Feet of Clay

Blog posts have been few and far between over the past year. I have been disciplined enough to fill in my "daily pages" journal and a daily entry in my "five minute journal" documenting three items I am grateful for. A few draft blog posts, but no published blog posts from mid-2018.  Until today.

The twitter war over the last week or so between Jonathon Little and David Lappin, co-host of The Chip Race, has been bothering me to the point where it is time for me to write out some thoughts.

The timeline, which I am unlikely to get completely accurate, but am too lazy to go back and verify, but for the purposes of this blog post, which is likely to be read by zero people, seems to be:

• Toward the end of 2018, a guest on the podcast, "The Chip Race" says, in response to one of the hosts asking for a response to something Jonathan Little said, "Well Jonathan Little can go fuck himself". 
• The Chip Race then uses that phrase to promote the episode in question
• I am unaware of any blowback from Jonathan Little around the time of the podcast
• David Lappin and Dara O'Kearney become involved in a social media war with Daniel Negranu. Eventually, the war quiets down.
• The war erupts again about a week or so ago. And one of Negranu's tweets mentions that the Chip Race has denigrated Jonathan Little
• Little, who is tagged on Negranu's tweet, then joins the twitter war. From having not gone ballistic last year, this time Little charges into the fray and goes ballistic.
• Negranu retires to the sidelines
• Lappin retaliates by calling out an episode of questionable behavior by Little 11 years or so ago.
• Little berates the listeners of the Chip Race as "lowlife".
• Little continues to tee off at the Chip Race hosts,  Dara O'Kearney and David Lappin, over the course of the past week or so

My observations as a fan of both Jonathan Little and the hosts of the podcast are:

• In my view, Negranu has been behaving like a large three-year-old, and when he has a temper tantrum, it is likely to of a coprolalic nature. My opinion of Negranu as a poker player is that he remains one of the best in the world. My respect for him as a mature adult ... well, not so much.
• The Chip Race's promotion of the comment regarding Jonathan Little ("Jonathan Little can go fuck himself") did not come across to me as hugely disrespectful to Jonathan. My perception was that these two Irish gents saw a marketing opportunity for their podcast, along with the chance to have a bit of childish fun and seized upon it. If anything, they were guilty of ribbing their guest for making such a faux pas
• Jonathan's tweets over the past week (and Negranu's over the past few months) have been disappointing to see. When people who you thought were exemplars of behavior within the poker community reveal themselves to have feet of clay, it is disappointing.  
• If there was any damage done to Jonathan's brand, in my view it was all self-inflicted. I thought highly of Jonathan before the podcast in question and the promotion in question. The podcast had no effect on my view of Jonathan.  I viewed him as having a great work ethic, produced lots of content and I enjoyed the content from him that I consumed.  Nothing changed until last week.
• Subsequent to Jonathan joining the Twitter war between Lappin & Negranu, I can now add to my perception of his make up: the inability to remain emotionally equanimous in the face of mild irritation, needlessly insulting bystanders (followers of the Chip Race, like me, but who are also consumers of Jonathan's content), assuming the way he would react to the situation he found himself in would be the way *Everyone* *All* *Around* *The* *World* would react, and not understanding there are other cultures out there that may approach things differently. I believe the concept I am looking for is "projection". That is, assuming that he would only act in the way the Chip Race had acted if he had had bad intent. And therefore, he attributes, incorrectly,  bad intent to the Chip Race hosts where there was, in truth, no bad intent. From my perspective, he got it wrong. If Jonathan was truly worried about damage to his brand he would have been far better off sitting on his hands.
•  If Jonathan had listened to four episodes of the Chip Race, as I believe he has claimed in one of his tweets, then he would likely have heard David & Dara *really* going after Iany Simpson. Yet Iany has been one of the people defending David & Dara on Twitter. Culturally slagging off your mates with a bit of banter, so long as it is in good humor, is something the Irish have been known to do. Americans, apparently, not so much. The way the Chip Race used the faux pas relating to Jonathan seemed to be, at worst,  a pretty gentle form of the slagging. And I certainly felt there was no evil intent in their use of the faux pas.
• Lappin's bringing up the questionable behavior from 2008 or so felt like dirty play to me. I have known people who behaved poorly in their 20's, saw the error of their ways, and behaved impeccably in their later years. I feel Jonathan Little falls into that category. And good behavior should be applauded. I admire Little's work ethic, his poker ability, his obvious love for his kiddies, and the content he creates. He has more than redeemed himself.
• Little's outrage at the Chip Race hosts seems to me to have a large element of cultural misunderstanding at its heart. Having lived in New Zealand and Australia for the best part of 60 years, my perception of the Chip Race's references to Jonathan that so enraged him, were that the Irish guys were either having a bit of fun at the guest's expense and/or Jonathan's. But that they didn't have malicious intent towards Jonathan. Outside the US there are often references to Americans inability to handle irony or nuance. Irish culture tolerates friends slagging each other whereas American culture seems much less tolerant of this behavior. My view is that Jonathan misread the situation and has taken umbrage at a scenario where the mature response would have been to completely ignore the issue. If he had ignored Negranu's attempt to dragoon him into Negranu's fight with the Chip Race he would not have, in my eyes, diminished his personal brand through the use of offensive tweets over the past week. As a Chip Race listener, I was mildly offended when Jonathan declared that listeners to the Chip Race were "lowlife".
• Dara has done well to stay completely silent on Twitter with respects to Jonathan's tweets.
• I just wish Lappin and Little would stop tweeting about this so I can go back to enjoying the content from both of them.

