Three Hands of Poker

I am on my way back to the hotel, having spent the evening at a pub with a childhood friend. We say our goodbyes and I continue towards my hotel, but it is basically next to the casino, so of course I pop in for some quick before bedtime gambling. I set a budget of 1000 SEK (around 90 USD), as I am a bit low on cash at the moment, and make my way to the poker room. There is a 10/10 SEK NLT game running, so I take my seat, ready to build a big stack.

First hand I get dealt 76s, there is an EP raise to 70 (no straddles), I call, and so does one more player out of the blinds. Flop is J62 rainbow, check-bet 120-I call and so does the third player. I don´t see how I can fold middle pair with a backdoor flush and straight draw on this board. The turn is a black three (which is bad, I have two hearts), it goes check-check and I decide to keep my bluff nerve in check since I am up against two players and if I bluff turn I am obliged to shove most rivers and I feel a bit too pussy for this move. Also the stack sizes are a bit awkward - there is like 570 in the pot and I have 800 left, and jamming seems quite an overplay, but betting 200 and then 600 into 1k+ is also not really what I am looking for here. The river is another deuce, now the first player bets out quite big, initial raiser calls, and I toss my cards in the muck. The first player shows A2o to take it down with rivered trips.

The second hand I just straight up fold preflop, like a ****ing gangster. It was 94o. And then comes the next hand - I look down at two beautiful sevens with 800 in my stack. An EP player raises to 50 and I decide to just call. Another player calls, then comes a three-bet to 200, and two calls, and what the **** am I to do? Calling for 25% of my stack with a pair of sevens seems stupid, folding is probably best, but, hey, let´s just backraise and pretend we have Aces this one time! So I jam. The player to my left calls. The player to his left, who three-bet, now jams for 2,5k and the first player reluctantly calls. Long story short, both flops (we run it twice) have an ace. The player to my left wins with AQo against the player who three-bet and held QQ, and I somehow fail to make a set on any of the boards, so I am busto after just three hands.

***

These were the first hands of poker played since my last update, something like a month ago. In July and August, I was flush with cash. From mid-August, there were basically two weeks in a row when I was home alone, first the wife and kids went to our summer house (I joined them on the weekend) and then they were in Crete. I had all the chances in the world to play poker. Sure, I had to work during the days, but when has that stopped me?

Instead I chose to be social, meet a lot of people, go to a lot of events, hang out a lot and so on. And I didn´t even feel the urge to play poker. Granted, during July and August - when I had vacation, childhood friends visiting, and then being left on my own for two weeks - I did quite a lot of coke. Well, at least compared to the amounts I usually do. But I didn´t play poker.

During Covid I was often depressed, I also gained something like 10 kg, putting me right on the edge of obese territory counting just BMI, and our kids were smaller. Now I am free of depression, I actually don´t think I´ve been this stable mentally for a number of years - I actually feel quite OK in general. As our kids aren´t that small any longer, spending time with them is much easier since you can actually do fun stuff instead of pretending you´re a ****ing farm animal for the umpteenth time, and they are easier to manage, so there´s no longer anything stopping me from going out. So I guess I am just recovering my lost social life. And let´s be honest, if it´s like 20-25 degrees centigrade (we´ve had lovely weather here lately and it still continues - summerish temperatures in mid-September are sweet) and you have the option to hang out with some friends in a pub, maybe watch a game, do a few lines or smoke a blunt, or the option to sit in a poker room crowded by degens... well, I mean, I honestly think that the hang out with friends option is healthier and more +EV lifewise. And before you start worrying, even in the periods when I used a "lot", that is during the weeks I partied and was out a lot, it was something like 2-4 times/week and no huge amounts involved, and now I am back to something like every fortnight or so. The less you use, the less you want to use, and I guess that is somewhat true of poker as well.

Now autumn is coming, but I am poor and broke again. Well, not suck a dick in a tunnel to buy food-broke, but more like can´t afford to gamble several hundreds-broke. I wouldn´t be broke, but my wife wanted to go to Srilanka, and I googled it and the first images I saw literally sold it to me in an instant (I´m not a hard sell when it comes to travel) - beautiful beaches and leopards in some national park. So yeah, I bought us plane tickets for something like 4,5k and now I wouldn´t be able to hit a poker room even if I wanted to. Okay, I could bring100 EUR for a min buyin like when I went to the casino in Stockholm, but why bother? Then I´ll just rather spend that money on some coke - a bag will last me more than one night and I´ll probably have more fun as well. Oh, and also kids are back in school, so that means less free time since I have to take them to swimming practice 4x/week (which I am glad for, since then I can excersise 4x/w as well), help with homework at times and so on, and combined with a lot of work it also leads to me not having too much free time.

Soon the cold, dark and gloomy period of life here will begin, and I guess I will play more poker then (since hanging out with degens in a poker room is much more appealing when the weather sucks and it´s dark all the ****ing time anyway), but probably not before October-November since I first need to get my finances in order. Oh, and also start saving up money for our Sri Lanka trip in March...

So, until next time - take care!

