Me vs David Williams (aka Day 1b of UKIPT Main Event)

PokerStars staff are allowed to play the Main Event of the UKIPT Isle Of Man, which is unprecedented. So despite being hella busy with work, and despite Rachel being hella busy with her work, I kinda felt like I *had* to play it. Fortunately, Rachel kinda agreed. Day 1b was yesterday.

My first small goal for the day was not to dust off a bunch of chips on the first level being cute. I honestly don't remember the action, but I lost about 15% of my stack in a hand I probably shouldn't have been in on the very first hand. Bad start, and I did get the feeling right away that I wasn't going to have a long stay.

This feeling was exacerbated the next hand when PokerStars pro David Williams filled the empty seat to my immediate left, turning a relatively benign table into my own personal table of death. If you've played poker with me (especially these days, when I am definitely an amateur) you know I like to play a LOT of pots. David Williams likes to punish people who are in lots of pots. I would guess, over the course of the day, he 3bet 50% of the pots I opened and called another 40% of them.

I decided early on I would basically play passively versus him, but be willing to make some big call downs. Totally fishy strategy, but I knew I couldn't outplay him and I didn't want to totally nit it up, so decided I'd give it a try at least.

First big hand with that strategy, I opened QJ and he flatted. Flop was QTx with two hearts. I cbet and he called. Off-suit 9 on the turn and I checked (fish!) he bet and I called. Off-suit J on the river and he bets big. I tanked for a little bit, but ultimately called and was good.

Next hand was even fishier. I had KJ on a KTx two spade board. Turn brought the flush, river brought the straight (without improving my hand) but I still called down turn/river bets and was good again.

So things were going well, and I won a couple big pots vs other people as well. One when I bluffed the KQJTx river and a guy tank folded. I showed the bluff, which was stupid in general, but paid off in the short term when a couple hands later I donk bet a rivered straight against another player and was looked up light, again in a pretty big pot.

Before end of level 2 I had doubled my 20k starting stack.

Then things turned. I had K5s in sb and it was folded around to me. I was pretty sure DW would 3bet me, so I decided to just complete and call his inevitable raise. Which happened, and the flop came KT2r. Turn was whatever and river was a 9. I called three barrels, and lost to David's rivered two pair (T9).

A bit later, I raised A9s OTB and DW 3bet. He checked and I checked behind on the A84 board, and called his big bets on the 4 turn and blank river. He had 42o for the turned trips.

From then on, he had the momentum, and, increasingly, the chips. I couldn't seem to make the right adjustments. He was playing incredibly aggressively, and I couldn't quite decide between locking it down or playing back, and constantly got myself in bad spots. Gave back all my gains. Then I doubled up a shorty with 99
I did manage to win a few pots without showdown over the rest of the level, and went to the last break of the day right back at my starting stack.

First hand of Level 7, dealer is just about to go and DW's not there. I'm on the button, and feeling happy that I can actually have my button without him in the SB (although next most solid player was to David's left, but whatever). Last second, David sits down. FML. Until I look down at AA. Not FML.

Folded around to me, standard open, standard DW 3bet. I'm trying to think if a shove or a normal 4bet would like fishier (about 30 bbs deep), and basically decide just to shove cause it's first hand back, I might look impatient/fed up, and also I just don't want to play post-flop anyway. (Have I mentioned I'm the fish in this story). Happily David did think I was messing around and called with A6. Turn brought a gut shot for a small sweat, but an innocuous river and I was back to 40k.

Which is more or less where I finished, a couple hours later. Disappointed with how I played but real happy to have survived the day and planning to play much better today.

Overall couldn't have been more impressed with DW, btw. Total class act all day long, made surrendering pot after pot to with him without showdown almost bearable.

You know a blog's in trouble when...

the blogger starts posting about how he's been neglecting his blog lately but he's gonna get back into it now.

Man, that's the kiss of death. Sometimes, in my search for potential Team Online members, I'll google about looking at poker player blogs. And they fall into two categories:

a) active
b) inactive

And if they're in category b, there's about a 50/50 chance that the most recent blog post (from, like, last February) is about how they're sorry they've let their blog slide but they're really going to recommit to it.

I knew this when I posted my last blog post (the first in a long long time), but I went ahead and made it about blogging more anyway. I was hoping that using that as a topic would shame me into returning to regular blogging, not wanting such a cliched post to exist as the most recent.

Well, it didn't work, at least not so far. OTOH, here I am. Sure, I'm still talking about stuff that more or less qualifies as what you'd expect to see from a blog's last days. But the fact that there's a new post counts for something, right?

Don't bury this, it's not dead yet.

Speaking of pointleslys throwing words into the internet abyss, I have started tweeting more. Follow me at yvrchris.

