Trip to Kansas to see family

 Lightning and i recently went on a trip to KS to see my mother age 82 and my son age 31. it went well except for a couple of issues near the end, and I will leave it up to him to see if he is willing to discuss those issues. 

while i was there, i lost $1650 playing BJ online at my mothers house. she still does not know about it and likely will not. and since i returned to Dallas, (and id like to fly elsewhere but cant because ive got 22 books on me i took with me from my moms and no room for them in my 2 suitcases) i bought $2500 worth of bitcoin and i was up over $1000 on the bitcoin and now ive lost mostly all of it. i could of easily been about 10k better off had i never went to KS and never played any online BJ. 

my roll has dropped so much (and not because of poker) i am afraid of the PLO swings, so ive been playing NL. and though i finally got out of the hole and $361 ahead in last nights NL 1-2 game and cashed out $1194, i cant win nearly the 10-12k a month i need to grow the roll and cover bills if i dont go back to playing 1-2 PLO instead of 1-2. 

u cannot make nearly the money in NL u can make in PLO. and in NL 1-2 many of the other players are quite good and sit there for a living. this is never the case in PLO. 

if you would like to see video of the KS trip, follow lightning36 on twitter, in which he will link to his videos of me and him. (not to be confused with his print blog). 

i give up. whats the point in winning at least 200-300 a day at poker to cover the bills and have a few k left over each month if u are simply just going to lose it all online playing BJ? thats a terrible habit and no way to stop. 

i am at my hotel, (its the next day and i renewed it for 1 more week online) but i have to switch rooms to a 1 bed instead of a 2 bed because the 2 bed was sold out and its quite a bit cheaper anyway since im here by myself. i didnt think about this when i checked in. the lady working the desk said after she gets a ton of paperwork finished for the next day that she could probably let me do the paperwork and switch rooms at 3am or so so i wont have to deal with it at 11am, (when i might need to sleep). Plus, then ill be free to go to Winco and load up the freezer once i switch rooms, which is the main thing i want to do. its the best grocery store in Dallas and im out of food. 

I am glad i finally got that winstar slot ticket i forgot to cash out off my hands, even though i only got $250 for it when it was for $334. The lady who runs the semi private 5 card PL hilow Omaha game bought it off me. 

and another thing ive got to quit doing is playing in that game. its so much harder to win in it than in regular high only PLO, because it has a much different player pool and also the $10 forced straddle on the button really eats up your chips fast. i lost over 800 tonight and over half was in that game and the last 300 or so in the 1-2 NL once it broke. 

i was very briefly over 43 at one point before i paid for the trip to KS, and now im barely at 35-36k. 

most of it was just the cost of living and all the money wasted on BJ, though ive had a few bad poker sessions lately too. 

and i still need to get into a far less expensive place by the month so i can stop paying sales taxes. but i keep worrying all the time the place wont be as safe if i stay at the hotels i can afford to stay at. they still have indoor rooms, so those hotels arent too bad, they just have more broke and desperate other tenants instead of wealthier people who can afford the nicer hotels. ive wasted so much on hotels in the last few years. 

i need to i guess stick to 1-2-5 PLO high, the one game in Dallas i was winning the most at and could actually at times have 1000 plus nights. you need a few big days to make up for bad days and to fix it so u wont be tempted to play video blackjack on the computer. 

with the 22 books i picked up at my mothers house it would make it very difficult to fly anywhere since they wont fit in my 2 full suitcases, and besides any other city would be harder to win at in poker than Dallas anyway. mainly because it doesnt matter what hours i play in Dallas. i can wake up at 4am and know there are games going that wont break. 

i hope lightning36 publishes his blog soon because im curious to see what he wrote about the trip to KS. im not sure how it works when u read the blog from a phone, but when u do it from the laptop, theres links to others blogs on the right hand side. 

still doing great playing PLO in Dallas

 i Knew i hadnt updated the blog in awhile, but i didnt realize it had been over a month i thought it was 3-4 weeks. 

i wish i could drive. instead of a roll of 42k, i would have a roll of 4.2 million. and i wouldnt be constantly making people mad by being afraid to get in their car and ride to another casino if i havent known them for many years. or at least had the ability to physically defend myself, because if so i would also be able to ride with people no matter how much money they know i have. 