P.S. Is there poker in Amsterdam? I am going there for a business trip next month, will have Friday night free (flying home Saturday evening) and I am thinking of backup plans in case my plan to see Netherlands-France live fails. I picked up tickets from a site that seems quite shady, and they were much cheaper than on Viagogo, so I guess there's quite a decent chance I'll get scammed and let's be honest, if I don't have any plans when being in Amsterdam, it'll just end up with me smoking a joint and then being too high to do anything else but sit in my hotel and eat crappy food and space out.

Winning in Warsaw, Sunrunning in Stockholm

So, after a three month hiatus, I am finally back to playing poker (and, of course, still doing other degen stuff). Partially my break was financially motivated (burning so much cash on other life things etc), partially due to hanging out with friends more and going to some parties (and as a family man, now that school has started, I don´t have too many evenings free), but mostly due to a lack of interest from my side. However, now winter is here, finances are looking stable, and I will probably get back to gambling at least a couple of times a month. The past two weekends I have been on business trips Thursday-Saturday, which has given me ample opportunities to let my inner degenerate free.

***

It´s a late Thursday evening and I leave my hotel in central Warsaw to go and have dinner. I have gotten around 20 metres from my hotel when a young and pretty girl approaches me and says something in Polish.

"Sorry, don´t speak Polish", I reply.
"Oh, that´s okay. How are you?"
"I´m good, thanks. What´s up?"
"What are you doing tonight? Maybe you want to go to a strip club?"

I politely decline her invitation and wish her a good night. First of all, I dislike strip clubs. I never have understood behind paying considerable amounts of money to look at beautiful girls doing erotic stuff, getting horny and then not getting to **** them. I´m not into cuckolding, but seriously, isn´t strip clubs like the epitome of cuckolding? Tease and denial. Second of all, beautiful girls that try to get clients into any types of bars usually mean one thing - you´re getting hustled in a major way. And third of all, even if the strip club was one of those clubs where you do get to **** (after returning back home, I googled some info on this, in Poland they are usually either legit clubs or clubs where they will drug you or hustle you in other ways, but you won´t get to ****)... well, if I am going to be unfaithful to my lovely wife at some point in my life, I wouldn't want it to be shitty sex with some hooker. I don't have a lot of experience in paying for sex, but I've ****ed a couple of hookers in my younger years (incidentally, the first time I think was after we had been to a strip club and were horny as ****) and, well, I'd say that these times rank in the bottom 5-10% of sexual encounters.

***

After dinner, I head out to the nearest casino. It turns out to be quite crappy, but hey, I'm alone and I don't have anything better to do. So I hang around, play some slots, lose some money, play some roulette, win some money, play some slots, win some more money, play some more roulette, win even more money and at around midnight I call it a night. As I cash out, I realise that I have actually won a quite pretty amount of money - something like 4-500 EUR. I've also had five or six beers, and as I head out for my 10 minute walk back to the hotel, I am in a good mood.

A bit closer to my hotel I am approached again by a strip club solicitor, this time a young male.

"Look mate, I am not interested in strip clubs", I reply, and quickly decide to go for the Hail Mary, "but if you can get me some coke or ecstasy, then we can talk!"
"Sorry, I have no contacts, I'm new to this job", he says. "But maybe you can help me and come to the club?"
"No, sorry, I have no interest in that. Anyway, good luck!"
"Hey", I now hear a female voice and see a cute blonde approaching, "what did you say that you want?"
"Well, some coke would be nice."
"Sure, I'll fix that for you. Let's go!"

Now, I am on a central street in Warsaw, and even if it is a Thursday evening, there are still people around. Also Warsaw is a safe city and as far as I know, straight up robberies are rare, so I decide to follow her for a bit. We go just around the corner and stop.

"Give me 400 zloty, that's like 100 EUR!"

I give her the money and now she tells me to wait for five minutes.

"Ah", I smirk, "so this is the part where you take my money and leave?"
"Don't be silly", she smiles back, "I work here!", she says and points to a strip club some 30 metres down the road.

She disappears in the dark and I stand around, checking my surroundings, checking potential getaway routes should some danger appear. Now, I may look and play the part of the stupid tourist, but I've been around enough to know that what I am doing is a stupid and potentially dangerous thing to do, but on the other hand my red flag radar didn't go off in any major way. And usually my radar is quite good.

A couple of minutes pass and she returns from a side street. She walks up to me, hugs me, gives me a kiss on the cheek and says "Thanks for tonight!" while she drops a small bag in my jacket pocket. I think to myself that even if the drugs turn out to be baking soda, I´ve never gotten a drug delivery in such a sweet way.

***

After a busy Friday spent working, I return to my hotel room and check the contents of the bag for the first time. I am assuming that I have been hustled and I also assume that on the off chance that the stuff is real, it's going to be the weakest **** ever. But before indulging, I hit the hotel gym, lift some weights and to 30 min cardio on an excercise bike. I go back to my room, crack open a beer, and pour some of the stuff out on the table. Smells legit, consistency is basically what you'd expect from medium-low quality coke, so I do a very small line (always start very small with unknown substances from unknown sources, safety first, right). I wait for 30 minutes, don't feel much although it does have a cokey feel to it, so I crack open another beer and to a bigger line. And to my surprise realise that I haven't been hustled. That blonde angel of the night actually delivered some real coke to me.

