Perhaps I'll Play Through.

Not much to say [what else is new?]

Still mulling over my next move as I get no joy at all (cold decked, looked-up and out-raced when not just fucked-over-harshly) at the tables.

I might just reload enough to let me keep trying to do what I know how to do without bankroll pressure. I don't have insane illusions that I am some dominant MTT force, but I do know I play a solid winning game. I just need to keep the ball in play during this rough stretch.

Is that just a rationalization? It feels truthful, but I will likely run things down to the wire keeping the idea of a reasonable sized reload open.

It's awesome to see the boyz tearing it up everywhere, and it's killing me to voluntarily take myself out of the hunt. Wish me luck either way brothas and sistahs, cause fuck knows I could use it at the felt.

Laytah.

Thoughts on Impeding Momentum.

I have surprised myself.

No idea why it took this long for a move this obvious to occur to me, but I just had an epiphany about my poker game.

Ten minutes ago I read one of those Full Tilt emails from the pros. Yeah, yeah, this one was from Chris Ferguson, a real FT pro, not one of those silicon anorexics we love to read about getting biotch-slapped by this guy and this guy.

You've prolly all gotten it too; where he talks about turning 0 dollars into 10 000. Jesus. Seriously. This dude has been playing freerolls to build the buy-in for min stakes games. Impressive. The point was all about building, and more importantly PRESERVING bankroll.

I can bitch all about the last three months until I am blue in the face. The truth is, I have no one to blame but myself because I have made no adjustments to what tracker and the cashier tab have been telling me.

That's not true. I've made adjustments. Terrible ones. When it was clear I was beginning to catch more than an expected number of bad beats and horrid bounces from MTTs, I did two things which accelerated the effect of my time on the rack: I started playing more $75 MTTs and even a few 109s without satelliting in and I started three tabling (which definitely reduces my feel) thinking it would lessen the effect of a few bad beats.

In retrospect, I have detected a few flaws in this line of reasoning.

Anyway, reading that Ferguson blurb I decided to get serious. My new goal is straightforward: play the best poker I can, but do so at limits and games that will give me the best shot at growing my roll. Here is the plan:

Positive Mental Attitude. I will NOT go Busto. If I have to drop down to 1 buck MTTs, I will. I don't really play this game for money (though I certainly don't mind when it gets shipped my way), I play primarily for the competition. Now I am competing with my ego. Whatever I have to play in order to grow my roll again, I am going to. Sure I'm not Chris Ferguson, but I am still about a thousand times better than a lot of guys out there.

Two-tabling at most. There is a huge dropoff in my results with three tables open. Just the way it is and it's about time I accept that rather than ignore it and assume it will get better.

No more sats to bigger buy-in MTTs for just now. I am going to focus on entering things that will actually result in a dollar value if I do well. This one is going to hurt with FTOPS coming up, but it is what is.

Far, far fewer blogger MTTs. These are great, and I would definitely like to take down that leaderboard, but for the short term I can do better elsewhere. I am running poorly right now so I should look for fields with people who play worse than our group generally does. I will have to miss the Blogger Bracelet Race tonight in order to take the kids to Go Diego Go! (Yeesh.) Consider my buy-in a donation [when isn't it?], may the winner final table at WSOP and RePrahZent!

The exception to the rule is I will try the token building strategy and try those Tier 3 SNGs for bankroll expansion. I am not a great SNG player, but my game is decent and well suited to the play I've seen in those things before.

I will avoid Cash games like the plague, since it's clear over the last three months I am a break-even 200NL player. That btw is a huge improvement for me and my big leak (playing way, way too long in one stretch) will be plugged as soon as I see a roll big enough to take another spin.

Wish me luck boyeez. The thought of dropping below a $26 MTT seems mind-bending, but what the hell, let's see how this goes? Can't get much worse than the pain I'm suffering currently.

Laytah.

A sense of desolation in Aisle 4 and other metaphors for impending ruin.

I am not exactly great at living on my own. For all you single or divorced guys who have figured this great and secret show out, I am impressed. I am just too lazy on a fundamental around-the-house level to do well without routine surveillance. Left unobserved and to my own devices, I will mostly watch television, play poker (back when I derived some enjoyment and/or sense of accomplishment from that activity), surf the net [insert euphemism here] and procrastinate.

Here are some things I have discovered I am not exactly good at in the last four months:
Paying Bills.
Cleaning up after myself.
Doing my laundry [thank god I found a dry cleaner who delivers, but even then I get lazy about stuffing my shirts and crap into a laundry bag to hang on my door...yep; it's getting that bad].
Buying new clothes [I used to be pretty fucking good at this, but as I have become a fat bastard, I now avoid the one act that will force me to face this fact repeatedly. I keep telling myself I will go on an absofuckinglutely insane spree if I lose 20 pounds. Still waiting on workout one. Yep...it's that bad.]
Buying Groceries.

I think we'd all agree those are pretty fundamental skills if you're going to make it on your own, even for the short period of time I have to pull this off. I used to be excellent at this shit. I used to be independent to an almost anti-social degree. Such is not the case anymore, and it's a good sign I think that I don't pine for that misspent youth, but just want some help with all the activities of daily living I usually tune completely out without any sense of loss.

Yesterday, I managed to find a grocery store within a ten minute drive of my downtown Buffalo apartment. The experience proved bleaker than I anticipated.

Somehow, on maybe my third grocery outing of the last few months (most people who visit me know my aversion to grocery shopping and bring stuff with them - hint hint Rav) I managed to locate a foodstore in its death throes. Latina's, which according to the picture of its blissfully unaware founders, was started in 1954, was about to call it quits. Today in fact.

I went shopping in a grocery store the day before it closed for good. Empty shelves, with only the most perish-impervious commodities still in play. My cart fought me the whole way to round out the sense of the unnatural. The process was depressing and I wouldn't have continued if I didn't know (I mean know) it could be another two weeks before I motivated myself to buy some living supplies.

