Just Another Fish

Two Pair on the flop: I hates it!

Whenever I get it online it always gets beaten. Usually by a straight, but occasionally by another two pair from the turn or river. No matter how scary the flop is, and no matter how I play it, it gets beaten. In the last week I’ve lost quite a bit in my Poker Stars account and I can trace at least three-quarters of that to losing on a flopped two pair. It’s rather annoying!

Wednesday - The Tree

Wednesday is hockey day, and one of the highlights of my week. I love to run around for a couple of hours like a maniac, occasionally stringing together a series of jerky steps and taps that, to the untrained eye, can sometimes masquerade as skill. I was attempting something of this nature on Wednesday when I accidentally ran into a tree.

Yeah.

The ball had gone wide, and I had somehow got control of it. Head-down, I silkily maneouvred the ball past a player or two and accelerated back towards the middle when I noticed something up ahead. About 2 inches away, in fact. Suffice to say that the left side of my head is now rather lumpy and my ear looks like it’s been raped by a cheese grater.

It was, I’m told, hilarious.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Thursday - The G

Despite an early scare when I couldn’t find my passport (it was under the bed), the Hoose and I made our way to the new G Casino on Bury New Road. We were there to take part in a £2 rebuy tournament, as were 50 other hopefuls.

As you can imagine - with initial blinds of 25/50 and a stack of 500 - the rebuy period was just a complete and utter all-in donkfest. This was aided on or table by the Loud Drunk Irish Guy. The LDIG was all-in on pretty much every hand, which saw his stack go up and down faster than a kangaroo on a trampoline. Although he ended the rebuy period as the chip leader, it turned out that he had been thrown out of the casino because of his frequent shouted conversations with some other LDIGs.

I was very close to going home just before the freeze-out - after losing all-ins and having to rebuy with AK, AJ, AT, KQ and JT (hell, I decided it was still better than most of the hands being used around the table) the Hoose and I (we had been sat next to each other) decided that with the blinds (now 50/100) rapidly approaching I should probably go all in on the BB with any 2 cards. These turned out to be 79o, and after a brief hesitation I put all my chips in. It turned out I was up against, amongst others, 99… but thankfully I hit trips and took a rather nice stack back. I quickly doubled that up - can’t remember how! - and finished the rebuy with 4,900 chips. The Hoose had, I think 3,700 and we sat back down prepared to play some real poker.

This bit was far more fun. Hoose eventually went out on A9<KQ against a bloke called Paul, who had earlier beat me 99>KK with a straight. By the time we were moved to 2 tables my stack was ~6,500, at which point I started winning some large pots and went to the final table of 9 as the chip leader (just!) with 33,500. I held my own, but once it got to 4-up I ran fairly card dead, which didn’t help when Paul, seated to my right, raised my big blind about 6 times in a row, during which my best hand was 95.

Eventually we went heads-up, playing for an additional £135, and with a very small stack the blinds proved a problem.

My first hand was T5, which was quickly folded to his preflop all-in. He showed an ace.

My second was K2, with which I called his raise from the small blind. Flop came down Axx, and I made a fairly large bet, which he re-raised. I folded, and he showed an ace.

My third was K7. He looked at me and asked, "wanna go all-in?" I agreed, and he showed an ace…. The board missed us both and I went home in 2nd, with £145.

Late last night I decided to play a litle poker. I wish I hadn’t…..