My plan was to chill out in my room and play some low-limit online poker, and that plan worked to some extent. However, when I lose the last of my 100 USD deposit on Pokerstars, I realise that there is no way I am going to be able to sleep any time soon, so at 2 AM I drop the bag in the wallet and head of to another casino - this one located at Marriot Hotel. As I've been doing coke all night, I'm talkative and happy, and more or less instantly make contact with a guy from Iceland and a Belarussian couple at the roulette table. Long story short: we have a large amount of fun, gamble and drink until 7 AM. In the end I hit a huge hot streak, so I cash out almost 5000 zloty (in for 2000 total), which give me another night of profit - this time to the tune of 700 EUR.

I manage around two hours of sleep before I spend the day walking around in Warsaw, buying souvenirs for my family and mysteriously completely fading a hangover. That part surprised me a bit, even though I didn't drink heavily and fast (and the drinks in the casino tasted bad, so I only drank like two or two and a half drinks over the time I was there - think I ordered four in total), I feel great except for being fatigued due to lack of sleep. I have lunch at a restaurant in Old Town, order a cola, to which the waiter replies with "With vodka or without?" I choose the without option, walk around some more, head out to the airport and sleep for the entire one-hour flight home.

***

I arrive in my hotel in Stockholm on Thursday evening. I booked a hotel in the area I grew up in, and a hotel that is like five minutes by foot from the biggest poker club in Stockholm. My play was to play on Thursday and go out with childhood friends on Friday, but the club was closed on Thursday. Oh, well. Some other time, right? Because it's not like I am going to go out drinking with friends and then playing cards, right?

Cue Friday night. One friend had to leave early, at around 11 PM, since he had to drive early in the morning, and shortly past one the rest of us call it a night. So I do the only thing I can do after a great evening, being 6-8 beers deep - I head to the ATM and walk to the club. When I arrive, the only seat open is in an NLT game. 10/10 SEK blinds (that's like 1/1 USD). First hand I am dealt pocket fours, I raise, there is a call or two inbetween, and then some guy makes it like 300, so I jam my 1500 SEK buy-in. He snap-calls, so I guess I am in bad shape, but I was actually narrowly ahead against his JTo. Unfortunately, he spiked a ten on the flop.

I don't really recall how I lost the second bullet, but I know I got it in good. I head to the ATM for a reload, and buy in for 3000 SEK. The only hand of note was when I had raised (or three-bet) J8s, flop was something like Q82 with two clubs (I have red cards), SB all of a sudden leads for pot into me, which I feel is weird, so I call. Turn is a blank, he bombs once again, and I am sensing that he might be FOS, so I call. River blanks, he jams (covers me), but I get great odds to call (there's like 1900 in the middle and his jam is 1000 more) so I go with my read and call, and MHIG against a busted flush draw.

Shortly afterwards there finally is a seat open in the PLO game, and boy, it was a great game. 10/10/20 blinds, stacks deep and extreme gambling. There were three or four players who made sure that almost no flop was seen without at least a three-bet, and often the flop had multi-way allins. I proceed to lose my 5000 stack with a set that didn't hold in a three-way spot, reload, win some money when I almost fold bottom set on a draw-heavy flop but in the end make a crying call for 4000 SEK and hold. Then a huge pot comes up, I have AQ65, flop is A34, there is action from some smaller stacks and then a big stack who was an extreme gambler potted it again, and I think that a lot of the times he will have a draw here and my ace will be good, and if it is not, well, then I have my straight draw as a backup, so I get it in and this time I was actually in a bad spot as the big gambly stack actually had A52x. However, I spike an offsuit seven and fade the diamonds on the river as well, so I scoop both the side pot against the shortstacks and the main pot against the big stack. The pot was 27k.

Then I hit some bad run - lose AKKxx in PLO5 allin pre against unknown hand and K9842 who spikes two pair on the river, miss a bluff against one of the tigher players (he spiked third set on the turn although his draw missed - if he doesn´t spike the set, I win it) and then miss overpair+fd+gutshot against two pair on the turn. Then the tide turns again, and I manage to get QTxx to hold on QTx against some guy with one pair and a gutshot (I told you the game was good, right) before once again losing in a big pot, there was a raise pre and some callers, I three-bet AAxxxds from the SB, the original raiser (gambly guy from the hands above) makes it 1000 to go, gets a call inbetween, I pot it and get two callers. First caller has something like 3,5k behind so I jam in the dark and he calls in the dark. Flop is KTx with two of my suit, we run it once for the main pot and twice for the side pot. I blank out on the first board, make a straight on the second, but the big main pot gets scooped by gambly guy who made some sort of shitty underpair - I do however scoop the side pot. Good thing that I potted when it came back to me, since the tight player on the button folded kings and he covered me - with such a flop there is no way I can do anything but jam, and if he would have called preflop and only agreed to run it once I would go home broke (however, I think he would have ran it twice).

I play until 4AM and in the end I cash out 25800 SEK, in for 9000 SEK in total, so I made a nice profit of 1500 EUR. Got the help I needed in the one big spot where I got it in bad. But it was an absolutely awesome game - if I had ran a bit purer, I could have easily won twice as much or more, but I won´t complain as I easily could have walked away a big loser as well.

