags) then for the ferry, realising about halfway that even if I nail the ferry I can’t make my flight in time. I’m ready to throw in the towel at this stage as another bout of nausea overwhelms me and the taxi driver pulls over for me to do my thing. I’m very close to tears, but the fear of being stuck in Macau drives me forward. I tell the taxi driver to race to Macau airport and I run into the terminal asking for flights.

The lady says, “Sorry no flights to Manila today” and my heart sinks. I don’t think I cried but I can’t swear that I didn’t. She then says “Hold on” and grabs her book and says “Oh wait there is a flight to Clark” (airport about 2hrs north of Manila) and my hopes soar. “Oh no”, she says, “its boarding now, you’ll never make it.” I plead with her to sell me a ticket, I beg her, I pull every heart string and she says, “Ok you can buy a ticket but I don’t think you can make it”. I buy the $300 ticket and burn rubber to immigration. I run into some kind of staff dude and he slips me through the advance line. I rip my retarded broken laptop out for the security checks, race through, grab the laptop intending to slip it into my bag whilst running for the gate. At high speed, I trip over one of the step blocks they use for the manually metal detector checks and completely stack it, smashing my laptop on the ground and everyone turns and stares. I’m in sick game mode and I grab my laptop and race off at high speed for the gate, reaching it about 3 min before ETD. The gate is closed. I’m about to burst into tears. “I HAVE A TICKET” I yell at the guy. I am a blubbering mess, panting and pleading, I absolutely HAVE to get on that plane. He’s trying to calm me down but he’s not opening the gate. “I HAVE A TICKET, I HAVE A TICKET” I keep blubbering, utterly gutted. He’s using soothing language and when I eventually calm down he tells me the flight has been delayed “Didn’t you hear the annoucement they just made?”, he asks. Ding. Finally, a delayed flight works in my favour.

As the adrenalin seeps away, I collaspe into sleep and almost miss the flight. The awesome guy at the gate recognises me sleeping and wakes me up. I’m the last one to board. We land at Clark and I’m so wasted from exhaustion and nausea before I even know what I’m doing I’ve handed over 5000 pesos to a random driver for the 2hr ride to Manila (a fair price would probably be 500 pesos).

I take my bags straight to Makati Medical only to have the doc tell me the IV I got in Macau was perfect. He gave me a few more scripts for various things and told me to take it easy for a few weeks but that I’m going to not only live but should be feeling much better within a few days or a week.

I feel pretty awesome now, all things considered, not too many hours after I genuinely, legitimately thought that death was imminent. That infection came on so fast it rocked my little world.

Antibiotics pwn infection 8020.

Merry Xmas.

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macau makes a good first impression…

Landed in Macau last night and headed straight to the PokerStars party hoping they would have free Kobe burgers. They didn’t, but they had some entertainment which made me forget my hunger momentarily.

Scattered around the party, PokerStars had hired something like 30 pole-dancers. It was all very risque and borderline faboulous. My delicate sensibilities were offended which was good.

I left the party to check into the hotel and when I returned, everyone had headed off to the clubs. Celina invited me up to TonyD’s room so I thought I’d head up and see what crazy shenanigans those boys were up to. I walked into a middle of a conversation about the value of c/r’ing AQ on a low dry board.

Taking this as an omen, I decided to get some food and grab an early night’s sleep in preparation for what could well be the last live tourney I shall ever play.

The city here is pretty amazing and the insanely huge new Venetian hotel towers over the skyline. Someone said it was the biggest or 2nd biggest building in the world, which sounds about right. The city is clean, organised and appears wonderfully rich and efficient. I had a small chuckle when I exchanged some cash at a vendor proudly advertising their rates with a large sign declaring “No Commission Charged”. They were buying AUD at 6.4 and selling at 7.5 but, hey, they don’t charge commission.

English is not widely spoken here so I stumbled around the hotel restaurants before deciding to take the safe option and order room service. The food here is just amazing - its really ridiculous, I may have to move here just for the food.

