xmas and holiday randomness…

Miranda Kerr is so freaking hot its ridiculous.

Anyway, I’ve been back in Australia on Xmas holidays and its been pretty fun and relaxing - I hate Xmas as a general rule but this year hasn’t been so bad. I’ve been totally chilling and got to watch some cricket which I haven’t been able to do in about a year and it seems not much has changed - its ridiculous how good the Australian team is, and we are so far in front of the next best team, its somewhat embarassing. I think our 2nd string side would crush just about any other team in the world.

The day before I flew out from Manila I had a bit of an adventure at the local currency exchange place near where I live - I get amused by pure utter stupity and this time, it was a Western lady’s stupidity that amused me. I was waiting in a long line to change up some cash and the Western lady at the front of the line was changing about $10,000 usd in full public view of people who are waiting to exchange amounts of about $10 or whatever. I think this is a pretty stupid thing to do, generally speaking, changing amounts of this size in full public, but this lady was a special kind of stupid.

The exchange place has expensive lightning fast counting machines which never get the count wrong. 10k usd translates to about 400,000 pesos so the lady was given 4 blocks of 100k peso stacks. The guy put each stack through the machine twice and handed the lady enough money to easily get her killed (no bodyguards or security around). But it gets better…

The lady doesn’t trust the high-tech counting machines so she wanted to manually count out her 400,000 pesos in front of about 30 people waiting in line. She had a big problem with one of the 4 stacks, claiming it only hand 99,000 pesos in it and accused the guy of ripping her off 1000 pesos (about $25). There was a very enjoyable scene as a result.

Doing his best to not roll his eyes at her, he ran the 4 stacks through the machine again and, surprise surprise, the machine told the 30 or so watchers that no notes were missing. The lady did not agree with the machine. She counted out the 400,000 pesos again manually. As it turned out, and who would have thought this, her first manual count was wrong and she was indeed holding exactly 400,000 pesos in cash. Without apologising, she walked off with her 400,000 pesos in cash into the open street. I might be a bad person, but if she got mugged for that cash, I’d be lying if I said I’d be overly concerned - and its possible I might even have been amused.

——

In amused spirits after the pure, utter stupidity I had just witnessed, I caught a cab to the pain that is Manila international airport. The driver takes one look at EDSA (the main arterial highway) and says, “This will take hours, we need to go a different route.” I concured with his opinion as the 15 million people in Manila were all heading home to the provinces and, although I’m not a fit person, I’m fairly certain I could have run 100km faster than it was going to take those buses to get to their destinations.

On our different route, I am stunned and flabbergasted to quickly pass a huge, new complex with a large sign saying “Manila International Airport”. As we are still an hour away from NAIA airport and being of sound mind (at the time), I enquire of the driver wtf is going on with this big new airport so close to the city.

He explains to me this is the new international airport which has been fully completed and ready to go for some time however there are huge “contractural disputes” about it preventing it from being used. It has been ready to be used since June, 2005 (only a short 2.5 years ago) but is sitting empty until they can sort out the “contractural disputes”. LOL.

An engineering company hired to test the new international airport reported the brand new building was suffering from “structural defects” after they were brought in to assess the situation after the new airport’s ceiling collasped in 2006. I don’t know what this engineering company was paid to come up with such a high-level technical assesment and I have absolutely no engineering ability myself, but I”m pretty sure for about $2 and without viewing the ceiling collaspe, I could have handed the Philippines government the same assessment. Ceiling collaspe = structural defects. At the risk of using the gheyest word ever…”duh”.

For anyone who has been lucky enough to endure the madness that is NAIA 1 (built before WW2), here is what the new (empty and unused) airport looks like - I think its beautiful, and if structural concerns are really the reason its not being used yet (who knows really), I’m willing to take my chances with a collasping roof rather than die a little inside each time I go through the carnage that is NAIA 1.

