Thank god july's over

July was great fun off the tables - I went camping in the gower with friends (sunny!), to visit my family in Oslo and went to womad, all of which were top.

On the felt however, I put in 6 sessions, -$3552, -$1990, -$4713, -$1479, +$500 and -$2990 for a total loss of $14,224. Fun times! The last few sessions my game was a bit off, but the beginning of the month I felt I was playing well. Kinda made me rethink BR management. 14k is roughly 140 average buyins for me, and it happened in six sessions. Granted they were impressively bad sessions, but to think that in 6 sessions I can lose over a third of my online roll on a 140 buyin downswing is kind of crazy... going to leave off some of the slightly tougher/more expensive games off my weekly schedule until I get back to $30k online (like the stars $50r and $100 1r1a). Hopefully this wont be a common thing...

Thankfully played a session last night and got august off to a good start, booking a profit of $4k.

August = reverse July plz.

weeeeee

zoopzoop! Finally got a 5 figure score. Had a very deep HU match at the end with improved - ranked 13th in the world at pkt 5s. For someone who's won millions of dollars online he was unbelievably classless, calling everyone on the final table an idiot (in a $55 mtt? seriously? ever heard the saying 'don't tap the glass'?!) and had a hilarious legion of followers on the rail being even worse. Which made the win even more satisfying :D Improved was gracious in defeat though, signing off with a 'gfy'. Nice.

It's interesting what people take from poker. Working hard and getting reasonably competent at poker gives me confidence in one area of my life, which is a nice change. But maybe if you aren't a neurosis-riddled inferiority complex on legs, getting successful at poker turns you into a narcissistic ego-bag of douchey proportions. Maybe I am but just don't recognise it. Ho hum. Either way I don't understand how you can get to 13th in the world, win hundreds of tournaments and millions of dollars, and still get pissy when some guy cracks your AK with TJs in a $55 freezeout.

Glastonbury trip report

I get to the station to get the bus at 11am wednesday morning, meet a friend in the queue and we leave at 11.30. We hear the 10am bus hasn't arrived yet due to a small accident, so we might be a few hours. Nevermind, we'll be there by 1 or 2 at the latest. OH WAIT - 9 hours later and we are still on the bus. This is the 25-mile journey from Bristol to Glastonbury - we are averaging 2-3 miles/hr. But it's a nice day, most people are walking alongside the bus and stopping at the pubs along the way, and when finally arrive at 9.30pm everyone cheers. James, who I'm camping with, has already arrived and put up our tent (score!) so I dump my stuff, and spend the rest of the day wandering around and intoxicating myself. hurray!

I wake early on thursday as the tent is BOILING. We spend the day doing more lazy wandering and intoxicating, and see a few random music things. It's a lovely day, so just sitting back at the tents chatting is great too. In the evening I go wandering, mind slightly fuzzy, and catch the end of Bristol band The Hand (rachael dadd+1) who are wonderful, and then I find myself dancing next to the rinkydink (set of speakers on a bike) with a bunch of guys in suits riding giant, luminous bug-shaped space hoppers. No, really. That'll be glasontbury then...

Rained a bit during the night, but nothing major. I meet with some friends at 12 to see Regina Spektor - I'm not a huge fan but it's nice to see my friends from Bristol. Next I head to the Jazz/World stage for the Hot 8 Brass Band, and then over to the dance area for lively reggae/ska/dub band Dreadzone which is very good fun. I meet my dad at reggae oldies Steel Pulse, and buy lemon Brothers cider and Pieminister pie. This is a good day.
At 9 I meet a group of friends at The Glade to go see Beardyman (awesome uk beatboxer) play with The Bays, who are a kind of dance/club type act but it's all improvised on the spot. They also have a super amazing drummer, which appeals to me as I've played drums for a long time. My friends don't enjoy it particularly but I think it's awesome - but then I'm in a bit of a silly state and would probably think most things are awesome. After dancing like a nutcase for an hour I head back to the tents and meet with some people there. We smoke for a while and have some 'hippie crack' (laughing gas - me feeling fairly fuzzy already makes this the most mindblowing 2 minutes ever. full on music in my head, light show, the works) After a while we head to The Park for a late night set by Fourtet. It hasn't started when we arrive, so we meet a friend of mine in the silent disco for some amusing noiseless fun, and then head to Fourtet, who are disappointing as it's a dj set, instead of the plinky-plonky niceness they play themselves. Me and James wander for a while, and then head back to the tents for sleep.