The old guy trolls the reg

There are a few players at Crown that, if I find I'm going to be seated at their table, or who end up taking a seat at my table, will trigger a desire to move tables. And often, should I find myself destined for a table with one of those players at the table I'll sit down but put in a transfer request with the aim of moving away from those players as soon as possible. There are several reasons for this:

• several of the players talk a lot. And their table talk can, after a time, be a little tedious. Especially if they have a desire to commentate on their own, or others, play. Rather than being irritated by the talk I choose to try to move away
• several of the players are unpleasant AND talk a lot. No more explanation needed
• several of the players are unpleasant, talk a lot AND commentate on the play AND berate players who, in their opinion, have played badly and given them a bad beat. 

A couple of days ago I was seated at a table with a player in the last category. Normally I would put in a transfer request as soon as I landed at the table. But this time I decided to see whether I could sit at the table and retain my equanimity. Being prepared to utulize the assistance of noise-cancelling headphones and one of Spotify's suggested daily mixes should I find that it would be better for  me to tune out the noise of the table chatter.   And I'm glad I did. 

There was an old guy who was at the table to have fun. And he was on the right of the chatterbox. The first scenario that amused me unfolded as follows:

• Old guy limps
• Chatterbox raises to $20
• Small blind and Old Guy call
• Flop JsTs7d
• Small Blind and Old Guy check. Chatterbox bets $20. Small blind and Old Guy call
• Turn Jd
• Small Blind and Old Guy check. Chatterbox bets $45. Old guy calls, Small blind calls
• River 5h
• Checks around.  Old guy takes it down with 6c7c

Chatterbox goes on tilt with a rant along the lines of "This has been happening to me all week. I'm losing to people who just shouldn't be in the hand!. What did you think calling the preflop raise? What did you think calling the flop bet. What about the Turn bet?. That is just such poor play."  And on he went.

The Old guy smiles and winks at me out of his right eye.

The second scenario unfolded a short time later. In an unremarkable hand the Chatterbox lost another pot. The Old Guy then asked him "Why do you play poker? You don't seem to be enjoying yourself. You seem to be pretty angry".  The Chatterbox looks at him and says "The best thing you could do is to shut up. But you are they type that has to have the last word don't you". (He repeats himself several time emphasizing that the Old Guy has to have the last word.  The old guy has a smile on his face and winks at me again. The irony of the Chatterbox accusing someone else of having to have the last word all the time was delicious.  If you were scripting the exchange for a comedy sitcom you couldn't have scripted it better.  

