Finally back to poker today, and it went pretty terribly. I ran badly against everyone, but it was most annoying during rematches with a few regs. I ran massively below EV versus all of them and ended the day down a lot. Bad start to the month.
January ended up great, however. I played just 1200 games at an average buy-in of $150, and I ended up with an EV ROI of 3.5% which I’m happy with. Hopefully February can turn around quickly and start to look more like January soon.
My friend and I made a prop bet that we wouldn’t check our poker results for a week, so I feel like I have nothing to write here. I guess that shows that I focus too much on results?
We made the agreement to not look at our results for a week both as a challenge but also because I really do believe it’s a good thing to do for all poker players. Never knowing results is probably the best thing you can do for your mental state, in my opinion. Checking results never benefits anyone but it always has the potential to damage the mental state in some way (whether you’re up or down).
The punishment is pretty funny for checking results too: we both picked a HU player that we really dislike and agreed that we would send that player $200 if we broke our promise. The awesome thing about this is that its barely any money, but the pain of giving cash to someone we dislike is enough to prevent us from doing almost anything. If you are a poker player, I recommend this for a prop bet punishment any day of the week 😛
I guess that means if you are the lucky recipient of a random $200 any day this week, you know I hate you. But who plays HU poker and doesn’t hate at least one player? No one, that’s who.
“Thanks for making me come here” – what Sarah said to me on the phone from rehab. Nicest words I’ve heard anyone say to me in a while.
I haven’t played much (or basically any) poker since the last time I wrote. I spent pretty much all last week running errands with Sarah so that she could go to rehab. She agreed to go for one month and then said she would re-eval after the month is over. I really want her to stay for two or three months, but I sadly don’t think she will. I guess I will start hoping that one month does the trick.
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. At first I thought it was due to the stress of Sarah’s problems, but I also figured out another possible source of the problem.
I have really bad seasonal allergies. It’s around one week before allergy season gets started for me, and I’ve read that taking antihistimines before symptoms start is the most effective way of combating the problems. I usually take Reactine (cetirizine or Zyrtec in the states) but I am trying to find another drug that helps me since I’m saving cetirizine for when my allergies get REALLY bad in a month or two. I’d take cetirizine daily for 7 months if I could, but the body builds a tolerance after around 3 months. Both Loratadine (Claritin in Canada) and Desloratadine (Aerius) are useless to me, unfortunately. I decided to give Fexofenadine (Allegra) a try for the first time a few days ago.
I haven’t slept well for several nights. I keep waking up multiple times during the night, usually around 6 or 7 times. This morning I finally realized what the problem might be and went back and had a look: every day I took the drug I also had trouble sleeping, and they both started at the exact same time.
I’d been taking Allegra at night, so I’m gonna skip tonight and see if it helps sleeping. If so, I’m gonna try taking it in the morning instead and see if that helps. If not, I guess I can’t take this particular antihistimine. I’m running out of drugs to try! And I really don’t wanna get allergy shots cuz I’m scared of needles 😛
/boring post about allergy drugs, wtf. Sorry, I’ll try to talk about poker next time!
This has been a pretty crazy month, I must say. I’ve had some days where I have run hotter than I ever have playing hyper heads-up, and now I’ve had one of my worst days. My graph from today looks like a cliff dive, mostly because I played a 35 game stretch of $200s where I lost 25 of them. I ended up losing 20 ABI overall, and I ran 20 ABI below EV.
I didn’t feel as tilted as I might expect while the games were happening, but I did feel pretty annoyed once the losing stretch was over. This was probably in part because I couldn’t resist taking a look at my graph to see how badly I’d gotten crushed, and even though it was no surprise, it was still tilting to see it.
I decided to stop shortly after the losses because I was pretty irritable at that point and I don’t think it was going to get worse. Overall I can’t complain much, given how the month has gone. Back at it either tomorrow or Monday.
It appears that my limited hours of poker this month don’t matter because I just run super hot every time I play. I’ve continued to keep my average buy-in around $150, and I’m running at an ROI of ~8% this month so far. It obviously can’t keep up this way, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts 🙂
One night my friend and I decided to play each other at micro stakes hypers just for fun, and we realized that it could be a good idea to do that on a regular basis. I’ve been enjoying running really hot versus him while also improving my game along the way.
Obviously there’s something to be said for going over hand histories and discussing theory, but practice also makes perfect. Since I’ve been playing mostly fish to start the year, it’s been a good way to practice playing against someone competent and get myself ready for higher stakes again.
On the personal side of things, Sarah was discharged from the hospital today. I asked her to come stay with me temporarily while we figure out rehab options. She is extremely reluctant to go to rehab for an extended period of time because she is worried that her work is going to suffer. She also doesn’t want to pay the money it costs in case it “doesn’t work.” I hope that she will listen to me and go because she really needs it.
I played around 50 games in 1.5-2 hours today . I had spent the morning talking to a social worker and also Sarah’s book keeper about a variety of topics surrounding Sarah. During a break, I decided to give Sarah a call because I needed access to her mail key.
It was an unpleasant conversation. Prior to today she had been confused and didn’t have a good memory for things that were going on, but today she was very much herself. She told me that she didn’t want to go to rehab immediately upon being discharged because she needed to take care of things at work.
I told her that she needed to go to rehab right away. She said no, she couldn’t. I told her that she would start drinking again if she didn’t, and she said no she wouldn’t. I told her that she said that last time, and she said that things would be different this time. I told her I didn’t believe her and said that if she starts drinking yet again, I can’t be in her life anymore. It’s just too much. She said that she knows this and that it’s one of the reasons why things will be different this time.
