Up at 4:30 am

A side effect of fasting for two days is that, while my intention was to go as long into day 3 as possible before breaking my fast, there was difficulty with sleeping due to the gnawing hunger pangs experienced over night.  At 4:30 am I chose to end my fast and have chowed down on one of the yummier breakfasts in a while.  Just the same content as a bunch of other breakfasts, but psychologically very yummy.

Still, I consider it a success to go for a tad over 50 hours without food. Other than a couple of cups of coffee per day, with a teaspoon or two of coconut oil, water was my main sustenance.

There were times during the past two days when my cognitive function was more affected than others. And yesterday midday was one of them. However I managed to be able to keep bringing myself back to an even keel whilst in a Telstra shop and ended up purchasing a cheap smartphone. For $79 this is a cheap and cheerful smart phone. But still, given that my old phone was a Galaxy Y inherited from my son, with a likely age of around 5 years, this is a major upgrade.  The major reason for purchase is to use Evernote at the poker tables. I've been using an ipad to write notes over the past month or so. And an ipad is not a discreet writing appliance.  Hopefully, switching to a smartphone for my notes will allow me to look like a disinterested old fogy who is consumed with texting on his smartphone rather than an old fogy who is a bit too full of himself and taking notes on people.


The major drawback to this two day fast has been difficulty in concentrating for large chunks of the day. Which means difficulty in studying. Hopefully, with some food on board I'll be able to better able to attend to my studies today.  Although I have been really enjoying Jonathan Little's podcast weekly poker hand podcast series and did manage to get something out of his podcasts over the past couple of days. Particularly the math around whether to call when facing a bet on a 4 flush board and being given the right pot odds.  For example, Little points out that the chances of your opponent, in a heads up pot, having one of the flush cards is around 60% (Your opponent holds two cards. The odds of each individual card being a flush card is approximately 1 in four. Reduced slightly because there are four cards of the flush suit on the board.). Which means, if they bet in such a way that you only need to win the pot 20 - 25% of the time, then often you have the right odds to call. Especially if your opponent is good enough to recognize the situation as a good bluffing scenario, in which case, the times where your opponent does not have a flush card (say 40%), will be enough to justify the call. Which, for many players who are good enough to recognize the scenario as a good bluffing scenario, it is.   And many recreational players will fold every time to a bet in the situation where they are out of position, the board shows four cards of the same suit, and their in position opponent bets.  The constant refrain is "you can't call with out a flush card".  Which, against some opponents, is simply not true.