I believe the technical term for that is "having F*** You Money." It's a nice spot to be in, and I hope to join you there some day, and to be OMCing at the tables for fun and not for daily bread.

Fortunately, those days are growing ever further away, leaving only their entertainment value.

Yeah I’m definitely glad you’ve kicked the meth habit a long time ago and can reflect on the entertainment of the ol meth stories.

90 minutes into last night's session, I played a hand that immediately put me on super tilt, a rarity for me—but not rare enough.

I won't post the hand; I know what I did wrong. After dumping $150 into what ended up being a very large multiway pot, I made a correct fold vs a standard $1/$2 player, but a catastrophic fold against that particular Villain.

I had sat with that Villain for more than an hour, but I did not have a good read on him, where perhaps I should have had one by then, rather than sitting around playing on my phone and watching the dog show on TV (so many different kinds of terriers, some of them with eyes set ridiculously far out on the sides of their heads. How do some of those breeds even see what's in front of their noses?)

When I go on super tilt, I rack up immediately. Doesn't matter if I'm in the blinds, on the button, or anywhere in between. I'm out.

Back in Las Vegas, ragequitting cost me more than a few hours over the course of the weeks and months. But last night, in Springfield, I went on slot sweep after I racked up, and I found that activity to be very soothing.

After an hour of checking slots, I could have easily jumped back on a table and played some good poker, but by then it was getting late for a work night, so I went home. When I start playing full time; however, I now have a tool to combat the super tilt ragequits: go off and check the slots for an hour, then return to the tables and finish up the session.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 1.5 hours
(-$321.00)

Running Poker Total: 193.5 hours, +$5893.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$100.95

Running Slot Total: 43 hours, +$1102.77

Grand Total: 236.5 hours, +$6995.77

Is this a common occurrence for (to be distracted at the table)??? The only time where I find that a little distraction at the table can be (somewhat) helpful, is in the midst of a lonnnnggg af session (think 13-16h live MTT days) when zooming out of poker can actually be helpful for the mind (and no more important player reads are to be had at the table).

Anyhow, looking forward to you playing full-time and the updates that will ensue and, as always, gl friend

Of course but staying focused ain't always easy, and is also prolly one of those things that gets harder with age every year. To a select few it seems to come naturally but not to us commonfolk. Also has to do with our digital multitasking environment, and also the casinos that plaster everything with big screens and other distractions

Agree and which is why focus levels should be approached in a measured and strategic fashion, much like breathing consciously in moments of fatigue/tilt or the mental game in general. It is an intrinsic part of being a pro, imho...

Thanks Dubnjoy000!

I think the first two hours of a session are crucial. I used to wear myself out quickly with trying to get closely observed reads on 4-8 players in as few hands as possible, but I've since refined that down to looking at my immediate neighbors first while keeping a passive eye on the rest of the table for flags like limping every hand, raising limpers frequently, poor bet sizing, floating flops then giving up on turns, bluffs and how they're structured, showdown hands, signs of tilt, and other things on which I can build a read.

If I can do that within the first two hours, I'll have a decent read on the table and need only pay close attention when new players sit down, or when one of the original players does something contrary to my read on them.

On Saturday I visited my friend Will and his wife down in Connecticut, and we watched our UCONN Huskies men's basketball team steamroll highly-ranked Gonzaga in the NCAA tournament. The Huskies have been crushing everyone in their path lately, and it's been fun to watch.

I also played two hours of $1/$2 at Foxwoods. The room is okay. They have 54 tables and a wide selection of games and limits. Their buyin cap, however, is only $300 for $1/$2 and $500 for $2/$5. These were common caps a few years ago, but rakes have since gone up, and buyin caps ideally should follow suit if the game is going to remain profitable.

The tables and chairs in the Foxwoods poker room are set pretty low, which is not a comfort for my long legs, and the nearest cage is a bit of a walk—not terribly far, but not right in the room, where it should be, and Foxwoods doesn't have the free soft drink machines which make the Springfield MGM so refreshing.

The table was soft, full stop. I was the only non loose-passive to sit there over the course of two hours. I'd read in the Venues and Communities forum that Foxwoods is infested with sour regs moping around at every table. Perhaps all that business is at the $2/$5 game and higher. I'd be pretty sour if my $2/$5 game was capped at 100bb.

On my drive home on Sunday, I stopped in Springfield for a two hour poker session. It was in Springfield that I fell from the wagon and ordered a shot of Jack Daniels. I continued my wagonless streak at home with a pint of Wild Turkey 101.

