Coronavirus

Coronavirus - Family - Other sports - Poker

The nightmare of normal

March 15, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today Mum and Dad will have got the keys to their latest property. They’re quite stressed at the moment with trying to sell their current place as they head into autumn. Mum seems to spend half her waking hours dusting or vacuuming, in case somebody shows up out of the blue. They feel about as locked down as I am.

At the weekend I watched John Campbell’s fantastic video on the impacts of Covid on mental health: the depression and anxiety caused by all that worry and isolation. But what he didn’t mention were the anti-effects. If I had an office job and had been able to work from home for a year in relative peace, how would I cope with all those people again? With extreme difficulty, I’m sure. This was the case for me in 2011. I quit my insurance job at the end of 2009. For the next 15 months I travelled, read, played online poker, and did temporary work which I enjoyed because I never had to involve myself in all the crap. Then (and I still can’t believe it happened) I got sucked back into the corporate world. In my first few weeks there I was like a fish out of water. Possum in the headlights doesn’t begin to cover it.

Yesterday I heard that Murray Walker, the Formula 1 commentator, had died at the age of 97. This came as a surprise to me, because I thought he was already dead. Somebody quipped that Walker spoke like a man whose trousers were on fire, and that was why he was so memorable, even for someone like me who was mostly uninterested in motor racing. He voice was cars zooming around a track on a Sunday afternoon. These household-name sports commentators of my childhood and early adulthood are rapidly becoming history. Peter Alliss – it’s hard to imagine the 72nd hole of the Open championship without him – died in December aged 89. Then there’s Richie Benaud, voice of the Ashes, and Sid Waddell, voice of darts. Going further back, there’s Bill McLaren (rugby – again, what a voice), Peter O’Sullevan (horse racing, another sport I didn’t care about but was hard to avoid), Ted Lowe (snooker), Brian Johnston (cricket again), and Dan Maskell (tennis, “Oh, I say”). All gone. Dodgers baseball fans had Vin Scully, who commentated on their games, with extraordinary wit, for sixty-seven seasons until 2016. At 93, he is still with us. But these voices, beamed into our living rooms and onto our car radios seemingly since time immemorial, won’t be replaced. They’re gone for ever, as (for me) has sport itself, largely. I think back to England’s 1998 cricket tour of the Caribbean and how exotic and far away those islands seemed as I listened to ball-by-ball commentary on long-wave radio. As money has flooded top-level sport, that remoteness, that wonder, it’s all gone.

Four more poker tournaments at the weekend. Saturday evening’s fixed badugi went nowhere, then by Sunday the US had moved to summer time, meaning all the day’s tournaments kicked off an hour earlier. (They’ll be back to normal in two weeks, when we too put our clocks forward.) The early starts reduced the fields by about 20%. I had a good run in the single draw, picking up some monster hands to amass a big stack, but I couldn’t make much headway at the final table. I had a big stack to my left who kept bombing after the draw and I never made a hand I felt I could call (or check-raise) with. Being out of position in single draw is tough. I was out in fourth for a $21 profit. At the same time I made a deep run in the pot-limit badugi – being in contention in two tournaments simultaneously is fun when it happens – but though I finished sixth I only made $7 because I once again did a terrible job of picking up bounties. I had a particularly unlucky bust-out hand, but that happens. Then I ran badly once more in last night’s fixed badugi, winning four of the 78 hands I played. My bankroll is $436.

We generally get very nice weather in Timișoara – that could be another reason why it’s become my happy place – but right now it’s grey and wet and miserable.

Finally, I’ve just found out about this new website – radio.garden – which lets you tune in to any radio station in the world just by clicking on a map. You can spend hours on it.

