Somewhere along the way I lost myself. Probably months, maybe even years ago. I can't tell.
I know.. I just know that I have to overcome myself. There is no way around it and a part of me, the most existential part of me is terribly.. terribly afraid to fully dedicate myself to this.
It's going to take sacrifices that I'm not willing to make.
I simply dont want to let go..

Why can I not just let go..? What the fk am I afraid of?

I have been struggling with this "existential" restlessness for a long time. It's essentially what keeps me wanting to go out there,
rock climbing/diving/hiking through the jungle looking for elephants..

If I have ever been 100% truly myself then not for longer then a few brief moments.

According to Kierkegaard, the "self" is a relation that relates itself to it's own self. A relation that can be understood as a synthesis of the infinte and the finite.
Of temporal and eternal. A synthesis of body and soul.

Not to be one's own self is despair!

Kierkegaard concludes that all man (naturally) are in despair. the most fatal one being the despair that is not even aware that he/she is in despair.

Maybe you cannot choose what you want but you can choose what you are!
Idk. I will eventually find out.
If there is no freedom of choice I'm not sure being human is all that great.

Maybe I've read too much Schopenhauer lately, who is arguably the biggest pessimist in human history.. (but also one of the biggest geniuses)

September:



stars.fr



comes to 7.8k w/ rb


little strategic leakfinder #1:

Most of you prob do this already but in case you don't.
I find that playing around with the "reports" function on PT4 is pretty much the most effective leakfinder outside of getting coaching and it costs 0 money.

example #1: New Report>Player Report>Next>Preflop Stack Size

Add stats of your liking and it should look like this (filtered for the last session obv so you guys don't go and exploit me):



If you do this with a months sample size and compare it with others it will become noticeable with which stack sizes you are leaking the most value/are unbalanced.
You can filter for the top of your buy-in range to see how things change or only show post ante stats, stuff like that.
If you have a decent sample on some good regs you can get a good grip on what they do differently.

The self is an interesting and, at times, haunting subject In buddhism, you observe self until it completely dissipates... What remains, is the observer, but that also apparently dissolves... sigh

My buddy, once said that the only freedom that we have in this life, is to take away the latter or not... quite pessimistic, but it makes sense to me...

Hope you are not feeling too heavy... Take care friend

hey, assonfire from ps.de here. Quite the high quality blog you got here, I will definitely keep following. And I hope you will reveal your big plans soon :-) I got some big ones myself, most people would call me a dreamer and delusional moron for those, but those people couldnt even grasp the effort I'm putting into achieving them and I see a lot of similarities reading your blog. If you happen to be in Thailand the next 6-7 months, let me know, dinner and/or drinks on me!

I didn't immerse in Buddhism as deep as I planned to (although I check out every pagoda that crosses my path) but it's concept of "Self" always seemed odd to me in the way that I simply don't think it's necessary to dissipate the Self in order to reach.. enlightenment, redemption, Nirvana or w/e it is and providing it's practised consequently, the conclusion would be an apathetic/nihilistic form of existence (imo but I think Nietzsche would word it similarly).

That's not to say that I don't think the "ego" can, or I would rather say should dissolve completely.

I try to be as open minded as possible when it comes to subjects as deep as they can possibly be so.. maybe that's just me not wanting to realize that's actually the truth and I'm just clinging on what I think/used to think is right because it gives me comfort.

My Interpretation of Self is closer to modern psychology and western philosophy. Plato, C.G Jung, Kierkegaard are just the ultimate bosses imo.

I correctly assumed that you are the type that'd understand my ramblings
The thing is that this type of despair doesn't make you feel too heavy or causes any strong emotions.
I'm not depressed or sorrowful.. But I'm torn!

Maybe it's true that you have to lose yourself to find yourself.
I feel like while traveling and spending so much time self-reflecting I'm aging 5 times as rapidly and life seems so absurd right now that I can't even know what I'm capable of doing anymore.
I lost a decent % of self-control to put it mildly..

It's funny thinking about the things that changed.
Here's a few cliffs (Why am I writing this?^^):

-I quit eating meat 2 months before I moved to Asia not knowing how much harder it would be over here (low quality dairy products cost up to 5x more, Cambodian food is 98% meat/fish = basically handcuffed to a vegan diet).
Anyway, I gave in to Lasagne after 6 months partly because I lost so much weight I would see my heart beating through my chest
-I started and quit smoking cigarettes at least 5 times (lighting up a cigarette as I type this) even though I havent smoked for 7 or 8 years
-luckily no drugs or heavy alcohol abuse other then 2 fun spacecookie sessions after having quit weed ~8 years ago
-quit coffee ~7 years ago. having coffee every day.
-quit Burger King/McDonald's/KFC ~7 years ago. Went to McDonald's twice yesterday. 3 days ago McDonald's for breakfast/Burger King for dinner etc.
-almost had sex for $ for the first time 2 months ago. Fortunately just ended up drinking Jäger while watching (I assume hilarious) Vietnamese Stand-Up in the hotel room. (Obv still pay for the whole night)
-a rub&tug experience that resulted in me not "finishing" off after what felt like a lifetime.. Resulted in the funniest dialogue I've ever had and me almost hooking up w/ the masseuse (dang, should've insta wrote it down as soon as I got back)

How much did he offer?


Just keep the degen stuff in moderation and do what makes you happy man. oh and keep wining $.

Matteo come to india but for that dont plan and u know why ..........