Posted in Random | No Comments »

backing deals and staking…

This is a pretty awesome Xmas present idea for the little ones - Kaba Kick is Russian Roulette for Kids. The player points the gun at his or her own head and pulls the trigger. Instead of bullets, a pair of feet kick out from the barrel (which is shaped like a pink hippo). If the gun doesn’t fire, the player earns points. How cute! It will also serve to let your kids grow up with a good, lucky feeling…

So with Grant taking out the APPT ME, I’ve had a bit of success in staking this month and was interested when one of my friends said he was looking at getting staked. This guy has had pretty consistent success over a fairly large sample size in NL mid-limits this year, but through one reason or another, his roll is decimated and he decided to look at staking rather than go through the stress of playing with his last 20k or whatever.

Staking good players is pretty fun but before hundreds of broke jokers message me with staking propositions, this is what is important in staking deals:

1. Trust - I need to be able to trust you 100% with cash. This is more than simply knowing I’ll get my pre-agreed share of the profits after the staking period is over - its also trust that the player will do the right thing and stick to the rules and caveats of the deal. If I don’t know you, I’m not going to stake you - its that simple.

2. Actual serious talent - one of the cute catch-22’s of staking is that if you have talent, generally you have a bankroll and you don’t need staking. Exceptions to this occur when good players break bankroll rules and overspend and donk off their bankroll in tourneys and travel - which then creates quality staking opportunities.

The terms of the deal Vos and I agreed upon with this player are:

50,000 hands must be played under the staking deal.

Vos and I will supply 25 buyins and our stakee is not to play above 2/4nl. All hands to be PT’ed of course and status updates every 2k or so hands.

Profits split 50/50 between stakers and stakee.

Rakeback split 50/50 if stakee shows a profit at end of the 50k hands. If stakee has lost money, RB money is taken to bring losses back to 0, any extra RB is split 50/50.

I set up a new account for our friend called RakebackSTAT as a kind of fun marketing experiment. So if you come across RakebackSTAT on the tables, that’s our guy - don’t bother chatting to him, as another caveat is that all chat must be turned off whilst he’s playing (player chat, msn, skype etc).

I’ll update this blog with his progress over the next month or so - should be pretty fun….

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

Online Poker Injuries - Avoiding and curing RSI…

This post will be long and won’t interest you unless you have RSI or are interested in avoiding it.

Poker is a dangerous game and is not for the faint-hearted or for small children (unless you’re Dazzler). For the 2nd half of last year and the 1st half of this year, I had ridiculously painful RSI and other super ghey injuries which were threateningly dehabilitating and freaked me out a lot.

I’m pretty much 95% better now, and this post will be about how I was lucky enough to get through it, and might be of help to you. I lost hundreds or thousands of hours of playing time from RSI injuries at the height of the soft mid-limit golden period prior to the UIGEA. I can conservatively say my injuries and my inability to treat them cost me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars as I was doing 20k hand months when all I wanted to do was play non-stop. Ironically now that I’m better, I could do 80k hand months but all I want to do is 20k hand months, but that’s just pure laziness. Also, the games are really hard now full of little 20/15 pricks and it hurts to think so much.

My problems all started doing a Anchorman style bicep curl at the gym a couple years ago, when I felt some serious pain in my right elbow. The swelling went down and my elbow felt fine the next day, and because I’m basically an idiot, I was back at the gym 2 days later. That night, my elbow swelled up pretty bad and I was unable to even hold a mouse to play - I was diagnosed with Tennis Elbow and, for months, despite treatment, every session I played was played with quite a bit of pain.

I’ve never been properly treated for Tennis Elbow because you’re supposed to completely rest the elbow for months and get daily deep tissue massage to remove the scar tissue. This is not really an option for me at the moment, but a physio gave me this brace below which is pretty effective and my elbow has been slowly healing over the last couple years anyway.

Basically, the brace compresses and stabilises the muscles around your elbow and its a pretty effective stop-gap measure. I have almost no pain whilst playing if I’m wearing the brace. Additionally, it also slightly elevates my arm off the desk, so I don’t get friction burns or bruising (which I used to occasionally get before). Using this brace, even without proper treatment, my elbow has basically healed.

