On The Naming Of Things

I have something of a dislike for two aspects of the English Language:

One is the intrusion of abbreviations where, to be honest, the abbreviation does not achieve much. The latest is the execrable "V-Day", which I noticed on Felicia's blog. At first I assumed that this was some kind of concatenation of VE-Day and VJ-Day. Victory Day? What's THAT all about, I asked myself?

But, no, apparently it's short for Valentine's Day, which is in itself short for Saint Valentine's Day. I don't really think that Dillinger and the like would have gained such a reputation if it had been called the "V-Day Massacre".

The second thing that I dislike is the naming of things in direct contradiction to reality. The only one of these that I can think of at the moment is a "wet bar", although I am sure there are many thousands of other examples out there.

This habit has two negative side effects. The first is that it is harder to remember the names of things when their description does not match reality. A wet bar isn't wet, it's high. Perhaps I have a distinctively literal mind, but when I think of a "wet bar", the image that comes to mind is a bar that is wet, not what most people mean by a "wet bar". And, since the name does not actually evoke what it represents, you cannpt "work out" what it is. You have to be told. This is like the difference between the Roman numeral IIII (meaning, fairly self-descriptive) and the numeral IV (meaning, not self-descriptive at all, but more efficient to write). Eventually we get the completely abstract "4". When you are dealing with frequently repeated concepts, this kind of shorthand is useful. But for physical things that you do not deal with on a day-to-day basis, a more descriptive language is better.

The second negative side-effect is that it makes the teaching of language to children harder. "Daddy, what does "wet" mean?" "It's the opposite of dry, poppet. Water is wet, and it makes other things wet." "So why is that called a wet bar?" "Ahh, that's because, errr...."

There are echoes of 1984 here, with language being wilfully corrupted so that nothing actually means what it seems. We see this all the time with spin doctors, but does it have to be (needlessly, as far as I can see) introduced in the naming of things?


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Despite continued visits to the gym, ny weight has started going up again. Unfortunately I am not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. I've been increasing my weight-training (and the kilos lifeted/pressed), so the gain in weight might well be due to muscle build-up. However, I've also been eating more, so perhaps some fat is creeping back. Or perhaps both. Oh dear, I hope I don't turn into one of those people drinking protein shakes after training, never eating anything but steak and eggs after training and bread & pasta before....

Uber sessions

I just played one of my rare "uber-sessions". Well, in fact it was only 3.5 hours two-tabling on Ultimate, but you get through hands at a hell of a rate on UB, so it clocked in at 750 hands.

It was just a session where there was a loose aggressive player at one table and I felt that I really oughtn't leave until he went broke (I typed "bropke" there ... this is worrying). And, since I was at one table, I might as well stay at the other, even though that one wasn't so promising.

Well, the guy did go bropke, (that was deliberate .. comedic effect, remember) but then he bloody reloaded. Damn.

And although I won at this table, things went very wrong at the other table. This is the inverse of the normal state of affairs, where I rip the tight table to shreds while simultaneously donating half my stack to the loosest players in Christendom on the "good" table.

So, I was perpetually "just a short good run" of breaking even (as well as still having this loose player at one of the tables, although by the end he had calmed down to just 40% VPIP and 30% pre-flop raises), which kept me playing on. On the plus side, I was accumulating bonus dollars all the time (this Laggy guy was great for generating big pots).

In the end my head was beginning to hurt, so I quit the tables about twenty bucks behind -- although I generated $26 of bonus dollars in just three hours' play. That's good going in the afternoon on Ultimate, believe me.

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None of which covers what I was going to post about. That being, do you remember my prediction that a lot of good players or name players would find it tough this year? Well, bloggers and names alike appear to be joined together in a communal financial train crash of unmitigated horror. Sometimes it seems as if only me, Andy Ward, Big Dave and Chris Fargis are in the black this year, although you never know with Dave. Bluff is probably winning x million dollars, but he isn't that big a name, or a blogger, so it don't count.

Double A's recounted "the worst four days of his life". Minus EV got murdered for a third of his bankroll at $10-$20 6-max on Party -- the genuine home of variance lovers everywhere. Maudie went broke (i.e., lost the money that she had generated from a freeroll many years ago and slowly built up). Pauly was muttering something about losing a third of his bankroll in four months. Milky Bar Kid said he had one of the worst runs of his life. Jan Christiophe has had such a crisis of self-confidence that he wondered whether he is good enough for $10-$20 6-max (there's that game again). Iggy just doesn't want to talk about what's happened to him (although he does talk about everything else in his post today, probably the longest in history). Threebet33, hot from $80$160 at the Bellagio, was talking about going back to $5-$10 online (although this resolution seemed bypassed by this morning, with six grand spent on a $1,500 with rebuys tournament) and even Justin Bonomo, the king of the sit'n'goes, called January "my worst month ever", to the extent that he didn't want to talk about the amount lost.

Blood on the streets indeed.

Perhaps it's good for all these that it happened so early in the year; it gives them plenty of time to recover. Some others, I fear, will join them in the hall of pain. And some of those there may never really recover. It does happen. Times, as they say, are getting tougher. The first couple of weeks in January are legendarily difficult, because most of the easy money is still paying off the credit card bills from Christmas. But how will these players survive when it is like that ALL YEAR ROUND?

We shall see.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am off to solve global famine and bring about world peace (you need to read Felicia's blog to understand that one...)

PJ