Another boiling morning, and I'm feeling a little fragile from the day before. I head to the Jazz/World bleary-eyed to meet my dad and we see Tenariwen who are fantastic. I meet up with James, we get a little silly and then go see Spinal Tap, who are suitably ridiculous/funny, and have guest appearances by Jamie Cullum and Jarvis Cocker. We head to The Park for the end of the Easy Star All Stars playing Radiodread, James heads to work (he's working for his ticket) and I lie around in the hot sun for legendary reggae oldie Horace Andy, who puts on a great show. My dad texts to say he's playing the Croissant Neuf at 8, which promptly leads to me falling asleep and missing it. I head to the jazz/world again instead to see Baaba Maal - top class Senegalese pop, and then head to The Park for Bon Iver, who has the crowd swooning with their chilled, beautiful melodies. I hang around a bit with friends, and end up going to bed fairly early as it's absolutely freezing and I'm feeling knackered.

Yet another stifling morning gets everyone up before they'd like. I go for a festival-wide wander, and bump into a friend from Bristol, and we go see The Destroyers, who are a 12-17 piece loud gypsy band. Needless to say they are good fun. I then head to the pyramid stage for international world music superstars Amadou and Mariam who are great, and then head to the other stage to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I'm excited about this gig and it doesn't disappoint - easily my highlight of the festival, and I am in an unbelievably good mood. We sit around a while, and then head to camp out at the Pyramid stage again, for Nick Cave and Blur. Nick Cave puts on a great show, and as soon as it ends there's a surge to the front for blur. We manage to get a decent spot fairly near the front, and spend the next two hours singing along to hit after hit. They aren't great to be honest, but everyone is having a good time - including frontman Damon Albarn who is so overcome he breaks down sobbing mid-song.
I'm starting to fade towards the end, and with a friend from Bristol and her friends I wander around slowly - wandering though Shangri La at night is awesome, tons of tiny 'side streets' with club-type things and music in lots of little tents and hidden corners. I'm feeling good, but then it gets cold, starts to rain very heavily and I'm very tired, dont have a coat or jumper, and am wearing my sandals. I get soaked through and my feet are caked in mud (i'd be disappointed if it hadn't happened at least once!) and eventually we head back to her tent to get her stuff, as they're all getting a 3am train. We wander to the entrance, I see them off and wander back very slowly (partly because I'm tired, partly to stop myself falling over - the mud is very slippy) feeling a bit shit.

When I get back to camp, clean my feet and get a jumper I cheer up though, and pack away our tent ready for James to finish work at 6am and we can head straight off to miss most of the queues. I manage to acquire some smokables, and I sit by myself watching the festival get light. A few of our camp return from various gigs and things and we smoke a few together, talking bollocks and things, all very pleasant. It starts to rain very heavily (I pat myself on the back for predicting rain and moving our stuff into the communal tent bit) and I feel sorry for James stuck outside. He comes back a little while later, absolutely bedraggled and I immediately wave the joint saying 'Come here and smoke this RIGHT NOW' He obliges and then packs up the rest of his stuff. We head off to get the bus, both talking utter jibberish and giggling, until we get to the bus gate and head our seperate ways. I'm feeling really quite silly and manage to get in the queue for the wrong bus several times before finally finding the Bristol bus. I then find out that instead of 1 bus every 30minutes, there has been 1 in the last 4 hours, and there are lots of grumpy people waiting. I sit on my bag in the hot morning sun trying to act vaguely normal, letting everyone else do the shouting, for the next 3 hours. It's quite surreal. Eventually 8 buses turn up at once (to a great cheer from our queue) and we head on to the buses. At this point I've needed the toilet for 4 hours, and had no food or drink for 10 hours and the bus is ridiculously hot, so am feeling slightly uncomfortable. I still manage to sleep almost all the way home though, arrive in bristol at 2pm (7 hours after I got to the buses) and hop in a taxi with a random guy who's been at glastonbury too. We discuss the highlights, and then he gets out and I head home for the wonderful post-glastonbury shower, toilet and sleep. And my god it's good.

