Sometimes with just a quick look at a situation, all I can think is “this is fucked.”

And I mean those three words exactly. There’s no fancy thought process going on. No “What does my hand look like here? What’s his range and what’s he representing? Would he do that because of (x) (y) or (z) reasons? What’s my expected value?”.

Nope, nothing like that. Just an instinctive repulsion at what’s on the screen in front of me and a weird cloudy feeling of disconnection from what’s going on.

Somehow, some part of my brain is making a split-second judgment that something’s not right.

And then it’s only after that feeling part that I start to catch up with conscious thoughts about what it is specifically that could be wrong — out kicked? bum straight? set over set maybe? (That one’s especially gay, and I do my best to believe the read and keep the size of the pot down but, 9 times out of 10, I’ll pretty much just ignore it and lose a stack).

I think after seeing so many hands of poker, my brain must have started doing some of its own slick neural-netty insta-calculations. Calculations which bypass the English language bit — the “what if? yeah but maybe.. actually nah” — and just throw out a simple good or bad feeling. That’s all it produces, a simple Yes/No, 1 or 0 answer — instinctive repulsion or instinctive attraction — where I don’t know why I know, but I know.  » 

Howard Lederer is amazingly irritating. Every single thing he says annoys me.

Not the best show ever. In fact, I think that was the worst one so far this season. Disappointing poker and that stupid pushup bet? Sometimes Antonio needs to just shutup for a minute. Thank god durrrr is back in next time. Lederer is shit at poker and when he talks about only being able to watch Hi-Def TV cos regular def offends his eyes? That is an epic level of douchedom.

Joe Hachem’s played some sound poker but generally I think High Stakes has had a downswing over the past two episodes. Looks like it’s gonna pick up again next week.

All the other episodes are in order if you click the “High Stakes Poker” category link.  » 

I always like coming back after a break.

I haven’t played poker for nearly 2 weeks now. I did try to play from our hotel room on the second day — caught the end of their monsoon season and there was a mahoosive storm — but the internet connection was dire and it cut out constantly. (I think the people that power it weren’t peddling fast enough).

I kinda broke my break though — I couldn’t help myself playing for an hour in the airport on the way back. Long haul flight, 2 hours to kill, what else am I gonna do?

Paid ~£1.50 for the hour and I even managed to attract a small audience of brown people around me as I touchpadded my way through an epic baby-stakes profit session of $50 across 3xNL25 tables at Full Tilt.

When I say “audience”, I mean that there were 2 dudes who ran the hairport’s wi-fi zone and apparently they liked the look of my shiny Apple laptop and had nothing better to do than watch me play a game they didn’t even understand.

Oh and I’m not bragging about the Apple thing. I bought my 17″ Macbook pro — with poker money (<-- that was a brag) — about 2 years ago, and it was a crap decision.

Don’t believe the hype. There’s nothing special about Apples. An extra £200-300 for a pretty case and an Early Learning Centre OS? pfff, jokers.

Anyway, taking a break was supposed to be the important bit. I tend to autopilot when I play too much, like I did before the holiday. Now’s the perfect time to correct bad habits.

Off to the tables.

P.S. I met an elephant for the first time. That pic is of me standing next to “her”, and so are these. (The big grey thing in the middle is the elephant — I’m on the left).

That thing is BIG. I’m 6′3 so… yeah. The middle pic is me setting a hideously bad example to my little brother. Chair swinging with a cig. It’s really a great combo, and it’s especially effective since I don’t see him very often anymore. I blame the all-inclusive beer.

I missed this one cos I was in Sri Lanka. I’ve backdated it though.

Brand new lineup. No way these guys are going to be as active as the last group. At least until Dwan comes back again — he was in the preview videos I saw so he must be turning up at some point. Still an interesting game to watch though, especially Antonio, even with that ridiculous watch. He’s got fucking Big Ben on his wrist but he’s good at poker and sometimes his table chat is genius.

Howard Lederer is a painfully massive douche.

Other parts on “Read the rest” — other episodes on the “High Stakes Poker” category link.  » 

The time when Jesus rode into town on a donkey, or some shit.

Anyway, as a firmly committed Christian (hallelujah praise his name) I’m going on a celebratory pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Only instead of Jerusalem I’m going to Sri Lanka, and it’s more of a holiday than a pilgrimage.

Be back in 10 days with some new posts.

The High Stakes Un-internet Pokers is back again. Wauw, that’s a big pot.

End of the first “segment” of Season 5, and Daniel’s been spanked clean out of the park. Kind of an awkward silence there as he was walking out of the room so slowly, down about $500k-600k. Ouch. David Benyamine wasn’t very loud but he played a real good, solid game the whole time and came out a pretty big winner. Barry and Dwan up a good amount overall too.

Quite a few 6 figure pots in this one. Good way to finish the first part of the best season yet.

Other parts on “Read the rest” — other episodes on the “High Stakes Poker” category link.  » 

Some more interviews from Mediocre Poker Radio.

Maybe not quite as cool as the in-studio sessions that I posted before with Di and Hac Dang and Phil Galfond, but the stakes these guys play at are a little bit more realistic.

mbolt1 (Matt Bolt) is first — a dude who worked in pest control in 2007 and then decided to try his hand at poker.

Like anyone else he played around $0.25/$0.50 and $0.50/$1, and then by November 2008 he’d already had his first $100,000 month at the poker tables.

That’s not a bad effort. Pretty cool interview.

Then there’s Citizen Wind — a dorky Asian dude who’s good at English so is really good at explaining poker — apparently. I don’t have a Cardrunners account so I can’t really say, but judging by this interview, it sounds like he’s pretty good at both playing and teaching.

And the last interview is Mauri Eskandani, executive producer of High Stakes Poker.

Haha, someone just sent this to me:

I actually laughed out loud. That owns.

Complete character control + a whole new dimension — is it good?

Um, yeah. PKR was designed to enhance the visual experience of online poker, to add more to the game, and to bring it a bit closer to live play. They did a good job.

No, it’s not as fast — you’ll probably see about 2/3rds of the hands you’d see at the pancake rooms (the flat ones).

So for 16 tabling nuts-only robot-grinders, your hands/hr won’t be as high. You’re better off sticking with Full Tilt or Stars.

Good riddance anyway, in my opinion. Poker androids like that just take up space at the table.

Besides, sifting through as many hands per hour as you possibly can was never what PKR was supposed to be about. In fact, come to think of it, it was never what poker was supposed to be about either.

PKR ends up halfway in between, combining (and exaggerating) the more personal aspects of live play with the speed and convenience of online games.  » 

More durrrr. Not quite perfect this time but he’s still way ahead of the table.

I’m gonna go ahead and congratulate myself on spotting Daniel’s jealousy-tilt right back when it was just starting. It was somewhere back in like episode 2 or 3 where he began to go downhill before overplaying those jacks. He carries on his run in this episode too, trying to gamble his way out of the hole, semi-bluffing in a spot that just didn’t make sense.

Barry Greenstein decides to show up with some real game in this one as well.

You can see all the other episodes in order by clicking the “High Stakes Poker” category link.