at least im still winning about $600 a day at poker. theres nothing like playing PLO in texas. so much more money to be won here in PLO than in NL, and in texas where PLO actually goes constantly instead of other states where u might have no choice but to play NL instead of PLO. and being at a poker room that has a ton of games going makes it real easy to hit and run by changing your stakes and game all the time.

the hotels here went way up in price for 2 days because of a football game taking place here, which is common for vegas and rare for Dallas. had i stayed at the same hotel Bill Potts stayed at (it wasnt sold out like a bunch of the others ive stayed at much nicer) i couldve saved having to go all the way out to Grapevine to get a nice inside room with a really good chain. grapevine is like a crime free small town outside of the DFW area. 

but i dont like $20-35 Uber rides multiple times a day, so ill definitely be staying much closer to Irving and Farmers Branch once again with large sized freezers starting Monday. i wouldve paid for a month before things sold out had i not been planning to see my mother soon with Lightning. but his trip with me to her place wont be til Thursday the 24th and we will be visiting a couple rooms in OK on the way there and back. 

an interesting story from yesterday i accidently took the Uber to the wrong hotel. there are 2 hotels in Grapevine with the same name, and i went to the wrong one, and since i didnt know the address i just typed in the hotel name and the word Grapevine. and i didnt even notice i was in the wrong one until after i tried my room number and the key didnt work, and i found out when the night person working the front desk said i wasnt registered. good thing they just didnt hand me a key without looking. so i ended up paying another $16 Uber. 

also i will grab some books at my mothers house she offered me some because shes given a bunch of stuff she had away. 

what are the legal requirements as far as buying property in very bad condition? i saw a lot of very old homes, many in need of repair, in the east Pittsburgh PA area, specifically in Braddock and Turtle Creek on Trulia? considering i would never have credit to buy a home and need to stop paying such massive amounts of money on hotels that only keeps going up, and i assume maybe there are other places with poker nearby where this might be possible besides just Pittsburgh? these didnt seem to be in high crime areas like Detroit would be. maybe other a little bit rural areas? 

i was thinking if i bought something for $30k (once i hit $75k so i have enough left for poker) and at the rate im winning at PLO in dallas, i should be at 75k within less than 6 months. then i would never need to worry about rent again and only about $1000 a year or less in likely property taxes and maybe $200 a month in electricity or gas or water. or is there a lot of other legal things id need before i could move in such as insurance, back taxes owed on the property that was so cheap, repairs needed, HOA fees, or something ive not considered? and is there a much better city that fits my poker needs i could do this is far better than east Pittsburgh area?

ive never seen so many homes for sale for under 40k that is almost impossible to find i would think and the only way id ever be able to own anything would be if i paid cash but even that cheap of a home id still need about 3x as much or at least double before i could buy it. 

i asked lightning about this too in an email and he never replied he likely threw out the email because he had about a week more to go in Greece at the time. I also asked Vince and i learned that the guy living in his house finally moved out. he should see if he can find something in TX he can buy in his name for me and i could just give him the cash upfront to do it. i also wonder if property in OK or FL anywhere near poker might also reasonably be cheap

many stories

i would like to talk about a bomb pot i think i played well. its an omaha bomb pot. on the flop one board is 88K and the other board is A23 and we all checked. Turn comes 9 on the 88K and 4 on the A23 with no flush possible. a guy pots it a guy calls, and i only called because he couldve had my boat beat and i have nothing on the other board. River comes 6 on 988K and A on A234. 

i am not sure because i waited too long to type up the hand history, but either its checked to me or i was first to act and i immediately pot it. why?

because the 6 is a safe card as far as my 99988 being beaten on the river, and also because me potting it there could easily get a guy to fold the wheel letting my 99 steal the other half if the other guy holding a boat has eights full, i got only 1 caller, and the caller had 8K6Q and i ended up scooping both halves. i dont think i wouldve won both halves had i not potted the river, or bet the turn where it wouldve been clearly obvious i wasnt betting with aces full but the bet on the river made me having aces full a real possibility. 

