Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis
I woke up in the middle of choking to death again; though to be accurate, it was towards the end of the process--woke up right away in a white hot panic with black spots of permanent unconsciousness swooping in across both sides of my vision.
Calm yourself, was the first important step. My lungs were soaked, steeped in the things that belonged only in my stomach, and locked up tight. My air passage was blocked and burning with bile and hydrochloric acid. No, I don't have asthma. I have a drinking problem.
Spoiler
Though, now that I think about it, is that inhaler thing any good? Maybe I'll try a hit sometime, just to see.
This was last Friday, just a few hours after I'd quit my office job of twelve years to take a shot at playing poker for a living out West in Nevada. This will not be my first shot at gambling for a living; although I have only tried something like this once before, many years ago.
Around the turn of the century I quit college most of the way through my senior year and I moved out to Las Vegas for 8 years. My experiences were somewhat of interest: rampant drunkenness, a stolen lab animal, solid card counting, North Korean meth, time spent with Mormons, advantage slot grinding, a cowardly pass on an FBI Most Wanted bounty, facing contempt of court charges, and dressing up as Albus Dumbledore. You can find that in my BBV thread.
[U][url]https://forumserver.twoplustwo.c...[/U][/URL] .
That thread held up pretty well in BBV, which is not nothing.
Starting meditative relaxation can be problematic when you're dying from choking on your own puke. I sat up straight, blind from the black splotches that had slapped away the weak light of the kitchen stove. I dropped my shoulders, relaxed my chest and upper arms, and then, projecting calm with all my might, I tried my throat. I pictured my lungs and throat opening up just a tiny passage, for just a little air to go by--something to get me started. And they did, untethering just the smallest little rivulet of air, and it made the most terrifying sound as it went through. It always does.
Whatever you've heard from actors pretending to gasp after being choked, the reality is worse. At least no one was with me this time. When that's been the case, the other person has invariably freaked the **** out when they've heard my gasping and choking routine, which only adds the burden of myself having to reassure them through nodding and non-frantic gestures, so that they won't call 911, as I hate the idea of calling the cops.
April 13th of this year was 14 months without me having a drink. During that long stretch I had honestly forgotten why I'd quit. That's right, I had completely purged from my recall the years of nighttime memories of myself almost choking to death, this happening once or twice every couple of weeks on average. Now, the terrifying night wakeups didn't happen even once during the 14 dry months. But 3 weeks back into drinking--oh yeah--there was that thing, wasn't there?.
Now, there was something else I'd forgotten about. And that's the Double Tap. The Double Tap happens when I don't force my drunk and tired and traumatized self to remain awake for a good two or three hours after a choking incident. If I fall back asleep before then, I wake up choking to death all over again. And sure enough, that happened last Friday, and I had to save myself again.
So on Saturday I jumped back on the waggy, and Cinco de Mayo is now my new anniversary date, and that's really enough about drinking. I'm not here to write about that business. I should have been done with it; and now I am.
My flight leaves for Reno in a few hours, and I'll be out there for the next 3 weeks scouting out the live poker games in the city. If I like it, that's where I'm moving to.
For Zeno yeah two pounds. I
Need to be nice to Zeno. I figure if I’m ever on the run from the law I could PM him to hideout on his spread in Oregon. I could work off my room and board by doing odd jobs for him and maybe earn a little beer money.
I have a question on vulturing Ultimate X. Let’s say your on a bank of 8 VP Ultimate X machines. Do you need to check every machine or just one in the bank? Also if some is playing say double double bonus at the $1 level will that leftover multiplier only show DDB or will it show on any $1 demon VP game?
Hi Da-Nit!
The $.25 Triple Double 5-play 4x bonus hand is only on that terminal, on only that video poker variant, for only that price, for only the 5-hand option, i.e. it's on one screen only.
One newer model (I forget the name, but it has a III suffix, like the third) has 168 screens for me to check, between the Ultimate X and the Ultimate X Bonus Streak games. I have to scroll through every one of them. That model takes around 8 minutes to check; others take around 2-4 minutes per terminal.
There are faster slot grinders out there than me. Watching one of them at work, flashing through the screens with two hands at top speed, could possibly trigger an epileptic fit. It can definitely draw attention.
I've been asked "What are you doing?" several times.
My stock answer is: "I'm just nosy. I want to see what games people are hitting on." That's worked so far.