***

It´s almost 1AM Sunday, wife and kids are away skiing, and I am about to go to a supermarket to buy myself a Christmas gift - a brand-new TV. After all, I need to show my family what it means to be a degenerate gambler and what degenerate gambling addiction leads to, right?

And It's a Win!

So, after a three month long hiatus of gambling at the local poker games, I finally made my return on Wednesday evening. As I arrived to the game, it was four-handed, so only five players including me, but that suits me fine. I bought in for 200 (we were playing 1-1-2 in non-bomb pots, 5 EUR/player in bomb pots, dealer chooses game and type of play), pretty soon almost doubled when I got it in on the turn with the nuts on one board and hit a one-outer on the second board to scoop. Then I lost a bunch in a similar spot but reversed - this time I didn't get there on the board I had a big draw on, and my opponent hit a one-outer on the other board for the scoop.

It didn't go well from here and pretty soon I found myself in for 500 in total. And here things started turning around (and two more players arrived). Unfortunately, I didn't take any notes, and my recall of the hands is pretty hazy since the game was regs-only, fast paced and nothing really stood out. I do remember one unstandard spot though. Flop 1 was low cards, no straight possible, I had NFD+gutshot, flop two was something like J72 rainbow, I had JJ. I bet the flop when checked to on the button and got like four calls, on the turn two pretty blank cards appeared, it checked to me and even though this is a spot where I bet like 99% of the time I decided to check it back for deception. Now, the river screwed me royally - I missed my draw and the board paired on that board, and on the other board the backdoor flush+straight came in, and with the action before me being like bet 50-allin, I mucked my hand. Had I bet the turn I would have probably gotten all-in and lost my buy-in. Oh, well, sometimes unorthodox plays work out.

Anyway, after this hand, my luck started turning, I started making some hands, and scooped a few pots here and there, and, well, in the end I went home at 2AM, booking a 160 EUR win over four hours of play.

Glad to see the goodrun continue, but since this was a pretty tame game with no degeneracy involved (the game is like a 20 minute drive and I usually go there by car, and I don't mix alcohol/drugs with driving, obviously), I don't have much to write up except for results.

Wish you all (if anyone actually reads this) a good weekend!

So, the week before Christmas is always full of stress, at least since we have kids. Work is always pretty chil and relaxed, since nothing important gets done the week before Christmas anyway, but everything else... Phew. On Monday I hosted our annual Christmas party for our employees. Long story short, everyone had a blast and said this was the best party so far, I got home at 4 AM from the afterparty and somehow managed to wake up three hours later and get the kids to school. And no, no risk for a DUI - school is a 15 minute walk from home and I always combine getting the kids to school with taking the dog out for a morning walk. So, yeah, Tuesday was pretty much a day of laying in bed, doing some braindead work, and waiting for the hangover to pass. Oh, and on Tuesday afternoon (when my hangover had passed), our new TV arrived and was installed. Now my wife will have a constant reminder of why her husband´s addictive tendencies are a net positive for everyone!

On Wednesday evening me and the kids went and bought us a Christmas tree. Both on the way there and on the way back they were constantly misbehaving, calling eachother names and so on, and when we get back... the ****ing tree doesn't fit into the holder, since it's too wide. And I have no tools at home - axe, saw etc. at the summerhouse. Luckily, my neighbour had an axe that I could borrow, so in the end it turned out okay, albeit with a larger workload than I had hoped for.

Yesterday I took my mom to buy a Christmas tree for herself, much more relaxing than with the kids, since we were both behaving as adults, not threatening eachother with violence and just having a nice and normal conversation. Oh, and I also picked up an Xbox for my little brats - looking forward to the fights on who gets to play what and when and so on. But the good thing is that I will have an edge in these fights, since I have a huge size, weight and streetfighting experience over them. Nah, jokes aside, will be sweet to have a console at home. Both for me and the kids.

Today I am just mostly chilling, since I can't be assed doing any real work the day before Christmas holidays. At lunchtime I'll drive to a mall since I still need to pick up presents for my wife and my mom, in the evening one of the kid's cousins will arrive and stay with us over Christmas, and tomorrow I will take him and my kids bowling and playing lasertag and perhaps to a movie or something.

This, of course, means that all my gambling winnings are gone. And on Saturday evening there is a game just a 20 minute walk from my home. And on Sunday I have nothing planned, as wifey will go skiing with the kids during the day and I have to be a functional and responsible adult only at 3 PM. So I can basically gamble the entire night away. The only worry I have is that going gambling in this game might be detrimental to my idea of staying completely sober until the new year (not really sure how I got this idea - I guess it popped up in my mind after the work party), since I have a slight hunch that this game might be filled with degenerates who drink, snort coke and enjoy a good gamble.

But, providing I get enough sleep (which I should, since I can sleep however long I like) I think I need to take this chance of gambling the night before Christmas since it might be the last chance I have in 2023!

Regardless, to the few readers of this blog, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, too!

Always reading Merry Christmas buddy!

A Merry-Go-Round Game

After having spent the day with my own kids and their cousin playing bowling, lasertag, eating out and doing some other stuff, I make my way to the poker game in high spirits - after all, what better way to celebrate love and unity than participating in a zero-sum game revolving around taking money from other people? At around 10 PM I arrive. The game is short-handed, which is good, but two of the players are Hold´em nits, which is bad, since it means that two out of five hands every orbit will be played NLT and if stacks aren´t deep and players aren´t pulling moves, NLT is just so boring.