I would like to tell u an interesting story of my life in my early 20s when living in Toledo ohio and when women still thought i was good looking. this one girl older than me who was married that i had met thru a personal ad had invited me over to her place a couple times prior when her husband was away. i wonder if Ray will remember this incident? her husband worked as a firefighter. well one day i couldnt reach her by phone and i wasnt sure if she was alone, and i pulled the fire alarm at the place she was staying to get her attention to come outside the door and to see if she was alone without having to knock on the door. these was long before cell phones existed i think. 

however i found out from her because of it her husbands fire truck he worked for was on the way over to the place since i pulled the alarm and she never wanted to see me again after that because she was wondered about the questions he would be asking. just the type of dumb things people do without thinking it thru because of their autism. 

that wasnt the only woman in toledo that wanted to fool around, and in both incidents i was far less than age 25. once a man hits 25, women dont really want him no more because hes too old. and gay men are the same way they lose all interest once a man is no longer a child. 

when i was 17 and living in an apartment a block away alone a black women id met at the laundrymat  in her late 30s came over to give me the first blowjob id ever had and it was all her idea. im sure she liked the idea of it being a kid under age 18. Just like all the school teachers do. 

Thank God i grew up in an era (graduated in 1986) before credit scores existed or i dont know how id have ever rented apartments at age 19, usually for about 160 to 250 a month. i really dont know how anyone at that age just starting out can ever rent a place today. i couldnt afford to pay even that when i was that young, but it was so easy, u didnt need any credit or income back then. 

they should change the laws so anyone who hasnt paid can be evicted for any reason immediately without ever having to go thru court. this would fix the issue and no one would need to live out of hotels and airbnb because then landlords wouldnt be reluctant to rent to people without credit. it would be just like life was like in the late 1980s.

the democrats under JFK were as far right wing as republicans and there was no crime back then. i could live in horribly sketchy areas. and what crime that did occur u knew would be prosecuted so u didnt fear for your safety in states like CA. california used to have prisons they would lock people up in. 

i dreamed last night that i was on a train and a very beautiful young lady was praying and an older black lady said that it was her daughter and i started talking to her and asking her questions and she told me she was an adult actress. and i asked her how she got into it and i was interested in having her as my GF. she told me she used to dive off the high board and i said it was swimming that got u into the film industry? and yes it was. she told me she was a star in a film ive never heard of called the lion king, and it turned out when i woke up theres really a movie with that name. maybe it was buried somewhere in my subconscious. 

then im in the room next door to her staying at her house and i accidently break her phone into a ton of pieces and i am trying to hide the fact i destroyed it and put it together and im worrying she will find out and blame me, and then i woke up. 

i am lucky to still be about 5k better off than when i came here from shreveport even after hotel and other expenses the past 3 weeks im still over 34k which is about 5k improvement. these games are so good here imagine the bankroll i wouldve had had i played exclusively here for years and were playing a little bit deeper and higher, such as the 2-5 PLO.

that is a great game to make a lot of money in and Bill Potts is in town now staying in a shit house motel. i thought of staying there but i figured it would be a worse motel than he claims it is. but he wont play nothing but 5-10 even though he isnt even winning and a good player can win much more per hour in plo games and lower stakes than in 5-10 NL. i think 5-10 NL (and the 10-25 NL he likes) would be the hardest game to beat. i guarantee u Phil ivey and Phil hellmouth couldnt because only the worlds best play 5-10 or higher. not the normal player who grinds for a living. 

Back in Texas

 Well Thanks to Jason Schott i finally got out of Shreveport (for $200) and back to Dallas. at least now im in a place where im near my bank and not a place where theres no way to deposit money into the bank. 

i mightve spent too much for a hotel room this week (after first staying elsewhere 3 nights) but at least its a really nice condo hotel with a kitchen and a washer and dryer. its room for at least 3 or more people to stay here, even though its only me. i have always really hated having to leave the room to do laundry in long term extended stay hotels, especially when some have sketchy characters wanting to bum money hanging out in the laundry room. i have actually stayed at bad places i didnt realize were bad until after i checked in, which i assumed would be good since the doors open to the inside instead of the outside. the only way to really know a place is good is if its close to 1000 a week instead of half that price, and then it becomes unaffordable but it sure keeps out those most likely to be desperate for cash. and another bad thing about hotels laundry rooms is often u have to run clothes thru the dryer multiple times for it to work. 