The take on this unholy haul:

2 cases of IBC root beer
12 pack diet pepsi
2 bottles of diet coke
1 pack of hamburger buns (the closest thing I could get to bread...I admit to opening the tie and inspecting them for mold. I realize someone else may have done the same thing prior to this purchase and would have shown more restraint but I was craving a tuna sandwhich in a bad, bad way)
2 jumbo packs of Doritos
2L jug of 2% milk...I am committed to drinking it before it goes bad in three days. Waste not, want not, eh?
pizza flavored pringles

And that's about it. There were precious few options and I do feel I did the best I could. But dilemnas (where will I get food next time? why didn't I buy tuna if I wanted a tuna sandwhich?) remained. Problems for another day no doubt.

Barring a miracle, I just don't see how I will avoid going busto. Down well below 1k for the first time in ages and no relief from this punishment in sight. If you guys don't see me around for awhile, understand it's my way of preserving my sanity. I know I missed Friday, but have let myself off the hook with this saturday evening post.

Laytah.

The Unintended Encounter and Remembering to Avoid Trouble.

Brevity. Or at least a close approximation thereof.

A series of three dominated beats and a BB special to end today's endeavours. I am not talking about short stacked desperation plays that got bounced by a large stack. I am talking about getting someone to do what you want them to do, and then wishing you hadn't. I should know better after more than a year with this game, but it's getting to me. It really is. I am contemplating a break to shake this thing off.

Nonpoker content? Days Residue then, since I am too tired to participate otherwise. Met someone today who really got under my skin.

I'm a pretty contented individual but this woman just had that thing. Not a conventional stunner, but something about her left an immediate impression. Sort of knocked me on my ass because it happened at work and I am triple-double on guard against shit like that when in uniform. Anyway, the loaded but essentially harmless moment passed without me doing anything ill-advised. In retrospect I was unable to name what I found so captivating, but the idea of brief uncertainty retained a haunt. It's these occasional trials that comprise the internal opus that is a meaningful committment.

Sometimes I wish I was more religious and could lean on something larger than myself [an admitted challenge these days] for answers and strength. As it is, I have to make due with words of wisdom from my recently departed spiritual godfather: A little less love, a little more common decency. Vonnegut there, quoting a fan who summed up his life's work in what amounts to a telegraph.

When love can't trump what the moment has me feeling, common decency towards someone I care about tends to iron things out. Secular humanism as marital aid.

Strange, strange days indeed...

And there is another, quieter consideration I've been turning over since this interaction. Ever had the experience where you are admiring a figure at a distance and it turns out to be your girl? You laugh at the imposition of the familiar with beguiling unknown. Milan Kundera wrote a whole book based on the inverse premise; of seeing someone unfamiliar and mistaking them for your love, to experience a whole set of reactions and emotions, only to realize a mistake has been made. Does this empherality of attraction and association invalidate the meaning of deeper ties? What is this love we feel for someone if it is so easily uprooted and dropped on another form that merely resembles the object of our affection?

I have no clue, of course, but I'm working on it. You should too.

Laytah.

A Year In Review Delivered Over Days: [Early] Winter of our Malcontents

HAH! 11:16 pm. Fuckers. Thought I was gonna pass tonight? No such luck. I follow-up that last masterpiece with a return to the Flights' Anniversary Extravaganza: Part the Third. Before I do I just want to provide you with an idea of what happened to me today before I got to the part where I decided to keep the streak intact. And before I do that, major props to mah brotha the HammerPlayer for utilizing Taint-Hound at near-maximal capacity. I hope the rest of you will follow suit soon. Much like the PokerGrub lo those many years ago, it is my humble wish that someday Taint-Hound will acheive the mainstream cache that our Beloved Hammer now possesses. I have a dream indeed.

My Day:

7am - awake, feel somewhat sleepy. by which I mean to say I poke myself in the eye with my toothbrush while trying to get the shower door open. still not sure HOW I did that...but it was an omen that should have been given appropriate respect. a wise man would have forgone the shower, cancelled all cases and pulled cover to head.

I, of course, trundle on in all my Cycloptic vainglory.

8am-1030am- dual chamber defibrillator. sudden death prevention in a box. still, twice as long as I capable. the day is evaporating and there is still much to do.

11am-2pm- single chamber defibrillator. you may note that to put a simpler device in takes longer. really tough going without any major catastrophes. just hard work. 5 1/2 in lead and just getting started.

315pm- 730pm- biventricular defibrillator [the lexus of devices, can save your life and treat the symptoms of heart failure: take a moment and thank god for engineers, they are doing some unreal things for us. and they rarely got to nail the prom queen. where's the justice?] 4 hours more in lead for a total of 7.

9:30pm- finished paperwork and made it home somewhat bleary eyed... mookie was an early implosion (Drizz nicely headfaked me into thinking his Aces looked liked a Hammah). FT26k just another in an insanely long list of dominated beats. AQ v A9 with moron looking for a heart after the first three come down. How long can this go on? Your guess is likely much better than mine.

Here with 7 minutes to go comes the next installment. Series wraps up tomorrow I think. At which time I will delete the blog.

Or not.

October 2006:

Fuel and I become regular emailers since he loathes girly chat. For two people who haven’t met, it’s clear we’re listening to the same frequency at least some of the time. Jo (another of my friends I wonder about…where are you girl?) brings a completely different perspective to MTTing and I tinker with my game to see what results from tightening up. I money the very first Big Game and get introduced to the higher level thinking that is lucko demolishing a table. He put on a clinic at the bubble that no one playing even understood, starting and ending with me. The comments on that post remain worth reading because the whole counterintuitive concept gets laid out very clearly. I became a rabid addict of his blog after that, and although I just can’t play that LAG style convincingly, I understand and recognize it much better as a result of reading him. Not a bad return on investment for a 26 dollar token.

November 2006:

My license finally arrives and dreams of actually moving to Buffalo turn rapidly into reality.

Final tabled the 25k at long last (busting 6th holding AQ v A5). Sweet, sweet days, where have you gone? FT why have you have turned on me? Whatever it was I did, I AM SORRY.

Oh yeah, I finished fourth in PLHE FTOPS Event #6. Heh. I know, I know…I got lucky. I can still feel some people thinking this every time they interact with me at the felt. FWIW, I think I played good too, and btw I satellited into that biotch too. So when this little cold streak ends and I start tearing it up again, you will have to take the knee you rightly should you donkeys!