Coronavirus - Poker

Confidence boost

March 13, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My 18-year-old student cancelled last night’s lesson two hours before we were due to start, so that meant only one thing: poker. And as it happened, a nice win. I won the fixed badugi from 153 entrants, making a $79 profit in 4½ hours. That felt pretty good. I took me a while to get going though. My starting stack of 3000 had dwindled to three figures before I made a monster on the last hand prior to the first break, giving me a toehold. From there it wasn’t plain sailing. I’d chipped up to just over 10,000 not long before the money, but I gave back almost half of that when my opponent underplayed a big hand. I should have lost more. When we reached the eight-man final table I quickly relinquished over half my chips to become the short stack, but when I recovered from that I came into my own. In fact at times I was just about running over the table. That’s always fun. I entered heads-up with just over 60% of the chips. My opponent wasn’t bad – he knew how to bluff – but he was too passive at times, not betting when he had a clear advantage and giving me the chance to catch up. We swapped the lead a few times, but after our 70-hand battle I emerged the victor. My bankroll is now $420, and hopefully that win will give me the confidence to play with more freedom, to bluff more, to make make more moves, and to be less timid in bounty tournaments. Let’s see.

This week I’ve been thinking more about my long-term plans. I’m pretty they involve Timișoara which I still absolutely bloody love. The place makes me happy. I have everything I want here, or at least I will when we finally see the back of this virus. Having a job that works for me is the biggest thing of all, but the architecture, the parks, the markets, the squares, I can’t think I’ll ever tire of all of that. And I’m part of it, slap-bang in the middle, not stuck out on the ninth floor of Building D in some god-awful shoot-me-now business park.

On Wednesday my student was clearly still feeling the effects of the Astra Zeneca vaccine he’d had five days earlier. I would have taken that vaccine in heartbeat, and would still take it for sure, but seeing his pallor and lethargy, several days after the jab, gave me pause.

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the Japanese tsunami. It came on the back of the Christchurch quake, and in the middle of my horrible long wait to find out the Wellington job. Not fun times.

Coronavirus - Poker - Politics - Tennis

Back in lockdown

March 8, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I was about to do my weekly shop, but then I checked the rules and realised I couldn’t until after lunch. Timișoara entered lockdown last night at midnight, and supermarkets are reserved for over-65s between 10am and 1pm. Good decision all round. The sunny early-spring weather had brought crowds of people to the centre, especially in narrow streets like Strada Alba Iulia where you’re all hemmed in. Hospitals are just about bursting at the seams when the new variants are starting to proliferate, so this increase in activity is at exactly the wrong time. There’s been too much “can we get away with it?” and general pussyfooting around, so I’m glad they’ve put the hammer down. I wonder if that would have happened under Nicolae Robu, our old mayor.

Leadership matters more than people think. Would New Zealand have done so well had the 2017 election turned out differently (or should I say, as expected)? We’ll never know, but it’s just a hunch that National would have been all “we’ve got a goddamn rock star economy and we ain’t gonna shut it down”. Team of five million? Maybe. Be kind? I doubt it. NZ’s messaging has been inclusive, not divisive, and that’s gone a long way towards their resounding success up until now. To be clear, I still think National would have handled it miles better than the US or most of Europe.

The British people’s reaction to their disastrous response to Covid is increasingly maddening. The death toll is around 120,000, and tens of millions of Brits aren’t only OK with that, they like what they see. Now they’ve got their vaccines and all is forgiven, if they ever thought there was anything to forgive in the first place. It seems that if you supported Brexit and voted Tory in December 2019, you’ll support the government come what may. And now they’ve got their vaccines that the EU don’t have, so hahahaha in your face! Take that remainers, we’re winning! Who cares about all that death now.

I played tennis twice at the weekend, and it’ll be at least three weeks before I’m back on the court again. In both sessions – four hours – I played with Domnul Ionescu, a man in his late sixties with a smoker’s cough who spat on his hand every second point or so. On the other side was a woman of 30-odd and the bloke I had that singles match with just before Christmas. Petrică, one of the other regulars who must be in his early fifties, couldn’t make it. He’s suffered from a kidney problem for some time, he managed to pick up Covid, and now he needs dialysis.

