Blackheath meditative break

April 14th - 25th saw me toodling off to the Blackheath Vipassana center to serve on a 10 day course. In exchange for service in the kitchen from 05:30 am through to 09:00 pm preparing meals for the 90 odd students and 15 odd servers the center offers:

• food
• board - in my case a small single room in a cottage shared with 5 other male servers
• the opportunity to meditate for at least three groups meditation sits per day for a minimum three hours meditation per day

Admittedly, if there are excess servers and the work is well organized then most, if not all of the work can be completed by 07:00 pm.

After a long commute from Melbourne, in part due to a flight delay by Jetstar, I turned up late afternoon and found that the team had more male members than female.   After the day 0 / registration day evening soup had been served, the long term server who had been organizing the kitchen took the kitchen servers into a room and asked us all to tell everyone a little about ourselves, as well as stating what everyone's goals for what they wanted to get out of the course was. Up to this point in time I've been telling pretty much everyone that I'm a recreational player / break even player as I have truly never thought of myself as a professional poker player. But I thought "stuff it. It's time to have some public accountability" and when it was my turn stated that my main reason for attending was to get some meditation in to help me plug my main poker leak. That is, being unfocused at the table and missing information with respect to both hands I'm in and more particularly hands I'm not it. Nobody drilled into my statement on the night but pretty much everyone gently probed my statement over the coming days to see whether I had been telling them the truth about my desire to improve my concentration at poker.

Everytime I toodle off to Vipassana I'm grateful that I can utulize such a facility so cheaply.  And the group of servers I worked with were a pretty good group who deserve a separate post which will come in a day or so.

One of the side benefits for me is that, due to the very full day each and every day of the course, there was no electronic device usage / internet usage for the entire time I was at Blackheath. Maybe if i go again I can write a journal at the end of every day for 10  minutes before retiring to bed.  Yeah....right! No chance

So here it is Sunday afternoon, May 1st and I find myself in Melbourne Central Library with a recoreded webinar by Alex "assassinato" Fitzgerald going on in the background.  About 40 mins in at the moment and he has been a little long winded so far. With the total length of the webinar being around 3 hours 30 minutes. My goal for today is to get through this Webinar and to read a little from Zach Elwood's book "Reading Poker Tells".

Poker wise since I've returned from Vipassana I've had four live sessions with a net of around $220 in front over those four sessions. At this time I believe the meditative break improved my ability to focus at the tables and that there is opportunity to improve my game through the additional information I'm picking up while at the tables.

Online I've registered with partypoker and deposited on that site. So far only played two tournaments there without cashing. Over the next week or so I need to put some time into understanding what is happening with respect to cash and tournaments on partypoker. And I'll continue to try intermittently to get some money deposited to America's Card Room. For some reason I'm having trouble getting money into my Skrill account and really, whenever I hit a road block there I stall for a while before trying again. At some stage I'll get some dosh onto America's Card room and see how it is.

I've played a bit of cash and some tournaments on pokerstars. With a bit of bad play and runbad on pokerstars welcoming me back and testing my resilience with respect to tilt control.

Enough typing for now. Time to post and move on.

An Anniversary passes and some disjointed rambling while I await my bustout at 2:30am

April 10th 1982. A significant date for me. Thirty four years later on April 10th 2016 I chose to have a day to myself and to stay away from the Casino. April 10th will remain a significant anniversary for the rest of my life. It is the day I met my ex and the mother of my kids. A great lady. Unfortunately our relationship has ended and I'm now in Melbourne and she is in Auckland. It was a good choice to have the day to myself.

This AirBnb has been a major lucky break. The people living here have been away for my entire stay and I'll exit on Thursday without having met them. So, on a day when I knew I wouldn't be much chop at poker, I chose to spend it in an apartment in Brunswick with Miffy the apartment cat.  Miffy, I was told by the neighbour when I was let in, was meant to be an unsociable cat. Well Miffy might be a bit odd, but it seems if you treat her with the right amount of indifference she will allow you to pet her. And purr. And show you how she quite likes to drink from the tap in the bath. After about 5 days I have been able to progress to  petting her quite vigorously and see her fall over in ecstasy clawing at the carpet. So much for an unsociable cat. 