Actually the goodwill that has been sent my way for months during my hot streak and the commiserations and advice while I’ve been running cold has meant a lot. Damn I'm a good guy for saying that...Now can the cold streak be over?

Thought so.

December 2006:
Heading into December, Flights had become a fairly popular pokerblog. Not only did about 100 people drop everyday, about 15-30 commented each post. That was the real fun in posting, I got feedback, some good advice and occasionally my balls busted in a way that made me want to come back with more. But December is where it falls apart. New job and no posting. And unclarity on my part if I even want to continue. I miss the Winter Classic in what will become a recurrent theme in my time in Buffalo [Having since missed trips to Italy and NYC as I might have mentioned recently]. This initial miss further distances me from my summer/fall of afternoon MTTs and evening posts. And from this blog. But interestingly not the brethren who I continue to read regularly, returning to my pre-Flights life of a serial commenter. There's something to be said for it...much easier on the schedule fo sho.

That absence from posting led me to think I was done with this expendable indulgence.

Turns out I was wrong.

MTF.

Toronto and The Center-Seeking Force.

I should clarify for any who might be labouring under the HammerPlayer's delusions: I am still well on track with my promise to you, O Flights' faithful & devoted (in fact I gave you a freebie on Sunday). My vow was to post every WEEKDAY for the next 30 days. So far so goot.

Now that I am at it again, I am struck by how my ring of adoration has shrunk. Fickle bunch, you lot. Still, I am obliged to keep my promise and keep putting things up everyday, but it creates a dilemna. If you, as I, want to get this place looking like it used to, you are all going to have to get off your collective aRSSes [clevah clevah if I do say so myself] and weigh in here. This Boeing has started rolling again and Inspiration is clearly on the Flights Deck. I will know I have hit third gear when Mel stops by again, and I rouse Wawfuls from his feigned indifference.

However, my usual in[s]anity aside, it's time for a brief break from our A Year In Review omnibus retrospective. The following post was inspired by an early-showing I received of the post Fuel put up today entitled "Mecca". If you haven't read it, I strongly suggest a visit. Not that I am in any position to tell any of you what to write about, nor am I a huge believer in Memes (I treat them with the same general disrespect I have for Mimes due my long-held policy of Guilt by Free-Association), but I would be curious to know what my friends and fellow bloggahs consider their equivalent touchstone. Understanding this idea had to percolate for months in my head, if it proves too dense to navigate, who am I to complain?

_______________________________________


Pilgrimage has a curvilinear topography. We might look quickly at bodies moving purposely from one location to another and construct a vector in our minds to describe what we see. In doing so we’d miss a grander map which has this motion more truthfully writ as a circumnavigation, a completion.

We go, but to return. That might be the last thing a preconscious soul notes before heading briefly out of the light and down, down into a body. The idea of purposeful return, seems primeval and the more I look around the more I see evidence of this inexorable drive working its invisible levers in my mind. The name of the quintessential pilgrim’s respite, Mecca, is now a well-worn metaphor for any visionquest’s goal. I like that fact since it’s subtle evidence that East and West might have more in common than either is wont to admit.

This idea has been percolating ever since JEV sent me his thoughts on it as it applied to WSOP and the way we stream in to Vegas, the unlikeliest Mecca of all, with dreams of fulfillment (albeit of a more material nature) and actualization. The minute I read his take, it occurred to me I have known the name of my other Mecca. And it’s a pilgrimage I have been making repeatedly for the last seventeen years, with varying degrees of success.

I left Toronto in 1990, without fanfare, and without even understanding I was leaving her; a kind of break-up without tears because I thought of my absence as a business trip rather than a formal separation. For reasons I still can’t explain I opted for the lesser of two scholarships, and turned down the University of Toronto where I could have roomed with my closest friend and enjoyed 4 years of downtown life, in order for a fresh start in London, Ontario. The experience was memorable but not productive. I tend to collect friendships wherever I go but this is the one period of my adult life from which I did not take a lasting relationship. I was without a rudder, or much common sense, for two years and it resulted in choices that would make Toronto a part of my past instead of my future.

London quite logically led to medical school in the Dominican Republic, and I went from returning home once a month to twice a year. In that time, my parents sold their condo on the west end. They did it primarily to finance my brother’s and my MDs, although we didn’t learn of it until we were almost done. As a father of three now, I realize I have no excuse and a very tough road ahead of me if I want to hold myself to their standard. They also sold the house I had grown up in on the eastern tip of the diaspora known as the Greater Toronto Area. That turned out to be the equivalent of a divorce because much of what I had loved about TO was centered around that house, my high school crew and the idea of home in general. Without that nexus, I found my way back even less frequently once I started training in Cleveland.

Ten years and maybe ten or twelve trips to see my folks, rarer still my friends; often with a sense of regret for what was lost when I unintentionally said goodbye to that amazing city. My wife notes I still spend our trips up almost visibly stressed while up there. It’s true too; I hate leaving and it shows the entire time I’m home. Another vanity indulged incorrectly.

In high school I always thought I would end up practicing in downtown TO and living within that cosmopolitan jewel. Later I thought I would yet wend my way back when my US training was done. Now, fully within my own, I realize that dream is not going to happen. My attempts have brought me close, but ultimately not brought me home. And as all adults should learn how to do at some point, I worked a compromise that I can live with.

But I had not until recently uncovered for myself why a proximity to Toronto meant so much. Yes, my family is there, and I was raised to recite Family First as a mantra, but that explanation hasn’t satisfied in its simplicity. A clearer understanding of this unnamed pilgrimage came to me over two nights leaving TO. The first was driving back to Buffalo a few weeks back after my Dad had collapsed on a treadmill and I had rushed to Toronto to see him. Things turned out alright, although ambiguously. I was driving back to Buffalo in the drizzling rain at seven in the evening, when I made an instantaneous decision to leave the northern toll-road that lets you speed at 85mph without traffic, and instead took the 404 down to the 401 into the heart of the city.

