Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

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The Dry 2024 Challenge Update

January: ✓
February: ✓
March: ✓
April: ✓
May: ✓
June: ✓
July: UNLOCKED

I went back to the June 1st post to copy/paste the months and the checkmarks from the challenge, and I'm glad for that, because I was unknowingly going to repeat the police sobriety checkpoint story here in this update, as if it had happened in June instead of May. I have a bad habit of repeating stories, and my friends and loved ones tend to enable me by not pointing that out.

Another thing that I'd forgotten in a mere month's time was the entire existence of a higher power, and the need to get down on my knees and acknowledge that hp, and to do the gratitude thing and the asking for continued support thing. Every month, so far, I've done these things grudgingly, and then I've wrung my hands about it in these update posts.

That's more repetition for you. But it's worked. I can't say that it hasn't worked so far.

So I'm halfway through the year, and increasingly the end of the year decision looms. I'm repeating myself when I mention that part of the reason for my success so far is the existence of an endpoint in the challenge. There will come a day when I can drink again, and that day will be arriving within the foreseeable future.

The real challenge here is to convince myself within the next six months that January 1st will not be the end of a one-year prison sentence, instead I'll be locking myself back into the prison from which I had been free.

I know this. I know this, but I don't wish to act upon it. More Hamlet business here.

I have a backup plan for next year that I didn't want to share with you, because it's half-assed and dumb, and because I'm embarrassed about how fiercely I'm clinging to it.

Here it is: it's about cycles of decay and renewal. The plan is to alternate through the seasons. Drink in the winter, dry in the spring, drink in the summer, dry in the fall.

Repeat.

That's the pitch. Now I don't want to talk about it any further. You can say what you want about it here, but I'm not going to respond. The plan is a hedge, and if I start thinking about hedging on a daily basis, the hedge will always creep, and I particularly don't want it to creep into this year.

In any case, I feel good. I feel happy not to be dealing with all the negatives that drinking used to bring, and that happiness has grown over the past six months. This is the feeling that I need to appreciate and to bring with me to the table six months from now when I have my reckoning; assuming that I make it that far, of course.

Congrats!

Thanks fid!

I just finished watching the two seasons of Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus.

It's fantastic stuff. It ran on Cinemax originally. It could be available on HBO/Max now? You can catch little snippets of the show on YouTube.

Mike Judge is the writer, director and producer behind Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, King of the Hill, Silicon Valley, Idiocracy, and other great shows and movies. In real life, he sounds like Butthead, which is great.

I always liked Beavis and Butthead in part because their musical tastes and mine correlated so highly; me and the boys liked and disliked the same stuff, although I felt that I could express the reasons for my preferences a little more elegantly than them, we were still saying the same basic things: this rocks or that sucks because aaa nant, na na na (makes headbanging and air guitar motions).

Back to Tales from the Tour Bus: season one covered the big outlaw country stars like Jerry Lee Lewis, George Jones, and Waylon Jennings. Season two covered funk outlaws like George Clinton, Rick James and James Brown.

For both seasons, the eighth episode was the final one, and for those Mike Judge covered two unknown outlaws, artists whom he felt were hugely talented but who for various reasons had missed out on the stardom they deserved.

Both of these episode 8 players—the country and the funk outlaw—blew my mind. So here they are, country and funk.

Blaze Foley

Merle Haggard would cover If I Could Only Fly and get a huge hit out of it. Blaze Foley was killed by the junkie son of his friend right around the time that Haggard's cover broke out.

Betty Davis: not the old actress, but an ex-wife of Jazz legend Miles Davis, and an amazing talent in her own right.

What can I say about this song besides holy ****ing **** it rocks. Davis's stage presence was so sexually charged that she found her act and her music getting banned throughout the early 70's, when just a few years later artists like Wendy O. Williams and Madonna would largely get a pass for the same types of antics.

Davis dropped out of the music scene in the late 70s and never reemerged, which is a damn shame.

Kudos to the voice of Butthead for introducing me to two great lost artists.

Tales From The Tour Bus was fantastic, highly recommend if.

Yep. A+ television.

Last night (ergo a few hours ago) I didn't make much at the tables, but I played well. I made two good thin value bets on the river instead of chickening out and check/calling or check/folding. I got in two good bluffs when my image was good, I made one good call down with TPTK after I'd noticed that Villain overvalued TPMK, and I made a couple of thoughtful folds with decent hands, and then was shown the goods.

The long run looks pretty good if I can keep playing that type of A game.

This month's promo is Christmas in July. They're bringing Christ into the poker room in mid-summer, apparently.