I think I'll starting blogging again

Not sure what made me look at this old blog, and not sure why I find it shameful I haven't written a anything in 18 months. But I did, and I do.

Actually, maybe shameful's the wrong word. I feel closer to sad. Cause it's not like I've really done anything wrong, in a broad sense, or let anyone down. It's just, I haven't replaced blogging (or any of the other creative pursuits that used to part of my daily life) since I've been here. I've just sunk deeper and deeper into being a family man and into work, with most of my personal time spent on exercise (which is not really that much, personal time nor exercise). And realizing that I never really write or create just for its own sake anymore, it's pretty much always vocationally, yeah that makes me a little sad.

Obviously the vast majority of bloggers are writing near exclusively for themselves, their audience being so small that it would almost be better referred to as the illusion of an audience. Obviously I'm no exception. But the fact that your blog is freely viewable, by anyone but especially by people who actually know you (perhaps only by people who actually know you), provides just that little extra motivation to actually think about what you write. It may not be enough to get me checking for typos, but it's probably enough to get me to fix one if I happen to glance upon it. 

Point being it doesn't really matter if anyone's reading it. There's something about a blog that makes you care enough for it to be a legitimate creative endeavour, I think, and I think my mind and I would both be just a little bit happier if I undertook a legitimate creative endeavour. At least, you know, from time to time.

So yeah, I'm sold. I think I'll start blogging again.

Movies

I'm not gonna lie. The movie situation here on the Isle Of Man is pretty dire. There are two theaters, one of which has one screen and the other has two. So okay, we're not gonna get much outside of the mainstream. But I swear they deliberately pick things just to annoy me.

We had a free babysitter (yay mother-in-law!) this week and here were our choices:

1) A sequel to a farcical spy type thing starring Mr Bean that really could have not looked more terrible;

2) A reissue of the Lion King -- like, honestly, WTF??? There are three screens available on the whole island and one of them is given over to screening a movie from the fuckin' 90's?

3) The Three Musketeers

So we went with three and it was a terrible choice. Several times I had the thought that perhaps somebody involved in the making of it was intentionally sabotaging it for some reason. A scorned lover or a merry prankster or something.

Yeah, maybe it was like the story of Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park". I don't know if it's true, and I'm not gonna google it right now cause it's okay to be wrong sometimes, but I heard he wrote the lyrics as a lark. Like, let's see if I can write the world's stupidest lyrics and still have a hit song. I'm wondering if that was somebody's agenda here. Let's see how stupid a scene I can write and see if the movie still gets made, and even becomes a hit!

Should have gone to the Mr Bean one, for sure.

There's like ten good-looking movies showing around the world that just refuse to come here. I'm gonna be home in Vancouver on business next week for 4 days and my goal is to see 4 movies. Probably not possible, given the business I have to do (which will include full days, and several dinners), and given that I want to see friends and family. But that's the goal.

Cause also, as if things aren't bad enough, they only show one preview at the movies here. And the last three movies I've been to it's been the same preview, for the new Twilight movie. Seriously, am I being punked?

Isle Of Man Update

Friday night the six guys I was training for this new program I'm working on developing left after two weeks of training. I was eyeing that date for about three months. Pretty much all the work I've done since taking this job has been about getting to last Friday with everything running smoothly, going well. I definitely had my doubts. A lot of first-time experiences for me. I was undertaking a pretty major project for a pretty major corporation, without any direct experience. And I've certainly never run a training course before. But I was banking on a lot of my experiences with the band and with poker translating in different ways to what I am doing now, and it worked out I think. Not that it went perfect, but honestly looking back over the last few months I'm pretty stoked with how it's all turned out, work-wise.

So now that I can breath a bit, this weekend I finally felt a bit home sick. Saw a facebook post with a picture of a quintessential Vancouver evening. Couldn't get my family on Skype, and then when I was indisposed for like five minutes somehow Rachel got on Skype with my brother and his family and I missed that. Started thinking about the band out there on the road, imagining them in the same hotels, on the same stages, driving the same roads that I drove for 15 years. And it felt really, really weird that I wasn't there. Just goes to show how busy I've been with work that these things are just hitting me now.

But anyway, recent bouts with homesickness aside, I think things are going pretty great here. Definitely expected a tougher transition. We've met quite a few cool people, including some with kids around Henry's age. We probably have more "couple" friends here than we did at home, which is pretty bizarre.

We bought a season train pass and have been exploring the island on weekends. The job is uber-demanding (I think I worked about 150 hours over the two weeks the trainees were in town) but also very rewarding, very enjoyable, challenging in a good way, and somewhat flexible (I'm going to have a family train adventure Wednesday morning, for example, and just work from home later in the day). It's weird going to an office and having a boss, but I love the company and respect my boss (very, very smart guy) so it's weird but not a bad thing.

