Mid Year random post

Into the second half of 2017 and back in Melbourne for a week after a lengthy house sit in Lindfield. Looking after Fernie the 3 year old Labradoodle. An easy dog to look after. Happy and well trained. The only hard part for a poker player is the need to be up between 07:00 am and 08:00 am 7 days a week. This requirement can interfere with the random desire to play through the night. However, having a mansion to stay in with such a lovely dog more than made up for that slight issue with my time scheduling.

The word from the Melbourne regs was that the play at Star was wilder than Melbourne. There was a slight degree of anxiety prior to my first sessions at Star. Surprisingly I found that the set up of the Star $2/3 game to be a better fit. With the buy-in for $2-3 being a minimum of $100 and a maximum of $500 at Star, compared to $100-$300 for Crown, buying in for the maximum of $500 and about 175 big blinds seems to be better suited for my game. Having been back at Crown for several sessions and seeing that many at the table buy in short and play a more short stacked game means I'll be more than ok with going back to Star in the future.

Luckily I have another house sit in Sydney lined up from 24th July for a couple of weeks. This will mean I'll be able to scratch my Star Casino itch earlier than I thought I would be able to.

My poker study progressed slowly while at George's. Managed to review a webinar with Jonathan Little and Ed Millar on "Information Dominance". Have a mind map of the webinar that I'll be able to review at some stage in the future. Subsequent to producing that piece of IP, I managed to work my way through Ed Millar's "The Course" and produced a mind map summarizing this book. Having the mind map has proved to be useful already. The mind map was created in freemind on my PC. From there I emailed it to myself and then opened it on my ipad with iThoughtsHD so I could review the mind map whilst travelling from Lindfield in to Star. Technology is wonderful.

I had finished working my way through the course towards the end of May / Early June. And my intention was to re-read Ed Millar's "Playing the Player" and possibly his later work "Pokers 1%". But then I decided to treat myself and instead purchased Tommy Angelo's "Painless Poker" and Zachary Elwood's Verbal Poker Tells and Exploiting Poker Tells.   Painless Poker is the best value for money poker book I have consumed in the past two years.   Two pieces of information stand out for me. First is that I have had a major leak with quitting. Angelo addressed this issue in his "Elements of Poker" book, yet I had failed to take in and fully act on the information in that book. Having the idea that impromptu quitting trumps scheduled quitting is an extremely valuable idea for me. Second, amongst the many valuable ideas around meditative practices at the poker table, the one that stands out for me is the idea of using mindful breathing at the table to stay focussed. I have been trying this out over the past two weeks and have found that my ability to stay present mentally during all of the streets for hands that I am not involved in has increased to a point where I am being present in way more hands than previously.  There are still hands where I wake up and wonder what happened on the flop. But far fewer than previously. And to be present during more hands means more information about other players betting patterns is available for my brain to process.

Have had a few emails from #1 son over the past month or so. One of which had a photo of him catching a wave at Raglan.   About ten years ago we went on a family holiday to Raglan and, at that point in time, I helped him with his surfing by helping him launch himself on the board and catching beginner's waves into the beach.  Very impressed with the progress.