I've always kept my mouth shut about the poker-contenty parts of your thread, since in many ways I think I'm the Anti-SJ, but as we all seem to be on break, I'll make an offhand observation: There's only one reason to play 1-2 nl in Vegas, and that's to pick up two essential, yet rare, skills -- skills that will let you move up to where you can make some money in the bigger softer games.

The first skill is learning to never play when you don't feel like it. It may be FOMO, it may be the puritan work ethic, but when you are thinking of playing when you'd rather be hanging out, listen to that inner lazy voice. It's trying to tell you something. Chill. Only play games that are irresistible.

The second, and in some ways more important, skill is learning to rage quit. When something happens that infuriates you and you want to get up and leave, get up and leave. Nurture your inner rage. If you say, "As soon as it's my blind, I'm outta here," pamper yourself and don't wait for your blind. Storm off now.

Once you get these two things down, you can play any game at any stakes.

I've always thought you were a natural in these two areas, but for some reason you seem to fight it. Maybe you're embarrassed by your gifts. Maybe you like making things difficult as an extra incentive. Who knows?

Also, it's fine that you are spending time studying poker, but for every hour watching poker videos, try to spend two hours wondering if there are any hot chicks out by the pool. Your game will improve more quickly once you learn to focus on what's important.

jmo

Keeping a curious and an engaged mind is most of the battle, especially as you get older; the same old ingrained neural pathways start to become superhighways with fewer and more difficult exits.

I might do Walden as my next half-read review. I think it's due for a reread.

Part of the conflict comes from my being a fan of the Stoic emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius. He was very much of a doer, in addition to being a thinker, and he has a lot to say about dispensing with adversity. One of his most famous quotes is

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Sometimes I feel like I'm letting him down by not trying a little harder.

Abandoned McCarran, and what, the 109 bus?. Saddenz.

Marcus Aurelius was all about identifying what you have control over and what you don't. You have no control over whether a game is good. You do have control over whether you play in it. Another guy who writes about this is Epictetus. He's not as soulful as Aurelius, but his Axiom of Futility is worth checking out.

Well at least you don’t have to worry about sitting in the middle seat next to two fatties.

Walden and Redwall I remember very little of but remember picking both up as a young teen off recommendation from a friend who is a great reader.

Literally can’t even remember the plot of Walden but I remember enjoying it.

The bus pic was from the terminal 3 shuttle. The interior is just like the 109 though. I've seen a few Epictetus quotes from time to time, but I haven't read any long pieces by him. I'll have to keep an eye out.

Unfortunately, the algorithm that keeps the planes chock full is still viable. My gate area started to fill up a few minutes after I took the pictures. I'm fortunate in that my old bosses generally fly me first class.

The airline gave out snack packs this time instead of the standard first class meal. This allowed me to keep my mask on and stash the snacks away for later. The only time I pulled my mask away was for a total of 3-5 seconds to gulp down a couple of Jack Daniels nips.

On a nastier note, I generally spit into the urinal when I use the public restroom. It's just a behavioral tic which tends to get things started. This time I hawked a loogie right into my mask. I was stone sober at that point.

I'll prolly be covering Walden when I get back. Redwall was one of those series that was always on my list, but I never pulled the trigger on it.

I thought they weren’t allowed to fill middle seats due to social distancing requirements. I’ll find out shortly on my way to Europe shortly. My boss who just did the same flight return portion said it was 80% empty. He was able to reserve entire middle section four seats per person on a 777 for him and the family.

That was the initial plan, but since late June United and American have been filling at least some planes cheek to jowl. I had an extra leg added to my flight--Newark to Washington DC when I was supposed to be going the other direction to Hartford--in what I suspect was an algorithmic scheme to pack the planes.

Can you deplane in Newark and train across NYC into CT? Seems like the worse move you could make to go to Newark and then head south to DC

My destination was north of Hartford and almost 3 hours from Newark by road or train. Two quick 1 hour flights in first class is not a particular hardship compared to busing and training through the Tri-State Area with two weeks of luggage in tow.