Four poker tournaments yesterday. All frustrating in their various ways. I cashed in two of them but barely broke even. In the Omaha hi-lo I amassed a nice stack but couldn’t build it up into something imposing. I treaded water for a long time, then when we got down to three tables I min-raised my high-only hand in the cut-off. I was unlucky enough for both the blinds to wake up with A2 and good side cards. I correctly got all in pre-flop three ways because I had plenty of equity (one third, as it happened) but the board ran out horribly for me and I was out in 15th for a small cash. In the single draw I hung around but a big stack on my left kept going all in over my raises and I never felt I had enough to call. Being out of position is horrible in that game at the best of time. I had another good run in the pot-limit badugi, knocking three people out early, but the bounties dried up and at the final table my stack did too. I got a small payout for coming seventh out of 100. Then in the fixed badugi I started OK but couldn’t win the big pots when it mattered, and was out well before the money. My bankroll is $337.

Update: The Romanian authorities have come to their senses and approved the Astra Zeneca vaccine for over-55s. The notion that it was unsafe or ineffective for older people has been roundly disproven, but sadly too many people might already have been spooked by all that bollocks.

This morning Adi Bărar, who founded the highly successful Timișoara band Cargo, died after spending two weeks in hospital with coronavirus.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - New Zealand - Poker

Tough times ten years apart

February 28, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My friend from Birmingham emailed me yesterday to say that he’d just seen his mother (who lives in the same city) for the first time in months, all masked up and physically distanced. No hugs. His father died about seven years ago. That must be hard. My parents live on the other side of the world so seeing each other is hard enough, virus or no virus, but when your mum is just there… I have been toying with the idea of a trip to virtually virus-free New Zealand. (NZ likes to be free of things. GE-free, pest-free, predator-free, smoke-free.) I’d have to quarantine for two weeks, but I could work in isolation.

The numbers are going back up in Romania, no doubt about it. The more contagious UK variant is, slowly but surely, becoming the dominant one. The weather is rapidly improving – we’ve had glorious days that have felt like May – but we could be in for a spring just like in 2020, under national lockdown. Unlike the UK, Romania is employing a two-jab strategy, so while 600,000 Romanians have now received both shots of the vaccine, most people are still fully exposed. (Anybody who has only just had their first dose is fully susceptible, too.)

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the deadly Christchurch earthquake; 22/2/11. I was still living in Auckland then. Three weeks earlier I’d had an interview in Wellington for the job that I didn’t want. I was going through a bout of depression, though the previous evening I’d managed to play tennis. (Yes, tennis night was Monday. From memory I lost my singles but won the doubles.) I was in Devonport library when I heard the news, and a couple of hours later my boss at the insurance broker’s on Queen Street called me to ask if I wanted my old job back. I’d worked on claims for the first Christchurch quake until December. Yes, please! I was back there the next morning. A meaningful job with no bullshit (especially in such circumstances). I had a relaxing ten-minute ferry journey each way. Then in another three weeks they offered me the Wellington job, and with much (justified) trepidation I took it.

On Thursday I had one of those rare car-crash lessons. It was my first lesson with a woman who said she knew no English whatsoever. The charger port on my laptop had broken, and no matter which way I wedged the cable in the socket, it wouldn’t charge. I used some very good materials from the Lingoda site, but had to explain them in Romanian (with difficulty) while being distracted by watching the battery level drop like a stone. My laptop was about to die so I resorted to using my phone, and I must have seemed rather unprofessional. I’ve since managed to make a connection again – I daren’t move my laptop a millimetre from its current spot on my desk – and I hope I can get it fixed on Monday. Hopefully my new student hasn’t already given up on me.

