Yesterday I found one way to extend my session: lose most of a stack getting it in 80% vs Villain's 20%, then sit there and try grind it back. It didn't work this time, but I got the hours in.

No hands of real note, though I notice that Red Rock's periodic $500 quad flopper promotion is changing how some of the weaker players are playing TT-KK: they're limp/calling these instead of open/raising or 3-betting or limp/reraising in the hopes of not getting folds pre so they can see a flop and flop those quads.

Never mind that a pocket pair only flops quads about 1/500 times; whereas they'll lose way more than the promo's $500 payout in EV by not raising their good and premium pairs over the course of the other 499 times, hope springs eternal.

In any case, it's important for me to note the players who do this, as I need to add TT-KK into their limp/calling range after I raise their limps.

Red Rock Station: 5.5 hours:
(-$270)

Darn, but people misplaying big pocket pairs trying to hit the quad bonus seems profitable.

I'm playing now and just caught myself being the fifth limper on the button with 66.

C'mon boxcars!

What's wrong with that?

I've been thinking about this, and if they limp pairs hoping for quads they are probably losing players anyway, so maybe limping pairs is +EV in the sense that it is less -EV and now if they don't flop quads they can just lose interest in their hand and fold.

Who knows? maybe they've just invented set mining.

I'm going with the Ed Miller notion that the average low stakes players are all trying to limp in and smash a cheap flop, and the that average players are all losing to the rake to the tune of around $10/hr, and that the closer your play trends towards the average player, the closer you trend towards losing over time.

After 5 limps, why not bump 66 up to $25 instead? Yes, sometimes you'll get 4 calls, but then sometimes you'll flop a set in position and win a huge pot instead of a medium-big pot. Sure, you can still run into a better set, but that's exceedingly rare. It's much more likely that you're going to be crushing a two pair hand or a sticky overpair or a combo draw,

Most of the time you're going to get 3-4 folds preflop and 1-2 check/folds on the flop when they stay in for the flop and don't smash it. And that gives you a nice pot. Not to mention that you're often getting junky J3s and 74s type hands to fold pre, where in a limped pot they could (and do) hit their straight or flush and crush your set.

Finally, some of the time you're going to get 5 folds and pick up a $13 rake-free variance-free pot. If this happens only once every 2 hours--and from experience I can tell you that it's feasible--you add $6.00/hr (after tips) to your win rate.

I think most of the loss comes from limping the big and medium/high pairs when they should be building a pot with them against everyone else's crappy ranges.

Another long session spent trying to dig out of a hole. No hands of note, I just lost arouind $230 early on over a passel of small and medium hands, as well as having a bluff go awry (fortunately Villain jumped in and shoved the river before I could do it, saving me around $100).

Red Rock Station: 7.5 hours:
(-$87)

I'm almost finished with Henry David Thoreau's book Walden. When I was halfway through the book I decided to not review it per se, mostly because I couldn't get much of a handle on the work. So in the place of a review I'll jot down a few notes and takeaways.

I last read Walden when I was in my early twenties, and I remember it making a big impression on me, although I don't remember exactly what that impression may have been. Freedom, I guess...maybe sticking it to the Man, man; the copy I own also has Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" essay as an epilogue. I haven't reread that essay yet, and that missing piece may be the catalyst which puts the book into perspective.

Walden is the journal of a young man who from 1845 to 1847 lived alone on the edge of Walden pond, not far from the outskirts of Concord, MA. There he built his own cabin on the cheap and tended to a small patch of crops in between writing down his musings on self reliance and freedom from consumerism, along with all aspects of nature and Man's place in it.

Thoreau's stint in the woods did not make him a hermit. Friends and curious locals were frequent visitors to his cabin. Among the former was Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, author of the famous essay "Self Reliance."

Thoreau had worked previously as Emerson's sort of groundskeeper/maintenance man before traipsing out to Walden Pond, and Emerson was a patron and supporter of Thoreau's writings, which in spite of his friend's efforts remained largely unread during Thoreau's lifetime. In addition to entertaining guests, Thoreau also popped into Concord from time to time to pick up money doing odd jobs.

Ultimately I think Thoreau wasn't striving to become completely self-reliant away from society; he was instead trying to obtain a certain measure of freedom from wage slavery and rampant consumerism, along with the peace and quiet conducive for writing down his thoughts on the nature of Man in the world, all the while still enjoying the benefits of living within easy walking distance of the community.

