Olio Olio Olio!

I recently purchased and am trying to read Colson Whitehead's much hyped new book Noble Hustle. This is the latest in paid-to-play-and-then-write-about-a-poker-tournament books in the vein of Anthony Holden's Big Deal and James McManus Positively Fifth Street. I almost didn't write that last sentence, because it implies Whitehead's book belongs in the same company as those latter two very good reads. Noble Hustle is, frankly, not a good book. It's pretentious, overly hip, full of itself, uses made-up words left and right, and frankly is a challenge to read. Weirdly, the book is getting a lot of press and some very good reviews, but those endorsements mostly seem to be coming from people who don't play serious poker. Yes, I'm going to continue slogging through it, but it's a tough go and not a lot of fun.

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I've been on a pretty good heater this month. Spending about 45% of my time at Zone $25NL and $50NL, 45% of time at $200NL and $400NL 6max tables, and the remainder of my time goofing around at PLO, medium buy-in SnGs, and the occasional MTT. The bankroll is fat and happy, but because I'm a once-bitten-twice-shy kind of guy, I'm sending in a request this week to withdraw most of that money and lock up most of the profits. Then I will step back down to the lower stakes and (hopefully) do it all over again.

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And speaking of heaters, got a good-news update from e-Pal on how his bankroll is doing. To remind you, e-Pal and I took $25 and turned it into just under $300 in a month (see last post on the experiment here). Long story short: we ended up splitting the net profit, and e-Pal went his merry way, returning for just one tune-up coaching session a week later. Anyway, e-Pal has now turned that tiny seed money he was left with into over $1400 playing Zone and 6Max tables in just three weeks time. Not too shabby for a rock'n'roller from down under who doubted it was still possible to make money online at poker. Wooot!

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Still no Full Tilt Remission. Grrrr.

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Tables set up and waiting for players at the Rio. 

WSOP starts this week! Wish like heck I was playing in it, but I'll still be there vicariously (via live feeds and the web) for the next month and a half. Gotta love this time of the year.

All-in for now...
-Bug

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Bankroll Builder. As part of the online education of e-pal (who resides Down Under, btw), I asked him to create his own pregame checklist of things to focus-on/remember during an upcoming session of poker. Number one on his list was:

"Gap Concept - If there is any doubt: FOLD!"

To which I immediately nodded my head and thought:

"Wow. My work here is nearly done."

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Tilt Hills. Am still fine-tuning my tilt hill and, specifically, the eight major categories of tilt. For instance, this morning I renamed the "anguish" tilt category to a more general category of "frustration." The mildest form of this would be mild irritation or annoyance. The most severe would be what Mike Caro once labeled "Despondent Tilt," or "The Point of No Return."  It's been a long, long time since I felt that one, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. I don't care anymore, just take my money....

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Side Glances. The title in today's post comes from one of my favorite columnists of all time: the incomparable Peter Egan of Road and Track fame. For years and years I subscribed to R&T, even through the dark days, primarily for Egan's monthly column. Hell, I even subscribed to Cycle World for a while because he penned an awesome monthly there, too. If you're into the internal combustion engine at all, this is a writer to search out.

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Work. I currently hate my job. I've been assigned what is effectively a second full-time undertaking, which is essentially me being asked to step in and "fix" a dysfunctional, out-of-control group of engineers and scientists. I know very little about the subject matter of the group (high-level science related), the personalities are either very strong minded with their own agendas, or weak/timid folk, and most of the work has already left the station (on uncertain paths). Oh, and I get to double my travel away from home. Joy.

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Big Bad Government. Still haven't received my Full Tilt remission. I must be on some sort of blacklist. Grrr.

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All-in for now...

-Bug

Olio Cookies

Some miscellaneous jibber jabber today:

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Bad News: Unavoidable work and family commitments upcoming in June have conspired to essentially kill any hope of me being able to play in WSOP-2014. Dammit!
Good News: I am using semi permanent ink on the calendar to block out time in mid-August to play in the Arizona State Poker Championship.
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Still no Full Tilt remission payout for this sad little Bug. I called the Garden City payout group yesterday and voiced my displeasure. Ended up talking to a brick wall bureaucrat named Carline who was 99.99% useless. The only thing I was able to pry out of her red-tape addled brain was my application is still working its way through the system and to continue waiting.
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Sheldon "I-Hate-America" Adelson continues to dump huge buckets of money into GOP coffers. Latest to grovel at the feet of meet with the little big man over the past few weeks includes Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and John Kasich. Sellouts all.
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Poker is Golf. Well, they are pretty darn similar. Both are skill games (no, golf is not a sport, folks). Both require lots of off green preparation, strong technical skills, and sound emotional control. They're also both subject to the vagaries of chance in the short term (e.g., poker: cards dealt. golf: condition of greens, wind, etc.). Oh, and both are incredibly aggravating and addictive at the same time. It's no real surprise that many of the best poker players like to drive and putt in their off-time. I don't know why I thought of this connection, but some neurons fired the other day and I realized I used to suffer really like playing golf, too. Thinking about dusting off the irons to go ruin a good walk one of these days.
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Ed Miller's poker books rocks.
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Suffered a big roller coaster of variance this past week, most self-imposed. Been experimenting a lot with weird hand reading ideas, which didn't work out as well as I had planned. Also donked off lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of buy-ins at PLO as I continue to suffer the vagaries and variance of learning that particular little nasty fun pill. But I'm back and stronger than before.... .... well, after a lot of low-stakes cash grinding I had to do to rebuild the 'roll, that is.
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Picked up an old Lou Krieger book on limit poker at the used bookstore the other day. Oldie but still goodie stuff. Like Ed Miller, Krieger was someone who could take difficult concepts and reduce them to simple layman words that the likes of simpletons simpletons like me could understand. RIP, Lou.
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I hate, hate, hate the director of our sister center here at work after he unilaterally imposed his own puritanical views on what we can and can't web surf during lunch hours on our personal time. Of course included in his close-minded world view is that poker is evil and should not be seen by the eyes of fallible folks such as moi. Asshole.
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All-in for now...
-Bug