Four more poker tournaments today. The first one (Omaha hi-lo) lasted barely ten minutes. A crazy five-way all-in on the flop, I had good equity, but none of it materialised. Then single draw, which came to an abrupt halt when my good hand was outdrawn. Then pot-limit badugi. I made a very fast start, then went card dead, then kept sticking around until I was the short stack with only three remaining out of 100 entries. I survived some hairy moments and eventually eliminated one of the other players for a useful bounty. (Makes a change.) I didn’t last too long heads-up, but I made a $48 profit for finishing second. This evening I played the limit badugi and chipped up well, but when my big pat hand got outdrawn in a monster four-way pot, that was pretty much that, and I fell four places short of the money. I’ve made a couple of hundred this month; my bankroll is $353.

We were supposed to restart tennis today, but someone decided to call it off because it was too windy. Too windy?! You gotta be joking. In Wellington, that would have been a joke.

I no longer own a property. I do however own a meaningful sum of money, finally.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :)

Know-alls and have-alls

January 27, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Windows 10 is starting to infuriate me. When it wakes up from sleep mode, I find that all my programs have shut down. I can’t work like this. I’ve googled things and tweaked a few settings, but I bet it’ll make no difference.

There’s one problem, if problem is the right word, that I keep running into in my lessons. The Man (and it usually is a man) Who Knows Everything. Who knows what he wants and how to get it. I find these people offputting, and my usual motivation to help them isn’t quite there, partly because I feel unable to help them anyway. They also seem to have everything. They’re already winning. What motivation is there to help one of life’s winners to win by even more? The poker guy, who has disappeared from the scene, was a bit like that. The super-smart 18-year-old who I saw on Saturday is like that. Lessons with him are never easy. This time I went through some expressions like “money for old rope” and “kick the bucket”. The rest of the time he told me about the world of gaming and anime that he inhabits. When I asked him whether he was a risk-taker, he said he played gacha, so obviously yes. Umm, what’s gacha when it’s at home? A kind of Japanese toy vending machine, from what I can tell, that he must play in a virtual form. It didn’t occur to him that I might not know what what the hell he was talking about.

On Friday I had a lesson with the 31-year-old guy who lives on the outskirts of London. He and his wife moved there from Bucharest almost three years ago, and they have an 18-month-old son whose little brother or sister is on the way. They’d just put an offer in for a house. The first one they looked at. Nearly £600,000. As you do when you’ve come from Romania. Heaven knows where their money has come from. I’m thinking he might not need me either.

This all reminds me of the maths tuition I did in Auckland in 2010. It was an eye-opener to see the insides of the houses where these teenagers lived. I’m supposed to get excited about pushing your privileged Oliver or Olivia from Excellence to Excellence Plus, am I? They weren’t all like that, of course, and the exceptions were where most of my motivation lay. Here, so far, the Men Who Know and Have Everything are the exceptions, and long may that remain so.

On Sunday I had a session with the 13-year-old boy who lives in Dumbrăvița, which is joined on to Timișoara, and is currently in lockdown for the second time since the autumn. Here in Timișoara we’ve been lockdown-free since May. The prevalence of Covid in Dumbrăvița has been consistently higher than here, and I think I know why. By Romanian standards, Dumbrăvița is rich. I’ve heard that it’s Romania’s second-richest suburb. It’s all BMWs and Audis, with the occasional Porsche and even a Maserati thrown in. When you go to Dumbrăvița it’s mostly dead. They’re all jet-setting and doing business deals just like this boy’s dad does in Hong Kong. They’re highly economically active. Most of Romania isn’t like that at all, and that’s why (I reckon) Covid hasn’t quite been the disaster in Romania (yet) that it’s been in western Europe.

The Covid situation in the UK is still dreadful. More than 1600 deaths have been reported today; the overall death toll is now in six figures. My brother, whose optimism has evaporated, said we might all be facing lockdowns for the rest of our lives. His wife had her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last week. In Romania we now have five cases of the UK variant. If that takes over – and why won’t it? – we really will be in deep doo-doo here.