I pick up a beer at the bar and sit down. Pretty soon I start running hot, I stack a player, and then I pick up a good pot in NLT of all games when I three-bet TT pre, c-bet a Txx flop with two diamonds and check-raise a turn that brings three to a straight - unfortunately, my opponent let his AT go. Then I get the chance to gamble when I three-bet 66533ds pre, get a jam from the shortstack and a jam from M., a player that doesn´t mind a gamble and that I battle a lot with. One of the guys that makes the game fun (although he usually ends up a winner). Shortstack has AA, that much is sure, but hey, I can´t resist the chance of taking a small gamble for around 100 EUR with a trashy hand, so I call. Flop is J88, which is bad, turn is a five, but on the river I spike a six to stack both players (M had some type of rundown, hit the jack on the flop). And what do you know, after an hour of playing I am up around 400 EUR.



Oh, and about ten minutes after joining the game, the host tells me that there´s a line waiting for me in the back room should I want one. Well, you know me, if someone gives me an offer I can´t refuse. With Christmas coming up, I am however set to keep the degening at a bare minimum - family first and all of that. And although I have Sunday more or less free until late afternoon since wife plans to take the kids skiing during the day, I still don´t want to be ****ed up and feeling bad the entire day.

***

As I drive to do some errands and pick up some last minute stuff for Christmas dinner, I am wondering to myself, why the hell am I feeling so tired? I got home at 4 AM, fell asleep maybe half an hour later and slept around five hours. I shouldn´t be feeling this tired, I didn´t overindulge in anything, three beers and five lines of coke in almost six hours. I think to myself that maybe it is due to not sleeping enough the nights before. Or maybe my 40-year old body is just telling me to stay the **** away from everything that isn´t perfectly healthy? And I recall having to fight to not fall alseep at the table at 3:30 AM, even though that isn´t really so late, I´ve played longer than that loads of times also without stimulants in my bloodstream. What the ****?

***

What goes up must come down, right? After the hot start I can´t seem to pick up another pot. The few times I bluff I run it into the nuts, and except for a few smaller bluffs when M was trying to steal some pots, I just keep missing my draws, or getting drawn out on, or just coolered as when I double up a player on 355J8 when I have AKJ95 - turns out I was behind the whole way against his JJ33x, although the J was what really did me in. I drop down to around 100 EUR, before finally winning a pot. Time to build some late-night momentum!

Slightly past three we agree that we will play until 4AM and then call it a night. Half an hour later, I am in a three-bet pot with a trashy hand: A5322ds. The flop, however, is pretty sweet: 762 with two diamonds. This gives me bottom set with a small backup in the form of a three-high flush draw. I check it, it checks all the way to M on the button who bets. I pot it to 150 with a tad over 100 behind, he thinks for a while and then says "**** it, I want to gamble with you" and I snap-call. The turn is pretty awful, an offsuit ten, meaning that any wraps/straightdraws get there, and the river is even worse since it comes a diamond. Since M thought for quite a while and said that he wants to gamble, I kind of rule out sets, and if he didn't have a set, then there are basically no draws that did not get there. And sure enough, he has a ****ing K high diamond draw and top pair.

As the game is about to break in half an hour anyway, and as I am feeling tired, I choose not to rebuy and chalk up my first loss for December: in for 200, out for 0. Gambling wise December was great - won a lot on poker over three sessions (the Stockholm PLO session was great, -30 in two sessions back home), won a lot in two sessions of casino gambling in Warsaw, and as of now I am also 210 EUR up on sportsbetting (counting deposits vs withdrawals) for the month. Feels good to be back playing poker more regularly as well - I think that I forgot that the game is actually fun to play during my recent three-month hiatus.

***

Having just finished the opening of presents on Christmas Eve I realise that I am cold and shivering. I excuse myself and go lie down in bed. And continue shivering despite. Sure enough, a couple of hours later I have a fever of almost 38,5. I text M. and tell him that one of the NLT guys probably gave me the Nit Virus. The next day I spend in bed and at the end of the evening I realise that I most likely have Covid, since my voice more or less disappears - so far, Covid is the only disease I've had in adult life that has made my voice disappear. This was the first time that Covid was accompanied with a fever however, but here I sit three days after Christmas, feeling okay except for being very tired, having a dry cough and trouble speaking.

All isn't negative though - I now have a legitimate reason for spending my days in the couch playing Football Manager 24 or Xbox, and watching football on the TV.

And I'll take Covid over flu any time - at least my two first times with Covid were much more of a breeze than any of the flu infections I've ever had, and this one doesn't seem to be an exception. Hopefully I'll return to full health within a few days.

Looks like bulling NLT regs lol.

Good health!

Nah, just our inside jokes about them being nits for wanting to play two cards in a DC game, that's all. Most of them are cool guys anyway and while NLT without deep stacks is extremely boring in a casgame setting (IMHO), no hard feelings. Oh, and at least when shorthanded, many of them seem to have trouble adjusting to agression so they overfold a lot, which kind of makes it easy to play against them.