Partly because of the Tennis Elbow and partly from terrible posture while playing, I developed severe RSI in my wrists. If you haven’t had RSI before, I can tell you it sucks ass. Pure pain and dehabilitating. As I’m pretty obsessive, I played through the early developing stage of RSI until it got to the point where I just couldn’t play anymore, the pain was too intense. At this point, I started looking for treatment. By the way, if you start getting the slightest signs of RSI, you should immediately stop playing and get treatment.

At this point, I had a lot of bad luck dealing with pretty incompetent medical professionals. If you’re ever unlucky enough to develop an RSI injury, you’ll find that very few medical professionals actually know what they’re talking about and you’ll be misdiagnosed a lot. A lot of medical fools will misdiagnose RSI as Carpel Tunnel Syndrome - I was told I had Carpel Tunnel a number of times. I did not have Carpel Tunnel.

I probably saw about 15-20 specialists who all contradicted each other, all offered various forms of expensive (but ineffective) treatments and exercises, sold me various expensive braces and straps and whatnot (some of which made the problem even worse*) and one surgeon I consulted advised me to have surgery on my wrists. This all went on in the space of a few months, and I could barely sleep sometimes as RSI sufferers will know its hard to find a neutral spot to rest your wrists whilst sleeping. Then once you do get to sleep, you get woken up from the pain if you’ve moved your wrists. Basically, you’re living in a kind of hell.

*Straps and wrist braces like the ones I bought can provide temporary relief, but they don’t fix the problem. They can even make the problem worse as your wrist muscles get even weaker using them. This is what happened with my situation, every new brace or strapping technique would initially reduce the pain, but the RSI would always come back quickly, usually worse than before.

This was the most frustrating thing about the whole ordeal - the RSI would sometimes recede, and I’d think whatever latest treatment I was doing was working only to then have my hopes dashed when the RSI would come back stronger, more intense and painful than before.

Things started to get pretty bad, I was in pain all the time, even when I wasn’t using my wrists (just walking or sitting). I would get shooting pains up my arm and I started to lose the feeling in some of my fingers - at this stage, I was not all that pleasant to be around and was seriously about to give up and take the surgery when I wandered past a magical little shopfront on Ann St. in Fortitude Valley (Brisbane). I wandered in and spoke to the chiropractor/physio there and she got to work. I’d seen chiropractors (mostly retarded and money hungry and ineffective), physios (mostly incompetent and opinionated and ineffective) and massage therapists (mostly lacking proper training) before - but this lady used a combination of all 3 techniques and I started seeing rapid improvement after only a couple sessions.

Her whole attitude was different to most of the specialists I’d seen. For a start, she was only charging $40 a session when most others were charging $80 or more. I asked her why she charged so little, and she was just genuinely interested in fixing health problems. She wasn’t an RSI specialist when I first walked in but she immediately got stuck right into the challenge, buying books which would have cost more than I was paying her for sessions, and everytime I’d come in, she would have new information and theories having spoken to other specialists and her optimism was infectious.

She gave me a range of strengthening exercises - I found the most effective exercises to be very simple, just using an elastic stretch band. In this 1st exercise below, I would crunch my fist upwards and then pull the band towards my face - 15x or until fatigue.

In this 2nd exercise below, I would rotate my wrists outwards and you can feel your stabiliser muscles strengthening as you do it.

Step 1:

Rotate outwards (clockwise for right wrist) to finish at Step 2 (then rotate back to starting Step 1 position):

In between quick spine adjustments, my chiropractor/phsyio lady also talked to me a lot about posture and how bad posture cuts off proper circulation, so I fixed up my workspace.