We went back and forth like this for some time and I started crying on the phone and told her that I need her to go to rehab. I told her that I would take care of things for her at work together with her book keeper. She said okay a couple times and that she would think about it.
After all of that, I really didn’t feel like playing poker anymore. I feel pretty sad and disappointed at the moment.
This sure is becoming an emo blog rather than a poker blog. Hopefully that changes soon because I’d really rather be playing poker.
Poker has been good to start 2013. I’ve managed to play 30 hours so far this month, and I’m on an upswing. Over 700 games my EV ROI is 4% but my actual ROI is 6%, which is pretty nice. My average buy-in is a bit lower than usual because I’ve mostly been playing between $100 and $200 stakes, and I’ve been playing mostly soft games as a result.
I feel fortunate that I’ve run good playing poker to start the year because the rest of my life hasn’t been very fun. Last entry I wrote about someone close to me being an alcoholic, and I’m gonna just call her Sarah in this blog from now on (not her real name, of course). I never knew that someone’s alcohol problems could affect other people so seriously, but they really can.
I’ve been more on edge and less happy during my every day normal life ever since I got involved with Sarah’s drinking problem. I’m most stressed out and unhappy when I don’t know what is happening and when I don’t know if she is okay. After two weeks of being sober in the hospital near the end of December, I remember being worried and anxious every day after she was discharged that she would drink again.
I realized that I was so stressed out in part because I felt like that I should be doing more to help her and prevent her from drinking. I had to consciously tell myself that I wasn’t responsible for her drinking and that it wasn’t my fault if she started drinking again (which she did three days after he hospital discharge).
I also spend a lot of time worrying about what is going to happen next and the things that I have to do to help her next. When things are in limbo and I don’t know what is going to happen, I get really anxious, stressed out, and unhappy. It’s really tough to prevent myself from feeling this way. I have also been having trouble sleeping lately, which I have to assume is from this additional stress.
Right now Sarah is in the hospital. She was sent there from detox again because of confusion issues and I’m not sure when she is going to be able to leave. I am waiting to find out whether she will be sent back to detox or whether she is going to stay in the hospital because I want to sit down with her and a social worker to figure out the next best course of action for her rehab.
This is gonna be the first personal post I’ve written in this blog for a while. I don’t usually have an urge to write about my personal life since this blog is supposed to be for poker, but I suppose situations that affect my ability to play properly are indirectly related to poker anyway.
I didn’t plan to play a lot of poker in December, but I ended up playing way less than intended. Someone I care for very much is a chronic alcoholic, and things took a turn for the worst near the start of the month. I’m one of the only people in her life that she has for support, so I spent a lot of my time trying to help her.
It is one of those situations where the alcoholic has refused to get help for years and finally is at a point where if they refuse any longer, they are probably going to die. To say that the situation has been emotionally tolling is an understatement.
The worst part of the situation is that a month after everything started, she is still not doing what she needs to do to get better. She spent two weeks in the hospital but apparently did not heed advice of counsellors regarding rehab. She was discharged last week and only lasted a few days before she started drinking again. I actually went to pick her up this past Thursday and she was so intoxicated that she couldn’t stand.
The ironic part is that I was picking her up to take her to a daytox orientation. When I found out that she had no rehab plan upon being discharged, I suggested she at least attend daytox. There were several days before she could attend the orientation, though, in which she obviously started drinking again.
So instead of daytox, I was able to get her a bed in detox. She called me today asking me to pick her up, though, because she wanted to be discharged. I asked her if she had a plan for rehab and she said no. I asked her why she wanted to leave and she said that she needed to take care of something at work.
I ended up telling her that she really needed to stay there and get a plan for rehab before leaving because I couldn’t keep helping her with detox. I said that I would come meet with her and a counsellor to try to find the best option for rehab.
She agreed to stay. Now I’m waiting for her to call me and tell me when to meet up with her and the counsellor. In the meantime, I have appointments to meet with her accountant because the accountant is about to go on vacation and stuff needs to get done before she goes.
Sigh.
Everything would be a lot easier to deal with if I knew that she was going to get help the way she needs it.
Needless to say, it’s been pretty tough to play poker with this happening. Not only has it taken a lot of my time, it has also stressed me out emotionally. It’s a really bad idea to play poker stressed out and emotional, so I haven’t been playing.
I’m hoping that writing this just now helps to alleviate the stress I feel at the moment, however, because I really want to play a session today. If you’re reading this and have any experiences dealing with alcoholics, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.
Happy New Year!
Instead of blogging about my goals for 2013, I have been listening to this on repeat and laughing my ass off:
Robots – Flight of the Conchords
It’s probably old news to you, but I’m obsessed with it right now 😀
I played a very short session of just $100s the other day. I wanted to get my brain thinking about poker in an easy and relaxing session before a real session. My first real session will be Friday, although I am planning on playing just $100s and $200s.
A blog post summarizing how disappointing 2012 was is coming in the near future, as well a short blurb about my goals for this year.
I played my only day of poker this past week today, again playing only $100s and $200s. Volume on PokerStars and Full Tilt was extremely slow, but I got lucky and got to rematch a couple fish plenty of times. I played 129 games and 91 of them were versus this one fish at $100s. He was very bad but also ran pretty bad in the end and lost 9 BI to me.
It was nice to have a winning session today. I’m only down a few hundred dollars on the month now, which is also nice considering how December started.
I don’t intend to play again until next week at the earliest. Have a Merry Christmas!