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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.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Poker

A few pics (and a spot of poker)

December 30, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s currently a ridiculous 12 degrees on the penultimate day of a crazy year, and the fourth anniversary of the day I moved into this flat. I remember that day well. All I had was a suitcase, a backpack, and a view. It was like a dream. I could have ended up anywhere but I’m slap-bang in the middle of this beautiful city. That’s mad. And then the next day the square was absolutely heaving. New Year is (under normal circumstances) a big deal here.

I’ve had a big last quarter of 2020 on the work front. A third of my hours this year have come since 1st October. To put that another way, my daily volume over the last three months has been 50% higher, on average, than in the first nine months. Yesterday I had five sessions (8½ hours) and felt I could have done better. I’d run out of things to do; I was winging it. Since I moved exclusively online, where there are fewer tools at my disposal, winging it has been a more prominent feature. One of my sessions was with the ex-professional poker player; he pointed me towards a database you can use to scout out fish in PokerStars hold ’em games.

Yes, poker. On Monday night I made $24 from a badugi tournament. I came fifth out of more than 100 players, surviving for 3¾ hours. It’s funny getting back into that again. The adrenalin rush of hitting a big hand or calling a big bluff. People made more moves than I remember a decade ago, or maybe they did then too and I just didn’t notice. I’m a better watcher of the game than back in the old days. My demise, or almost, came when I was dealt the 41st best hand in the game (which is better than it sounds), but my opponent made the 39th. That left me almost chipless, and two hands later I was out. After a couple of other cashes (and some non-cashes, of course), my bankroll is $97, which gives me just enough of a buffer to play the cash games. My goal isn’t really to make money (though that would be nice), but to enjoy the game and play a whole lot less robotically than I feel I used to.

When I called my parents last night, Dad had gone to Temuka to get his blood checked, so I was able to have a good chat with Mum. As long as we avoid all talk of Dad’s health, we get on extremely well. It will be a long time before I hug her again.

Here are some pictures of Timișoara (where else?):

Central Park, 20/11/20
This is Serbian. “Who is the fastest in the city?”
Some old maps of Timișoara Fortress
Gearing up for the “Romania without masks” protest.
Christmas dinner
Coronavirus - Family - Poker

A tragic year

December 21, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I woke up to an email from Dad. His cousin, who is 69 and was diagnosed with a brain tumour five months ago, is now in a coma. Dad had wondered why his cousin wasn’t replying to his emails. Maybe he just didn’t want to. Now we know he wasn’t able to. Dad’s cousin is the son of my grandmother’s younger sister, who died of cancer herself in her fifties. A potter by trade, he married quite young and they had a daughter. As kids we visited them in Wales quite often. We found him scary. He was six foot five and didn’t like children. His wife always seemed lovely though. Eventually they split up, and he found a Korean woman half his age. They had a son who must be about seven now. It’s all so awful.

Mum was telling me about a friend of hers from the UK who visited my parents in Geraldine a few years back. Her husband died in January, and then in July she lost her daughter who was 45 or so. This has been a horrific year for so many people. It can’t end soon enough.

On Friday night (my time, so Saturday morning in NZ) I got the usual bullshit from Mum. Dad had a bad headache and wanted to crawl into a hole, but they’d arranged to go out that evening, so obviously it was a pretend headache that wouldn’t have existed if they hadn’t planned anything. Stop that shit now, would you?

Late this afternoon I saw an anti-mask protest about to kick off in Piața Operei. What’s going on all over Europe and America is enormously frustrating to watch. I thought we might see these vaccines in the middle of 2021 if we’re lucky. But we have at least three vaccines ready to roll now, in one of humanity’s greatest feats. We can just about reach out and touch the end of this nightmare. All we have to do is get through this winter. But no, we’ve decided to spaff this whole thing up the wall. In the UK, they’re dealing with a new, more transmissible strain of the virus, and I just had an alert on my phone (four beeps) to say that air travel from Romania to the UK and vice versa has been banned.

I played some online poker this afternoon, including a micro-stakes triple draw tournament which I bombed out of after 80 minutes. Not before some interesting hands, though. It was weird getting my eye back in again. Annoyingly, PokerStars has a habit of crashing my laptop, so I don’t know how much more I’ll play until I can sort that out. I’ve had a few chats about poker with my ex-professional student. What comes over loud and clear from him is that live poker is a very stressful way to try and make a living.

Update: I’ve just watched Matt Hancock, the Secretary of Health in the UK, being interviewed about the new strain of the virus. He looked shit scared, honestly.