It’s important that your monitor should be at eye level - you do NOT want to be even slightly looking down or up (laptops are terrible obviously). You should elevate your monitor like in the pic below:

You should also get a very solid chair with a high back (to ease neck strain) and places to rest your arms by the side without cramping (so your arms don’t hang and create unnecessary stress on your shoulders) - this is my set up below (the cushion is a chiropractic cushion which keeps my lower back in proper position):

You should consider getting a special “anti-RSI” keyboard where the buttons are designed in a more natural, neutral position for your wrists (slanted outwards) - here is a pic of mine:

Finally, and probably the most important change I made, was buying this special joystick mouse. It’s the 3M Ergonomic Mouse and its worth so so much more than the $70 or whatever it costs. Standard mouses are terrible in that your wrist gets forcibly bent to operate it, and they put a great deal of pressure on your clicking finger and also on your pinkie finger which tends to be overworked when you move the mouse. Here is a pic of my joystick mouse and, along with the exercises, I think I owe this mouse most of the credit for my recovery - it keeps your arm and wrist neutral, straight and relaxed and forces you to move it with your whole arm (good) instead of just using your wrist (very bad) like a normal mouse:

One last final tip which might be obvious but worth mentioning - if you get a sore neck or sore shoulders (”Peddlar Shoulders” - mcd) or back pain whilst playing, a serious deep-tissue massage can often have miraculous effects. But the massage therapist needs to really know what they’re doing, as I’ve had some massages which made the pain even worse with bruising etc.

If you have RSI or are interested in avoiding it in the future, hopefully some stuff in this post will have helped you - at the very least, you should be thinking about ergonomics if you play a lot or spend a lot of the time in front of a computer as everyone knows the saying “prevention is better than a cure” but you cannot honestly realise how true that is until you get an RSI injury.

Posted in Random | 5 Comments »

Grunter awesomeness - what a fightback!!!

(report by Heath Chick for PokerNews)

Grant Levy Captures the PokerStars.net APPT Sydney Grand Final Championship

After a marathon heads-up battle, Grant Levy becomes the first Australian to win AUD$1,000,000 on home soil and keeps the APPT Grand Final trophy firmly in the tournament’s home town of Sydney, Australia.

Levy has now elevated himself to one of Australia’s premier tournament poker players with his impressive recent form including a 3rd place finish at the PokerNews Cup Main Event as well as multiple online tournament victories at PokerStars.

Levy overcame the tremendous fight of 2nd place finisher Jeremiah Vinsant who played a fantastic tournament and collects AUD$621,540 for his efforts.

Levy also now earns the right to win even more cash when he will be invited to take a place in the special charity sit & go event held here tomorrow, that will feature all APPT event winners as well as PokerStars professionals Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker and Joe Hachem.

And with that, our coverage of the PokerStars.net APPT Sydney Grand Final is complete. Congratulations to PokerStars, Star City and the entire APPT crew for a fantastic event. Until we meet again, good night and good luck!

—-

The man is just too good. It’s that simple. The smallest stack with 8 players left and pure domination from that point to win the whole thing….

Magical!

Posted in Random | 3 Comments »

one time grunter one time…

I don’t keep records but I think I’m down about 30-40k in tourney piece buying (if I include swaps as purchases).

My best ever horsie was my Finnish Fish Villie Laukannen who was looking sexy deep in the Aussie Millions early this year, but ran into the rolling blob of Gobbo Fricke to finish 20th or something for 40k or so.

I missed out on having a piece of Vos when he turned J6o into a million at WSOP.

It’s taken a very, very long time but I finally have a galloping horse on the final table of a Main Event, with sick sick awesome tourney machine Grant Levy entering the final table of the 6k APPT Sydney event 4th in chips with $1 million first prize.

Grunter has been in sick hot form last few months, winning sexy amounts online and all over the place. He certainly didn’t need to sell me piece and I warned him my bad luck would end his winning streak but I’m glad he ignored me.

Grant, I’m not religious at all but I gonna…say a little prayer for you…I say a little prayer for you…

one time

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

medical fun and games….

(some light backyard party entertainment - First Out You Lose)

So I had an enjoyable little adventure this morning which is probably worth relating.

Had a bit of a medical flutter last week just following up on my Macau adventure - the doc said all was good but he just wanted to test for a few things “to make sure”. When they were having fun with their needles, the doc asked me if I wanted to get tested for a range of scary illnesses (each test is pretty expensive for Philippines so I’m guessing he figured it couldn’t hurt to up the bill a little) and I thought “Why not?” so we tested for about 20 of your standard horrible and horrific illnesses.