I try not to sit next to anyone when checking a machine. I like to have at least one gap between me and the normies, to minimize the amount of attention that I draw. I have numbered the various machines using my own system, and I keep track of which ones I've checked, so when I skip over one due to crowding, I can return to it later.
For Zeno yeah two pounds. I
Need to be nice to Zeno. I figure if Iām ever on the run from the law I could PM him to hideout on his spread in Oregon. I could work off my room and board by doing odd jobs for him and maybe earn a little beer money.
I think a lot of us have the same plan. I never leave the house without sticking bus fare to Oregon in my sock.
Hi Da-Nit!
The $.25 Triple Double 5-play 4x bonus hand is only on that terminal, on only that video poker variant, for only that price, for only the 5-hand option, i.e. it's on one screen only.
One newer model (I forget the name, but it has a III suffix, like the third) has 168 screens for me to check, between the Ultimate X and the Ultimate X Bonus Streak games. I have to scroll through every one of them. That model takes around 8 minutes t
This seems like a lot of work.
l lost again, and I played poorly during the first half of the session, but during the break I realized that I've been making decisions too quickly during big hands, and it's been costing me.
The quick decisions come from my early years of multitabling MTTs on Full Tilt, and they have to stop, so I've imposed a 10 second minimum wait for any bet over $25, whether I'm making it or I'm faced with it.
This is not rocket science. Most players, good or bad, know enough to stop and think about decisions in hands that involve a lot of money, and I often do that as well, but I haven't always done it, so now I will.
I started with the new policy during the second half of the session, and I believe that I made better decisions.
MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
(-152.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$199.87
Running Poker Total from Sept. 2024: 24 hours, -($684.00)
Running Slot Total from Sept. 2024: 7 hours, +$1262.38
2024 Grand Total: 31 hours, +$578.38
Off to work I go.
If I'm lucky, I'll beat the Asian Slot Syndicate morning shift. MGM has been steadily reducing the number of advantage machines, so it seems like the Asian grinders' coverage has been marginally reduced as well.
Hopefully the poker gods are kind to me today. All I can do is to try to play well. When I'm running bad, I try to keep in mind that the most important hand is the next one. I stole that one from Ben Hogan, the golfer.
Also, there's there's the Brad Owen comeback video that I've found recently. Seems like it might be good to watch when I've running and/or playing bad.
I lost again, largely because I made a nitty fold in a big hand after a long consideration, and I was shown the bluff. I don't have much else to say except thank goodness for the slot wins that have been propping me up. Slot play was once considered a degen leak for a poker player, now it's a lifeline.
If you're wondering why I don't just play slots full time, I've explained that more than a few times already. Scroll up...okay, it's a big thread. Use the search function.
I'll be back tomorrow.
MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 7 hours
(-106.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
+$64.17
Running Poker Total from Sept. 2024: 24 hours, -($790.00)
Running Slot Total from Sept. 2024: 7 hours, +$1326.55
2024 Grand Total: 41 hours, +$536.55
Sorry I missed this, CowboyCold.
I like your undertitle! Mine was Bastard before an unsolicited mod change. I just rolled with it.
Yes, football season is on us! This year, touchdowns get $300 for one random player, and a table share of $100 each for the other players the same table. Field goals are $150/$50 respectively.
I should be playing today, but I've decided that working 6 full days out of 7 in the middle of a big downswing would not be the best approach for my mental game.
Schedule this week is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, so I'll catch the Mon and Thurs games.
Seems like you need to put Sundays during nFL season back on the schedule.
still better than minimum wage in several states
with the added expectation of several spot bonuses along the way
hope you quietly accept what the standard table play tithes
and only enter into the waters of indepth negotiation when expected value of contract amounts warrant the extra effort and risk
Yesterday was the same as all the others in recent memory in that I quickly fell into the hole by either making second best hands and paying off or by folding the best hand to an unlikely bluff, after that I followed protocol by going card dead for a few hours, left to stew in my own stuckstink.
Yesterday was different in that I also started in the hole with the slots, instead of having them as a mitigator to my poker losses. At one point, I was down more than $500 between the two pursuits. But no worries, football was coming around to save the day.
The 49ers and Jets scored a ton last night, defense was not on the agenda, and many tables and players in Springfield were blessed with hundreds and hundreds of dollars in promo bounties, but not my table, and not me. We got nothing.
Still, I soldiered on. I didn't quit. The old me would have wrapped it up early for the day at a dozen junctures. By the end of the night, with some hard work and some extra-credit slot checking, I managed to knock the loss down to less than $150.
