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It seems unusual to call a +$3K month frustrating, but it has been. It's even weirder to call it that when all of the targets have been hit:
1) 30,000 hands [x]
2) Avge of $30 an hour [x]
3) 100 hours live play [x]
Mind you, all three were only courtesy of a short final session on Stars this evening where I won $150, and all three were reached by the skin of my teeth -- 100.90 hours, $3,033 profit at $30.06 an hour.
So, why was it frustrating? Because after 10 days I was $3,000 up after 30 hours. The rest of the month was one of solidly moving sideways, and kept on an even keel only by the occasional bonus.
As I wrote a few days ago, this was caused by a most unusual "month of two halves", where for the first 10 days I ran like God and for the last 20 days I ran like shit. That the second part of this month included one day where I won $1,206 kind of indicates how awful the rest of the period was.
The thick line is actual winnings. The thin line is "EV" as measured by Hold Em manager in all-in situations. That is a good example of how volatility can be a cruel mistress, and not just at 6-max.
Thankfully I'm off to the South of France for a week fairly soon, and after that I'm only back at work for four weeks before I take my traditional long Christmas break. No desire to go to Las Vegas any more (at the moment) because, well, to be honest, I quite like the break from non-stop poker that I can get if I'm in France. I'll still play a few hands, obv, but I'm more looking forward to getting the Transport Alpes Maritimes buses to other parts of the Cote d'Azur.
The loneliness gets even to me at times, which I never thought it would. I have plans to overcome this next year and I'm confident that the plans that I have will wipe away a lot of the sadness (which should not be confused with depression! Different things entirely.)
++++++++
Today's news was typically pathetic. Alan Johnson sacks drugs adviser David Nutt -- Johnson unavailable on Radio 4 this morning (although sacked adviser was, and he made Jim Naughtie look a bit of a fool when Naughtie stated that Mr Nutt was being "naive" if he thought that politicians were going to take scientists' advice. Naughtie has been dealing with politicans for too long. He's gone native. (Of course, Alan Johnson looked an even bigger dick for not appearing at all.)
Gordon Brown is such a kiss of death these days that Tony Blair probably put his head in his hands when Brown endorsed him for the Presidency of the EC. Sure as eggs is eggs, within hours, Blair's "candidacy" had unravelled to nothingness. Well done Gordon. Someone referred to "The Brown Years" on Radio Five this morning, and for a second I thought that it was a comment on their hue rather than a historical description.
Naughtie and Humphreys were almost masturbating with glee at the "Young Parliament" that sat in the Commons yesterday -- a collection of political wannabees who had me reaching for the sick-bucket. One particular tosser was backing compulsory "current affairs" education in school, apparently on the grounds that it didn't matter if pupils weren't interested, because he wasn't interested in physics, but he still had to do it, even though he would never need it.
Presumably this was because he planned to grow up to be a politician like Alan Johnson who would see "scientific fact" as something that was a matter for negotiation.
Already, at these tender young ages, they had the spin of "kids don't like politics in the main because we aren't getting the message across properly". NO. The message is coming across loud and clear. The reason that kids in the main don't like politics is because it's full of tossy windbags talking about things that don't matter to them and not even doing anything about the things that they do talk about.
+++++++
Elsewhere, the US Securities & Exchange Commission was mysteriously silent at Bernard Madoff's comments that he could not believe that he wasn't caught in 2006, when the two inspectors from the SEC (one of whom Madoff said reminded him of Columbo) would have snaffled him if they had undertaken the most cursory checks. I've written before that regulators are renowned for employing people who can't make it in the real world -- the two SFA inspectors we saw during my short time at City Index couldn't have found anything that we didn't want them to find (but then, like auditors and accountants, I presume they would say that "we can't be expected to catch people who lie to us").
Elsewhere, BaFin, the German regulator "declined to comment" on the case of Helmut Kiener, a man alleged to be at the head of a hedge fund fraud. Outside of regulation, IG Index has declined to comment on its legal action against Harry Levene, who managed to spunk off nearly a million quid on a single 20-20 game between the West Indies and South Africa. I didn't think the games lasted long enough to lose that much. IBM, too, "declined to discuss" the departure of very-senior-executive Robbert Moffat, who has been charged with illegally passing on insider information.
The point here is that all of these parties are only to keen to push information that they want to the newspapers -- the shit churned out by the PR guys for free publicity when there is "positive" stuff is never-ending. Journalists can live with that; indeed, it makes our lives a lot easier. But there's a quid pro quo here. If the good stuff gets repeated, you can't just shut up shop with "no comment" when the bad stuff hits you.
These days, this "play the game" rule of "we'll push out the good news, but we need responses during the bad times" has become ignored. A bit like one Diplomacy player I recall who would never, ever, offer anything in return. It was always just "will you do this please? I'd be very grateful" but whenever you mentioned something about negotiations being a two-way street, some kind of blank incomprehension descended.
Oh well, fuck em all, the Naughties, the Johnsons, the IBMs, the Microsofts and the SECs. Once again the only guy who emerges with credit from the weekend is a non-politician non-businessman. Rock on David Nutt.
