Roll With It, Women, Melancholy, Poker

I was talking to a friend today on the phone and I was struck by an odd sense of pride. She was telling me about a friend of hers that is really struggling with his grandmother's cancer. She was just diagnosed, and he thinks it's grossly unfair and too soon. She's 73. Granted, the life expectancy of a woman born today is 80.97 years, but back in 1934 it was 68.45. This may seem cold, but the fact is that this guy still would willingly sacrifice his own life for his grandmother to live a few extra years. The more I type, the more I sound like a heartless prick, but the point I'm trying to make is that I felt proud because I'm able to roll with the punches that life deals me. I get sad and I get angry just like everybody else, but as I discussed in a previous post, I'm able to internalize everything and move on. This guy's grandmother still has a year or two to live, but he might not ever be the same. I still don't understand it. The pessimist in me thinks of the saying "Life's a bitch and then you die." While the saying omits some important facts (there's lots of neat stuff along the way), it gets at the basic idea that life is entropic. We all die, which means all things end. Maybe one day when we have nanobots they will be able to slip inside our bodies and just rebuild our worn out parts, but until then we have to deal with losing things: losing the girl, losing our former physical abilities, losing loved ones. The people that dwell just speed up their own end by standing still and letting time pass, and the shitty part is that there's nothing you can say to people to fix them or help them. I never believed in the saying "You can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped," but as I've aged I realize that not only is that true, but you can't make somebody want to be helped. It seems to me that most people have this genetic kill switch built in that causes them to shut down when they encounter emotional adversity, and there's no reset button. This guy will probably never get over his grandmother's death. My friend will probably never get over her mother's suicide. James and Matt won't get past their grandmother's death. I'll lose more friends and my parents and it will floor me. But I'll get up and float on because I choose to.

I'm tired of the women that I want not wanting me in return. That's all I have to say about that.

In case you haven't noticed, this post is more melancholy than usual. I have some plans this weekend with a high likelihood for shenanigans, so the rain clouds will pass shortly, I promise. If not I'll just "lie" and post a happy, goofy blog and you will never know the difference.

Speaking of rain clouds, fuck probabilities. They get too many vacation days a year. They must live in Finland. I got destroyed today and ended up WAY negative in heads-up matches. I'm winless is $100 matches, which doesn't help things. A fatty 0-2 effort today didn't help the bankroll. I played a guy named PapaGanush6 (it did give me pleasure that he effed up Baba Ganoush) twice, and it was terrible both times. He was an all-in machine, which I typically chew up quickly. However, in the first match, I dwindled to around 8.5k taking and missing flops and folding to huge overbets and all-ins. I finally found AKdd and pot reraised his overraise after I limped in. He called and we took a flop of A22 with a pot of about 8k. He was first to act and moved in. I called pretty quickly and laughed when he flipped J2o. Nice call preflop. In the second match, I decided to fight fire with fire and reraised a lot of his overraises preflop. I worked him down to 7k when I doubled him. I raised pot preflop and he moved in for the whole 7k. I had 55 and beat him in the pot. He flipped A4, giving him a 30% shot. He spiked the A on the turn and I'm down to 6k. He hammered on me for a bit, getting me down to 2k in chips, but I ran it back to 12k on 3 all-ins with the better hand that held up. I worked it all the way up to 14k before he flopped a flush and I flopped 2 pair. Of course I paid him off because I'm not folding 2 pair to this guy pretty much ever. That left me at 6k, and he again worked me down near 4k. This time I picked off pots to get back to 8.5k when the bust hand came up. I had A9o on the button and I raised it to pot. He had just doubled me up, and when he doubled me he would always push the next hand. What I'm saying here is that I was trapping with A9o. I'm kind of a badass. He predictably pushed and I beat him in. He flipped Q9cc making me a sick favorite. 70/30 to be exact. Since I prefaced this with "bust hand," we all can figure that the Q spiked on the turn. For those of you keeping track, that's 0-5 in the last 2 days when the money goes in and I'm a 70/30 favorite. I don't want to do the math on the likelihood of dropping all of those because it will just make me angry, but I'm guessing it's probably something like 100,000:1 against. If somebody gets bored, figure it out and let me know. I also went probably -2 in $50 matches today in somewhat similar fashion, but I got pretty tired towards the end of the evening when I played those and can't recall the specific bust hands. I do know that I only put in bad 3 times tonight, and 2 of those were in the $100 matches, so I'm guessing the rest were garden variety "me missing draws or them hitting theirs" losses. I do remember one loss in a $50 came with my AKdd vs KsKc. He bet and I moved in over him on a flop of Qd 7d 6h, leaving me at 47% to win, but I blanked out. The only highlight of the day is that I won around $40 playing PLO/8. I'm going to get the $.10/$.25 PLO/8 running every day because the people who play it are just bad. Had I bet hands a little more loosely, I easily could've made $60, but I was understandably gun shy after my heads-up debacles. Ok, bed time.