Glad it didnt turn into tl;dr (yet)
Certainly not as entertaining as yours because my hookerstories really suck, as I don't have sex with them.

I'll prob be in Thailand in Novemeber to take you up on that offer


350$

gg wp tho. Should've worded that differently..

yah, only a matter of time bro


recieved a lot of gifts today

Just stumbled upon this gem of a thread! Have always thought of you as one of the better 180regs when I mix them into my schedule. glgl!

I am in Vietnam for 2 months now, slowly making my way back to Cambodia tomorrow to play the APT and say farewell to my friends.

Spent some time learning about the Vietnam War, (here better known as the "American War") visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon and the Cu Chi tunnels, watching a whole lot of documentaries, reading books etc.

I liked how unbiased the museum is, although it lacked footage showing North-Vietnamese war crimes or POW camps etc.
it wasn't gloryfing how incredibly resilient the Vietnamese were and portrayed US soldiers and civilians in a humane light, depicting the desparation of a war that turned out unwinnable:





As well as the homage paid to American protesters, and to soldiers who refused to fight, those who burned their draft cards to face jail time and the few who chose to self-immolate.

However, the most disturbing images I have ever seen were those of Vietnamese civilians craving for their lives just moments before they got murdered.

some more pics:

Two of about 1000 entrances to the "Cu Chi tunnels"
(Was ridiculously exhausting to crawl through even without carrying AKs and RPGs)





booby trap



Pagoda in Nha Trang



huge white buddha



Nazi Dragon




Thx man! Gl in your gind as well, whatever your screenname is

6am in Cần Thơ. Getting Coffee



4 days left to make it in time

Lold at nazi dragon

Made it to Sihanoukville 3 hours before start.
Feels good to be back! Hope I can keep my VPIP on getting mugged at 0!

Subbed - Keep up the nice posts - Love reading them

skipping the 1k main because of
a) 0/4 as of now and not doing so hot in the cash-games. Didn't plan ahead properly to end up "cash broke" (nitty skrill withdrawal policys). Kinda dumb..
b) It's an ultra deep 4 days event and day 2 tomorrow hits a sunday which in itself is quite likely going to be more profitable with less hours spent on avg. so I should've skipped it anyways looking at it from a $EV perspective
c) lol live poker

October

.com


.fr

+1279 online
-1125 live

APT





bug that looks like leaf



The APT was really cool, small field sizes but really friendly atmosphere, pretty much playing vs the same player pool of ~50-60 people everyday so you get to know most. Reminded me how incredibly awesome it is to play this game for a living. Hopefully Amaya won't take it away from us...

Spent most of the time alongside of "zhivago2" (can't remember his full name but one of "teh Germans") who just recently retired from poker.
It's funny because our first interaction was at the table when I called his ep open w/ what I thought was 9s8s otb. call his cbet on A8x w/ bdfd and raise his turn bet on x of spades. he tank folds i double check my holecards to see 9h8h (facepalm) and obv show the 9h..
Online-Poker ftw, where that never happens^^
Anyway he teached me how to play Chinese and crushed me and took my money, I then crushed him at chess and fifa and he crushed me at pool.
He was railing me for 2 of my online sessions, smoking doobies and spotted some leaks along the way, reminded me of how much there is to learn.
Heaps cool guy, definitely going to pay him a visit when his hotel in Indonesia is completed.

I didn't have the mind on the grind lately and only logged ~150h of poker this month but was worth it to spent time with friends. When I crossed the border to Cambodia 2 weeks ago along the coastline, which is the most stunning area I've came across this year, I realized how much I missed this country. It's the first time in my life that I've felt some sort of.. belonging!

Played quite terrible today but the cool thing about tournaments is, you can still win moneys regardless.



Up to 63%

great thread bro. jst subbed. did i miss the utopian goals?

measures... something needs to be done

I will write them down. And then there's no coming back

measures...

hmmm.. I've been seeing a Cambodian girl for 2 weeks now and am pretty sure she wants to play chess today..
Her English is capped at about 15 words so we've been communicating nonverbally mostly and shifting dictionaries back and forth. It's only cute and romantic for a couple of hours though.
Srsly it gets old really quick!
So.. She doesn't know I'll be leaving soon. I asked her if she wants to leave everything behind and come with me to Thailand.
I just can't see myself breaking the heart of an Asian girl let alone ruin her with my d**k (Louis C.K. <3) but she's so gorgeous and.. Asian.

#firstworldproblemsin3rdworldcountries

Firstly i'm quite impressed(?) you've managed to go 2 weeks without ruining her with your dick.

Secondly, besides the fact that you've only known her 2 weeks you don't even know what she's like if you guys can't communicate. You may never really know.

She's kinda like a cute puppy that you're happy to see and hang out with but that's all it is really.

Gonna be much worse if you realize this a month from now when she's with you in Thailand.

You need to find yourself a Thai chick that speaks German obv. gl gl

Ist Louis ck a balding fat ginger? Fu for putting that image in my head

That thriomphe thing seems like an awesome tourney, is it weekly or something? Can't play on .fr so I guess it doesn't matter to me

Nice score! Gotta compensate for the times you play great but get slaughtered

Yea it's a Sunday special. Awesome comp good structure and only fishies cuz starts super early

Alright.. this wasn't easy.. pretty pumped now!


How to recapture soul:

1st measure: Spend as little as possible / Save as much as possible

2nd measure: Face your Fear



3rd measure: The 3rd Day Grind


little side measure: 100$ to charity for every cigarette until remainder of life

Starting... Now!