______________
1) 30,000 hands [x]
2) Avge of $30 an hour [x]
3) 100 hours live play [x]
Mind you, all three were only courtesy of a short final session on Stars this evening where I won $150, and all three were reached by the skin of my teeth -- 100.90 hours, $3,033 profit at $30.06 an hour.
So, why was it frustrating? Because after 10 days I was $3,000 up after 30 hours. The rest of the month was one of solidly moving sideways, and kept on an even keel only by the occasional bonus.
As I wrote a few days ago, this was caused by a most unusual "month of two halves", where for the first 10 days I ran like God and for the last 20 days I ran like shit. That the second part of this month included one day where I won $1,206 kind of indicates how awful the rest of the period was.
The thick line is actual winnings. The thin line is "EV" as measured by Hold Em manager in all-in situations. That is a good example of how volatility can be a cruel mistress, and not just at 6-max.
Thankfully I'm off to the South of France for a week fairly soon, and after that I'm only back at work for four weeks before I take my traditional long Christmas break. No desire to go to Las Vegas any more (at the moment) because, well, to be honest, I quite like the break from non-stop poker that I can get if I'm in France. I'll still play a few hands, obv, but I'm more looking forward to getting the Transport Alpes Maritimes buses to other parts of the Cote d'Azur.
The loneliness gets even to me at times, which I never thought it would. I have plans to overcome this next year and I'm confident that the plans that I have will wipe away a lot of the sadness (which should not be confused with depression! Different things entirely.)
++++++++
Today's news was typically pathetic. Alan Johnson sacks drugs adviser David Nutt -- Johnson unavailable on Radio 4 this morning (although sacked adviser was, and he made Jim Naughtie look a bit of a fool when Naughtie stated that Mr Nutt was being "naive" if he thought that politicians were going to take scientists' advice. Naughtie has been dealing with politicans for too long. He's gone native. (Of course, Alan Johnson looked an even bigger dick for not appearing at all.)
Gordon Brown is such a kiss of death these days that Tony Blair probably put his head in his hands when Brown endorsed him for the Presidency of the EC. Sure as eggs is eggs, within hours, Blair's "candidacy" had unravelled to nothingness. Well done Gordon. Someone referred to "The Brown Years" on Radio Five this morning, and for a second I thought that it was a comment on their hue rather than a historical description.
Naughtie and Humphreys were almost masturbating with glee at the "Young Parliament" that sat in the Commons yesterday -- a collection of political wannabees who had me reaching for the sick-bucket. One particular tosser was backing compulsory "current affairs" education in school, apparently on the grounds that it didn't matter if pupils weren't interested, because he wasn't interested in physics, but he still had to do it, even though he would never need it.
Presumably this was because he planned to grow up to be a politician like Alan Johnson who would see "scientific fact" as something that was a matter for negotiation.
Already, at these tender young ages, they had the spin of "kids don't like politics in the main because we aren't getting the message across properly". NO. The message is coming across loud and clear. The reason that kids in the main don't like politics is because it's full of tossy windbags talking about things that don't matter to them and not even doing anything about the things that they do talk about.
+++++++
Elsewhere, the US Securities & Exchange Commission was mysteriously silent at Bernard Madoff's comments that he could not believe that he wasn't caught in 2006, when the two inspectors from the SEC (one of whom Madoff said reminded him of Columbo) would have snaffled him if they had undertaken the most cursory checks. I've written before that regulators are renowned for employing people who can't make it in the real world -- the two SFA inspectors we saw during my short time at City Index couldn't have found anything that we didn't want them to find (but then, like auditors and accountants, I presume they would say that "we can't be expected to catch people who lie to us").
Elsewhere, BaFin, the German regulator "declined to comment" on the case of Helmut Kiener, a man alleged to be at the head of a hedge fund fraud. Outside of regulation, IG Index has declined to comment on its legal action against Harry Levene, who managed to spunk off nearly a million quid on a single 20-20 game between the West Indies and South Africa. I didn't think the games lasted long enough to lose that much. IBM, too, "declined to discuss" the departure of very-senior-executive Robbert Moffat, who has been charged with illegally passing on insider information.
The point here is that all of these parties are only to keen to push information that they want to the newspapers -- the shit churned out by the PR guys for free publicity when there is "positive" stuff is never-ending. Journalists can live with that; indeed, it makes our lives a lot easier. But there's a quid pro quo here. If the good stuff gets repeated, you can't just shut up shop with "no comment" when the bad stuff hits you.
These days, this "play the game" rule of "we'll push out the good news, but we need responses during the bad times" has become ignored. A bit like one Diplomacy player I recall who would never, ever, offer anything in return. It was always just "will you do this please? I'd be very grateful" but whenever you mentioned something about negotiations being a two-way street, some kind of blank incomprehension descended.
Oh well, fuck em all, the Naughties, the Johnsons, the IBMs, the Microsofts and the SECs. Once again the only guy who emerges with credit from the weekend is a non-politician non-businessman. Rock on David Nutt.
______________