Thanks, voice already getting better, so a couple of days and I should be back to 100% again.

Oh, and I forgot to add that I sat between two NLT players, and one of them ran out of vapes, so I let him use mine - so, naturally, he was the one who got me ill! (Okay, not really - I obviously was ill going to the game without realising, otherwise it would be hard to explain me having trouble staying awake at 3AM, despite doing a few bumps of coke now and then, so in reality it was actually a Degen Virus...)

First Gambling of 2024

I was planning to go gambling last Saturday, but cancelled due to not getting enough sleep, and due to wife and daughter coming back from a couple of days in our summerhouse during the last week of school holidays, but on Wednesday I was good to go - even managed to clock almost nine hours of sleep, which is quite a feat considering I have to get up at 7 AM every morning to get the kids ready for school.

I arrive just at the game starts, I know everyone playing, and somehow I get off to a really hot start:


Half an hour in I am sitting on something like 400 EUR in profits, after scoring an early double up and then stacking another player. However, from there it went downhill fast. Unfortunately, my recall is quite hazy, since we were playing fast, I was in the mood to gamble and thus played most hands, often with an open-raise, and most of the other players were in a splashy mood as well. Sometimes I got it in good, sometimes I got it in bad, but it was just not happening for me - a prime example of this was when I three-bet AKQJT, flop KTx - I bet and get check-raised to 150, I jam for a tad over 300 and chop it against naked KT. Meh. There was one spot where I got my hand stuck in the cookie jar, flop was T32 with two clubs, I had K-high clubs and 54, action went bet 15 - raise 45 and here I chose to make it 150 to go (since both players were active and this scenario had played out a couple of times, I figured that the re-raise might be light). The best course of action is probably fold I guess, since I can´t really call, and re-raising commits me. The first player tanks forever before folding TT, figuring he is up against a wrap+FD, but the second player jams for 290 total and I am of course committed. Club on the turn and I am dead - he had T2 for two pair and nut clubs to go with that, so I had only six outs and some backdoors, but poor play from my side. Way too agressive.

Anyway, after a while I end up in for 600 with only a tad over 100 in my stack, it is around 1:30 AM and I just want to go home, so I three-bet blind and get called, and then jam blind and get called. I turn out to have flopped trips and hold against some type of one pair+straight draw hand. Guess I am not going home after all. Soon afterwards I score another double, when I had raised J9866 and hit a dream flop of J76. I bet and get called, the turn is a king, I pot (leaving something like 20 behind), we get it in and run it twice. Make the straight on the first board, blank on the second and I scoop. Then I pick up a large win in a three-way bomb pot, where I flopped top set on 983 with two clubs on one board (nothing on the other) - I call a flop bet together with a bunch of other players, on the turn the board pairs up (9833) so I lead and get called in two spots, river is a 9 giving me quads so I bet again and get called in two spots and win 50%. Then I lose a quite big one when I three-bet a semi-connected high hand (like AKT97 or something along those lines), get jammed on by the player on my right for around 180, I reluctantly call it off and turns out I was a big favourite against a trash hand, but I lose. Can't win all the gambles, can you?

As play is winding down, I somehow manage to get myself involved in quite a marginal situation yet again. On the turn, one board is 8426 with two hearts, on the other board there are two hearts as well. I have A66x with nut hearts, so middle set and nut flush draw on both boards, on the second one I also have a gutshot. It goes check-check-bet 95 from a player with 100 behind-call. I should probably just call and see what the river brings, but instead I decided to make a play here. I know that the player that called probably isn´t too strong - in this spot I am pretty sure that the player who bet has 75 for the nut straight based on how the play went (bet-call-call flop, check-check-bet-call turn) and I am assuming that the player who bet flop and now called turn has a mid-range drawing hand of some sort, or maybe even 75 himself with no equity on the other board. So I basically decide to just wing it and pot it to 430, leaving something like 150 back - my opponent had roughly the same amount of money back, maybe a little less. After a long think, he folds, both boards run out blank but I manage to find a chop since my 88 is good on one of the boards. The guy who folded claims that I would have scooped the large side pot had he not folded... not sure I believe that, though.

Afterwards not much happens, and in the end I cash out 620 EUR for a massive 20 EUR profit. Considering I was in a gambly mood and played way too many hands, I am pleased with the result.

***

In other news, Covid was quite a breeze except for a few days of massive fatigue, but this time it lingered a bit longer than previously, had a day of massive fatigue a couple of days ago for no apparent reason. Also my swimming times and performance is way down. Not sure this is due to Covid though, could also be because of me getting very little excercise from like the 10th of December - kids were sick and then the pool was closed for maintenance until the new year. I really hope it is just a mix of post-viral fatigue and no excercise, if it´s not I´ll start to worry about my health and probably go see a doctor. However, I think that when I get back to 3-4 times/week of excercise, the strength and stamina will return, and I am still much better off than before. It´s just that the drop is so noticeable, especially when pushing a bit harder.