A good score and GLASTONBURY!

Yay glasto! Haven't been thinking about it much, but am starting to get excited. I missed last year (trust me to miss the one sunny year in aaages) and loads of my friends went, and all had a great time. It's not for everyone, and I know it's changed a lot since it started, but I still love it to bits. The people, the place, the atmosphere, the music - it's all amazing. My dad has worked there a lot, when I was young he sold pancakes and now he plays there most years, so I often get free tickets (not this year though). Basically I've been there a lot, and I feel its an important event every summer - some fairly major stuff has happened there for me.

It might be a bit weird socially this year though. I have a few good friends from bristol going, but I don't think they're going together, and then there's a big group from sheffield who I kind of know...ish (one or two I know well) - I kind of said I'd go with them, but they're pretty different from my bristol friends. Basically they're a bunch of druggy hippies :P who are all lovely, but my bristol friends aren't into the whole drug scene. I'm kind of in the middle somewhere. meh, i'm sure it'll be fine. I think i'm going to spend most of the time wandering on my own to be honest, trying to meet with people/staying in groups and stuff can get stressful.
Anyways, it's going to be awesome. And please don't rain.


As for pokerz, I've continued having dozens of near misses (10th-18th in a $1001r1a, a $100 FO, a $55 6max, a $77 6max, a $15 FO, a $7r and a $200 FO, and top 30 in a BUNCH more - in the last 2 days) but in my last game yesterday I finally got a score coming 4th in a $163 75k on fulltilt for a profit of 6.5k on the session. sweet! That score quadrupled my month's earnings which is great, nice to be back on track for the $6k+/month I've been hoping for.

The transition to the higher stakes stuff has been a bit rocky, but mostly ok. It's mainly the swings, I'm still not used to spending 2-3k in buyins per session. Still, no massive downswongz yet (touch wood) and I've decided to start cashing out again - it'll be nice to have some 'income'.

Swingy sessions and a warehouse rave

So I went to a rave a few days ago, and it was pretty damn awesome. I've been to similar-ish things before, but nothing on this scale. Was a massive set of abandoned warehouses, different rooms playing different music, all totally trashed and grimey - pleasingly so. Thousands of people, all there through word of mouth, going bonkers dancing, great fun. Was feeling pretty tired at the beginning of the night, almost didn't go, but very glad I did - there's not much that beats dancing your socks off for 6 hours. Unfortunately it didn't end well. I guess when there are thousands of people possibly not in the most sensible frame of mind in abandoned buildings accidents will happen now and then. On the upper floor you could climb out of the windows onto the roof which was a big square thing where lots of people went to cool down, really nice - got a great view of the sunrise. Anyway, at about 7am there was a flurry of activity and one of our group told us that a girl had fallen from the roof (3 storey fall onto concrete) and the police were on their way. We made a sharp exit, was a strange end to the night. I found out the day after that the girl had survived, but broken her legs. Pretty horrific, but at least she lived and will be fine - frankly I think she was probably pretty lucky, it was a big drop.

So yeah, a slightly odd/subdued end for us but still an amazing night. We ended up going back to a friend's house to wind down for a few hours - a few of my mates had entered a football tournament starting at 10am, and needless to say they were seriously regretting it when the time came! Got to bed 11am, woke up at 5pm, spent the rest of the day shuffling around as you do after a big night out and then slept 13hrs last night. score


On to the pokerz. Played 3 sessions in june so far, -1.2k, -2.2k (I had maybe 1 or 2 mincashes this session, one of the worst sessions I've had in a long time) and +4.7k. Just finished the 4.7k session so I'm feeling positive :) Won 2 $109 mtts, on ipoker for 2k and bwin for $4.5k. Actually came reeeal close to some others, went out 10th in a fulltilt $55 mtt KK < A8 (ace on the river...) and 20th in a pacific $55 too. Still, nice to book some solid results after a rocky start to the month.