I chose to drive through Toronto rather than around her. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but as the skyline unfolded heading east in the mist and half-light I was struck by her silhouette; elegant, lovely, and ultimately unknowable. Gatsby was not far from mind. I then had the scent of unrequited love stiflingly about me as I drove passed the lakeview penthouse apartment of a girl I thought to marry nearly twenty years ago. Garcia-Marquez suggested bitter almonds, but after a decade of placing my hands inside other people, I liken it to drying blood; the breath of a thing once-vital giving up its final association with the living. I forced a smile as I have every other time when facing this architectural reminder of something wanted and denied. It wasn’t that I still pined for the girl, though she has grown inconveniently more beautiful with years and children. I was just trapped momentarily in a superposition of states. Another victim of violent time.

The second drive took me in altogether different direction. I was cruising the Gardiner Expressway, the lakeshore’s ribbon, while I talked on my cell with a friend. I was navigating its narrow lanes when I was struck by a conversation my dad and I had had on this exact strip of road fifteen years ago. He and I would run errands together regularly, using the opportunity of enforced proximity to run the table on topics that were on our minds. We disagreed (mostly amicably, sometimes not) on philosophy, politics, economics, but we enjoyed the act of talking to each other. This particular conversation was so that he could outline how disappointed he was in my performance as an undergrad. I admit I was at an all-time low, feeling like everything I had ever been told about how clever I was had turned out to be hype at its worst. I was looking at two more years of undergrad at insanely high output just to have a shot at a Canadian med school. Or exile to the Caribbean.

His tone was soft as he kept us in the slow lane and outlined a plan he had for me. Although he never explicitly stated it, it was clear this was my last chance to get it right. I was mostly quiet, occasionally murmuring assent, when in fact I was highly conflicted and mostly just wondered how the fuck this had happened to me. In the end, he offered me the choice to continue in undergrad if I wanted, or to try the D.R. But this would be the last year on his dime unless he started seeing signs of the adult I was supposed to be turning into. That’s not an easy thing to hear from your dad if you respect him as much as I do mine. Not easy, but necessary as it turned out. I picked exile, and distinctly recall him looking straight ahead at the road, raising an eyebrow to a quiet smile and murmuring, “let’s see…”

As I drove the Gardiner, lost in that moment where my father laid out what has proved the biggest decision in my life to date, I worked something out. So much of my time in Toronto was spent on those highways getting to know my dad that they have become synonymous with our relationship. There is almost nowhere I can go in the GTA where I can’t think of an errand I ran with him decades back. I learned his whole riches-to-rags-to-riches immigrant’s tale on those drives. And in that process unconsciously inducted the city itself into my family.

Somewhere between these two images is a truth to explain my orbits around a magnetic center. Toronto as what might have been. Toronto as a connection to a mortal man I cannot imagine myself without. In truth, the image of a life as a successful downtown TO doctor has never gone away. It sits a renegade seed in the unaccommodating tundra of a pragmatic mind. Despite all the good that has come my way since; including a wife I met in that Caribbean med school, I am at times unable to resist regretting that early failure and the exile it created.

Pilgrimage is all I have left.

Now is this too much to speak of something as mundane as regret? It’s always been my intent to view myself as the hero of my story; I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t. Robertson Davies was once criticized for portraying all women as Beatrice. He laughed this off with the keen observation that all women are Beatrice. To think otherwise is to deny yourself her light every day of your life.

The unarticulated corollary to this axiom would be each of us is Dante. Yet another pilgrim working his way back home.

MTF.

A Year in Review Delivered Over Days Part 2: Summah, Summah Summah! Like a Merry-Go-Round...

Greetings Heathens.

Welcome to the lexicographical powerhouse that is Flights. Herein we continue the highly anticpated and morally ambiguous retrospective that the last twelve glorious months have set the stage for. This day's installment covers Flights true ascendency to the very pinnacle of pokerblogging, and I make that assertion with my well-worn (and characteristic) humility. In this glorious summer, Flights becomes the most popular blog in the history of the InterWeb(tm), and well known bloggahs the world around flocked to her shores in order to bask in her nuturing embrace.

If I never stated it before: You Are All Welcome.

I was happy to give your otherwise dreary existences a close facsimile of meaning whilst I could.

I should note we seem to be building steam again, which is goot. Let's keep those stragglers straggling in, and work this site back up to the commenting UberStop it once was. I believe our high water mark was around 40, but I will settle for something in the mid-teens to low twenties by the end of the month. Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps...

And Without Further Ado:

July 2006:

The sole of wit is to know it's place [great line from a great flick, although Ryan might be the only one who can cite it without using a computah]. “Poker is for faggots” proves that not everyone groks an obvious joke. It also proves without a doubt the Trip is one hell of a guy. He made the Banner for Flights, and proceeds to help me fuck with it whenever my byzantine sense of humor or circumstance dictate. My first ammendment right to insult people I actually like gets violated and no one (starting and finishing with me) seems to care. sic transit etc. etc. etc.

Next came the Summer WPBT and my first live MTT in which I bust KK v QQ teaching me once and forever that online poker is no more rigged than live. Overall a great time spent with Waffles, D, Hoy, Carmen, Weak, Tina and the big surprise of the weekend: Smokkee. By now Tina has posted enough pics of Ray that the gig is up, but I wish to God I had a photo of the look Hoy, D and I gave each other that evening. Priceless. Absofuckinglutely Priceless. Kat & Jules decide to filet Waffles after he calls them yipping poodles, but then realize that allowing him to live and continue to play poker is torture enough. I meet Pauly, Iggy, Al (briefly) and Bobby (WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU GONE JOE DIMAGGIO? Is it me or did The Bracelet move again and not send me a forwarding address?) and find out the Old School is just as righteous as the New. Goot times all around, whether pondering Ansel Adams at Bellagio with Jules & Kitty (yeah yeah and the Hedgehog) or greeting Wawfuls (how the FUCK did I not think of this homonymous rendering?!?! - I am so ashamed of myself I can barely continue) in a towel when that was still a sight to behold, or just chillin with mah boyz D and Hoy in a hotel room when we were too tired/hungry/drunk to do more damage.