My tolerance is way down. When I came to at 3AM, I found that a nearby restaurant had called my phone 4 times and left no messages. I opened my laptop to try to find out what the hell I'd been up to. Sure enough, I'd ordered a big takeout meal online from that restaurant. I checked my trash and confirmed that I'd never picked up the order. I haven't had the courage to check my credit card statement yet to see if they refunded the charge or not. If they haven't, then I'm going to let it stand as a lesson.

I'm somewhat glad that I didn't pick up my meal; who knows what shenanigans I would have gotten into. I'm nearly 100% positive that I would not have driven; the place is within easy walking distance, but I was wearing my pajamas—or what passes for pajamas: holed leisure pants and a stained, torn sweatshirt—and who knows if I could have been arsed to put on decent clothes to go out. Also, I wanted to puke in the morning, but I had nothing in my stomach. If I'd picked up my meal, I would've had plenty in the tank, and then what I had in my belly would have been in other places in the apartment.

So yeah, back on the wagon.

Foxwoods Casino $1/$2 poker: 2 hours
+$162.00

Foxwoods Casino Slots: 2 hours
(-$2.23)

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 2 hours
+$40.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$146.04

Running Poker Total: 197.5 hours, +$6095.00

Running Slot Total: 47 hours, +$1246.58

Grand Total: 244.5 hours, +$7341.58

When Led Zeppelin lost their great drummer, John Bonham, they stopped making new records. They put out one more album named Coda, but the tracks on that record were polished outtakes of unreleased recordings from before Bonham's death.

Likewise, Pink Floyd only put out one more album, The Endless River, after their keyboardist Rick Wright died in 2008, and that album was almost entirely adapted from instrumental outtakes of Wright's unreleased keyboard stuff.

Coda and The Endless River are not good albums. Neither is terrible, but neither escapes the fact that the music on them had already been listened to by the bands and rejected as unsuitable for release.

After losing their great drummer, Keith Moon, The Who soldiered on with four more albums. Two of those albums came out in the 80's, and the other two came out much more recently. So far, I've listened to the former two.

The 80's post-Moon albums were 1981's Face Dances, which was received with mixed reviews, and 1982's It's Hard, which garnered mostly poor reviews.

Unlike Zep and Floyd, these two albums were filled with new songs, and unfortunately, Moon's absence is apparent on both. There are three bright points on them IMO: You Better You Bet and Another Tricky Day on Face Dances, and Eminence Front on It's Hard.

Now Eminence Front, to me, is a marvel. It is the consummate headphones song. Put them on, crank it up, and let one of the great two-minute keyboard and guitar intros in Rock n' Roll history roll in intricate waves into your world. Then listen as Pete Townsend pops into the far right reaches of your right ear and refuses to leave until you truly understand just how much all that 1980's cocaine-fueled social posturing was a put-on, a put-on, a put-on.

Eminence Front might be my favorite Who song, and it is definitely in my top 20 favorite songs of all time. While skimming the wiki article, I found out that the Dallas Mavericks basketball arena has used the intro of Eminence Front to pump up the home crowd for the last 20 years or so. I can see that, or hear that, at least.



One more thing: one of the later remasters "corrected" the split-second gap between Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey singing the words 'It's an eminence front' together, and it also moved Pete's voice from the right to the center. I think that these moves were a mistake, and I present the original here.

I've always loved this song but never pretended to understand it.

]

I always liked that version. It's the highlight of a just-okay album.

I have a long way to go in my poker journey; in addition to that, I don't always bring my A game to the table. On Monday night, I brought my C game, and I ran like crap as well, and I got torched.

Fortunately, the slot gods were kind, and they gave me a partial rebate, and I also had a chance to watch my UCONN Huskies win their fifth NCAA basketball title in convincing fashion.

I watched UCONN's first title win vs the well-hated Duke Blue Devils in 1999 at Caesar's sports book in Las Vegas. In that game, the UCONN men were something like 9:2 dogs to Duke, and I won a tidy sum by betting a hundo for them to win outright.

I don't bet sports much, because I suck at it. I believe my win/loss record in sports betting is something like 2-6 lifetime.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 3.5 hours
(-$624.00)

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$364.57

Running Poker Total: 201 hours, +$5471.00

Running Slot Total: 49 hours, +$1611.15

Grand Total: 250 hours, +$7082.15

3.5 hrs? This is where your rage quit would have served you well.

Poker is a journey; not a destination.

Tu Fu would agree.

Better hourly at the slots now!

Well, congratulations on UConn at least. They looked like the best team in the tournament, curb-stomping everyone along the way. Poker will turn around.