I was playing a 6-max NLHE $25 cash game and lost one buy-in when I pushed QJ on a flop of QJT. Despite having raised pre-flop I lost to 89. Eager to win it back, this happened:

Table 107933 (No DP) (Real Money) — Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: T89574682177 ( $24)
Seat 2: tha_phil ( $7.32)
Seat 3: CptnAdequate ( $16.96)
Seat 4: gunman ( $34.80)
Seat 5: primatepoker ( $37.02)
Seat 6: hollishomes ( $12.40)
hollishomes posts small blind (0.10)
T89574682177 posts big blind (0.25)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to CptnAdequate [ Ad, As ]
tha_phil folds.
CptnAdequate calls (0.25)
gunman folds.
primatepoker raises (0.50) to 0.50
hollishomes folds.
T89574682177 calls (0.25)
CptnAdequate raises (0.75) to 1
primatepoker calls (0.50)
T89574682177 calls (0.50)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5c, 7h, 2d ]
T89574682177 checks.
CptnAdequate checks.
primatepoker bets (2)
T89574682177 folds.
CptnAdequate raises (8) to 8
primatepoker calls (6)
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 2h ]
CptnAdequate bets (7.96)
CptnAdequate is all-In.
primatepoker calls (7.96)
** Dealing River ** : [ 5s ]
Creating Main Pot with $33.27 with CptnAdequate
** Summary **
Main Pot: $33.27 | | Rake: $1.75
Board: [ 5c 7h 2d 2h 5s ]

T89574682177 balance $23, lost $1 (folded)
tha_phil balance $7.32, didn’t bet (folded)
CptnAdequate balance $0, lost $16.96 [ Ad As ] [ two pairs, aces and fives — Ad,As,7h,5c,5s ]
gunman balance $34.80, didn’t bet (folded)
primatepoker balance $53.33, bet $16.96, collected $33.27, net +$16.31 [ 5h Ah ] [ a full house, Fives full of twos — 5h,5c,5s,2d,2h ]
hollishomes balance $12.30, lost $0.10 (folded)

I need to make plans!

I obviously need to get out of this job. I shall start speaking to agencies. The more technical, the better.

In the long-term, I would still quite like to do a PhD… but since we’re talking long term then let’s face it, there’s only one subject I’m really interested in: quantum theory and metaphysics.

There’s a lot of things I would need to study to get myself up to that level, and the only way to do that is to work out exactly what topics are required and make sure I learn them.

While you all whet your appetites for my next instalment, why not have a look at this short and very readable guide to quantum mechanics?

It covers the various interpretations of QM and it will probably tell you a great deal about how I view the universe if I tell you that I think they’re all true insofar as they’re actually possible). In fact, one of the interpretations is called ‘Consistent Histories’; mine might be called ‘Consistent Interpretations’. My favourite, however, remains the MWI - if they can all be formulated in terms of each other, then this one is at least still the most elegant and least encumbered.

Oh, and if you want to look at something funny instead, I quite recommend the Perry Bible Fellowship.

I did promise a while back that I’d start talking about my ideas and stuff.

The trouble is that I’m not sure where to begin - I talked a lot of this stuff to death years ago, and while I think it all holds up as a very elegant and compelling edifice, it’s very hard to deconstruct and discuss. This is possibly because it involves a bundle of intuitive yet elusive concepts that I don’t really think about in a verbal sense; they’re somewhere between maths, logic and dynamic models. In other words, I feel it in my gut.

I imagine religious people would describe their faith in much the same way.

So… again, where to begin?

It’s probably best if rather that attempt an analysis straight away, I talk about what I believe and see what comes out. At this point, I do not know if I am writing for myself, my friends, or the hordes of surfers who visit this blog every day. In a way it’s kind of like the diary you secretly hope people will head and… ????? well, step 3 (profit!) is that somehow everything becomes OK in your life.

Sorry, this space is for metaphysics only. I’ll quit with the me-talk.

First off: do I believe in god? Well, no, clearly not… though I do have some sympathies with Spinoza’s Pantheism, wherein reality and god are one and the same thing. It’s the only thing that would make sense, though it obviously requires structural justification (why would reality be god-shaped?).

The questions that really interest me are: what is reality? What are minds? How do they relate to each other?