I return home to find myself in a photo on Tao. Too Fuckin Cool. I knew I'd get a chance to post that link again! Knew it...Goddam I look goot goot goot.

July proves to be my first real MTT results month. I started playing these because of Hoy and smokkee. I downloaded FT one Thursday we were all playing the Not. Smokkee was in a deep run for a WSOP ME seat, right down to the seat bubble, and everyone was calling out hands in the Stars chatbox. I couldn’t take it anymore so downloaded FT right then and there. At the exact moment smokkee bubbled. For 3.5k I should point out. But somehow I was convinced I had jinxed him. Took days to even start chatting again online, and if you what a talkative bastard I am, that’s saying something.

I win The Not for my first bloggah MTT, create the silent (k) in an inspired stroke, then final table 3 big field MTTs on FT. I chopped the FT 6.5k as my high-water mark. To this day I haven’t taken one down, but as it turns out fourth can be profitable too.

I get to know Peak when he comments on Trip's site after Trip highlighted Flights. He even-handedly noted that while I wasn't to his taste [mine either brotha, mine either...] I did have a distinctive style. I literally snorted coffee reading that, wandered over to his site and added yet another bloggah to the circle just like that. I am still counting on my boy to come through this May when I hit Denver. Les Do Dis Thang, Danny Boy. I tend to think of Peak as my online alter ego. His style is restrained, detail-oriented and lucid. We would all agree I aspire to none of those virtues. We started online close to the same time and started blogging roughly the same time. We play very different games, but we share the belief that there is much to be learned from paying attention to the play of other [albiet select] bloggers. We're prolly both wrong, but at least we're in excellent company.

August 2006:

There are close to a hundred people stopping by on a regular basis. I do consistently well in blogger MTTs and begin an epic assault on the FT 20K. I make the final three tables three different times, suffering mightily on the way out the door; illustrated best when I bubble in tenth to a four-outer on the rivah. I start to experiment with tightening up in the midgame but discover a strange reality. The annoying fact is that when I run deep, my strategy has me running short, a minimal threat to a win. To date I am haunted by this flaw in my approach.

Now reading through these posts with the advantage of hindsight, I admit I see the beginning of blog fatigue. For one thing there are fewer posts, and they are sadly more focused on recapping tournies as opposed to actually blathering on meaninglessly with words like 'obfuscate' and 'perfidious'. Perhaps I post less frequently under the assumption I will be starting my new job in September and should focus more on the work to come?

Laughably, laughably wrong…but fortunately the story finds a happy ending.

September 2006:

I coin the light-years ahead of its time pejorative "taint-hound" in a moment of diabolical inspiration. The first person I use it on is not amused. Still makes me chuckle. It is a sign that the community has a way of ironing out these little wrinkles that Steve-o and I are on good terms to this date. To be truthful, out of all the words and unique spells I feel I gave to the 'sphere, Taint-Hound remained my favourite. The fact she never caught on the way I hoped she would remains a stinging rebuke. Perhaps now, properly aged, I could encourage the brethren to grant this chatbox-safe masterpiece a second season? Vamos a ver...

Overall a strong month MTTing highlighted by two FT20k final 20 finishes, winning the Mookie, and final tabling WWdN a bunch of times (Mr. RunnerUp sadly). E, having temporarily deleted his blog, posts invisibly on mine. No one notices the difference.

The next week I have a brain-dead llama (no, not Wawfuls) guest host. No one notices the difference.

Signs of things to come.

MTF.

A Year In Review Delivered Over Days In Order to Demolish the Over/Under.

This time last year I was taking it on the chin at the tables. I had started online to play WWdN, a tournament that I have proved incapable of winning despite 3 or 4 final tables in at least 30 shots. I started a blog I thought to keep track of the money I was spending. I considered it a distant early warning to prevent me from becoming an addict or from reloading. In short order I found I liked writing in it just for the hell of it. In short order I found I liked writing.

It’s been interesting to see how many of my friends started just a little ahead of me. A year later, The New School is still looking good and running strong. To mark the 1st Anniversary of Flights, I thought I’d go month by month through the passed year at this blog and take note of the characters I’ve met along the way.

April 2006:
“I went on a journey of self-discovery this weekend on Pokerstars. Mostly I discovered I am an idiot.”

As true today as the day I put it down. Only three posts in the inaugural month and no comments at the time. I do vividly, somewhat self-consciously, recall writing those posts understanding there was little chance anyone other than myself would ever read them. I also remember feeling a little awkward about chatting at the blogger tournies because it always seems like everyone has known everyone forever. For anyone in that position now, I would submit most of the people you’re reading have serious psychological problems and can barely function in three dimensions. No need to be shy at all…

May 2006:

May began with E and Hoy dropping by Flights. E and I met across the table at WWdN (my first his second I think). Hoy and I met after I he accidentally bet into my aces while multi-tabling. He then proceeded to call me Lakaris, starting a trend that lasted weeks. I committed to starting the title of every post with the letter 'I', a fact I managed to do for 98 posts. A year later, I still consider these two guys a part of the inner circle.

Also of note, May 14th was the day I broke even as a poker player after starting 1200 in the hole dating back to the prior December. Jordan stopped by to let me know he liked my writing but couldn’t figure out what the hell I was talking about. Days of futures past indeed. Depsite enduring two truly mind-warping months where I have lost 3k in buyins and AA, KK, QQ cracked and cracked cruelly 15 times, I remain a net profitable player thanks to that glorious, FTOPS-run that was characterized by solid play and numerous dominated escapes. That it is now my turn to take it on the chin round after round despite playing reasonably well just goes to show that the math will always get you.

This was also the month where Flights really got noticed, thanks mainly to Trip, both for posting his now famous meme we all took a stab at, then pointing everyone my way to read my absurdist take on it. Bloody P’s comment on it was my favourite because it was a classic head-fake. It was here that Don, Mookie, Wes, Carmen and even the Waffler became names I looked for on a regular basis. With the idea that people were reading I began my quick plummet of the deep end.

May 17 was my first of many, many Mookies. It took me so long to win one of these mothas I may as well as just bribed Mookie to declare me a winner (would have been far more cost-effective).