For some reason I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up late watching Friday Night Lights. The 2nd season is on Torrents now. FNL is really very addictive, and it will do a good job of carrying me through to Jan when S7 of Shield and S5 of Wire start back up.

I woke up very tired and headed down to the tourney, wondering what compulsive disorder makes me do this to myself. The dealers were mostly pretty terrible (and that’s being polite) but my table was friendly and soft so it wasn’t too painful for the first few hours.

I built up to near double stack after a few hours when a fairly loose player opened in LP with a small raise, SB called and I called with 64h in the BB. The flop was Kh-9d-5h I think. Checked to raiser who c-bet, SB flashed QQ as he folded (no 3bet pre and ck/f flop wtf?), I checkraised just under pot, effectively putting the initial raiser all-in. He tanked for a very long time, even moving his cards over the fold line at one stage, finally putting his stack in against his better judgement, showing down AA. Ok, tough spot, poor guy - it was good he took 5 min to decide if his AA was worth playing there, he wouldn’t want to rush things with such a tough decision. Board blanked and I’m down to 6k.

I lose an 8k pot with QQ vs 77 to a shortstack all-in and I’m ready to go but I win two very small races with two tiny stacks just to prolong the pain.

Half hour before dinner break, I hit TP with KQo on Qd-5d-2d board and call a donk’s flop bet. He slowrolls KKd. Slowrolling is awesome, I might start doing it if I ever play live poker again - why not if its not penalised.

I might play the 15k event as its 6handed I think but most likely not. Live poker is pretty retarded obv….in 6 hours there is no way we played more than 80 hands, maybe even a lot less. 15k is also a hell of a lot of money and it would suck to get deep and not cash…

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just say no to travel…

So I landed in Macau tonight for the penultimate APPT event which is on tomorrow. I have decided my 2008 New Years Resolution #1 will be “No More Traveling”. I simply can’t deal with travel anymore, its just too sick and too brutal and I’m too fragile to handle the pain.

I enjoyed Israel for part of the time I spent there, but I was fairly keen to get back home and get some work done as the net kept cutting out in my hotel in Tel Aviv and when my $40/day net did work, it was scratchy and slow at best. As I was checking out, I decided I needed and deserved a little kick, so I grabbed the last mini-bottle of whiskey out of the mini-bar. I quickly unscrewed the cap and took a swig very quickly, and as the bottle reached my lips I realised it was half empty. My brain didn’t react fast enough and I gulped about 1/3 of the remaining half down. I have a thing about not sharing bottles with other people (even friends) and to think I’d just accidentally shared this bottle with some random stranger made me instantly nauseous. I felt even sicker when I realised it was the kind of stranger who drinks half a 50ml bottle, then puts the rest back in the fridge so he doesn’t have to pay for it. Eww fuken ewwww. I will never understand ‘people’.

The real sickness was yet to come however. As I was looking at the bottle feeling my hatred for this scum rise, I noticed the whiskey is polluted with small pieces of something. Fighting back waves of nausea, I pour the remaining whiskey into a clean glass and take it down to reception to discuss whether or not I’m going to die. The concierge did a good job pretending he cared, even offering to call a doctor, of course whilst looking at me out of the corner of his eye wondering if I’ve made this shit up to get out of paying for a $4 bottle of whiskey. I really don’t like stuff I cannot understand or come up with a theory for - if you can come up with a theory of why a half-empty bottle of whiskey is sitting in a hotel mini-bar polluted with small pieces of random matter (food or bread or god knows what) I’d really like to hear it.

As I had a flight to catch, I decided to not risk dealing with a random doctor who probably would just tell me to induce vomiting, and I had already taken care of that. I continued on to Ben Gurion airport, an airport which I had previously rated very highly on my much-respected and highly-authoritative Airport Rankings List on this blog.