Slow Progress with Tiny Habits

A combination of BJ Fogg's TED talk on the subject of "Tiny Habits"  and one of Tim Ferriss's podcast interviews with Christopher Sommer led me to a change in my morning routine sometime early to mid 2016. In particular, after my morning meditation I give my body a stretch in janu sirsasana. Aiming to lengthen my hamstrings and improve my general flexibility. Following that, on a good day, I'll complete a set of push ups.

With both activities I started with a low hurdle for success. And over time I've seen the number of push ups I can complete grow from around 20 to start with up to 50 at the end of 2016.   I kept it at 50 for all of 2017 then gave 60 a whirl at the start of 2017 and found that hurdle was a relatively easy one and have kept my sets at 60 since then. With the janu sirsana stretches there has been very slow progress with respect to increasing the limits of my reach and how close my head can approach my knee. However I'm now at a point where I am more than mildly pleased with the slow millimeter by millimeter progress that has happened over the course of the last 21 months or so.

While I have been unable to lose and keep weight off over the past two years, I've improved a couple of aspects of my heath. The improvement with which I am more than mildly pleased with

FIN!

Every so often #1 son sends me an update on his life via email. The latest one is well good enough to share.

Hey there, 

Thought I would share the story of my surf on Sunday with Calvin at Anawhata. The walk down to the beach is about 15min, and is one of the less populous beaches between Piha and Bethells. When we got down, there was a couple walking on the far end of the beach, and a guy surfing close to shore while his girlfriend walked their dog. 

We paddled out a bit further than where the other guy was surfing, and spotted a good wave over at Paikea bay south around a rocky pillar. After several sets came through south of us, with nothing where we sat, we decided to make the ~200m paddle to try get some better waves. We were about 100m out to sea at this point. 

I was leading the way by about 30m and turned around to give Calvin a hurry up when I heard a hiss of water from the direction we were paddling. I swung back around to see a dark 1.5ft fin submerging in the water about 20m away coming straight towards me. 

It was not a dolphin fin.
'FIN' was helpfully yelled out by one of us.
'I'm fucking dead' went through my head. 

I waited facing the spot where the fin had disappeared. Board pointed slightly down where it came from to throw. No ripples appeared in the water. Where was it? Another hiss of water came from my right side. All I remember is seeing the white patch that Orcas have by their eyes submerging into the water, and that it would have been between 8-10ft long. The adrenaline completely wiped all other memory of that moment. It must have been 4m away from me. 

I turned back to paddle over to Calvin and then into shore so we had 'safety in numbers'. The surf was dead flat, and the other surfers girlfriend must have seen the fin and our odd behaviour and signaled her boyfriend in. The paddle back my heart rate was probably higher than at any other point. We saw the Orca breach again swimming away from us but still felt completely naked until our feet were well onto the sand. 

From the beach we saw that there were two Orcas, and the one that went past me was the juvenile. It must have mistaken me for a Seal, and then investigated when I didn't turn and run and it got a better view of me. The pair hung out in the middle of the beach about 300m from where we sat on shore and just floated for about 40min before heading off somewhere else. 

Felt glad to be alive after that event. Not sure I ever want to be that close to Orcas again, although I would trade that in a million times to never see a shark in the line-up. Calvin was glad to have a trial run of what you should actually do if there is a shark because he absolutely shit himself when he saw the fin. He was lucky that I reacted so well and that I didn't catch the last wave that came through or it would have been him in the firing line. Both of us now know that Auckland west coast can indeed have Orcas. 

Note:
-This is a different version of the story that I told Mum. She only knows that I saw them.
-There are no recorded fatalities of Orca on Human attacks from wild Orcas.
-Fun fact: there are estimated around 150-200 Orcas in NZ.