Oh, and I was going to quit vaping tomorrow. But then a friend invited me out for dinner and beer on Saturday evening, so no use trying to quit on Friday if I am going out on Saturday. And next week I am off to Stockholm for a work trip, arrive on Thursday evening and fly back Saturday evening. I somehow, by pure coincidence, booked a hotel literally next door to the casino, so there is quite a big chance of me accidentally venturing there on Thursday. No major degenning though since I need to be fresh for work on Friday, and on Friday I´ll probably go out with friends - might end up in either the casino or poker club anyway, but we´ll see about that.

Until next time!

Gambling it up in Sweden

Friday night, it´s around 4:30 AM, and I am in for more money than I was counting for, but in my quite inebriated state I could not find the willpower to leave a game that was obviously good only because I ran out of cash in my wallet, especially as the ATM is just a minute away. We are playing 25/25/50 SEK NLT, which translates to rougly 2.5/2.5/5 USD, and it is action, it is splashy, loads of deep stacks and for once I am actually having fun playing a two-card game.

After some heavy action on the flop, which was J84 with two spades, I am rooting for a spade to hit the turn. The pot is around 9k already and I have only 3.5k back - but I am holding A4 of spades for a pair and a flushdraw. The turn, however, blanks out and the big stack puts out a bet of 6k. Call, call by two shorter stacks, who I barely cover. Of course, I am never folding, so I just stick it in and say run it once.

If I win this pot, I am up around 8k for this night. If I lose, I am down 13k and booking a huge loss for this trip. And it all comes down to just one card...

***

I arrived in Stockholm Thursday night. After a few beers and dinner in the lounge (I have free lounge access in a number of airports thanks to one of the cards I have) I was feeling good. I checked into my cheap-ass hotel, strategically located a couple of hundred meters from the casino, charged my phone for a while and then headed out to the casino.


I enter the casino and head up to the poker room only to find out that a 25/25 PLO5 table is about to open - however, a must-move one.I head down to get some chips, lose 1k on roulette, and then make my way up to the table which turns out to be 25/25 on paper, but playing 25/25/50 since everyone straddles, and score a double-up the very first hand, only to lose it back a few hands later. I raise AA97xss, one of the blinds three-bets and gets a few callers, so I pot it to 3000 and get four callers. Flop is Q97 with two spades, the first player jams, the other two (shorter stacks than me) call as well and I of course call. A 9 on the turn gives me some hope, but the big stack turns up an absolute monster: KQQJT with spades. Oh, well.

I reload and the action player who scooped the large pot just keeps winning and winning, running up his stack to something like 35-40k in a few orbits. I do start picking up some steam and am sitting on around 9k (in for 7k) when I get called to the main game. Very tilting, since this game was good and just an orbit earlier we discussed changing it to 50/50 with optional straddle instead of 25/25 with mandatory straddle, but one player refused.

The main game sucks, but I still decide to keep playing. I proceed to lose a pot with NFD+gutter vs set, and instead of leaving I head down to get more chips. This was the single worst decision I made during the whole trip and although I did make some dubious decisions on later days, this decision - while being more or less sober - was the very worst one. I proceed to lose a largish pot when I call down with the second nut straight and nut blockers (was very close to folding, but in the end I decided that I have a blocker for the nut straight, so **** it) and then I lose the rest when KT9xx failed to improve against naked Aces on QJx.

Of course, I am not one for going home 15k down, so I grab a whiskey sour and compliment myself on good planning - in my shirt pocket I have a 1000 SEK chip left and a 1000 SEK slot ticket. Time to grind it back!

I casually stop at the first roulette table I see, toss the croupier the chip and say “Five with neighbours, two hundred”. And what do you know, the five hits and all of a sudden I have reduced my loss by around six thousand. I play some more, win some, lose some, but as I head down to the slot room, I have 8000 in chips in my shirt pocket. As for the slots, I am off to a slow start, but then I hit a bonus, and in the end I head to the cashier´s cage with 11500 SEK for a total loss of only 3500. I head to bed, thankful for my roulette and slot skills which clearly eclipsed my poker skills this evening.

***

After a busy Friday at work, I get back to my hotel, grab a beer and some chips from the hotel bar and relax. An hour later I go out to meet a friend from high school who I hadn´t seen for at least 10 years. We go grab a burger and a beer, and then head out to a bar for more beer.

Here I see something that you rarely see anywhere else, something that is symbolic of the fanatical drug policy of Sweden, where they are really tough on casual drug users while being completely unable to deal with the higher-ups and the spiraling gang violence. At around 10 PM, in a bar, three police officers walk in. Not to deal with a troublemaker, no. They just walk around and look at people and try to find out if someone´s not having a sniff of some powder on a ****ing Friday night. Ten minutes later they leave.

And in clubs, they actually have plain-clothes officers monitoring potential drug users - a friend of mine got busted in Sweden while walking to the toilet, and he didn´t even have anything on him. Of course, he had used drugs, and will now get a fine, but this is something I find truly bizarre. Okay, go look for drug dealers, if that´s the drug policy you have. Whatever. Go after underage users to try to get them into rehab, or at least think twice before doing drugs in the future. But to go after peaceful adult drug users on a weekend night? That is just so ****ing absurd that I can´t wrap my head around it. Sure, if someone´s totally ****ed up and doing bad **** - arrest their ass. I´m all for it.

But this? Just sick.