Gaz had left a couple days prior and had spent some time telling me how retarded the departure process for Ben Gurion is, but nothing he could have told me could have prepared me adequately for the pure retardation I experienced there. Following Gaz’s advice, I arrived 4 hours early. Fully respecting the security position the Israelis are in, I was determined to be polite, helpful and respectful throughout the entire demeaning process. My attitude lasted about half an hour. There is a word I would like to use to describe just about everyone I dealt with at Ben Gurion but it is a word that offends a lot of people - suffice it to say they are a bunch of pricks x 17.

It took me 3 hours to get through the security screening process, and one hour of that time was spent staring at nothing with my bags’ contents spread out all over a large counter as the girl who was supposed to be handling me had moved on to someone else and apparently forgotten all about me. They then finally got back to me after ignoring me for some time when I politely requested attention, and then they proceeded to ensure it will be a very long time before I ever return to Ben Gurion airport. They took my brand new 12 megapixel digital camera away and I love that camera more than most human beings.

They spend hundreds of millions on security, have staff everywhere, high-tech machines and they can’t tell if my Canon digital camera is a camera or a bomb. I swear they have to be morons. After half an hour of playing with my camera whilst I waited, they return to ask me how to turn it on - I swear I’m not making this shit up. I show them, they go “ahhh” and they take it away again. Another half an hour later they return saying there is absolutely no way I will be allowed to take this camera on board the flight as their security department needs to “test it”. WTF? I explain to them that I live in the Philippines and that even if they actually did end up sending it to me (which I explained I had serious doubts about), that it would be a miracle if it ever even reached me in Manila. I told them they were effectively stealing my camera. They got defensive at this, maybe *too* defensive, and one of them got aggressive and got in my face. As he was pretty angry, his English degenerated and I politely requested that he stop spitting at me and also if they could find me someone who spoke English as I couldn’t understand a word this guy was saying. He got very angry at this and I was wondering if he would jump the counter and attack me like the Iraqi/Filipino travel agent in previous adventures.

Things were heating up fast and one of them delivered the punchline which shut me up quickly. She said, “Sir, you can either have the camera and stay here or you can get on that plane and go, but we will never allow you to take this camera on our plane.” Deciding I had spent just about all the time I wished to spend in their wonderful country, I told them to keep the camera and ordered them to repack my bags. “I had everything packed neatly, put it all back neatly!” I barked at them. This did not go down well obviously. They all stood there, refusing to move, with the spitter folding his arms in dramatic fashion.

I decided to try a little bluff so I said, “Fine, I’ll just wait here until you pack it, my flight doesn’t leave for another hour.” I guess one guy decided he’d had enough of me so he grabbed everything in sight and smashed and slammed it all back in my bags, forcing the zips closed and all but pushing my bags off the counter at me. I decide the time has come to leave Israel so I head off to the final security checks and, of course, our flight leaves an hour after scheduled departure time and I spent an enjoyable 12 hours sandwiched between two people who were either very inconsiderate or did not understand the concept of “personal space”.

———-

With no time to recover from this experience, I found myself heading to Manila Airport Madness only a couple days later as I had already entered Macau APPT and booked flights and hotel. Once I get this trip done and over, my life goal will probably be to avoid future travel at all costs.

I stumble into the pure unadultered insanity of Manila Airport and am thrilled but not shocked to discover there appears to be a 2hr line at the check-in booth. Of course airport staff are all standing around pointing and chatting but no one appears to actually be doing anything productive. I realise quickly I can push my way into the chaos of the “line” at check-in and probably get out of the madness in about 5 min, but ethics forces me to take my place at the back of the “queue”. The longer I wait, the further back in the line I’m getting pushed as people crash into the “line” from every direction with no thought for the people patiently waiting. I spend an hour waiting, not progressing even one space, actually moving back in the line as I fight with my ethics.