Alcohol, AirBnB, Air Conditioning and Drama

It seems I slept through some drama last night.

I'm in an AirBnB in the suburb of Macleod, somewhere in Melbourne, Australia. I'm renting a room in a house with the host being in residence and another room being AirBnB'd. The host is a Chinese Australian lady, probably 30'ish (maybe  a little younger, maybe a little older), who I've had little to do with up until today. That is the nature of some AirBnB's where the schedules of the host and the guest means that you may see little of each other from day to day. Suzanna has a broad Australian accent and had come across as a no-nonsense lady who was busy with whatever she was doing outside of being an AirBnB host.

Three days ago Ben took up residence as another AirBnB guest. The next day was a Sunday. A day where I would get to know a little about Ben over a shared breakfast. Ben is in his early 40's, Anglo Australian, has a daughter who is almost 18, had been residing in Perth until fairly recently and has a 24 year old Korean girlfriend who is living in Korea, with parents he is not allowed to meet until he learns to speak Korean. He cut breakfast short to take himself off to Church.  To my eye Ben is morbidly obese and must be a candidate for any of the ailments associated with obesity such as diabetes, heart disease and sleep disorders.  I can testify that he almost certainly has issues with his sleep based solely on the decibel levels associated with his snoring. While the noise level from his snoring was mildly bothersome in my room, I'm pretty sure that it would have been unbearable if I had had to try to sleep in the same room.

Ben had a job estimating quotes with a plumbing firm near Melbourne airport. Seemed like a quiet polite bloke

On Ben's first night I arrived home around mid-night and the evaporative air-conditioning system was going. This air-con system is a noisy system, with an outlet in each bedroom. Not having been instructed on where the controls for the air-con were I went to bed and woke in the morning to a quiet room, with the air-con having been turned off overnight.

After Ben left for Church Suzanna arose and asked me about the air-con running.  It seems Ben, being a plumber, had worked out where the controls were and had turned it on. Suzanna didn't want it running overnight. Partly due to the noise, partly due to cost and had turned it off.  My assumption is that Suzanna then discussed the air-con with Ben.

Last evening when I returned to the house at around 7:15pm, the air-con was running. Ben came out of his room and let me know that "only the fan function is on. Felt a bit stuffy when I got here so turned that on to get some air-movement".  From the pre-emptive nature of the conversation I'm sure there had been a conversation between Ben and Suzanna about the air-con. Ben then let me know he was watching a movie on headphones and went back into his room. Suzanna came home later and we had a chat around 9:00pm. Suzanna was surprised to find the air con running and I relayed the earlier conversation with Ben re only having the fan function of the air-con running. Suzanna pointed out there were ceiling fans in each bedroom and if he had just wanted air movement he could have turned his ceiling fan on.  I retired sometime around 9:30 - 10:00 pm. Suzanna turned off the air-con - in part due to the noise in the bedroom.

Then, it appears, while I was stacking some Z's,  the drama began.

Ben turned the fan function on the air-con on again.

Suzanna messaged him on AirBnB

Ben had been drinking sake

Things escalated. First on the AirBnB messaging system. Then the old fashioned way. Face-to-face.

At some stage Ben called Suzanna, in Suzanna's terms "The C word".

Suzanna asked him to leave

Ben, having consumed too much sake, declined on the grounds he was not safe to drive.

Suzanna messaged me around 11:20pm on AirBnB 

 just letting you know that Ben is drunk and has been incredibly rude to me tonight. I don't think he is dangerous but he is not acting like a sober person. I wanted to ask Airbnb to relocate him tonight but he says he's too drunk to drive so I'm having them relocate him first thing tomorrow. Just wanted to let you in case you hear anything.

When I arose this morning I saw Ben heading down the hallway towards the front door dragging a suitcase behind him, with Suzanna casting looks at his back that, if they had been daggers, would have been life threatening.