Anyway, a few hours we head over to a rock club where we hung out as youths, happily notice that the place hasn´t changed much, and some time after two we bid our farewells. As I sit in the taxi to the poker club, I feel so happy to have people in my life that you haven´t met for more than 10 years, but when you meet it feels like a month has passed at the most. That truly is a blessing.

***

As I wait for the dealer to put the chips into the middle and check the stack sizes, I do a quick count. I am in for 13k (I had only brought 7k when I went out, and another 6k from the ATM), if I lose I am almost 17k down for the trip. Kind of brutal, but whatever, haven´t had a big gambling loss in quite a while and in December I did win a lot of…

…and my thoughts are interrupted by the deuce of ****ing spades on the river, letting me scoop this massive 20k+ pot!

Boom! There we go, baby! Back in action! This was the second time I was all-in with my second buy-in, the first one also went well:


In this hand, I had three-bet TT. Flop was QTx, check-I bet-he raises, I just call. Turn a low blank, he bets, I jam, he calls, we run it once and my set is good. What made it even more funny was that I had a friend back home drinking and texting me to take 10% of my action, and after I won this pot he asked me for a live hand peek over video. I obliged, and what would you know? I saw in my phone screen that I opened red Aces!

And to make it better, there is an open and a few callers before action is on me, and when I make it 1000 to go, the opener makes it 3000, leaving only a tad over 2000 behind, we get it in and I win both runouts. Good times. Around this time my stack maxed out at somewhere between 25-30k:


And as you can see from the image, I obviously have the 100 straddle on, because this is how you play, right? And after such a win, you need a celebratory beer, right?



Of course, what goes up must come down, especially if it is 5AM, you are drunk and the game is playing big - but after making a dubious call an hour later and getting shown top set, I call it a night and cash out 14150 SEK for a profit of 1150 SEK. Not bad at all, considering the amount of alcohol consumed and the fact that I barely ever play NLT these days.



***

I awake at 10:30 on Saturday, somehow my body decided that I shouldn't sleep until my wake-up call an hour later. Oh, well. I realise that I still am a bit drunk from last night, but, oh, well. **** happens. At 11:59 I check out and I am feeling quite good about my day - I don't have any real plans except picking up some gifts for the family. I walk around until I find the first open kebab place, have a distinctly average kebab and with kebab-boosted energy levels I continue to go about my business. At around 2 PM I decide that enough is enough and make my way to a pub, where I have a few refreshing beers and snack on some garlic-fried shrimp. I realise that I shouldn't keep sitting in a pub, since I really don't want to get drunk, so I walk around a bit more before I find myself next to the train station.

Two hours to go before I need to leave to the airport and a casino right next door, so what's a degen gonna do? Of course, keep degenning! Fortunately for me, the first slot I sit at rewards me with a nice little win, and when I move over to the next one, I get a sweet bonus:


A while later I cash out 7500 SEK after being in for 1000 SEK. I decide to ask for 6500 SEK in cash and 1000 in chips, so I can have a Whiskey Sour at the roulette table before leaving. This time the roulette isn´t kind to me, especially the final two spins when I the number that hit was adjacent to one that would have given me a nice profit. Especially the last spin was evil, as I had bet around four numbers and a hit would have given me around 5000 in return.

All things considered, this trip was a great success with several unlikely comebacks - and in the end I posted a profit of around 5000 SEK!

Until next time!

Love it!!���������������������� Hard enough to find good drunken gambling action where I am but reading your TRs is the next best thing!! LFG 2024 heater year!

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, the games back home are usually quieter (although sometimes totally degen as well), especially the weekday game I play in quite a lot when it runs, since I have work the next day I always drive and stay sober. But with age comes wisdom, which means work on Friday abroad = fly out late Thursday afternoon and back home on Saturday!

Today I Deposited 50 on Stars and Played the Biggest PLO25 Pot of my Life

And although I am known for the excessive use of words to describe degenerachy, a picture says more than a thousand words:


Villain bet the flop (he played crappy), so I happily came over the top for around 100 more, he snap-called and I figured I would be up against a set, but hey, he had TPTK and TPTK goooood.

Although all is not bad, there was a Euroleague game here in Riga tonight (Anadolu Efes-Maccabi), my son is in first grade so they have an extra week of holidays so my wife and my son is in the summerhouse, I wanted to go to the game but daughter said no, so we had a chill night with dinner at a Japanese restaurant and some shopping, and at home I drank a few beers and watched the game, but yeah, the reason I am telling this is that ten minutes before the game I messaged by dealer and asked him to bet Efes -4,5 for me, and I bet just the right amount to have a gram for free if I win, so tomorrow this degenerate is picking up a gram of coke for free (ok, iif you count the bet, it's for half price, but whatever). I won't use it tomorrow though, wife and son returns from the summerhouse, hoping to have some fun with wifey, so I'll pass both on poker and going out, but still, better to call in your gambling wins in due time, right?

I have no poker or casino gambling to report on, just been working, taking care of the family and indulging in the occasional drug-fuelled party night. I mean, one of those nights turned out really degen and extremely fun (basically we did a shitload of MDMA, my Garmin thought I did a swimming workout between 02-08 AM, while in reality I was just feeling awesome and dancing like a monkey to some nice electronic beats all night), but no poker or gambling, so not much to write home about.

Until next time!