It has just gone 02:45 am local time and I'm currently sitting at 103rd out of 121 remaining in the nightly $8.80 bounty builder. With 3,686 runners and a kickoff time of 22:15 AEST, possibly not the wisest choice of tournament to enter.  Especially if I had plans for Wednesday. Which I sort of did but those plans are now being reworked by a slightly fuzzy brain.  While I am deep in the tournament I have only knocked out one runner... So far.

While making this run I've watched an excellent program discussing sex and disability. The program ran on the SBS Australia network and is available via itunes at https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/insight/id251153372 . It is a bonus to me that I've discovered I can subscribe to the Insight program via itunes. The folk that make the Insight documentaries / panel discussions seem to be excellent researchers and presenters and get a good cross-section of people to discuss different issues

Andrew Denton's podcast series, Better Off Dead, continues to be a real treat whenever a new episode is released. With 16 episodes published so far, I believe there is maybe one more episode in the pipeline and then I'll have to find some other mega brained journalist who can produce well balanced and excellently researched programs. Somehow I managed to meander into watching some vintage Denton when he had the Doug Anthony All Stars on as guests to his mid-2000's program. Which then led me into, eventually, purchasing an ebook for #2 son. The Cheeky Monkey: Writing Narrative Comedy by Tim Ferguson

Now 91st out of 99 and it's 3:07....

In the BB with KJo and folded around to SB who shoved. I called with my short stack and turned a straight for a double up to  21 BB (about 63k). Now 64th of 85 remaining. There is one player remaining who hasn't knocked anyone out and their bounty is sitting at $4. Mine is at $6. And the player who has the biggest bounty has a bounty of $141 on their heads. Anyone who knocks them out gets half paid into their account and the other half is added on to their bounty.

Just open-raised AsQs in Cutoff with 17BB and folded to a shove by Button and a reshove by SB. SB turned up with QQ and Button had KdTd. Both hands would have beaten me as KT rivered a ten but lost to the SB's pocket Queens. Perhaps a tight fold. From a results orientation, in this case, a good one.

And just doubled up with JJ > 77. I had 13BB and the guy with the 77 hand  had 47BB. He tanked and ran down his time bank all the way before calling...

Being tired just led to a mistake. Folded to me in SB where I had K7o and 26BB. BB had 8BB. Should have been an auto shove in the hope of stealing the blinds or winning the BB bounty  and I folded....D'oh

03:37am getting pretty short stacked now and 46th of 60.  Everyone from about 40th is pretty much in shove / fold mode as the blinds and antes relative to the stacks are so big now.  The main reason for this blog post is to keep me a little bit more thoughtful about the situation.

03:52 41st of 45 and have just gone through a pay jump. Still small potatoes in the scheme of things. For this pay level guaranteed $49.  Dang. I've just  been given another walk. Second walk in last three orbits. And I've stolen the blinds once with a shove with AK suited on the button

03:55 and then I get AA in MP with UTG shoving....  He has AQo and the board is friendly to me. Second player knocked out and his bounty was $44. So I get $22 of that into my account and $22 added to my bounty. Yahoo! He only had 6BB and I am now at around 22BB and 32nd out of 42.

04:20 Woke up with KK in MP and raised to 2X. SB woke up with QQ and a short stack. Board was friendly to my KK. Though I was worried about a chop on the turn when the 4th spade landed. Neither of us had spades. The 5th card was a brick and another bounty was mine. This time my account increased by $43 and my bounty went up by $43. Now 19th of 32.

04:33 16th of 27 and just moved into a new payout level. Now guaranteed $62 if you bust. If I bust at this level and take home another $62 then I'll have made more from bounties than the money for busting at this level. So far $68 from bounties have been banked to my account.

04:45 woke up with QQ in BB and 35BB. UTG+1 has 70BB and open-limps. MP shoves for 11BB. I reshove and UTG+1 calls with AKo. I flop a set. UTG+1 flops two pair. He doesn't improve. And I take the bounty for MP. I bank a bit under $15 and my bounty increases by the same to around $87. Now 7th out of 20.

04:55 break time and now 8th out of 18 with 50BB  and into a new payout level. Busting at this level will increase my bankroll by a touch over $79. So at a minimum this tournament will give me a kick of over $160
Blinds are 12,000/6000 with an ante of 1,800. My stack is 598,600.

05:11 three quick bustouts and we are down to 15 players and into a new payout level of $101.