Obviously unless you’re sharing needles or having unprotected alley adventures with rent boys like Tim P, when a doc says “Ok now we’re testing for HIV”, you’re not going to be too worried.

I was supposed to phone in for the results today but I had to see a doc as my eyedrops were out and for, some inexplainable reason, the eyedrops I need are prescription only. wtf? must be something in the eyedrops they use to make heroin or something - whatever.

So I call up an eye specialist and make an appointment for 10:15am. Now, as I am quite savvy in the ways of Manila now, I am very careful to make sure there are no misunderstandings with complicated things like “appointments”. I held the receptionist on the phone for a long time and we were both very clear that my appointment was at 10:15am and that I would be seeing the doc at 10:15am. Easy.

Knowing it will take half hour for the 2km trip in Makati traffic at that time of the morning, I cruise out at 9:30 arriving at Makati Medical at 10am. It always takes me 15min to find the right office in that wonderful maze of fun and adventure. I have fun with the maze now and hospitals are pretty interesting if you’re allowed to wander just about anywhere, which you can do at Makati Medical, especially if you walk fast and have a worried look on your face.

To my disappointment, I found the eye specialist fairly easily and waited for a bit until my appointment time. At 10:15 the door opened and the secretary got everyones’ names and assigned us tickets. I had ticket number 4. I explain to the secretary that I have an appointment for 10:15 which is, of course, right now. She explains to me that I do indeed have an appointment at 10:15 but so do 6 other people and “the doctor cannot see you all at once, can he”. Stunned by this unexpected (but yet somehow totally expected) development, I enquire of the girl if she is aware of the actual definition of the word “appointment”. As it turns out, she had only a rudimentary understanding of the concept, so I gave her a short lesson explaining the complexities and nuances before inquiring how long I would have to wait PAST my appointment time. She said, “Well the doctor generally only takes 15 min per patient. You are number 4, so he will see you in…(long pause)…95 min.” I could honestly not make this shit up. I thank her warmly for her time and continue on my way to pick up my results.

Not in the slightest bit concerned, and thinking about what errands I had to do later that day, I waltz into the doctor’s office for my results. The assistant pulls my file and opens it. There is a stack of 30 pages (test results) in it and I notice this below before he closes it and tells me the doctor will see me in 10 min.

I have gone into shock 2 times in my life, and today was the third (the other two were when a dolphin brushed my leg when I was 15 and I thought it was a shark and also when I spun off the highway in the rain at 120kph and wrote off my car).

If you haven’t been in shock before, its a pretty unique and weird feeling - kinda hard to explain. Numbness is a big part of it, inability to think logically, some nausea but not painful nausea - actually, there’s very little “feeling” in shock at all. Of course I wouldn’t know myself, but I suspect its like being on really lame acid, maybe like some bad mushrooms or something. Basically you’re a little smacked out when you’re in shock.

I wandered around the halls numbly as I knew nothing really about Hepatitis. All I knew was it can kill you and that there is no cure for it - I remembered someone once telling me one of the Hep’s is worse than AIDS. With these comforting thoughts rattling around in my shock-addled brain, I wandered everywhere for god knows how long before I strolled back in to hear my death sentence.

The doc looked worried. He said, “How are you feeling?” I tried to respond but didn’t. He said, “Are you ready to go through your results?” I stared at a picture of a chipmunk behind him advising patients they should take Cloaxil or something like that. Time seemed to move slowly. He took that as a Yes and proceeded to rattle off some nonsense about everything being good news. I am somewhat confused at this stage - good news? What is he talking about?. I numbly point to the block letters “POSITIVE” for Hepatitis and whilst doing so, I notice it is Hepatitis B. I try to remember if that is the really bad one but I can’t remember.

What I did not notice was the tiny letters below Hep. B which said “Anti-Hbs Immunity”. It turns out I tested positive to being immune to Hep B. I listened as the doc explained I must have had shots for Hep B at some stage and the blood slowly started returning to my extremities as I began to realise I had cheated death once again.

I guess sometimes a Positive test is good - who knew….

Posted in Random | 3 Comments »