Suzanna and I had a bit of a post-mortem over breakfast before she headed off to work. At one point she wondered whether Ben was a tad racist. My suspicion is that if there is any character flaw in Ben, it is that flaw known as "arsehole when drunk".  A flaw I've had to own up to in the past. And, after quitting the demon alcohol almost five years ago now, a flaw I'm glad that I haven't displayed for some time now....  I have sympathy for both players in the drama that unfolded last night. Suzanna for the rudeness she was subject to. And the fear she likely felt when having to deal with a large, drunk male.  (Although she did point out that while he was drunk he didn't appear to be threatening. If he had gone down that path, his size would have been an issue for her.  On the flip side, while large, due to his obesity he couldn't move very fast... And she could have knocked on my door, yelled out for help). 

And sympathy (maybe empathy) for Ben. This morning, all things being equal, he is likely to be feeling shame and embarrassment. And, unless he never drinks again, is likely to behave reprehensibly again when drunk again in the future. Which, again, will be followed by shame and embarrassment.

I did hear muffled voices at some point last night. But not the content of the discussions that they were having. Incorrectly my sleep addled mind's initial impressions were that Suzanna had a male friend over and why couldn't they be quieter in their conversation.  While, in retrospect, it would have been better for my male ego to have arisen from my slumber to offer aid, it seems that Suzanna is a more than competent lady who takes no prisoners when insulted.

I wonder how many stars they will give each other on AirBnB's rating system?

Lessons from a LAG

Sat at a table yesterday where my stack more or less stayed static over the course of my session. Winning a few modest pots before bleeding back to around starting stack. During the course of my eight hour session I was able to observe seat two spin his stack up from a $300 starting stack to $2300. An impressive streak where he played aggressively, bluffed a lot, and managed to get paid off when he made nutted hands. Once he had hit the high water mark he continued to play aggressively, bluff a lot, but did not make any nutted hands and bled his stack down to around $450 before leaving the table. I started in a seat two positions to his right which was not a good place to be. Managed to end up moving to 3 seats to his left which was a much better position. A couple of reasonable players moved to positions 1 and 2 seats to his left. It was to those players that he bled a lot of his stack.  Having recently re-read Ed Miller's "Playing the Player" I was trawling through my mind to see if I could recall all the lessons from Ed's book on how to approach playing a LAG like this. Today I'll be browsing through the sections on how to approach playing with this type of player again.  In one pot where I started UTG with JJ I raised to $15, a mid position player called, the LAG called, and the Big Blind thought about what to do for a few seconds before calling. Flop came K45r. The action was checked to the LAG on the button who bet $40 into $60. The Big Blind called. My original plan was to either flat the LAG and hold on to the river, or perhaps to check-raise. However, something about the Big Blind's original call and the call on the flop pushed me to folding. I folded. Turn 7. BB checks. LAG fires $75.  River Q. No straights. No Flushes. BB checks. LAG checks behind and turns over 10-9 off suit for no pair, ten high. The Big Blind shows 54 off suit for a  flopped two pair. His intent was to call all streets for any bet and if the LAG had out drawn him so be it. He was following Ed Miller's plan of information denial by check-calling rather than check-raising with bottom two pair. In the likelihood that the LAG was simply barreling to get people off hands.

"I know what you've got. But I'm going to call anyway"

This afternoon shortly after I sat down I received two Aces on the button. Always a nice feeling to get this hand preflop. Then the Under The Gun player (UTG), first to act, open  raised to $50. With the blinds at $1/3 this was a vast over-raise. Most big raises first in are of the order of $25. The action folded around to me.  I decided to shove and announced "All In". The UTG player, an older guy who tends to play tight looked at me and said "I know what you have. But I'm going to call anyway". He had a pair of Kings. The board ran out kindly for me until the river when a King landed to give him a set and the winning hand.  He then said "I knew what you had. I just got lucky enough to be hit on the dick by the card fairy...."