i am really happy dallas is one of the few cities with great poker and low cost hotels. only okc and san antonio have lower prices. 

even though there is always some kind of poker here, i still often am playing a different game than the game i want. the 2-2 plo is often not going between 2am and 10am.. and the 2-5 plo with a 300 min buyin was way too expensive. almost no red chips were on the table and the players were bitching because i hate not having at least 300 in red in front of me. but there were tons of 100 500 and 1000 chips on the table and i was on the opposite opinion it slows up the game when the dealer is constantly needing to break change for it and no one has enough red. so i didnt feel comfortable in the game. no one wanted to run it twice like they do in the smaller games because the pots were too big and everyone was too deepstacked. so i got out of there when i got a 4x pot that got me up a little over 1000 profit. 

i am much better off in the smaller game when it goes or at least the game in dallas as opposed to the game in irving. also dallas lets u borrow a portable charger without making u let them hold your ID, though the same company runs both rooms. one lets u pay 50 cash deposit in lieu of letting them hold your ID and one wont. they should equalize the rules in both. 

the plo in dallas in 200 min 1-2-5. the plo here (except for the smaller 2-2 game) is 300 min in 2-5 and 7 dollars per orbit wasted in blinds instead of 3 dollars per orbit, which hurts a nitty player like me. 

paying 13 an hour is a hard enough obstacle to overcome, let alone the cost of playing higher stakes.

i am halfway through my laundry now and its so nice to not have to leave the room and get dressed. 

i still see some of the same stuff that would always piss me off in the poker room though, (such as people throwing stuff on the floor near my foot, their water, racks etc instead of getting up and getting an empty table like i always do as soon as i sit) its very hard on my back for me to bend over to pick anything up i want gone. and ive told the bathroom attendant everywhere i go to not put the seats up on the mens stalls when hes done cleaning because its extra work to put it down to sit and unless u bend over to sit it down slowly hurting your back it makes a loud sound when putting the seat down. but they dont give a xxxx about no one and dont listen and always leave it up. if people wanted it up they would use the urinal not the stall. 

ive got into a lot of horrible arguments in my life over this with mens bathroom attendants. i cant think of anything more rude to the disabled who cant stand up to pee. people got to realize that once a man passes 40 and can no longer have sex, they might also have to sit instead of stand to urinate too. 

But ill tell u the one thing thats nice. not having to deal with a button straddle. this room, like all of Doug Polks new rooms, only allows the straddle UTG. i think thats much better for the action. and Doug has no connection to this room at all. at least in other cities where i love to play for many years, (reno) they do the straddle in the right orbit instead of punishing the small blind. but not so in shreveport. 

the oddest thing about shreveport is i played so little live BJ while i was there, and actually won over 1k overall for the 6-7 weeks i was there. i played more online BJ there than i did live. i guess its because no matter what u win or lose in BJ or slots, they wont give comps to poker players. 

but i didnt win online at BJ because i wiped out all my online wins at the very end when i lost the 3200-3300 the final time right before i left. 

at least i won over 400 on acr before i gave it all back. and turned most of it into cash. but not all. 

let me tell u a hand i got very lucky in right before i quit for the night. i had 8T8Q double suited hearts and diamonds. and i tried to see the flop for $5, then for $30, and as u know i never trust the integrity of any game where the players are deepstacked. because i always feel like one person puts in a raise for their partner and then once most call it their partner reraises. i fully trust the integrity of a game where a lot of players have 100 or less in front of them because people who are broke wont steal like the rich do. 

so once i called the $30 a guy makes it pot, and a few people call and then a guy repots it (and it turned out he actually had a real hand AAJ2 double suited and the same exact suits as me. so i was drawing much less live than i thought) but i was thouroughly on tilt by that time and stuck big and i shoved my $495 in intending to quit down close to 950 if i lost that pot. 

isnt 8T 8Q double suited not too bad of a PLO hand? most of the players who see the flop usually have much worse. 

flop comes AJ3 with 2 spades and i thought well im xxxxed. 

turn comes 2, making the 3rd spade, to seal me being xxxxed. 