Got SUSOP this weekend (sheffield university series of poker) which is a £50 freezeout. Not much of a series, but should be fun, and then back down to bristol next week in time for glastonbury. And lots of online poker in the meantime of course.

Close encounter

So me and a few friends are sitting in the park, drinking some beer and smoking a few joints, playing the guitar, generally having a lovely summer afternoon. A few of my friends go off to find the loo, and it's just me and my friend Jon. He's telling a story which I find immensely funny and am giggling, as you do.

'What are you laughing at?'

I'm faintly aware something threatening and unpleasant is about to happen, but try to ignore it and carry on talking to Jon.

'I said what the fuck are you laughing at?'
Ah crap. 2 guys approach.
'Nothing, my mate's just telling a story'
'You fucking laughing at us? I'll take that guitar and smash it over your fucking head'
Nothing like a guy who thinks he's Joe Pesci to round off a nice afternoon in the park. Why does this stuff always happen when you're slightly baked?
'Woah chill, we're just sitting enjoying the sunshine, we're not laughing at anybody'

We finally manage to convince them we're not laughing at them, and the guy who's doing all the talking apologises, saying there's 'gang shit' going on. At this point I'll add that my friend has long curly hair and wears cardigans and I was wearing a stripy hippyish shirt and shorts and sandals. Real mafia types.

When he realises we're students and not in a gang from out of town, he clocks us as potential customers and sits down next to us ('oh please god no') and talks about drugs and where to find student parties non-stop for what felt like hours. The quieter guy speaks up and is actually being quite nice, but there was that undertone of 'we almost got beaten up by these guys for no reason, they could easily flip out again' that made it very difficult to relax. Finally our friends came back and we decided it was a good moment to leave without looking like we're running away (which we were). Before we go he insists we take his number in case we need drugs. yah, I'm going to voluntarily meet up with a psycho who almost assaulted me in order to give him money...

Is this legal?

Just had my 2nd winning sunday in a row - I'm suspicious! That has to be some kind of record, surely? Maybe the poker gods are placating me before dealing me a -100 buyin downswing or something. Final tabled 2 $109 mtts on ipoker, 2nd in a smaller one for $1100 (really good HU match, almost won it a few times but couldn't quite clinch it) and 3rd in a bigger one for $3100. Probably cashed for about 6k total, about $2.5k profit. Yay! Reached 20k online which is great, feel I'm able to take a shot at the majors without satting now, although I wont be buying in to $150+ mtts during the week, want to keep to the softest possible fields for now.

Pretty pleased with how everything's going pokerwise at the moment. I think I'm playing well and I'm actually progressing in terms of bankroll and stakes, which I haven't done in a long time. I've been a bit slack organising other things though. REALLY need to figure out what I'm doing this winter, can't stay in the UK. Not just because I'll feel crap, but I literally wont be able to do anything. Poker's off the cards (ba-boom tish) since SAD makes me tilt and lose bankrolls (I really really reeaaally don't want it to happen a 3rd time) so I'll have nothing to do, so I'll lie around feeling miserable, so I'll play poker. And lose bankrolls. Basically I need to phone this guy about a teaching placement in senegal who hasn't been replying to my emails, but I'm lazy and don't like phoning people. If that doesn't work out I have some decisions to make - and I'm really no good at making decisions.

Having said that, the 1 big decision I've made recently -dropping out of uni- I definitely feel was the right one. Even hearing about people's exams just makes me squirm, especially language oral exams... ewww. Hate them soo much. I always did fine, just... ugh, I'd just wake up and immediately start worrying, even in normal term-time without exams. I love being able to wake up and not worry about everything.