Not much poker going on

2010-12-08

Hi guys

Well the weekend was a complete writeoff, in the sense that I completely wrote myself off from pretty much Friday afternoon all the way through to early Tuesday morning lol. Seriously we partied that hard including a decent session at Eve Nightclub, haven't had a bender like that in ages where you just wake up and pretty much start drinking again Mell had her friend over from Perth, and I had two friends over from Sydney through that stretch so we were pretty much always out and in good company and just completely exhausted at the end of it - back to some heavy detox and exercise this week though.

I had grand designs of grinding an absolute ton this week, but so far it has been near-impossible due to internet issues. For some reason my modem has been going through stages recently of disconnecting/reconnecting every 1-20 minutes, which is really tilting when it happens mid-session especially since I have been used to near-perfect connectivity since we moved to this apartment last September. I have already lodged a call with Telstra and they are looking at the line; as far as I can tell from the Whirlpool Forums I either have too much rf interference from something nearby and will need to drop back to ADSL from ADSL2+, or I have a faulty phone jack, line or modem. Telstra is supposed to be calling me between 7-11am tomorrow morning and I really hope it's fixed otherwise I will need to find somewhere else to grind until it is

On top of that my computer seriously feels like it's on its last legs. I have this shitty old DELL running on Vista with I think 4Gb of RAM and an 300Gb hard drive, and it definitely needs an upgrade because it is just absurdly slow at times when I am running 20 tables across Stars/FTP/UB/Party, as well as two versions of Table Ninja, HEM, Pokerstove and occasionally Firefox and Skype. Sometimes I will click fold or whatever and it will take two seconds to register which I really don't want. All my peripherals are sweet, so I have been thinking of getting a desktop custom spec'd up and stripped back just for grinding (so just all of the above programs, plus Excel, Team Viewer and Universal Hand Replayer)..so if you know someone reliable or are proficient at this kind of stuff yourself and are interested in either some cash work or a trade for coaching, feel free to PM me as I'd like to think I have it sorted early in the new year. Also if you do a good job I'll be sure to pass the word around.

So the computer is dying, the internet is dead, and it looks like online poker has some serious complications at the moment too! It remains to be seen what the potential US legislation preventing poker sites from servicing US players for 15+ months will mean for the games, but for the most part I am not too concerned. Just like Spencer Johnson's book, Who Moved My Cheese?, I'm sure that if there is a change to the legislative landscape, it will also provide opportunities for players who are prepared to keep an open mind. My main aim is just to get better at more forms of poker (including cash, higher stake SNGs in an ex-US playing environment) and grind a ton, so while there will no doubt be some teething issues somewhere along the line (no idea how online e-wallets, training sites, VIP programs will be affected) I think if I can keep my head down and find ways to grind volume I'll be okay.

As mentioned in an earlier post I also have an audition for the Part Time Program at 16th Street, which is next Wednesday. As usual I'll be super nervous leading up to that and obviously really keen that I make a place since it will make me feel so much better about grinding poker through 2011.