It was a huge relief to see Joe Biden’s inauguration go off without a hitch, after what happened two weeks earlier. President Biden. Sounds great. The near-octogenarian has his work cut out but I’m sure he’ll give it a damn good go. I’ve now been in Romania for three US presidents and six Romanian prime ministers.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Photos - Poker

Keeping the heat in

January 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s cold. Last night I put the central heating on for the first time this winter. Amazing, really. These great hulking blocks of concrete that were put up during communism are almost unbearably ugly on the outside, but they sure keep the heat in. We also have communal pipes that travel down all eight storeys – there must be a giant boiler somewhere, and one day every year in late October or early November you can hear the water gurgle. My student in Maramureș has taken a break – I hope it’s only a break – and that meant I could visit the supermarket yesterday as it opened at eight. The temperature at that time was minus six. It’s a great time to go because it’s almost empty. The lady at the checkout even had time to compliment me on my choice of spuds (“they’re so good for mashing, but you have to eat the mashed potatoes as soon as you make them”). It’s hard to know what to say (in Romanian!) in reply to something unexpected like that.

Yesterday was a funny day. I managed to get in three poker tournaments. The first was no-limit single draw (just like good old five-card draw, but the worst hand wins). I’d forgotten what a good tournament game that is. With only two rounds of betting, it’s very fast-paced. I finished in fifth place out of 93 runners after 3¼ hours, but only made $10 in profit. That’s because it was a bounty tournament, which means you get rewarded for knocking people out, and your reward is bigger if your victims have previously knocked people out themselves. None of my four scalps had eliminated anybody, so I only received small bounties. In these tournaments there’s a premium on building up a nice big stack, which I almost never had (relative to the field). My badugi tournament was over in a flash, and then I had a go at a turbo no-limit hold ’em tournament with a massive field. The buy-in for that was $22, but for some reason I got it as a freebie. I chipped up fairly well, but made an atrocious play (I think) with pocket jacks and I was soon out the door. My bankroll is now sitting at $220.

At the weekend my cousin showed her disdain for the way corners are being cut (as she saw it) with the vaccine roll-out in the UK. She thinks that delaying the second dose, so twice as many people can get their first dose, compromises the whole thing. Well, news flash, more than a thousand people are dying from Covid there every day. It’s an emergency. Sometimes you really do need to compromise. (Update: 1610 more Covid deaths have been recorded today. It’s Tuesday, which always gives the highest numbers, but still.) I sent her a link to one of John Campbell’s latest videos but I doubt she’ll watch it. I’ve just taken a delivery of six months’ worth of capsules containing zinc and magnesium.

We’ve got Dolly Parton on Musicorama right now.

This is what it looked like outside my window an hour ago:

Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - Music

The big chill

January 14, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

The snow I mentioned last time pretty much melted away, but now the white stuff is coming down properly.

Dad sent me a great video about Fen skating. The Fens – the pancake-flat part of East Anglia which I lived on the edge of – regularly floods and sometimes freezes. Before the half-arsed winters we get now, the meadows might be frozen for weeks, and people would skate on them, especially Bury Fen, near Earith where my aunt lives. I had a go once or twice, but was just about talent-free. The Fen skating tradition dates back at least a couple of centuries, and racing was serious business that drew bumper crowds. The men in the video are getting on a bit now; they reminisced about the famous winter of 1962-63 and three successive harsh winters in the 1980s – people came in their thousands then to participate or watch. They said that another deep freeze could revitalise the tradition, but I’m not so sure. Even the eighties are a world away now. Back in Romania, temperatures are forecast to dip into the double-figure negatives, so the Bega might freeze as it did during my first winter here. There was even ice fishing.

I watched the replay of Dad’s cousin’s funeral. The video only lasted half an hour, and a good part of that was music before and after the service. I couldn’t see very much. He was a potter, and much of the focus was on the relative fame he achieved in that sphere. He was a PR man, he gave lessons, he talked pots, he was all over social media, he met the great and the good of the potting world on his travels, and he blew his own trumpet loud and often. The complete opposite of my father, in other words, who can’t stand any of that stuff (you can see where I get it from) and has always preferred to let his paintings speak. He was described in the service as being curmudgeonly, cantankerous, and always right. Surly is the word I would use. I think he was actually quite friendly though if you got to know him (I never really did).