river comes K no one had the flush, guy shows his set of aces and wins the side pot and i scoop the main pot 4 way double up with my TQ

the other hand that surprised me early on that i lost and probably will surprise most of u, is that when i flopped A76 and had A789 double suited in my hand (but no flush draw) i was actually behind to AKQJ with the nut flush draw. the player next to me showed me after the fact on a phone calculator. now that did surprise me that i would be behind with both top 2 pair and open ender to the other guys hand. doesnt that also surprise most of u?

still looking forward to flying out of Louisiana to florida or texas anytime after august 8

 i had been slowly coming back a little bit from all the money ive used to live on and blew in omaha games in shreveport, both PL high and 10-20 fixed limit high low with a full kill. i think i left dallas with $27,900 and i was back to $25,300 at the beginning of today, after being down all the way to 22,800

and as always i was trying to get up at least 200-300 before i had to go to walmart before the store closed and was slowly in the game for a little bit more as time went on from the $100 id originally sat with a few hours earlier. at the final hand before i quit i was in the game for $527.

i had one hand in which i had AJ, and i think made a small raise preflop. i hate to raise it big unless i know ill have the button postflop. like from $3 to $7 or $10 if i even raised it at all. i cant remember. 

flop comes AK6 and the blind (either big or small) bet and i hate it when a guy bets from early position into multiple players because it makes me feel like hes got a strong hand and im afraid to raise. so i only call. turn comes A but it puts a possible flush on the board, so i still only call. river comes 8 and he bets a bit more and i still call, and find out i let him get there with A8. granted i dont think he wouldve folded had i bet heavier early on. 

eventually im out of the hole, slightly ahead and just about to quit to go to walmart before they close, and i really hate the fact i cant just play as long as i want anymore and just go in the middle of the night, but lightnings BFF dr fauci destroyed that. i get dealt AK and raise it up preflop and the only 3 players are me and the guy on my immediate right and my immediate left. both older black guys with a lot of chips. 

flop comes K95 and the first player checks. i bet $40 and seat 9 raises to $100. seat 7 folds. what am i supposed to do here? a short stack id just commit myself but i had about $500 on me. 

there were 2 clubs on the board and i called in case he had the draw. turn comes 2 spades a total blank. and this time he only bet $75 when i checked and i thought for sure i was ahead (turned out i was). i again only called. (and after i left pissed off i heard the one guy saying when i was at the window, why didnt i just raise him allin on the turn if i thought i was good). 

river comes J. i checked in the dark, as if i was the one on the draw, and he bets $200 and its not a club. i called and he has KJ for the 3 outer. yeah thats why i left unhappy. so i was stuck way more at the very end, plus about $200 in bitcoin id lost online earlier on my phone playing BJ. 

that was twice that almost the same thing happened to me today both for big pots. and i dont think either of those 2 guys wouldve folded had i went allin on the turn. thats just running terribly bad.

i had a weird dream last night in which Trump came running up to me and said he needed my help and i went to follow him and i saw a station wagon in which a bunch of women without shirts on were hanging out in and in the middle of the station wagon was Bart Hanson lying on a bed saying to come in and lie down and then he said "you're the rock star poker player, you're the greatest" and earlier in the dream i was playing video poker out of a newspaper vending machine and i came back and someone was playing my machine. and someone handed me $300 in cash as compensation but instead of money it was all checks made out in my mothers name. and as im walking up to her front door there is a huge refridgerator for sale outside with tons of doors and is about the size of many tables. 

got my ID resolved and im in an airbnb for a month in Louisiana

 well my money is still decreasing rapidly, 23700 left of the 27900 i had when i left Dallas, but at least my ID is good now til 2030, though i wont be able to fly as of May 2025. 

i had some bad luck when i first got here. lost $415 playing poker the first night i was here, $200 for the Uber to get here from Dallas, and then i played the bags of Jewels machine a little bit too early after the game broke. the bags were at 4,4,4 and i know i should only play when at 5,5,4 or 5,5,3. but i thought the only way u make any money is if both the red bag and another bag hits at the same time. 

i lost about $500 on that machine that night. and the red bag never hit. only the green bag once, and the purple bag twice. 

at one point all 3 bags were lit, but when i left the game the red bag still hadnt burst. 