I like the place we're living a lot. Rachel is so-so on it, I think. It's only a three month lease, so not sure if we'll be staying longer or not. I don't really want to move, but Rachel spends about five times as many waking hours here as I do so her call. It's a ten minute walk from my work, and the sea views are incredible, and we're across the street from the seawall and we can walk straight down the seawall into town. The town is actually more charming than I expected, even if a lot of stuff closes up real early and a lot of other stuff doesn't even exist. I mean, you can't compare it to Vancouver (or any major city, obviously). But if you just sort of accept there's no cool breakfast spot, and the coffee shops close at 5pm, and most of them don't have WiFi, then it's not that big a deal. If you feel like there's absolutely nothing in this town, then you realize there's actually quite a lot. Some okay restaurants (okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but there's some expensive restaurants anyway), plenty of shops and whatnot (and Amazon provides free shipping). Lots of parks, actually lots of events going on (might not continue to be the case once summer is over but whatever). Hell, Elton John was here last month. We didn't go, but it happened.

Still can't get used to people driving on the wrong side of the street. I just about get killed every other day. Not driving, just walking (we don't have a car). My neck refuses to look right first. And when it does I level myself and believe I'm looking the wrong way and look back to the left anyway. It's terrible. Why can't they just conform with the rest of the world?

We've been running really good, weather-wise. Doesn't really get that hot, but we haven't seen that much of the famous Isle Of Man rain. Or, at least, the timing's been good when it has rained. I've walked to and from work every single day. I'm told some days the weather will necessitate a taxi or else I'll be a wet dog at work. But I haven't had it be an issue yet.

Henry's sleeping through the night, more or less, which was unimaginable a month ago. Still can be hard to put down, and can demand some brief comforting at random times in the wee hours, but 100% better than it was. He's getting brattier as he nears in on two, but he's still overall the mellow, happy kid he's been most of his life. The only thing I really don't like about my job is sometimes I don't get home until after he goes to bed (not often, except the last two weeks when my training went into the evening so it became somewhat regular). That's hard. And he's been a bit clingy with me in the morning, probably as a result of that, which makes leaving for work hard too.

Man, I love that kid. And his mother. I guess that's probably right now the thing the Isle Of Man has going for it more than anything else, more than the wicked job or the sense of adventure or the beautiful scenery or the delicious egg mayo sandwiches: it's the current home of my two favourite people in the world.

And now you're up to date.

Feels Like Vacation

We had to fly forever to get here. Till yesterday we were staying in a hotel (well, an extended stay apartment, but essentially a hotel). Now I'm sitting around listening to Phish (I don't know why I'm getting more and more into Phish at this late date, but I'm fairly sure it's not a positive development) in our new abode and if I look out the windows, past our patio, literally all I can see is ocean. Or sea, I suppose. Everything feels and looks a little or a lot bit different, like it always does when you travel.

So even though there's lots of work that's been done and needs to be done to get properly domesticated/settled here, and even though I know my first month on the job is going to be ridiculously intense/busy (I get a mixture of anxiety/excitement every time I remotely think about it, which is often), it feels like vacation right now. Which will probably fade fairly quickly (although I think for it to fade in entirety might take a very long time). It's probably a good thing, feeling like you're on vacation, right? Who doesn't love vacation?

But it's also kind of freaky, truth be told. Cause, you know, you're supposed to return home from vacation. But given that for now this in fact is home, a slight out of sorts feeling currently permeates. I mean, if this is home, and we go to Vancouver on holiday, does that make missing Vancouver being "vacationsick"? That's not even a word. How am I supposed to feel that?

Overall, tho, a very promising start to our new adventure. Found a place to live we quite like (after a scary start to the search -- day one yielded no worthy fruit at all), already moved in with all our utilities up and running. Have a good sense of the town, which is basically as advertised (pretty small, but not without its charms, pretty easy to navigate on foot; and of course there's the ocean and seawall, or promenade, both of which we are, historically speaking, inclined to be quite fond). Already have met some potential new friends. I'm walking distance from work. With the exception of buying a car (which we still consider a possibility as opposed to a certainty) we're pretty set here already.

In other news, in a blog post today I went word-slash-word three times in one sentence. Of course no proof exists, but I bet that's the first time I've done that in my life. More proof I'm out of sorts.

Be At Least A Little Picky

This morning I went across the street to our local Subway for a sandwich to help sustain me through the daily rigours of life. And the guy in front of me got a Subway Club. And guess what he had on it? I'll tell you. He had everything. Literally. He got every vegetable and every sauce and salt and pepper and he only stopped getting stuff cause he had everything.

So what I don't get is what does that sandwich even taste like? It's like using every crayon in the box on top of each other until all you're left with is a big black blotch. A big black blotch of a Subway Club sandwich. I've been thinking about this for hours, and I just don't see any justification for how that sandwich isn't total bullshit.