You son of a *****, I’m in! (1st class sold)

I remember now quitting Redwall after the first book or maybe early into the second. Walden I can’t help but remember liking so much that I looked it up, still didn’t remember it. So I’m probably going to make it my next novel to reread Walden.

(Weird side note: I looked up famous lines/passages and one of my favorite HDT lines comes from Walden so maybe I remember it better than I think and starting it will trigger all the memories)

+1 10/10 post would read again

You could also cbet smaller on the flop (which means you need to crank up your turn cbet frequency a bit when compared to the situation where you bet 50-70% on the flop).

Good stuff!

That seems to be the fashion lately, Sheep: c-bets as low as 1/4 to 1/3 pot on flops where villain is unlikely to have a range advantage.

I'm having some trouble getting on board with the new small c-bets; but I will, eventually. The live play sizing is sort of lagging on this, last time I checked, and sticking around 1/2 pot+, but I'm not playing live lately, so there's no excuse to not adjust to online conventions.

First day back at the office with the bosses gone. Of course Windows did a big update over the weekend, which never fails to screw up the office intranet, not to mention that they made everyone's default browser Microsoft Edge without asking for permission. Typical Windows--I think I have most of the fires out.

The nice lady who works here filing docs and answering phones asked if she could turn on the radio, which is perma-set to the local "variety" station, a title that's a huge contradiction in terms, given that they play only 8 of the top 40 songs over and over again, all day long. I have a neurotic aversion to repetitive tripe.

I told her that the station was one of the reasons why I quit this job in the first place. The ****ing thing is still playing songs which made me sick to death two years ago. So now we're listening to country. It's a change of pace.

Modern country songs seem to follow standard old 70's-80's pop song formats--think Eagles, Pat Benatar, Journey, Jimmy Buffet, Dr. Hook and the like--sort of telling a story with a hook and standard refrains. Nowadays these features have been thrown out of mainstream pop. Country songs have adopted these old methods, thrown a manufactured twang into the lyrics and called it good.

In the early 50s somebody asked Charlie Parker how he could listen to so much awful country music. He replied to the effect, "The stories, man. Listen to the stories."*

*Ken Burns Jazz PBS documentary?

My admittedly ancient experience with doing this is that you have to set them up first. If your first few micro-c-bets are with hands you are willing to commit with, then you'll have an opportunity to put the fear of God into the table with them. Otherwise you'll get tortured doing it.

Alternatively, you can throw in some bluff-stackoffs to keep them on their toes, but I'd rather go for the micro-c-bet/minraise/slam -- it convinces the table that you are a terrible player who sells out his big hands with small bets.

Yeah modern day country is pretty terrible and that’s an accurate description. Yeah I agree with you though I’d probably still rather listen to it than the same 100 pop rock songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s songs over and over again. There’s some that’s tolerable, like this song, Must Be The Whiskey by Cody Jinks. Not sure if that gets radio play though.

I have a lot to learn still, but it seems like the idea is to crack the whip on a lot of turns, whether for value or for a bluff. I'm still working through it, so I'm not going to extrapolate on that just yet.

It's not my favorite genre by a longshot, but I've always had a few favorites.

When I was a kid it was Charlie Daniels: first (in my youthful chronological order, not Charlie's) it was The Devil Went Down to Georgia, then The Legend of Wooley Swamp, then Still in Saigon, then Uneasy Rider, then Charlie and I had a philosophical parting of the ways, so to speak.

The last few years it's been Johnny Cash. This one's the current favorite--a little country, a little blues, a little gospel, and a lot of ass kicking.

If they let you get to the turn, crack that whip!

For some reason, after your opening line, I was expecting a link to late 70s/early 80s Devo.

A+

That would have been much better, but I was taking a Derail-With-Country-Music line. Plus, I saw Devo perform it live, or what they called live, and am still not sure what to make of them.

I used "state of play" as a bit of business jargon today.