I was going to write, "No one ever made a living in poker from ragequitting," but then I remembered...



Here's hoping that none of our journeys will ever be as difficult as Tu Fu's.

I am several kinds of okay with this.

Thanks golddog!

My C-Game-nanigans continued last night when I reshoved with AQo multiway over a $100 limp/shove, when I know very well that that particular villain's range in that spot is JJ-AA, AK, and that the other two players' $12 ea in the pot would not be enough to make it a breakeven play; no, not even within 10% of breakeven.

After that I used poor sizing on a river bluff vs a good reg and got snapped off, as well I should have. Those two bad plays accounted for most of my losses.

I need a change—really I need to study more and to play better—but a change; yes, a change. On Saturday, I plan on placing something new in my itinerary.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 3.5 hours
(-$211.00)

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$10.66

Running Poker Total: 204.5 hours, +$5260.00

Running Slot Total: 51 hours, +$1621.81

Grand Total: 255.5 hours, +$6881.81

stop booking wins when you're winning & rage playing when you're losing..

Good advice. I will be playing full eight hour days not long from now. As I mentioned upthread, if I find myself tilted, I'll take an hour and check the slots. I've found that action to be meditative—which is a fancy word for boring—but it's also quite soothing.

I'll have 8 hours/day budgeted for poker and 2 for the slots, but an extra hour at the slots if I tilt is not going to tucker me out.

/hope your temp-ban clears soon.

On Saturday I checked out Bally's Twin River Casino in Rhode Island, an hour and 15 minute drive away from my place.

A good portion of that drive lead me down route 146, which is one of those infuriating and dangerous routes that doesn't know if it wants to be a highway or a secondary road, so it mixes in stretches of both, seemingly at random

There's nothing like flying around a corner or down a hill at 75 mph (120 kph) on what's supposed to be a damn 4 lane highway, only to run into a stoplight dead ahead, or to find someone from a parking lot entering the highway from a full stop.



I showed up around 11:30AM, and the single-level parking lot closest to the street was almost completely full. Once inside the doors, I was assailed by a cloud of cigarette smoke, thicker than I remember it ever being in any casino, including Jackie Gaughan's old, tiny Downtown Las Vegas barrio joints like The Gold Spike, El Cortez and The Western.

Given the smoking bans in Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, Encore and Chasers, it appears that Twin River is the premiere gambling spot for southern New England's inveterate chain smokers. The upstairs casino, which has the poker room, is smoke free.

A while back, I had read in the Venues and Communities thread that Twin River's lowest NL stakes were $2/$5, and that intrigued me, as I figured that at least some of the local $1/$2 players would be biting the bullet and moving up, in order to play poker close to home.

But it's been a while since I checked into the Twin River thread, and the poker room now offers a $1/$2 game. In any case, I'd had my mind set on $2/$5, so that's what I played.

The floor staff were polite, competent and engaged. I was on a table within 5 minutes, after having read that the wait times could be very long on Saturdays. I could have run good in that aspect; but still, there was open seating for $2/$5 at least once during my session.

Now for the negatives: tables are 10-handed, something I haven't seen anywhere since The Orleans in Las Vegas abolished it 4 years ago. In addition to being squeezed in with 9 other players, the chairs there are low and uncomfortable. The rake goes up to $8 with absolutely zero promotions: no high hand, no bad beat, not even a t-shirt or a beer koozie for a royal, nothing. Just give them your $8 and be happy they're not asking for $10. You get $1/hour in food comps for playing, which is on the low end of standard.

Cocktails are $16 for well booze, and $18 for premium drinks. I had no idea that I was playing at Yankee Stadium, FFS. I abstained.

The action was good. There were two or three good regs at the table throughout my session, but the rest of the $2/$5 folks were just regular players, indistinguishable from bad $1/$2 players.

I could tell that most of the players were local from their speaking in that Peter/Lois Griffin Rhode Island accent, which is close enough to the Boston accent that it takes a practiced ear to tell them apart.



Most of the players at my table knew each other's names, and it was a friendly atmosphere. I'll post one hand that was fun—not for me, of course, but maybe fun for an observer.

EP, who is a good reg, opens to $20. I pick up JT in the SB. Normally I'll 3-bet or fold in the SB, but JTs is one of the few hands I'll flat from there, occasionally, especially if the open is from EP and if the BB is not a frequent 3-bettor, which he is not. BB calls.

Pot ($60) - three players.

Flop: 456

I check, BB checks, EP bets $25, I raise to $80. BB and EP both call.