June 2006:

Don lists me as a huge underdog in the Mookie and I final table it for the first time. The MWGB starts flexing its magic, but I remain slow on the uptake. Jordan starts the luck vs. skill meme that encircles us and howls like the Whirlwind. Mookie and I discover Don drives the DruggieBuggie. Having driven in it, I still can’t quite believe that fact. Hoff coins the phrase ‘Fear The Hoy!’ and I start droppin it like it’s hot. Felicia drops by to tell me I’ve turned her on (a trick damn few of you unwashed masses ever pulled off I bet). I suffer my first ridiculous MTT schooling at the hands of a donkee named smokkee. By now Jules and Kat are my honorary big sisters and Chris (WTF are you up to brotha?) is dropping by regularly when he isn’t swinging with his freaky neighbourhood.

Most importantly, June gave the pokahblogosphere a girl named Melinda. No I did not make her up. And no, I never really got tired of the ongoing surreality that was our online affair. Adding Waffles to the mix certainly signaled the end of it all. When Carmy and her started going at it…well, the end is always less tidy than the beginning of these things, no?

Okay enough for today.

MTF

The Unrecorded Magnetic Field of Buffalo, NY

NYC here I come my ass.

One day I will figure out why events (some patient related, but many just strange life entanglements) keep conspiring to make sure I never get anything resembling a vacation again. 5 months now and not a wisp of one.

Vegas - no go. Politics.
Italy - no go. Viral Pneumonia (well okay, the worst bronchitis you can get before pneumonia)
Now NYC - no go it turns out. Patient related (and I'll leave it at I am just too neurotic to leave unfinished business).

I am feeling pretty low. I intend to tilt off some dough now and might even "go busto" tonight.

BTW, that last post reread after 7 hours of sleep is interesting to me on a couple of levels. The first is that I don't recall ever consciously articulating that sentiment towards NYC ever before in my life. I think it was brewing beneath the surface but I had never really said it aloud or written it down. I also think Hoy and Rav hit the nail on the head. I think I have likely been carrying around a vestigial grudge that it's time to let go of. Strangely (or perhaps not-so-strangely) one of my fondest memories of my mom is the time we visited NYC when I was ten. We had a fight while visiting the WTC and I said some pretty horrible things. I used all the money I had brought with me to buy her one of those fake "emerald rings" you could get in the gift shops there. I gave it to her on the way up the elevator and apologized. She accepted and gave me a surprisingly warm hug. I still remember her smiling at me in that elevator.

Which is to say, I like NYC. And am now determined to reclaim her from my assumptions.

I just need to figure out how to achieve escape velocity from Buffalo (a city I truly love and am fast considering home) in order to get a chance to miss it a bit.

MTF. [5 days Hoy. over/under is going to get demolished]

Somewhat Cantankerous Thoughts on returning to New York City.

Fuck is this post wierd. Just read it start to finish. Haven't changed a word. Polemical though. Assuming you know what that word means you can save yourself some wasted time.

Bone (-Daddy) tired today. The lab was held up by one stupidity after another thus I didn't finish until 7:3opm. 4 1/2 hours in lead on the last case with the heater way up thanks to an idiot observer. I just want to sleep for three days and recover my sense of alertness. The only smart thing I will do today is not fire up a table. I have got to avoid pixelating my retinas in this sleep/eat/shit mode.

Actually I think I'm too tired to shit.

I tried as soon as I got home and limped off my clothes. But the cellular fatigue that has set in proved greater than the urge to purge and thus after a few half-hearted chugs I resigned myself to living with toxicities. The apartment reeks of my four-day old meals on wheels that I have conned the good state of NY to deliver to my door under the ruse of agoraphobia. The downside is that you inevitably become who you pretend to be, so you must be careful who pretend to be. Mother Night, by my recently departed godfather for the curious.

So here I sit, full of shit (literally for a change), resplendent in my purpled turpitude while I contemplate my plane flight to New York City tomorrow afternoon (I have an ablation in the morning and three consults, so I will have been one productive fuck before I even leave on an allegded CME day).

It is my first time being back in NYC since months before 9/11. I truly thought I would never go back. There has been a major exodus of muslims out of NYC since 9/11, and with them literally billions in productivity and tax dollars gone too. Why'd they go? They had the fiscal ability to not have to put up with every 18 year-old white kid with an axe to grind taking it out them for acts of terrorism they don't condone (in fact actively abhor), and had nothing to fucking do with. The greatest strength of the American experiment is that socio-economic class trumps race most (but not all) of the time. The joke is the typical urban redneck was like "Good Riddance" while anyone who can count without using their digits knows the economic toll it's taken.

Nonetheless lots remain, and a family friend who is an insanely wealthy and successful plastic surgeon in Manhattan was letting me know that I shouldn't believe the hype. It ain't that bad. The first rule of New York, he told me over the phone, hasn't changed: you mind yourself, no one else gives a shit about you for the most part. I opined his view of NYC might be better than most because he views it from an apartment the size of a house with a mortgage that would I would need to sell a kidney to pay. Maybe, he noted, Maybe not. You may be surprised.

But the problem for me is that I am by nature an uppity brownie. I don't take kindly to people staring at me like I should apologize for being me or being in sight. I usually don't pass up the opportunity to tell people like that to fuck off. I have scars above my left eye and under my chin as a result of this well-worn policy.

The US of A has been clearly beautiful to me no doubt. I love and respect her mightily for it. But I also know I have been fucking good, good, good to this country. Paid my taxes, given to charity and involved myself like any good almost-citizen in the affairs of the day to whatever degree appropriate. I also happen to save American lives on a pretty regular basis, and improve the quality of American lives on a daily basis.

No, I don't need anyone to thank me for that; I get paid to do it and my new house is thanks enough. But as a corollary, I just can't stand the look that some uneducated fuckwad with a high school GED gives me as he looks me up and down, trying to spec out if he's got a terrorist on his hands or just someone else he doesn't like. Yeah that's it retard, I managed to elude the deadliest, best-trained, best-equipped spy agency in the history of the world, but you managed to out me. Nice work Orville. And Fuck You Pal. I'm only about a thousand times more invested in the well-being of this nation than you. But I'm sure your Proud To Be American bumper sticker levels that playing field.