A guy approaches me in some kind of uniform and asks me where I’m going. I say “Macau with Cebu Pacific”. He says, “Ah good, you’re in the right line.” I say, “No shit but look at this chaos. Everyone is pushing into this huge line from every direction, there is no order, there is no discipline, there is no logic, there is no sense. There is only chaos. Why don’t you do your job? Why don’t you get on a loudspeaker if you have one, or yell and scream at people to line up in an orderly fashion? Look at this mess. You’re doing nothing. Why did you even come to work today? What are you getting paid for? How can you live with yourself cashing your paycheck each week when you preside over such madness and chaos and do nothing to stop it?”

He just stares at the floor, saying nothing, looking embarassed. I take another breath and launch in at him again, “What? Nothing to say for yourself? How can you just stand there and do nothing about this chaos? You could stand over there (I point to a spot about 80m away) and you’d be doing just as good a job as you’re doing now. You’re doing absolutely nothing. It’s disgusting that someone is paying you to preside over this mess. Do you even care that this place is a holocaust of chaos?”

He is quiet for a few moments, and then he pulls a glossy colour brochure out from his back pocket and says, “I’m sorry, I just sell ice cream. Do you want some ice cream Sir?”

I don’t even know how to react to this. “Yea man, I’ll take some ice cream”, I sigh….embarassed and looking down at the ground as I fumble for some cash.

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i am a skill games god….

“Hold on, wait a minute.
Got to put some pimpin in it.”

So all month basically I open up poker tables and get punished. Made a huge comeback one day but then the pain continued - I don’t want to say figures cause they’re ugly and its important to keep you chumps thinking I can actually play poker.

Thankfully, when running bad at poker, I have other income sources to turn to. It’s possible I am the world’s greatest Russian/Chinese player although I’m lacking in quality opposition. All the chumps that line up to play me really can’t seem to cut the mustard at this level and whilst its fun gleefully accepting their cash, I feel like I’m really for bigger and better challenges.

I have about 10 guys who regularly come looking for me to hand them Russian punishment online. In November, only one of them was showing a profit, dear little Puzz. Last night I wiped out his little positive November balance in about 16 min at 200/pt, which gives me a clean sheet for all comers in Russian in November. Up around 35k which hopefully will offset the bulk of my poker losses this month.

Previously I have spoken at length about how much I rock at Jacks or Better Video Poker. I don’t know if I’m the world’s best player at JOB but I may well be. Frankly, its ridiculous how many of you morons email me for poker advice when basically I’m a Russian and Jacks or Better god. Hit me up for Russian and JOB strategy questions you fools.

Tonight I was a little tilted after talking poker with some joker on MSN for 20 min, which was about 19.5 min longer than is reasonable considering how boring the subject matter was. I decided to let off steam clearing a little JOB casino bonus. I haven’t really played JOB since WSOP but its really like riding a bicycle when you’re as good as I am.

I was disappointed to discover that the max bet was only $50 per spin on this casino. Obviously, this has the potential to seriously affect my JOB hourly rate. When you’re playing skill games with such a large edge (as I am), you obviously want to be playing at sexy stakes. Undeterred, I proceeded to play. On my second spin I was dealt As Ks Js Ts. I was playing 25 lines. Here is a screenshot of the first 3 lines:

Obviously I downswung hard for the next 22 lines, just getting random flushes and straights, meaning I only won $4500 on that spin.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t completely own all skill games. I might be the world’s worst Craps player and I’m not thrilled about my squeeze Baccarat game either. I don’t know all the fancy squeeze table talk and I’m completely lost when people are yelling “Legs legs…FOUR SIDES FOUR SIDES” and “Put down a MONKEY dealer!!”. Stupid retarded game - pwns me every time.

My only Craps win this year was in the Crown Hog room at PN Cup and I skunked out first go and shamefully handed the dice in defeat to MCD who proceeded to draw a crowd with his Golden Arm, rolling for about an hour straight. I would like to one day be half as skilled as that sigh. The Craps Groupies were all over his stick obv.

