Just Another Fish

Well, I played a little this weekend and it went well.

I started off with about $50 and, after 3 SNGs, I’m now on $96. Which is nice. If I hadn’t won the last one, which was a $13 6-man one, I wouldn’t be sp happy and would be cursing my poor bankroll-management….

I haven’t really been playing much poker since I went to Estonia - taking all out but $50 really does take away your enthusiasm for playing!

Took the shine off that win last night: lost over a buy-in at 25NL when KK<AA against the big stack, and then I decided to play a big $33MTT. Played very tight (helped by the fact that I was quite card-dead) and then went out AKs<22<99 all-in pf. Played another few rounds of 25NL until I got my bankroll back up over $400 and called it a night…..

That will come in bloody handy when I go on holiday in just over a week!

 Bankroll: $463.31

How’s this?

$1,500 sign-up bonus at 1,000 % deposit match, at Hollywood Poker

http://www.pokerlistings.com/hollywoodpoker.com/bonus-code

(My bankroll, despite repeatedly getting close to big money in a few MTTs, is now $279) 

Been playing a few STT’s, MTT’s and multi-tabling 5c/10c 9-seaters (tried doing that with 6 tables; it’s… interesting!).

Current bankroll: $271.74

This means I can now move t the 10c/25c tables. Nice. 

I’m finding my newly purchased Poker Tracker and PA HUD very useful, but am running into a problem: PA HUD stops refreshing.

That’s basically it; the stats stop being updated and parts of the overlay dissappear (presumably because it is no longer being refreshed; if the table window is minimised and restored then no overlay is shown at all). Closing and re-opening HUD (and sometimes Tracker, too) usually cures the problem, albeit only temporarily.

Additional notes:

I use PokerStars, and the problem appears to be worse on tournament tables.

Disabling the cache and using the PokerStars’ instant hand history seem to improve matters slightly.

Occasionally the table I’m playing will stop appearing in the PA HUD window.

Which I’m sure will be absolutely fantastic. (My normal blog has migrated to rosyatrandom.livejournal.com)

Well, let’s make this a proper first post.

I’ve been playing poker about a couple of years now, at low stakes. I used to pretty much play SNG’s eclusively, but have got into cash games lately. I’ve just got Poker Tracker and PA HUD, which I expect to improve my game enormously. My biggest win so far is from winning a $3 MTT about a year ago, which got me about $900. Total winnings so far are a little over £1,000, I think.

Anyway, I withdrew all but $50 for Xmas/New Year, as I was broke. Since then I’ve kept getting it to between $100-150 before dropping down back a bit, usually as the result of a session on tilt.

I play on PokerStars as CptnAdequate, currently on the 5c/10c 6-seater ring games

Current bankroll: $201.87

And here’s my graph for 6-seat 5c/10c since November:

That’s right, I’ve gone all emo and spotty and moved to:

http://rosyatrandom.livejournal.com/

Your daily serving of Rosy can now be found there. Go. Go!

That’s what it all comes down to, in the end*. Not religious — I’m quite happy with my insane ideas there — but social.

There’s a famous existential book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I’ve never read it. The title has always resonated with me, though. For me, it captures the feeling that I’m floating through life, trapped in a bubble, passing on and along without ever being able to hold on to anything, or make any real connections with people. And, yes, it’s fairly damn unbearable.

This would be why I’ve always had hopeless long-distance crushes on girls. It’s a way of investing meaning and excitement to my life, which I otherwise find depressingly banal. I never talked to the girls or tried to make anything of it because I always (well, most of the time) knew it was all just in my head. A fantasy, and rarely anything to do with the girls themselves; I hardly ever knew them at all. Another symptom of the condition, that — not being able to make a real connection with them.

I’ve pretty much passed that phase now, or at least I have such a deep sense of irony and self-awareness that I can’t fool myself anymore. I simply can’t engage in ungrounded fantasy like I used to, and while this is clearly healthy it means that I have to actually face reality. This isn’t a good thing for someone who used fantasy as a means to escape from reality in the first place because they couldn’t cope with it. Or, it would be a good thing, except I still can’t cope with it.

I should just be happy with my life, with my friends, with my social life. But I’m not. Always, I feel restless and frustrated. Always looking for meaning and significance, a connection. I leave every social event disappointed and aware of the absurdity of both the disappointment and hopes that led to it. I think that a great deal of my life has been spent in a continuous, low-grade, panic attack. Certainly today.

Perhaps I could find a way to be happy and let things roll as they roll… but things do not roll. A closed-cycle, maybe, caused by not being happy. But I feel that life passes by, only touching me to erode.

This desperation to connect, well, it’s another way of explaining my behaviour. Everyone is so far away and I have to shout to get their attention (hello, randomness)… which gets tiring, so I become a commentator (hello, tactless cynic). Sometimes I feel like I’m making a connection and actually behave like a normal person (albeit a rather blundering, confused one)… but this never lasts long. Either the connection was a figment of my imagination, or it dissipates away before the conversation is over. I can’t hold on to it.

And I’m getting too old for this. I’ve seen everything before. Everyone is too young. I’m trapped between where I was and where I should be. The despair needs to be dealt with but I can feel it accelerating.

I have friends, good friends, but not many. And they can’t help me. All my old friends are no longer in my social scene, the one where I still try to fool myself into thinking something might happen. I really don’t know what to do. This… this blog… hasn’t/isn’t/isn’t going to helped/helping/help. I’m still trying to rely on other people to save me but I need to do it myself. Somehow.  

This angst has been brought to you by Rosy. He’s very sorry about it, and sorrier still that even as he types this he knows he’s not going to delete it.

* Well, in a sense. It’s just one way of looking at things; the thing about paradigms is that they can all capture and convey the same information but present it with completely different emphases. Which is why self-psychoanalysis is always doomed to end up in chasing your own tail — what seems a real and important truth today becomes just a trite facet tomorrow.