It's a mystery bounty type of payout for the hourly high hand, as below, and it's extremely popular, so I'm going to have to call in early for seatings this month.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$62.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 1 hour
(-$15.23)

2024 Running Poker Total: 310 hours, +$4050.00.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 162 hours, +$6043.81

2024 Grand Total: 472 hours, +$10093.81

Yesterday at the poker table I went up over $450 within the first 4 hours, then I started losing it back. Dinner break after 6 hours saw me up only $150, in part from me flubbing a hand and dropping a hundo on it.

I wanted to leave. My first impulse in this spot has always been to leave in order to preserve my win for the day, and that's in part how I eventually went bust in Las Vegas, as that meant that I wasn't putting in enough hours.

There was no leaving after dinner, as the 4th of July fireworks were about to go into full swing, and the MGM free parking garage was an absolute mob scene, so I want back to the tables.

And lost. I was down into the red at some point. Still, I didn't leave, because I was playing fine after dinner, and the table was decent. Many gambling sob stories begin with "I was up x amount at one point, but then I couldn't leave well enough alone and go home."

That is unfortunate for the teller...if they're playing -EV pit games, but I'm playing +EV poker. Time equals hands; more hands times positive EV equals higher positive EV. Time is essential for profit.

Anyways, if I had started the day by digging myself into a $450 hole and then grinding my way back to nearly even, how different would I have felt? There is no objective difference between that and going up $450 early and then losing it all back and then some. The bottom line is exactly the same.

So I stayed, and I played well, and I ended the night ahead by a modest amount, at least with the poker. My slot machine slump continues. It feels like I'm into my longest losing streak ever on the machines. I believe that this is due to the fact that the machines are heavily monitored by other slot grinders these days, and the plays that I'm finding are smaller in terms of EV, and smaller EV equals higher variance.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$130.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
(-$88.70)

2024 Running Poker Total: 318 hours, +$4180.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 165 hours, +$5955.11

2024 Grand Total: 483 hours, +$10135.11

I had a spider in my apartment for the last two days. My previous policy was to tell spiders that they have 24 hours to vacate the premises, or I would kill them. And then follow through on that.

Around 95% of the time, spiders get out of my apartment within a day of receiving that notice. I don't care if correlation doesn't equal causation, as long as there's correlation.

This little spider, however, was in the 5% of holdouts. So, with my new no-kill policy (wasps and yellowjackets excluded), I had to try the sheet of paper and drinking glass entrapment and removal trick. It worked quite easily. Hopefully, the spider didn't spray poison all over the inside of the glass out of spite.

Pro tip: don't take any chances and wash the glass thoroughly.

more on Betty

and i love your idea of growth and decay with the seasons

Done and done.

Thank you for that, REDeYeS00. I watched the whole thing. What an amazing lady. She just passed away 2 years ago, unfortunately.

On Monday I played a (planned) short, 3 hour session, as I had been struggling with my sleep pattern and hadn't woken up until 3pm. There I found myself in several very big multiway pots, behind, priced in and unlikely to get a bluff through, so I'd needed my draws to come in on the turn or river, and they had not. And with that I lost $300 and change.

Yesterday I woke up at a reasonable hour and played a full 8 hour session where I was card dead through several hours of it, but I managed to book a $100 win. I haven't hit an hourly high hand promotion since February. I'm very much due for one. If I grind more hours, I'll generate more chances.

At home, I've just finished Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. This is my third read-through of that book, once in high school, once in my 30s, and now in middle-age, and this is the first time that I had picked up on the idea that Dostoevsky's theme for the book is that asking God for forgiveness will bring grace even for a wretched multiple murderer like the main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

I had missed that tidbit the first two times around because Raskolnikov is a Russian 1860s version of a modern self-centered emo anarchist, and he seems like he wouldn't waste brain space on a lame manmade construct like religion, except that at the very end of the story, when he's half-destroyed by guilt and ennui, and agonizing over confessing his crimes, he asks Sonia—an old-school hooker with a heart of gold, and a fervent believer—to ask God to forgive him, and that seems to do the trick.

On Tuesday I picked up a few more books.

The bottom book is the second in The Expanse series, which they made into a truly excellent TV series. I only watched the shows up until the end of the first book, which corresponded with the middle of the second TV season, so I'll read this book, and then continue on with more episodes of the show.

The title of the middle book is hard to read from the picture: it's Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, a near future sci-fi story about schemes to try to fix global warming. Knowing Stephenson, the story will probably have worldwide conspiracies, breathtaking action sequences, and some sort of cool cyberpunk element to it.