I will post the tally at some point, but I've just now won the battle of going back to work today, so off I go.
Your security guard is doing a great job.
This season, I will work Sundays when I can. What's annoying is that the poker room promos two games on Sundays, the first at 1PM and the last at 8:30PM, so if I wanted to sit in for two games, I'd have to play for almost 12 hours. That's not happening.
still better than minimum wage in several states
with the added expectation of several spot bonuses along the way
hope you quietly accept what the standard table play tithes
and only enter into the waters of indepth negotiation when expected value of contract amounts warrant the extra effort and risk
Thanks REDeYeS00! Winrate will start being statistically significant around 350 hours or so. I'll have to hope for some rungood to dig me out of this.
Thanks Dubnjoy000!
Thanks Sheep! Yeah, he's earning his slightly-above-minimum-wage keep for sure, lately.
"Hey, it's the Piano Man. How ya doin', Piano man?"
The middle-aged lady with the smoker's voice sidled up and sat down at the Ultimate X machine next to mine.
"I call you the Piano Man because you're always playing those keys."
Those keys being the Ultimate X buttons that I use to quickly scroll through the screens.
The lady and her wife are video poker regs at the Springfield MGM. She is gregarious, and nosy. A few days before, the lady had asked me what I was doing when I was checking the machines. I had told her that I was curious if other people were winning or not.
"Eh, I'm just checking on a few things in between poker hands." I mumbled, aghast at being called out in this way. Fortunately, I did have a seat at the poker table. During the hands between my hijack and my big blind, I had gotten up to check on one last machine that I had missed before I'd been seated. Now I got up from the machine and left her, awkwardly. I may have a new nemesis.
I was supposed to take today off, but my friend Helen from Taiwan is visiting this weekend, so I'm hanging out with her on Friday. And my friend Will wants to get together on Saturday. I can make this work and still get my 40 hours this week if I work today and tomorrow.
MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 13 hours
(-$13.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 7 hours
+$64.17
Running Poker Total from Sept. 2024: 37 hours, -($803.00)
Running Slot Total from Sept. 2024: 14 hours, +$1407.79
2024 Grand Total: 61 hours, +$604.79
The blue is September 2024, and not an annual total, right?
Today was a good day. I spent the first hour stewing in downtown Stuckville, as per usual, but then I caught the bus out of there.
Back again tomorrow.
MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 7 hours
+$624.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
+$123.53
Running Poker Total from Sept. 2024: 51 hours, -($179.00)
Running Slot Total from Sept. 2024: 20 hours, +$1531.32
Total from Sept. 2024: 71 hours, +$1352.32
All aboard!
The Story of Helen
Ten years ago, my boss and I went on a business trip to Taiwan to visit a large machine tool show in Taichung, which is Taiwan's big industrial city.
We visited a booth that Helen was working at, and apparently I made a big impression on her, as I believe that she singlehandedly convinced her bosses to arrange a dinner and business meeting with us.
Helen rode along with her company's driver when he picked up my boss and I for the meeting, and at one point the driver told her to stop flirting with me. The meeting was a bit of a disaster, as our two businesses had little to offer each other, and it was an obvious waste of time for us and for their executives.
Helen was blamed for the fiasco and fired.
I felt bad for Helen, and our company needed a general machine part vendor in Taiwan, so I suggested that we offer Helen the gig, since she was now a free agent. So today, Helen owns her own import/export business and has been doing pretty well for the last 10 years.
But she still has a thing for me, and it's always been one-way. Long time blog readers might remember that I have fears that she's after me for a green card, which is something that she does want very much. That doesn't really matter so much, because I don't have feelings for her. I like her well enough as a friend, but that is all. And I have sympathy for those in the throes of unrequited love. But that is all.
I have told Helen numerous times that I'm not interested, but the torch still burns. She called today while I was in the shower, 4 times, and left 12 text messages. Tomorrow's visit with her is going to be....fraught. Yeah, that's the word.
Today, I'm off to work. Football tonight. I deserve some promo bucks, I've certainly raked enough into the MGM's coffers over the last few hitless months.
Re: Helen. Is tomorrow's meeting of the business variety, for a company where you're no longer employed (except on a fill-in basis, as necessary)?
If so, I guess I'd just say, "no, I'm not a part of that organization any more. I won't be attending."
If it's a personal meeting, that's tougher. It's nice to see people from your past, but don't want to give false hope.
Good luck. Hope it goes well.