If you want to be a Chinese poker or Jacks or Better god like me, just email me love holla.

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Top 5 Most common mistakes I see mid-limit NL players make…

I get some emails from people asking why I don’t post more poker stuff. This is because poker is incredibly boring. However, as this is supposed to be a poker blog rather than a rambling travel and lifestyle blog, I feel guilty when I get these complaints and feel I should talk a little poker. I got two emails today about this, so here is some poker stuff for you lucky retards who actually enjoy the game.

One of the emails asked me about the most common mistakes I see mid-limit NL players make, so here is my late-night ad hoc list of what I believe the most common mistakes are. If this list sucks or has no value, that will teach you to come looking here for poker content.

5. Playing Out of Position Without a Plan for the Hand - This is a really common mistake I see weak players make. When playing with position, its a lot easier to enter pots without a fixed plan for how you will react to a wide variety of variables. You can play with more freedom, casually assessing each street on its merits. Out of position, especially against good players, you really need a solid plan for how the hand will develop against particular opponents on a wide range of board textures, facing certain opponent actions and, of course, always taking stack sizes into account.

I’m not thrilled about my own OOP ability but, fortunately for me, a lot of players really suck OOP. I think their biggest mistake is entering inflated pots OOP without any real tangible plan for how they want the hand to go down, and thereby giving up a lot of control by missing spots where they could easily exert some real pressure. Of all the big mistakes I see players make OOP, I think the most common is opening with a small/medium pair or suited connectors and then calling a pot 3bet with a plan that is often comprised of nothing more than “hope to hit a set or combo draw”. Against my 3betting range (and that of most half-decent NL players), this play is suicide. I’ll often call 3bets OOP with small/medium pairs and SC’s but really only when I have a legitimate plan for how I will proceed on a range of flop textures where I don’t hit a gin flop. If I’m playing an opponent who seems to get his percentages right postflop a lot and is tricky and skilled postflop with his use of pot control, I’ll mostly just fold to the 3bet.

In blind defence situations, I’ve experimented a lot with light 3betting as opposed to flatcalling. I think you have to be a lot more talented and skilled to flatcall a wide range. The reason for this is that most of the time, your opponents will be playing with the 80-130bb range and 3betting makes all hands a lot easier to play as the all-in point is reached a lot quicker. 3betting out of the blinds allows you to define hands a lot easier and cuts down on your opponents’ positional advantage. Even when 3betting, you still need a structured plan which takes into account a range of variables. Its just that 3betting makes your plan a lot shorter and simpler.

Unless you are pretty confident you can outplay your opponent postflop, getting involved in a lot of pots OOP without a decent plan is suicide. This is the 5th most common mistake I see at the mid-limits.

4. Playing to a Card - So many players at the mid-limits, including a lot of winners, are guilty of playing a particular style that is comprised of decisions that they believe to be optimal but which are not really all that optimal as they are so predictable. In some respects, this is a big weakness in my game and something I’m actively working on addressing.

It can be very easy to learn a simple style of winning NL play without ever fully understanding why you’re taking certain lines. For someone like me who basically learned NL through forums and HH’s, it can be very easy to fall back into a set way of doing things, opening with x range in y position, c-betting z flops, shutting down here when called, always checkraising certain flops with certain hands and always floating others. I’m a strong believer in optimal lines, but in the current nature of NL games where skill levels across the board are increasing much faster relative to your own increase in skill, optimal or textbook lines can quickly become suboptimal as players adjust to you. Playing to a card is rapidly becoming very exploitable.

For many players, playing to a card is all they have. They don’t have the ability to adjust and choose from a range of lines which disguise their play. Inexperience is often the reason for this, but more often its simply laziness. It’s extremely easy to play to a card and it requires a LOT of hard work to be creative. When I’m playing with no inspiration or with disinterest, I find it hard to be even mildly creative. The 4th most common mistake I see mid-limit NL players make is playing without creativity.

