It grinds you down

Does there exist a pepper mill and a salt mill that doesn't cease operating within a month of you buying it? I had this really cool pepper mill, and I thought that I had cracked it, but tonight it just upped sticks and stopped grinding properly. Is there some intrinsic constituent of pepper that negates the grinding process? Buggered if I know.

I went into grumpy old man mode this evening with my bank. I e-mailed them saying "please cancel this direct debit forthwith. I am paying the bill in one annual amount from now on".

Reply arrives today. "Dear Mr Briks. Do you want us to cancel this direct debit?"

I promptly fired off a missive mentioning not that I thought I had made this request fairly clear (this point came later) but going into one because they had misspelt my name. "This indicates carelessness", I ranted, soon getting into full flow about carelessness being one thing that I will not tolerate in a bank, and that if they can't spell names right, who knows where my money might end up, blah blah blah. Oh, and please pass this to your superior and ask him or her to contact me.

Well, I DON'T want people dealing with my account who happily transpose letters in a surname.

What drugs should I take to make me lighten up?

Difficult game, this Pot Limit

I had an irritating, but thought-provoking, hour or so on Ultimate playing PLO. Initially I thought that it was because I was getting landed with more difficult decisions than usual. Then I realized that everyone else at the table was deep-stacked, which made things more complex than the normal collection of $25 and $15 (plus one or two $100+es). Finally I spotted that I was thinking about stack sizes and the implications for what would happen (or could happen) on the turn. The old “bet the hell out of it and see what happens” Birks had gone by the wayside. Because there were deep stacks everywhere, I had to consider the possibility of pot bets on the turn. If I was out of position (which I invariably was, usually in the Big blind seeing the flop for nothing!) this made things difficult.

The first hand (which I forgot to get the hand history for) was perhaps one where I should have got as much as I could into the pot on the flop.

I picked up AAQ2 rainbow under the gun and limped. Unless I plan to throw the hand away, there isn’t much else I can do here. Five other limpers got to the button who raised to $3. Folded in SB and BB to me. I have $50, raiser has $96. I can reraise to $12 here. Should I do so? I really don’t know. I bottle it and call. All bar one of the limpers folds. Three players and $12 in the pot.

Flop comes QT2 two spades. I have top and bottom. Do I bet $12 here? I really don’t know. I bottle it and check-call a $5 bet from the button. The other player also calls. $27 in pot and I have $42 in front of me. At least I now have a plan. If the turn is a rag, I intend to check-raise the turn. The turn is a six. I check, and the other two players check check behind me, the bastards.

River brings a Jack. I check, Opponent 1 checks and initial raiser bets $15. I fold. My opponent almost certainly has AK here.

I really had no idea where I was at any point at all in this hand, and it still has me puzzled. I think the check-raise plan on the turn is a reasonable enough turn, but at every point prior to that my major worry was that a bet from me left too much in out respective stacks with me out of position. I want to check-raise all-in, but I can’t see how I can manoeuvre it. Against shorter stacks, controlling the tempo of the hand is so much easier.

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