Actually even worse are well-educated fuckwads with their landed gentry prejudices. When I was younger I actually wanted to show those guys that their fears were irrational and that it was a myth that to be muslim meant to be some kind of radical. Now, older, I couldn't give a fuck what these people think about me. I live a complex, but essentially humane life cognizant of the fact that people will still dislike me and misunderstand me anyway. That would have made me sad 15 years ago. Now it makes me smile at the futility their of hating me. The fact is, I'm too rich for hate or prejudices to hurt me or my family. Unless of course the whole country goes nuts and tries to interr the entirety of my particular prayer group.

I guess I am now near-convinced you can't convince anyone to believe something, however logical, that they don't WANT to believe. So I no longer try. But I still am not putting up with any shit either.

NYC here I come.

MTF

My eternal summer fades and loses possession of that fair it ownest. IOW Coolers Continue

I have Hoy as a witness as to how fucked up things are for me right now. We met in battle at Wolf 359. I was a black starfleet Commander, he was a cyborg made out of the Flagship's Captain and some rubber tubing from Home Depot.

Well we met in battle anyway. Sat to the 30k 6-max. AT shorty pushes knowing I have to call. AJd no good to half my stack. Then to bounce me AK gets called by KJo for his entire stack [btw and fyi: this hand blows. even when i play it I am aware of this fact] despite the board double pairing to all but assure victory, door number five turns out to be one of three coupons for an unanesthetized colonoscopy and polypectomy. My anal ring will never be the same.

The 19k today? Made steady aggressive progress (ie. yet again I outlast about 750 morons in great shape to do damage when the other bigger stack at my table falls for my AA 3.5X (since me being me this about the third time in two orbits I am raising in LP). He pushes to tell me to fuck off...what a dream scenario...holding 49o.

Are you aware you can make a straight with 49o? I wasnt and had clicked off the table back to beginning my sequential anal explorations in the 30k. It was only when I clicked back and got the message that I had bounced 211th. You only the need the 9 it turns out. The 4 is silent.

I was not silent.

Tried to play the Mookie, but be honest, how would you do with that much rage encircling your loins? Thought so...

This will do for now. Except to note, ate exactly right, still no workout, but managed to operate for 8 1/2 hours today after driving from Cleveland at 4am. Heroic no? I agree.

MTF

[ps. Before anyone tries to remind me of the current headlines and tell me what a real tragedy is, allow me to proactively ask you to politely fuck right off. I get it. We all get it. It's sad. Now let's focus on me. This has been a Public Service Announcement from Flights of Iakaris.]

Toronto and The Center-Seeking Force Part Zeroth.

101. A number that seems older than our ability to name it.

And yet this is just a quick promise-keeping missive from the road. So it goes...

Kudos to scurvydog for bouncing me from MATH. All blame to me, the credit is yours. Next time I will talk less and focus more. My frustration push with QJ on a Q high board was only going to get called by something that would be way, way ahead. On the other hand, I wasn’t impressed with that earlier river call holding kings. Not sure at all how you knew I didn’t connect with that flush/straight board that I smooth called the whole way then value bet at the end, but the inability to say goodbye to kings was rewarded. I think two months ago I get the fold. These days I have the damp reek of futility about me. Yeesh.

And how did your noble healer end up this frustrated? Earlier that night I played the 75er 19k, get down to the last 60 or so with a mid stack when I flop bottom set on a board with two diamonds and successfully OBFV (a trick it's fair to say that is solidly in the toolbox now, thanks 55). Forget how it ends, even a prom queen can see that one coming, but here’s what villain had to do to find his pot of gold. He had to call off his entire midstack on the flop. When he could well afford the fold. KJd. Didn’t even think twice. Then I listened to him call me a gambler. Needless to say had that worked out the way it should three out four times I am top 5 entering Day 4. These are the things that I would read about happening to you unwashed masses for months and months with sympathy but not empathy. Now it happens to me almost every time I fire up. Going on weeks now.

It will be very interesting to see if I end up having to reload (which I just might not do) or if salvation is around the corner. Naturally I now feel the self conscious need to cough, cough remind all that more than 10k has been withdrawn…etc etc…but I will overcome that need because I am a self-secure grownup.

Almost.

Seriously I will be pretty sad if I can’t go to the well and come back with fresh water as I have whenever needed in the past year. This should be an interesting couple of months.

As to work, I finished two pacemaker generator changes and two consults before 12 noon. Not bad, although generator changes are about the simplest thing I do in the lab. Still, I can honestly say I am operating better than I ever have. My fingers are beginning to behave like they know what my brain wants them to do before my brain even asks. I have this humble (snicker derisively if you must) awareness of all that can go wrong, but my confidence is running at an all-time high. I like to play 92.9 JackFM in the lab as I work. Fucking excellent radio station and keeps the work uptempo when at times it is anything but.

Translation: I am having fun. A lot of it.

So how did I spend my unexpected half-day off? I decided to surprise the wife and kids and drove to Cleveland, which is where I am writing to you from. Killed the opportunity to finish my next post, and necessitated this more typical disjointed Sanskrit, but can’t say as I regret it a bit. Kissed my beautiful girl, watched Return of the Jedi with a 5 year old stud who has taught himself to read, write, add, subtract and multiply without a day of formal education in a class [insanely proud much?] then tucked my baby dolls into bed. I will be up at 4am tomorrow and driving 3 1/2 hours to arrive in time to start a day which will likely go from 8-6 in lead getting irradiated.

Was a bargain anyway I look at it. But the house can’t be built soon enough. Pictures of the work in progress to follow shortly.

Oh yeah. Ate Okay. Still no workout. LLFF wins again, but I will get him eventually. I always get what I want, I usually just have to sell part of my soul to get there.

I think I still have some left.

MTF

Toronto and The Center-Seeking Force Part I...aka I have stopped starting each post with the letter I which I did for 98 posts, did anyone notice?