I had gone to Barnes and Noble to pick up King's Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep, for a second read-through, but as often happens, I got distracted by other books and forgot about it. There's a 2019 movie adaptation, but that doesn't interest me much.

Navigating Dueling Reads

I interspersed my poker sessions last Thursday with a family dinner at my elderly parents' house, as they live not far from Springfield. On Friday, my dad called to tell me that my mom had tested positive for Covid, so I stayed home, having been directly exposed. On Saturday, my dad caught it, and on Sunday my sister-in-law got it.

Fortunately, everyone is doing okay so far, and symptoms haven't gotten any worse for anyone than a mild case of the flu. My dad had quit smoking in February after 70 years of it, although the last 30 or so years saw him pretending to be quit and smoking only on the sly, so he hadn't been a pack-a-day guy since the 90s.

He quit for real this year because he had to go on oxygen for emphysema and COPD, so dad catching Covid is worrisome, to say the least, but so far all is well.

I tested negative for Covid yesterday, so I played a full poker session.

I had a drunk player on my right, and we played the following back-to-back hands vs each other. Villain wasn't quite drunk at this point, but he was on his way, having put himself on the outside of three strong drinks.

Hand 1:

Folds to Villain who opens $15 in the HJ, I flat in the CO with J♥9♥, folds around.

Pot ($33) - heads up

Flop: Q♥T♣2♦

Villain bets $20 and I call.

Pot ($73) - heads up

Turn: 8♠

Bink! Villain checks, I bet $40, Villain calls.

River: 7♥

Pot ($153) - heads up

Villain pauses for 5 seconds, then casually shoves for $259. I cover.

Pot ($412) - heads up, Villain is all in, hero yet to act.

I have the stone nuts and snap call. Villain shows J♠ 9♠ for a chop.

Hand 2: (the next hand)

Folds to Villain who opens for $10 in MP, I 3-bet to $30 in the HJ with A♦K♦, folds around to Villain, who calls.

Pot ($63) - heads up

Flop: K♠6♥3♦

Villain checks a very dry flop. I could check back for deception, or bet small to keep his medium pairs and bad draws in. I bet $20 and Villain calls.

Pot ($103) - heads up

Turn: 4♣

He's still around, I'll see if I can extract some value. I bet $50 and Villain calls.

Pot ($203) - heads up

River 9♦

Villain pauses for 5 seconds, then casually shoves for $230. I cover.

Pot ($433) - heads up, Villain is all in, hero yet to act.

So here are the reads:

Pro Calling:

Villain is drinking and has a buzz.

He might be tilted from having to settle for a chop with the stone nuts on the last hand.

I have also witnessed him in two prior hands going too far with top pair, medium kicker, and losing decent-sized pots in both hands.

The board is pretty damn dry. He could have called a 3-bet with 66 or 33 for 6 combos, but was he calling a 3-bet pre with 52s or 75s for 8 combos? It's doubtful. Calling with 4 combos of 63s also seems unlikely. 44 and 99 are also remote possibilities, though he'd have to fade a $50 turn bet with a bad 2nd pair in order to make the latter set. Was he just flatting with a single combo of KK and not 4-betting? Drunks tend to like 4-betting more than trapping when they're holding the goods.

Pro Folding:

The above does add up to 25 (albeit more or less discounted) combos that beat me. With my TPTK here, I'm not beating much of anything that would overbet shove for value on the river after I'd shown so much strength throughout the hand.

Physically, every action that he took on the turn and river in this hand was the exact duplicate of what he did in the hand before. Check/call, then slight pause, then casual overbet shove. And he had the stone nuts in the last hand when he did that.

So, what's your opinion, having reviewed the reads?

Snap call?
Tank call?
Tank fold?
Snap fold?

I think it's close enough that there aren't any wrong answers, but I could be wrong about that.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 14 hours
+$79.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
+$144.58

2024 Running Poker Total: 343 hours, +$4029.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 173 hours, +$6202.77

2024 Grand Total: 516 hours, +$10231.77

Yesterday I fell behind early as usual, then I made back the deficit and then found myself up a little around the mid-session, but then towards the end I barreled off around two hundo with a baby flush, trying to hit two outs, either of which would have turned the baby into a straight flush, against what turned out to be Villain's ace-high "nut" flush, and that would have won me a huge pot, along with the likely high hand bonus money for that hour.

But it wasn't to be. I'm not going to whine about missing two chances at two outs. I'll just note that I appreciated the opportunity to shine.