Coronavirus deaths in the UK have reached 100,000. Yesterday 1562 deaths were recorded. (On a per capita basis, this is equivalent to almost 8000 in the US.) People are often dying alone. Bodies are piling up in mortuaries. This level of excess death hasn’t been seen since the Second World War. It’s a tragic toll.

Last night’s Musicorama was dedicated to Joan Baez, who has just turned 80. What a voice, and what an incredible life she has led inside and outside of music. In the winter of 2015, just before I started this blog, I found myself playing Diamonds and Rust over and over. On Monday’s show that a variety of artists including Sting. Why do I like his All This Time so much, I wondered. Ahh, because it sounds so much like Paul Simon.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker - Politics

Hard to stay optimistic

January 11, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s hard to stay optimistic at the moment. A month ago I felt that the end just might be in sight. Help was on the way, in the form of vaccines that had been developed at lightning speed. But the virus has morphed into this mutant monster, the vaccines are being rolled out mind-bogglingly slowly, and all that optimism was just a mirage. The UK is nothing short of a disaster zone. Once it was divided into three tiers, then a fourth was added, but the whole country is now officially in Tier Fucked. Leadership is been lamentable since the beginning, when Boris Johnson missed five straight emergency meetings. Daily death tolls – a lagging indicator – are already in four figures. My sister-in-law might not be a podiatrist for much longer. She could soon be a nurse. The south coast got off lightly during the first wave, but now it’s mayhem there, just like everywhere. Here in Romania it’s bad, but nowhere near that bad. However, we’re still dealing with old, non-mutant Covid, as far as I know. If the new variant takes hold (or should I say when?), all hell will break loose. In some ways I’m very lucky. My little job is extremely doable from home, and avoiding people is almost the norm for me.

Then there’s Trump and the riots in Washington where four people were killed. My god, where do you even start with these people? What will happen to Trump now? Could he be removed before the inauguration in ten days’ time? Could he end up in the slammer? Let’s hope so. And Covid is a massive shitshow in the US too, let’s not forget. It already feels a lifetime ago, but Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, horrendous as it was, probably helped the Democrats pick up those two seats in the runoffs, giving them control of the Senate (with Kamala Harris’s casting vote). That’s good news.

I need to stop it with all the disaster (and dystopia) porn on Netflix. Black Mirror, The Social Dilemma, David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet (brilliant though it is), and this morning a documentary about the Challenger accident in 1986. I remember that happening when I was in Mrs Stokes’s class in primary school. I liked Mrs Stokes. She died of cancer only three or four years later.

I finished 11th in a badugi tournament tonight, making eight bucks. There were 110 entries, including those who busted out and rebought. On a few occasions I was just one pot away from having a real shot at the final table and the bigger prizes, but it wasn’t to be. (I could easily have missed out entirely, too.) My bankroll is now $162.

Weather update: it’s snowing!

Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker

The good guys

January 2, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

We literally rang in the new year a few minutes after my last post, as the cathedral bells chimed like billy-o. A few people set off fireworks from their gardens but the streets were empty; there was an 11pm curfew. Shortly afterwards, the eleven-year-old boy I teach sent me a lovely text to wish me a happy new year.

I saw this coronavirus logo today. I thought it was clever and effective:

This new Covid variant is more transmissible, so the threshold for herd immunity will be higher. We all need to take the vaccine – it’s that simple – but scarily many people will refuse. I saw some eye-popping figures from a survey in France. Last week the woman in Maramureș said she wouldn’t be taking the vaccine, that it’s bad to wear a mask unless you know you’re infectious (?!?!), and that the virus is harmless unless you’re already very sick beforehand and it doesn’t kill anyone who wouldn’t have died soon anyway. Sorry, but that isn’t true. “My English isn’t very good. I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” No, you’ve got your points across perfectly well. It’s just that you’re talking utter dangerous bollocks. And she’s training to be a nurse, would you believe. My hope is that when people that the vaccine isn’t causing severe side effects, they’ll eventually fall in line and take it themselves.