Zuh-Hero Pokah Content Below Boyz and Girlz. Forewarned is forearmed no? Just made my deadline. Was going to send this to 55 first, but have realized anymore delay and I will never get it out. BTW this ends up being number 100, although it's an incomplete pass as you will soon see. Story of this blog to date. First Year Anniversary coming up at which time the omnibus retrospective will begin. Tickets are still available for the nude clown jello wrestling performance piece during intermission.

Ate well. No work out. I am a lazy, lazy, fat fuck. Still I will soon be a cable TV star and I better get back to sex symbol shape soon if I know what's good for me. Curious? That's about ten posts away...

To today's business then, shall we?

Quite a while ago Fuel sent me a great piece he had written on the WSOP as a poker player’s Mecca. The post ended with him opining that each of us have other pilgrimages we strive to make. This fine idea concluded with an appeal to think about the concept a little and see if I had something I wanted to say on the topic. In fact I had started forming my take on this thread within minutes of reading the piece but then suffered a total inability to express my thoughts. For weeks. And strange that, because as a muslim (yeah, yeah a gambling dillentante of a muslim, but one nonetheless) I’ve grown up with the idea of pilgrimage as a fundamental article of faith.

Anyway, the idea has never been far from mind and recently I spent time with an old friend which led to a true a-ha moment. Not easy to come by one of those at this stage of the mid-game and what follows is my attempt to get it down. I don’t pretend that any of this navel-gazing prattle will be of interest to anyone but myself, but Gardner oft noted that writing is good for the soul and who am I to argue with him?

Dammit…it’s 11pm and I am still two tabling! Am going to have to post this now to keep my vow. Tomorrow…no preamble…only self-serving mummy didn’t love me so that’s why I wet the bed insights.

MTF.

Easter and other Ressurections…aka Running very Poorly but optimistic by default…aka The Once & Future Blog

In my defense, silence may not be informative but it’s not necessarily the hallmark of a complacent mind. It’s true I’ve been experiencing an inability to complete even a few paragraphs without tremendous effort and that has resulted in me not wanting me to do this thing that is usually a source of genuine satisfaction. The hedgehog would translate that as: I have had writer’s block. A more accurate description would be: I have been feeling lazy mentally and physically for a long time.

Still. There has been a fair bit on my mind. For one thing, I have been running terribly and it has warped my brain and my game into a spot where I am not sure which way is up. I am donking it up huge or running supercold or both at the same time. It’s great to read Hoy [TWO bracelet races won is pretty ridiculous anyway ya look at it], and the usual suspects tearing it up, because it has not been happening for me at all. Yes I have been coolered fierce and had aces cracked coming up on the money three times in the last week. But without a doubt, this is not the A game [yeah, yeah Waffles, I know you hotly dispute the existence of an A game]. Speaking frankly I sometimes kick myself for removing more than 10k right before the Neteller fiasco. I had never gone more than 600 bucks in buy-ins without an MTT score that more than justified the expenditure and grew the roll. To be blunt this current streak is getting close to a crisis point. The roll to buy-in ratio is still workable and even somewhat artificial (although the hassle of getting money back onto FT might turn me off online poker altogether) but it will be interesting next few months. No score there and I will be facing a decision I haven’t had to even mull over in about a year.

But I still believe this will work itself out and maybe even in time for June, because I am definitely down there that first week to give it a shot or two. No ME this year I think barring a late inning miracle, but at least one and probably two of those first few events look like a go. I was going to get down there earlier but since everyone is rolling in towards the end of that week I’ll follow suit and save those vacation days for later. NYC is next up next week and I am looking forward to a break of sorts (still have to take a prep course for my upcoming EP boards this November, but will make time for the good stuff).

Anyhoo…returning to the note of actually writing, I have decided to hold myself to some kind of commitment. With no originality, I have decided to write here every weekday for the next thirty days. This will work I think because I actually have several things I want to express since it’s been a dense three weeks emotionally. For example I just came to the painful realization I’m ghey…I thought telling my wife would be the hardest part, but she knows I have a pokerblog so has been assuming I’m very, very ghey for the last 12 months. I have also started writing fiction again for the first time in a long, long time (very teen angsty/coming of age shit I am going to sell to UPN), so maybe this is the end of a variety of dry spells.

I list (primarily for my own benefit, and of course for your ancillary titillation) the blurbs I intend to generate over the next few days.

Toronto and the Center-Seeking Force (55 gets credit for getting that one to lift-off)
On the Death of Sweet Lou Rakita
My parents' 40th Anniversary
Learning of the Death of Kurt Vonnegut while Recalling the Death of Carl Sagan
The [de]construction of my new house and life
Separation from The Family and the Anomie it Entails
I am about to become a Cable TV star. Is he having a laugh?! [Full style points for anyone who gets that one.]
The As-Yet Unengaged Battle to Exercise, Eat Right (and other dreams 0f once-known Glory)

In addition and again for my own benefit primarily (but very possibly for your amusement) I will be putting down whether I worked out and ate right. It’s about time the MWGB got back to work for me. I want to be back at my ideal weight and in a regular workout regimen by the end of the summer. Make it so. I also need a big MTT score pronto. And I’d like to stop playing like a jackass. Make those so too.

MTF.

In Which at Long Last and Long Overdue I call it quits.

Just busted from the 400k in a manner befitting how I've been running for over a month.

Things just don't seem to work for me anymore. Superior mindset but inferior results.

I just realized what many of you have been assuming for weeks/months.

This blog is dead.

I am done with poker too. I don't mean it in a dismissive way at all, but for me there's nothing left to gain or prove. I just reread my first post. I should be satisfied; I acheived mediocrity and a couple of times I did indeed escape it.

I was going to try to become a cash game specialist, but instead I think I will learn how to play golf this summer. And how to rollerblade. And play with my children even - assuming they still recognize me.

Thanks to all for reading and teaching (the latter more than the former), and thanks especially to this guy for showing us all how to save the date via high technology.

Low-tech Retards like me have to count on that most fickle of blades: irony. Fermentation at twelve and twelve again should suffice, but knowing my intemperate pen, this may well be it anyway.

HAFD.