05:21 and busto in 11th Folded to SB who shoved  with A10o. I called with AQo. He ran out a straight on the turn. Flop 789 to give him an open ended straight draw and turn was the jack.... No miracle 10 on the river. $129 for 11th plus 84 in bounties. Off to bed

March Review

Looking back at the second month of my Melbourne rut and the highlight for me was taking four days off poker and serving at the local Vipassana center. A needed break from poker and a short, sharp burst of extra meditation.

Poker wise a slight losing month. Travelling well in the first part of the month and, again, another downswing in the second part of the month. Combination of some second best hands and poor play.

Leak wise I've noticed that I'm becoming aware of situations where the cards don't matter but am being a little passive and not taking advantage of the situations. There have been many limped pots when I have been in the big blind where I could have raised and likely taken the pot down  with any two cards. Or at least, been in a great spot to take the pot down post flop. My image is pretty tight and I'm sure I could take advantage of my image more.

The major leak I've worked on in March is the lack of focus during hands I'm not involved in. The good news is that I am managing to stay alert in more hands and be able to reconstruct the action from pre-flop all the way to showdown in a higher percentage of hands. The bad news is that I'm still zoning out far too frequently during hands and wake up on the river to wonder who the initial raiser was and how the flop and turn action had unfolded. But. There has been improvement. And I'm starting to develop a ritual while a hand is being dealt to try to ensure I'm awake at least through the preflop action.

I've managed to get myself invited along to a couple of home games and did well in the first being a couple of buyins up. But sadly being 6  buyins down on the second game. This game ran until 3am in the morning and that is well after my quitting time.  Again I'm donking off buyins when tired. Another reminder of my playing when tired leak leads to my "e" game.

Exercise wise I continue to walk lots more in Melbourne. Mainly due to the need to walk to train stations or tram stops to commute into the Casino. No scales at the last couple of places I've been at so cannot determine whether I've lost any weight or not over March. But I have managed to increase the number of push-ups executed each day to 50. Thanks to the TED talk on tiny habits I slowly built up the number of push ups executed each day and am now managing 50 per day.  My  morning ritual seems pretty solid with 45 minutes of meditation, followed by some hamstring stretches and finishing with the push-ups. Generally it feels like I've started the day with a win if I manage to execute all 3 components of my morning ritual.

Plans for April. Well... I left this post in draft for over a week and have come back to it on April 8th so a reasonably significant chunk of April is already in the past...

Moved out of the Caulfield airBnN into an airBnb in Brunswick on Tuesday April 6th. Luckily for me the people who live in this two bedroom apartment have taken themselves off on vacation for the entire period that I'm here. Yahoo!!.  And they have left an elderly cat behind for some company. The neighbour let me in and she also comes in once per day to feed the cat and look after the litter tray. Another Yah! She told me that the cat is anti-social but it seems to be tolerating me and allowing me to pet it. One quirk the cat has is that it likes to drink from the faucet in the bath. Turning the light on in the bathroom turns on the fan. And this audible cue lead to the cat coming into the bathroom, hopping into the bath and waiting expectantly under the tap. Hint taken, tap turned on to allow a dribble of water out , and the cat starts drinking from the dripping tap. This is now quite a routine, with the cat even meowing at the door of the bathroom to give me a nudge to enter the bathroom and turn the tap on for it.

This apartment is a very nice place to stay in and I feel like I've lucked out a bit this week. It is in an old brickworks and is reasonably close to tram stops / train stops and a shopping area. With a cafe within 5 minutes walk if I want to grab a coffee. So instead of going into the Casino on the first day I arrived here, or even on the second day, I stayed in and played internet poker for a change.  A very pleasant change.  In the AirBnB's I've been in I haven't felt like lounging around and getting in the way of the people who are hiring a room out to me. So I've been pretty consistent at heading into the CBD/Casino area each day.

On the 14th of April I'll be flying up to Sydney and will be heading out to Blackheath to serve on a 10 day Vipassana meditation course. By choosing to serve I get the benefits of having three one hour meditation sessions per day, food and board, and the sense of doing something for others by working my backside off in the kitchen preparing food for the course attendees. But at least I won't have to pay any money as my donation is my time working in the kitchen.

Enough meandering. Time to publish.  This post has been in draft for too long.