Pot ($300) - three players

Turn: 9

I bet $170. BB calls, EP calls. I begin to sense some distant alarm bells, but I still figure my hand to be best most of the time.

Pot ($810) - three players

No heart. No heart. No heart....

River: 3

I check. BB shoves for $256, EP snap calls.

I am getting enormous odds in a huge pot with a J high flush. I fold without agonizing about it much.

Pot ($1322) - two players (Hero has folded)

SB shows 72 for a straight flush, and EP mucks.

On the slot front: there are very few advantage slots at Twin River: just a handful of Regal Riches/Prosperity Pearls and a few Rich Little Piggies. And the only thing I picked up from my slot sweep was the stench of cigarette smoke in my clothes and hair.

As I walked a long way out to my car after my first and likely last visit to Twin River, I was sharked by two cars looking for a space in the jam-packed lot. Both of them flanked me on either side with their signals on. I thought about staying and watching the potential fireworks go off, but I didn't want to get stuck doing paperwork for the cops if a fight were to break out, so I left quickly.

On the drive home, I felt pretty good. I'd lost again, and the experience had been mixed at best, but I'd played well, and I'd hung around the $2/$5 game just fine.

Bally's Twin River $2/$5 poker: 3 hours
(-$263.00)

Bally's Twin River Slots: 1 hour
$0.00

Running Poker Total: 207.5 hours, +$4997.00

Running Slot Total: 52 hours, +$1621.81

Grand Total: 259.5 hours, +$6618.81

I'm happy for the change, having made the trip to Rhode Island to play at Twin River. It gave me a new appreciation for my local poker room: the humble yet satisfying Springfield MGM. Sometimes the tired movie trope of the best friend/girl-next-door being the one for you is a true one.

Last night I played well and I ran decent. It's always nice when the cards keep up with your effort.

Another reg at my table bought in for $500 and ran poorly. He picked up that "losing image" I've talked about it before (having cribbed the concept from Bart Hanson) and everyone started playing back at his aggression.

One one hand, I've been in that spot before and I felt for him; on the other hand, better him than me. The thing that struck me, though, was that he ran his stack down from $500 to $200 before he left, and he didn't top up.

That's a leak in my book. Part of being a better player is stacking people more often than they stack you, as well as value betting in more good spots and for more chips than your opponents. That's why you should have as many chips in front of you as you are comfortable playing.

But I've since given it some more thought. He was a good recreational player; maybe he had a $500 budget for playing that day, and he was going to stick to it.

I thought about what I would do if I was in that spot, and I'm torn between starting with the $500 like he did, vs putting out $300 and using the remaining $200 to top up, or as an auxiliary buyin if I got stacked.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 3 hours
+$385.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$14.57

Running Poker Total: 210.5 hours, +$5382.00

Running Slot Total: 54 hours, +$1636.38

Grand Total: 264.5 hours, +$7018.38

The Brand New Double Board Cashman Bingo: oh lordy.

The original single board game is difficult enough to evaluate, with its five different betting denominations, each having its own independent board and own set of difficult-to-quantify EV requirements that involve combining the amount of money on the board relative to the base wager and the board's current proximity to completion.

This double board version only multiplies that built-in ambiguity. Mind you the machine in the picture is in a severely -EV state; it just happened to be the first time that I'd spotted this title, and I couldn't help but take a picture of it, so I could brood over it later on, at my leisure.

I "found" three plays on the double board games and got mixed results, just as I'd expected. After 30 years of thoughtful, responsible wagering, I'm now finding that the game designers are getting close to inventing something that might become my own gambling Waterloo.

In addition to the slots, I played poker for two hours last night, and then I racked up, entirely sure at that moment that I had played a three hour session. It had felt just like three hours; not two, not four and a quarter, but exactly three hours. I did not catch my error until I was booking my session on my phone, after I'd cashed in my chips.

It was very odd. I've never done anything like that before. Maybe I jumped in from a parallel universe at some point during the session, and the times between the two realities weren't quite synched.

In any case, I played well, and I pulled off a good three street bluff in a good spot. I used good sizing on the bluff, and I got Villain to fold QJ as TPGK on a semi-dry board. He'd hemmed and hawed and tanked for a long time before he folded. Perhaps that was where my perceived extra hour was spent: waiting for Villain to muck it.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 2 hours
+$158.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$1.06

Running Poker Total: 212.5 hours, +$5540.00

Running Slot Total: 56 hours, +$1637.44

Grand Total: 268.5 hours, +$7177.44