and then the following day i lost about $900 at poker. some in NL some in 10-20 hilow. and of course i was paying for a motel in bossier about $160-180 every 2 nights on priceline. thats why i wanted to be out of there and if i didnt get back to texas, to be in my own place with a kitchen and a washer and dryer. 

all of the flights to texas arent cheap they were all $279-400 and i dont feel safe riding a greyhound bus and i looked for non greyhound buses leaving shreveport but all they have is greyhound. they did have a few flights cheap to vegas, or to other places if u took the express option thru priceline where u dont see which airline and time the flight leaves or where it transfers u at til after u book the ticket and its non refundable. 

u can even fly to fort lauderdale for 177 if u go that option where u cant see the flight til its too late. 

i dont like the fact theres completely dead mornings with no games here (mon and tues) because it had plenty of tables and players all last week wednesday thru sunday. id wake up at 7am and find the game still going. and i also dont like the fact i cant run up a big stack then hit and run and go 5 miles down the road and buy back in for 60 like i could in dallas at the 2nd poker room. 

but here its 100 min. and often only 1 casino poker room open. they need to figure out a way to get players in early on tuesdays so its not so dead here. i bet the dealers dont like sitting here doing nothing that morning either and hate to be the one called in to wait for a game to go. 

i would suggest offering the players $50 an hour to start the game. and pay it to everyone at the table instead of 1 person. that would get at least 4 to come in and start it up. and keep giving them $50 an hour til the game fills up as it gets closer to the afternoon. 

if the house claims they cant afford it, just take it from the checks of the nighttime dealers on the busy times and use this money to fund it. its not fair to the dealers who work tues morning that those dealers on swing shift on weekends earn more. 

also my toenails really need cut again there are starting to get long it was a long time ago Vince took me to the foot doctor in vegas. the one that doesnt cut right is back out to not being able to cut. 

ive taken some horrible beats in here and actually have won over $700 on blackjack. so im shocked im as broke as i am. Uber costs a lot more here than in TX and the cost of food and general living expenses under Biden is just horrible. i went over 5 hours without winning a single pot in 10-20 hilo and left without finding out how many more hours it would have been. and here the bomb pots u get 3 cards and 2 boards in the NL game. taken some horrible beats in that game too but its too much work to type them out here now. 

wasted opportunities when i was young and could sit over 12 hours straight

 Yeah it was nice when i didnt get tired so quickly and just want to go home. and its harder to not be able to quit because i havent earned at least 200 for the night yet. and it was nice pre covid when living expenses werent close to 4k a month 

i remember when i lived for next to nothing and when my roll was often under $2000, sometimes $1000 in the very early days. such as when i found an apt for $230 a month in butte montana and i was mostly playing online a lot. 

But i was young, dumb and stupid in those days and no matter how little money i had i could never grow my money. even though at that time, no one knew what a HUD or a solver was and there were still casual losing players online since the US govt hadnt banned it yet. Fuck that war criminal George Bush. it was because every day i would win about $25-30 and end up giving $10 or so of it to Britni or Lorna who i was talking to online all day long in chat and yahoo messenger while i play poker. anyone remember yahoo messenger? 

when u are that young, having a woman is the most important thing in your life. but when u get to be over 50 and can no longer have sex due to your old age, and have to piss every 45 minutes an extremely tiny amount, u then start thinking, im sick of being homeless, having no credit, owning no assets and then u get to the point where u only care about money and nothing but money. 

had i spent more hours stockpiling money at that age like Bill Potts did (minus whatever he likely donates to those supporting Hamas) i would have a roll of 260k instead of 26k. 

i am going to miss Dallas when i leave to go to Louisiana to try and replace an ID before it expires in August. there isnt many places around the USA that have 9 tables going at 630am. never have to worry about the last 1-2 NL game of the night breaking up here. Never have to worry about acting first if the button straddles because only the UTG can straddle here. where else can i martingale and buyin for only $60 when i first sit down?

but i cannot understand why im not winning more here. im still 6k less well off than when i left vegas for texas. most of the loss was on the day i lost 3000 the day i lost 2100 the day i lost 860 and the cost of living and not from poker but still, in houston, san antonio and el paso i not only paid all those expenses i kept growing the roll too. at least ill never go broke 60 at a time in NL. thats all ive played for over 2 weeks. im scared to play in a PLO game unless i can buyin for 100 and none exist in dallas. 