This sounds to me like some of the things a certain would-be professional gambler might be looking for out of life.

So why didn't the book resonate with me this time around? I think it's because I'm simply jealous of Thoreau, now that I've all but screwed up my own attempt at a sort of urban/desert Walden through my own laziness and procrastination. As I read of his successes in bucking the status quo, my thoughts kept returning to my own failures.

Thoreau's prose is always polished, rife with pithy metaphor and at times incredibly beautiful. Writing is something else I could have been working on in the place of drinking and playing video games all day.

I'll leave you with a few snippets from the book...

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some could be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod* or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. [...] It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe--sporting there alone--and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it.

*about 5 meters

+1. Never overlimp here (save for some special situations, mostly when you have limp/shoving-happy maniacs on the table), that's fish play, raise and cbet pretty much any A or K and a few other flops. 4 callers is pretty much what you wish to have here, think about it.

Fire's a EuroLag and knows what's what. TBH I don't miss you guys at the tables, at all. I'll make an exception for you, of course, but the rest of the EuroLags can stay back in the old country and 5-bet each other to their hearts' content.

I played another session on Saturday and booked a small win after once again falling into a hole early; no hands of note. Today I'm drinking moderately to heavily and doomscrolling over our national election. I will have no further comment here on that.

Red Rock Station: 5.5 hours:
+$63

I highly recommend any regular poster in SJs thread to head over to the 2020 presidential gambling thread for amazing Lolz tonight and tomorrow.

Planned to get drunk tonight watching results but an 8AM work call may hamper those plans.

^Haven't been to that thread yet but I'll guess that I wouldn't want to be a mod for it rn.

I'll prolly check it out later.

Here's a hand where, if a live dealer pushed Villain the pot, I might only catch it half the time. Someone at the table might say something, though. Would you say something if you weren't in the hand and the pot started being pushed the wrong way? And would it depend on whether or not you liked the player?

Yatahay Network - 700/1400 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 45,477
UTG: 146,432
CO: 24,555
BTN: 36,800
Hero (SB): 88,304

5 players post ante of 175, Hero posts SB 700, BB posts BB 1,400

Pre Flop: (pot: 2,975) Hero has K A

UTG raises to 2,800, CO raises to 24,380 and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 23,680, fold, fold

Flop: (53,835, 2 players) 6 8 T

Turn: (53,835, 2 players) 6

River: (53,835, 2 players) 8

CO shows 5 5 (Two Pair, Eights and Sixes)
(Pre 52%, Flop 73%, Turn 73%)
Hero shows K A (Two Pair, Eights and Sixes)
(Pre 48%, Flop 27%, Turn 27%)
Hero wins 53,835

Yeah I may have misspoken. It’s kind of fascinating to see how easily people buy into misinformation being spread.

I always say something if the pot is going the wrong way. Dealers aren't perfect and there's always so much BS going on at live games it's easy to make mistakes.

Yes, I would say something if I noticed. Want the game to be administered fairly above all else; as Mack says, people make mistakes.

3-pair is a strong hand. You never know when you'll need backup.

Haven't heard from you in a while SJ - everything OK??

Right. Hopefully SJ didn't catch the 'rona or go busto

Tunnels? Hopefully not.

That seems like the first line of a haiku. Someone more creative than me will have to take over.

RIP suited. Hope he's ok. He has been known to go missing for some time occasionally but it's a bit long.

Hi Folks. Sorry for the lack of updates.

Busto is right, especially after I dropped my laptop by accident and had to get a new one.

I bought a Chromebook on impulse and then decided to do my research after I bought it. Apparently, it's hard to get ACR poker and Poker Tracker to run on Chrome O/S. I exchanged it for a Windows laptop, and here I am.

I have $1700 on ACR that I need to pull off, but to do that I need to take a crash course in Bitcoin, starting like now, before my on-hand funds run out. I bought a Nano S Bitcoin wallet because--according to Jonathan Little in his video on how to cash out--exchanges like Coinbase will freeze any direct transfers from quasi legal poker sites, so I need to transfer it to my Nano S wallet, then sell it on Coinbase, then transfer those funds to my bank account.

I never got around to setting up an online account with my bank. I'm wondering if I need to, or if just having my checking account and router number is enough for Coinbase to get the funds where they need to go.

Glad you put in the update and COVID didn’t catch you. I know you’re not going to like this but why not get a part-time job?