"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread

Agree with this 100%. Its so stress free. No forced coin flipping, minimal variance, life just chugs along and you just relax and print if you can stand being in the casino

As much as I have an ego and want to crush everyone and win all the money, I've learned that it's important for mental and physical health to be able to grind something with minimal stress, making it easy to put in consistent hours without burnout.

These days I just choose which of my 3 cars I want to take to the casino that day, play anywhere from 4-8 hrs, and enjoy the rest of my day. Don't really need off days because it's not stressful to begin with.

Plus I can still crush everyone at lower stakes. There's maybe 5 people at $5/5 who aren't completely awful. Most regs have horrendous leaks and I'm just robbing them blind (because they label me a nit), or they try extra hard vs me and spew.

I’m still in a profound depression, and keep thinking I should quit poker (since I get so much more depressed when I lose), but then I’m kinda stuck in a “but jeez if I quit poker I will have NO hobbies!” thing. (I mean, it’s not literally true of course—I’m a cinephile with a particular emphasis on Filipino cinema…random Filipino directors still send me screeners of their films hoping I’ll give them some good publicity, haha)—but like, I’m 40 and married and poker is pretty much my only real-life social activity, so part of me worries that if I give that up I’ll just become more isolated and more depressed and…ugh.

What makes this worse is it wasn’t even a slow-roll, I was just playing against a dummy. I opened AQcc, he called in big blind, flop AK8cc, he x I bet small he raises big I call, Turn 3x, he jams I call and he says “I need an 8!”, River 8 of course—so I’m pissed by the bad beat—but then he reveals an A8 that had me the whole way and I swore at him and racked up.

Davo - Hobbies are spoda be fun and fulfilling. The poker room/casino scene is a massive energy suck. I spent my entire gamboolin career working on achieving balance in order to avoid what you are going through which is the never ending road of isolation that gabling leads to. I highly advise finding something else more fulfilling than trying to make a couple o bux gamblin if it causes this much pain and does not provide a comfy living 4 u

@ sabr the thing I love most about games below 5/T is the ratio of $ won to largest downswing. It is comically large

so after a 22 hr day spc slept 7 hrs banged out another 22hrs took a 5hr sleep and is back at it. Today will be short (lol). She is trying to stay ahead of a storm that could cause significant delay. Her nutrition has been on point and shes feeling super strong and looking to take this thing home

gogogogo

And by "short" she means like 130 miles, right? as HWSNBN used to say, smdh.

But even more nuts is that the real contest is for second, as ED is about to finish the race over 1K miles ahead of the next rider.

7 hours of sleep, when did SPC go soft?

Seriously, that is really incredible. How does she avoid muscle cramping? I’ve found when I’m awake for long periods of time, even without heavy activity, I get Charley horses / calf cramps and jaw cramping.

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Davo +1 to what squid said. This does not sound healthy. There are endless hobbies out there. Go try something new. You’ll start and stop a dozen different things before something speaks to you, but at least you’ve recognized poker isn’t for you.

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so 70k effective?

How deep are you sitting ?

I wasn’t in this hand but I bought it for 20 and topped up 15 more throughout the course of the night.

My buyin depends on who else is in the game. When it’s super juicy I might buy in for 30-50. Last night I had the two best players on my direct left and the two worst players who were on my right were 20 deep give or take.

Edit - forgot to answer the first question. They were ~70k effective

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I honestly dont get it. She just recharges super fast and can put big back to back days together with no problem. Completely different than how my body works. Seriously, today she woke up and saw a decent weather window and was g2g.

SABR, squid and miami right as usual. Do fewer things which make you crazy, more things you truly enjoy. Life's about maximizing fun, to the best of your ability.

This isn't some wild-ass meta where they both have AK off...

but the real meta would be if one had 75suited and the other had pocket Costco cards.

I hear about Berkey's 100/100 game all the time and it sounds mostly like monkeys flinging poo at each other, but I'm a recfish, so what do I know?

20K deep or 20 beers deep? That matters too.

None of those hands matched the holdings

Some of this player pool plays in that game as well.

I can confirm there is a lot of poo flinging in these games. Some of the pros are actually quite good when they want to be but are splashy because it’s better for the long term.

Just chips. To my knowledge neither of them drink. The two players in the HH posted were drinking but I don’t think that was a real factor.

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That is some deep, high stakes shenanigans. I simply do not have the heart for that

How many pros in the game?

He is an absolute beast.

Fun fact: ED's coach is pretty much the best in the biz and coaches all the world beaters. He has officially asked spc to join his stable and will be coaching her up for her 24hr record attempt in the fall. Needless to say she was both shocked and quite pleased.

Usually 2, sometimes 3.

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Wow that’s incredible. Congrats to her and to him for adding an amazing person to his team.

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Squid, what was her athletic background as a kid/in her 20s?

I know it wasn’t directed at me, but my memory might be hazy, but I think squid had mentioned some years ago that she had no background before starting to carry those heavy stones.

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seriously ZERO. She is 100% slow twitch and can not run fast or jump high but can literally do stuff forever (unfortunately this type of fitness is not encouraged in kids. She actually knew that was what she wanted to do but they would not let her). Her spatial awareness was quite weak. She was picked last in gym and thought sports were for others.

She wanted to learn how to lift weights and that is why she asked me out. We saw pretty quickly that she had good genetics for building muscle and she went from skinny snarky librarian to strong fit chick in a few years. She saw the rock carrying contest at the highland games and broke the record the next year with a few months of training specifically for the event. Picked biking on a whim and decided to see how far she could go. Turns out quite far. She is incredibly coachable, consumes information like no one I have seen, and has a fantastic work ethic.