The third question is not as asinine as it seems. Clearly, minds are part of reality so youcould say that it’s a category error to even ask that. Not so. The reason being is basically the Weak Anthropic Principle - “conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist.” What we witness of reality is limited to those parts of it in which we can exist. If you were stubborn, you could argue that this is a facile truism but it alters things. Most people hold that time is a simple linear beast, mainly because they have never had a reason to consider otherwise. It’s common sense - there’s the past, the present, and the future and they form a continuous line.

Both relativity and quantum mechanics would argue otherwise. (There now begins a lengthy discussion of this)

We all know that space-time can be warped, that the speed of time depends on your viewpoint. Put simply, the faster you move in space, the slower you move in time. Photons, travelling at c, do not experience time at all. They are emitted, they are absorbed. Everything that happens inbetween is instantaneous. Different observers witnessing the same events can disagree on even such basic things as causality - does A happen before B? It depends where you stand.

Quantum theory describes a bizarre world of pure probability. Mostly, this does not work its way up to everyday reality - which is why it can go against all common sense. These probabilities interact with each other; combining, nullifying and diverging. At each time, any system exists in a constantly evolving superposition of states. Each one represents a possible outcome of an observation (in fact, the nature of these components - eigenstates - are determined by the type of question the observer is asking reality to answer). According to QM, this superposition is the reality, and these alternatives should just keep on interacting with each other. But, upon observation, all but one arbitrary survivor disappear. Why? Where do they go and what causes this privileged state of affairs? Traditionally (the Copenhagen Interpretation), this question has been answered with a brush-off - the waveform collapses and you can’t say any more about it.

Einstein did not like this - hence his famous, “God does not play dice with the universe.” The essence of his complaint is that the fundamental description of reality should not leave things unanswered. If things happen randomly then we are faced with absolutely no explanation for them; even reality itself would not know what’s going on. This is ridiculous, but I’ll leave for now just why that is.

Next up:
The Many Worlds interpretation.
Why reality has to be not just deterministic but timeless and unchanging.
How consciousness relates to reality.

I can feel your excitement….

It’s been a while, again, so here’s some stuff.

Since the Bristol thing fell through, I’ve been doing… not much. I’m still in the same (dead-end, dull and barely paid) job, my room has got increasingly messy, I’ve still not touched my violin and have taken precisely no action to change any of this.

Back when the PhD was still a possibility I felt almost optimistic; even assuming that should I need to get a proper job (which I do) I’d be able to get a good one I’d be happy with. Now… well, I can’t see what the job market has to offer me or, indeed, vice versa. The only option that sounds worthwhile is computer programming, this being somewhat hampered by the fact that I don’t know how to program[-me?]. I know I can be a fairly intelligent bloke, but when it comes to useful knowledge and skillsets what do I have? This is not a rhetorical question; I’m really struggling to come up with anything. And what jobs are there that suit me? I do not want to waste away, either here or on some ridiculous IT position doing meaningless things for a meaningless company.

As might be apparent, my mood is not gret right now. At least I have football tonight; running around like a headless chicken is just what I need. Plus, my ankle is apparently OK (well, tendonitis anyway, but according to Mr. Dr. this should not prevent me playing sports) so I can return to taekwondo after a rather lengthy break. If I can be bothered to get to Stockport on a saturday lunchtime, when I am usually catching up on a lot of much needed sleep.

Girls are… well, I’m over my crush on the girl at work, which unfortunately leaves me with no-one to concentrate on and only makes more stark how much I need to get out of this place.

Poker’s going OK. Am currently clearing a nice bonus at Party Poker under the pokernym of CptnAdequate. I’m struggling to do OK on the limit tables, but make a nice profit (if not much of the raked hands required for the bonus) on the no limit. I saw $25 go to $75 in a few minutes yesterday when I jumped in to a table and got people in for all their money on 3 premium hands. Which was nice.

Right, it’s time I need to be off then. Please don’t tell me to cheer up!

EDIT: Just got back from football. Played rather well, we won, feeling quite good now!