Illness and Recoveries.

I am coming up on my 100th post. It took a lot longer to get there than I would've thought when I was unemployed, posting everyday and unaware of the concept of being "too tired to play". Not there yet, but by no means is this spot over and done. As long as I'm reading I still feel like writing (if with less frequency) and as any of your stat counters could tell you, I am definitely still reading.

Without getting too maudlin about it, I am currently recovering from being sicker than I have been since I was 16 and my appendix got septic on me. Perfect timing too because I had to cancel an all-expenses paid trip to Italy to meet and work with a famous electrophysiologist. Milan down the drain. I was working my ass off for the two weeks prior to clear my case load before I left. The Thursday before leaving I worked from 7am to 11:30pm and during that time an idiot I know came in and coughed his ass off all over my EP lab. No mask. In a sterile environment. I had to kick his out but the damage was done... By Saturday I couldn't get out of bed and slept about 20 minutes that night. I mean fucked up. Really fucking fucked up. Sunday I cancelled the trip. I turned the corner Monday but even now I walk around with the sullen unease someone who has been forcibly reminded of his mortality is bound to know. This cough just wont leave and when I speak for more than 5 minutes my voice becomes a somewhat pained whisper. Those of you who know what a big mouth I have know that this is perfect torture for me.

Anyway.

Playing a little better and have pulled the reigns a bit. Small adjustments but things are already feeling more familiar. Was 45th of 70 remaining in the 18k last night when I couldve tripled with KK but my shove got called by a big stack with AtinyX and there goes that. With three in the hand (god knows why the midstack retard with QJs on the button decided to CALL off his stack too) I knew I was screwed and so it was. Still...three showdowns early as huge favourites means I am getting good action on big hands so don't [or want] to race early after all.

Funniest thing last night was final tabling the Dookie where I played Omaha online for the first time. Really took me back to those first months playing NLHE...where you know there must be rules but have no clue what they are. Very enjoyable.

Okay, back to work, because like Tony Soprano I have decided every day is a gift... today in fact was a men's attache tinted oxblood for effect.

MTF.

I have little to say but say it anyway...aka here comes an essay in four parts...aka where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Fair Warning should include: Ahead there be Ramblings of a Madman (no not that one...this is the internet boys and girls, you never need to go far to find one), Introspection deluding Itself it isn't Self-pitying when in fact it may well be, and of course Aggressive References to Attempts to Copulate - ultimately (all too frequently) unsuccessfully.

Lay on MacDuff...

Not playing well these days and it's of course manifesting itself as a desire for anonymity. Hideous decision making at MATH and WWdN punctuated only by worse decisions in other MTTs. Still, being a social creature I enjoy our get togethers if only to hang with people I know too well to not continue to know.

But that doesn't leave much room for posting about poker.

Fortunately, I have a day job that is fairly fascinating [to me] and it's had me mulling over "where I am" as my children have all celebrated a birthday this winter and I hone in on completing my 36th orbit [not for months yet for those of you picking out your gifts from Harry Rosen's tie collection].

Risk is relative, almost by definition.

I have begun to wonder if I may be experiencing so much risk in my 7-7 reality that I have become immune to risk at the felt at the levels I play. Three days a week I create life-ending arrhythmias in the lab just to test the devices I implant. I am so blase about this fact my pulse rarely exceeds 70bpm during the seconds the devices charge and deliver the presumably life-saving shock. On one level I am frankly bored...my brain is moving through the next five things to do if the shock works, and a sub-basement is contemplating the more urgent 3 things that come next if the shock doesn't work. It's only when I have company in the lab, a new nurse, a young device rep in training, that I get to see how strange this whole process is. So risk I get plenty of, and I must enjoy it, enjoy being able to accept it and proceed through it because I didn't stumble backwards into this job; in truth I fought very hard to get it.

But something strange has happened along the way. I have lost my sense of boastful enjoyment of being in those situations. As a fellow, I used to relish getting the reins, proving to people I belonged there and was smart and tough enough to solve difficult problems in real-time and handle the responsibility of burning the inside of a beating heart. I don't think I understood the calm, detached looks on the faces of my attendings at the time. They just seemed pleased things worked out. No euphoria, no self-congratulation, just relief if anything.

That is now my reality. I plow through the cases with the belief/hope/prayer that things will go well. I trust my training and I do the job as best I can. Although I like some rock playing while I work (preferably The Hip, but anything with a guitar and drums will work in a pinch), and although I clearly love playing Dr. K at the hospital, I am left with little more than relief when things work out as they should. I know I come off at the hospital that none of it phazes me, but most of the time I am marvelling at the fact that given so much can go wrong it seems amazing it just doesn't.

Which brings me to a noticeable change in how and what I am feeling when I log on these days. To be clear, it isn't that I'm burned out. I actually feel very happy, very fulfilled as a person, and fairly creative these days. Concerning poker, I still love winning, love penetrating the levels of an MTT, love the logical challenges and the sense that you are climbing something tangible. There is inherent in the structure a goal to every MTT we seek out. The ultimate answer to why WSOP was presaged nobly by Mallory many peaks ago. [As an aside, cash games always feel to me like the amorphous open-ended conversation with a girl you'd love to nail, but who's aware you fucked her friend and has no intention of becoming an anecdote.] No, what has changed is not my motivation. It is my response to the risk associated with mistakes. Making bad decisions has become too easy.

Here's my thoughts on about two months of tinkering with different styles while I play (blogger and nonblogger events): The trick to opening up your game is to remain focused on the intent of making changes. There needs to be an ability to assess if an adjustment is equal to an improvement. If the essence of LAG play is to appear far looser than you are actually playing [paraphrased from lucko's blog wherein he quoted a big online playah], the pitfall for less disciplined knaves is that you can harm instead of improve your perception of the value of any given holding or position. Where this shows the most for me is in mid-position decisions. In addition, I think I have lost my perspective a bit, because I no longer am playing with enough concern for making poor decisions. This is of course one [of many] things that stands in my way from moving to the next level as a player. As a competitor, I don't like the idea that I have already maxed out my limited potential in this game. But given my age, my competing interests [known by some as my life] I do have to face the possibility that I may be as good as I will ever be right now.

That's too bad if that's true, because frankly I'd like to be a lot better.

Unfortunately, I am smart enough to know what that would take and am hovering at the parabola's edge, boulder in hands understanding that gravity and calculus are calling me away in another direction. I'm not sure if the oscillation returns me or not, but I keep plugging away, sifting between what I feel I do know and what I have some limited understanding of. It's not profitable, but it is intriguing. Everytime I score for more than a few hundred in an MTT, there's this period where I play very strange poker. I never doubt I will find my way back to good form before too long, but I can't help but marvel at guys who are ten to fifteen years younger than me, who exercise the discipline required to excel at this game day in and out.

Of course, sometimes I'm so jealous I want to punch their heads in too, so it isn't all magnanimous acknowledgement.

Did I mention I can be a prick? Well established fact for those who know me in the real world, but I work hard to hide it from you folks.

You Are Welcome.

Bastante.