3. Failing to Fully Grasp the Power of Variance - the vast majority of winning NL players that have worked their way up to 5/10 will have a decent understanding of the power of variance, but very few will ever fully grasp how truly sick random events stacked on top of one another can really be. I think you need about 1 million hands and a very cool head to begin to understand the truly brutal nature of swings.

You can go your whole poker life without fully understanding the sickness of variance and you’ll be fine if you are mentally strong enough to not let the worst of your downswings negatively effect your play. 99.99% of us do not have this Zen ability. Almost all big downswings are compounded by bad play. I’m not talking about tilt here specifically, although tilted play by definition, is bad play. The 3rd most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is assuming they need to adjust their play when they really don’t.

All winning poker players are trying to make optimal decisions all the time, but its very easy to misinterpret a simple downswing as a cosmic shift in the playing ability of your opponents en masse, and then make the assumption that you’re getting run over and need to change your decisions. Logically, this assumption is obviously incorrect. Players don’t simply get drastically better in a short period of time. If a regular you play with has played a certain style for 6 months, but all of a sudden, he seems to be walking all over you, chances are he’s just hitting cards. All my big downswings are directly compounded by my assumption that I need to drastically alter my long-term proven winning playing style to adjust to increased aggression.

2. Tilt and the Ability to Recognise the Pattern and Take Steps to Minimise Exposure to Tilt - I don’t really tilt in the traditional sense of blood rushing to the head making me lose my mind and play horribly. But I definitely tilt just like most players - for me, tilt usually means I begin to play too aggressively. I might move up a gear and start playing 28/23 when the situation doesn’t call for it. This obviously results in sub-optimal play which can be very damaging when playing with small edges. It can be really damaging against good players as upping the aggression level gets you in a lot of tricky spots postflop. As I’m already playing sub-optimally, the damage gets exponentially compounded.

The ability to rapidly recognise the slow buildup of tilt is something that I’ve gotten a lot better at over the last year. But recognition means nothing if you don’t have the discipline to take drastic steps to limit your exposure on the slow buildup to tilt, let alone when you’re completely tilting. It takes a lot of self-control and discipline to rapidly assess a situation and state, “I no longer have positive expectation in this game.” The 2nd most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is failing to effectively recognise the buildup to tilt and take steps to limit their exposure to it.

1. Poor Game Selection - If you are not actively practising quality game selection, you are either a genius or you’re giving up a lot of edge. There is a common saying which is very true: “You could be the 6th best player in the world, but if you always play the top 5….”

Game selection is more than simply avoiding tables stacked with good players. You need to understand how your playing style stacks up against the table’s playing style. To use my game as an example, I play about 22/17 preflop and postflop I’m very aggressive early but a lot nittier overall postflop than I would like my opponents to realise. If I’m sitting in a game where the table is playing very loose-aggressive postflop, I have the tools to adjust - but only when I’m playing well. When I’m not playing well, my postflop decisions can be poor, and playing in a game like this will result in a lot of situations where I feel I’m getting run over and I respond with poor decisions.

Depending on my mood and how I’m playing, I will occasionally have greater expectation playing on laggy tables, particularly HU or short; but on most days, I’m better off playing with the nits.

The ability to (quickly) assess the skill level of your opponents is important. As a general rule, regulars are often skilled whilst unknowns or transients are more likely to be “taking a shot” or blowing off steam. However, you should be well aware of how your game matches up against all the regulars at the site you play. There are many winning regulars that I have high expectation against as they are mostly trying to avoid me and target transients. I probably have greater expectation against these regulars than I do against randoms. On the flipside, there are many regulars who match up very well against me and against whom I have painfully high negative expectation. To be a consistent winner, you need to be able to objectively assess whether your negative expectation against these guys is outweighed by any positive expectation you have against the rest of the field on any particular table.

The most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is grossly mis-judging their net expectation against the field.

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