The renowned music-and-poker guy I mentioned yesterday goes by the name of Steve Albini. He seems a thoroughly good guy. I wouldn’t mind being him, I think. Another good guy is a friend from Wellington who I thought might have blipped off the radar for good, but it was a real pleasure when he replied to my Christmas email. I hope we can stay in touch.

I visited the mall very briefly yesterday. Part of the reason I don’t like modern malls (Covid or not) is their slickness. I realise I don’t do slick. For instance, just before Christmas I watched a live online broadcast of the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn, where the two planets merged in the same line of sight. The commentator was Italian, and his English was rudimentary, but he had a passion for astronomy that came across more fully because of his imperfect English. (Some things I prefer to be slick. Public transport. Online banking and payments. In fact all service industries in general. But otherwise I’m happy for things to be more imperfect and authentic.)

I looked at some of my stats from last night’s badugi tournament. I won 23 out of 43 showdowns, a little over half, but I went just 3-from-11 when we got heads-up. The heads-up part lasted all of 31 hands; I could have sworn it was longer. On Wednesday I played my craziest hand ever at the micro badugi cash tables, crazier than any of the tens of thousands of hands I played back in the day. There were two maniacs at the table, betting and raising until the first three streets were capped. With my hand I had no choice but to come along for a very bumpy ride. I could hardly believe it when the nine of diamonds I spiked on the last draw was enough to give me the $24 six-way pot. When you’re running a small bankroll, a hand like that can make an outsized difference.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker

Good riddance to 2020

January 1, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Minutes left of 2020 in Romania as I write this. (The time stamp will say 1st January 2021. I’ve never moved my blog off New Zealand time; they’re eleven hours ahead of us.)

New Zealand is one of the few places on earth to have a real New Year’s Eve. It’s (yet another) good advert for NZ to see the Sky Tower fireworks beamed across the planet. Sydney managed to have their famous pyrotechnics from the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, even though they’re not out of the Covid woods. And that might be about it. We’ve got the odd banger going off in Timișoara as a write, but the usual organised stuff has been canned, as far as I know.

I’ve just finished second in a badugi tournament, for a profit of $45, after 4½ hours. (Badugi is a kind of poker, my favourite kind of poker, in case you’re wondering.) I survived a pretty dire moment in the second hour, but from then on I steadily chipped up. I pulled off some pat bluffs (not drawing any cards when you don’t have a real hand), which are the coolest, most adrenalin-pumping part of the game. Then when we were down to three I picked off pat bluffs (also known as snows) from both the other two players. When we got heads-up I had an enormous chip lead, but my opponent drew out on me twice when he was all-in, and mounted a comeback. He hit hands, I didn’t, and after quite a long back-and-forth I had to settle for second. So it could have been better, but my bankroll is up to $152.

I recently communicated on a poker forum with a guy from Chicago who’s knowledgeable about all kinds of weird variants, enjoys the game immensely, and is obviously a good player. But I had no idea (until I did a spot of googling) that he was famous. He’s 59, and a long-time production engineer for some of the all-time great indie bands, including Nirvana back in the day. The sound on In Utero, that’s him. He charges very little for his services, hence why he’s always been in such demand. And he’s been in a few successful bands himself (one of which was called Rapeman – I can think of better band names). He’s very outspoken about commercialisation of music, and I don’t blame him. Somehow he’s also an amazing poker player. In 2018 he took down the seven-card stud event at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. And he writes so eloquently. He’s a man of many talents.

Six minutes of the old year to go.