Speaking of shining moments: for 30+ years, I have been bereft of the ability to solve those 3D Magic Eye™ puzzles from the 90s. I had always assumed that my deficiency was due to my astigmatism and/or my corrective lenses, if not some moral turpitude on my part.

Yesterday, a poster on Reddit complained about having the same disability, and they posted a Magic Eye Puzzle™. I was ready to scoff along with the post and scroll on, but then something told me, more than two decades after giving up on the challenge, to maybe give it one more try.

I took my glasses off (which I know I've tried before, unsuccessfully), I put my nose three inches from the screen, and for the first time, I saw the damn shape! It was a space shuttle!

I'd always had it in my head that the colors of the print were supposed to change once the image resolved into a shape, and the solved shape would be a different color than the background. That's not true. The shape is the same color as the background. In any case, I'm chuffed. Just chuffed.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$69.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 3 hours
+$94.50

2024 Running Poker Total: 351 hours, +$4098.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 176 hours, +$6297.27

2024 Grand Total: 527 hours, +$10395.27

quoting to easily find these words in the future to read again

quick twitch reaction to hand two without in depth deciphering
you overvalued the staying power of TPTK on the flop and got smoked by a baby set

I appreciate you, REDeYeS00! And I thank you for having the stones to comment on the hand without knowing the result. That's a top-tier post right there.

After some thought, I had concluded that I might have been asking too much of the readers there, and I was going to just move on, lesson learned. It's my duty to entertain you; not the other way around.

But, since you showed the initiative and took the chance, I'll post the results.

I tanked forever and finally called, because I thought that at $1/$2, one of those reads I posted counted for more than all the others: and that read has to do with Kicker Trouble.

Kicker Trouble is one of the big reasons why you should play tight in splashy games. In that scenario, when you and Villain both make top pair, your kicker is going to be better on average, thanks to your better hand selection. And when you both make two pairs, your top pair and/or your second pair is going to be higher on average.

Along with the sets that REDeYeS00 mentioned, I also had Villain possibly calling a 3-bet pre with holdings like 52s, 63s, and 75s for made straights and two pairs. Remember, Villain was tipsy, and spite calling 3-bets was on the agenda; however, Bart Hanson says that when you give Villain nonstandard holdings that beat you, you should also find corresponding nonstandard holdings that lose to you. So if I was going to see monsters under the bed, I had to balance those with losing hands like KQ, KJ, and KT, suited and unsuited. And those hands add up to 24 combos.

So now I had 25 combos that beat me and 24 combos that lost. Of course, I wasn't good enough to count them in real time, I just had them all swirling around in my head like the Deliverance banjos, but it felt pretty balanced between winners and losers. I had to call $230 into what would add up to a pot of $663, so I had to be right only 34% of the time, and that's a call.

I showed this hand to Gambelina and she mentioned that K9, which made a winning two pair on the river, also made a lot of sense. So there were 6 more combos that beat me. That made the decision closer, but still a call.

But would Villain just haul off and overbet shove those showdowny, losing top pair hands on the river?

Yes.

This Villain would, because I had seen him get into trouble before with TPMK. That was the decider. And that read came from paying attention and not burying my nose in my phone like some other regs.

nh

ty, brother

Yesterday I woke up with a scratchy throat, and I was feeling a bit lightheaded. Given the recent Covid outbreak in my family, I found it imperative to test myself again for the sickness, but the test came up negative. So whatever I have, it's garden variety and not an instance of our modern plague.

My immediate impulse was to take a sick day, but I countered that with the fact that I've taken far too many healthy days off this year, so I dragged my carcass to the casino. I wasn't coughing or sniffling, so I didn't feel that I was particularly contagious to the other players. In any case, I washed and disinfected my hands often.

I'm glad that I went. I played well and I won. I got a big bluff through, and I snapped off a big bluff, and I accumulated chips throughout the session. Towards the end, I felt myself fading a bit, so I cut the day a little short and booked the win.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 7 hours
+$634.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 1 hour
+$12.00

2024 Running Poker Total: 358 hours, +$4732.00
2024 Running Slot Total: 177 hours, +$6309.27

2024 Grand Total: 535 hours, +$11041.27

All those green numbers make me happy. Sober and winning, that's the Suited we want to see. 👍

Coincidentally, I own a book with 3D Magic Eye™ puzzles from the 90s, which I retrieved from a box recently. Some of the 3D shapes are quite advanced, and I'm not always able to see them to their full extent. But I usually see something, at least.

twenty bucks an hour is nothing to sneeze at
and perhaps i'm wrong but guessing suitedjustice has been drinking from the social tap for additional security every month