also i can not remember for sure where i last had or seen my birth certificate from canada. either ray or vince lost it and i dont know who but neither guy can find it so thats another problem. 

since i sleep during the day they never had a chance to replace the ac and deep clean the carpet and i hope they arent mad i didnt complain and tell them how wet the floor is near the edge of the bed until i move out in 2-5 more days. but i never ever wake up til much later than 5pm and i certainly dont want people in my room when im undressed lying in bed 3-5 hours trying to fall asleep. 

its great when u can keep going back to sleep 10 hours everyday. one thing ruining many peoples health is they dont get enough sleep. only thing that ruins mine is i never see a doctor so who knows what health issues could be getting way too severe to be fixable. 

this blog is way too short but its long overdue and been half finished for over 10 days, so im just going to go ahead and hit publish

dallas trip report

 well at least theres one thing u can say for playing in Dallas. at least u wont find bad poker games that are too tight. most of the players play like they just stepped off the Greyhound bus from west virginia. not that it has helped me any. i am really growing broke fast. lost well over half the bankroll i had when i was over 50k.

since coming to Dallas 2 weeks or so ago, (as soon as my place in Vegas was up) i have visited a lot of different places to play poker around town, although most of the time ive played at the place thats within a $7 Uber from my hotel instead of a $22 or more Uber. 

When i first arrived i noticed how much better the games were here than in Vegas, particularly at TCH irving. i won over $600 3 of the first 4 days before everything started going south. Now with expenses and losses playing in games way too high for me, and just the cost of living, im now over 7k worse than when i arrived here and barely have close to 25k but there is definitely much looser action here in the 12NL game and the PLO games than in vegas. 

I also played in 3 home games with rakes anywhere from $35 and higher, and where they had good massage girls, well at least 2 of them were. One of them paid for my Uber both ways. There is also a lady who is nice and friendly who runs a Big0 hilo game at one of the Texas cardhouses legal clubs and its a loose game. higher than i can afford. even though the min buy is only 300. 

the first hand, i turned my 300 into over 650 and about 5 minutes later i lost the entire thing back with double suited aces and was so mad at myself for not hitting and running although i wanted to play a couple hours before i did that. that put me on serious tilt and thats the day i lost over 3k all at poker. 

after Rebecca the host left early, others were leaving and me and a new player said he liked dramaha so we changed it to PL dramaha instead of Big 0. and i rebought 1600 and was within 100 of being even from being out over 1220 then everything went haywire and i eventually left with nothing. 

a bomb pot at the end took the last 1600 and one hand i lost with a flush in my hand because id forgotten one of the other players had just talked me into including dramaha zero in a mix and i forgot the game had switched, so i lost over 800 just that one hand. 

Kind of like how i would lose in Jaimes mix game in Reno, his home game. 

Unlike most clubs in other parts of TX u get no bonus here of any kind for buying time in bigger amounts so i keep paying for an hour at a time although it can be a pain in the ass to keep handing out $20 or so and keep being asked but i hate spending 100 at once and emotionally feeling out that much. all the rich old men with money could care less. 

and of course since i only win 1 pot every 5 hours as tight as i play, i hate paying time period. but Houston got so greedy on their rakes it made it a lot harder to win than when i first got to Houston in March of 2020. i remember games where they used to charge 5 and now charge 15. 

i still think Larrys game in el paso would be a way better option. i could get 100 every day for starting the game at 11am and i remember a decent hotel i stayed at for under 350 a week. But i need to try and replace an ID in louisiana somewhere before it expires before im on the opposite side of the state. 

one really nice thing about playing at TCH here is there is no small blind act first on the button straddle. it starts under the gun just like in Vegas. all the places around the country that make the sb act first drive me nuts. and the good news is in the 2-2 plo u cannot button straddle, only straddle under the gun. but of course in all the other plo games u can button straddle. its even mandatory in rebeccas game. 

and the other nice thing is the poker games in dallas go around the clock instead of breaking up at night. as horrible as ive been running, (some of it from blowing a few k online) i still think in the long run i could easily make about 75k a year here. 

33,333 a strange number for my bankroll but when i first started writing this over a week ago, the exact amount of it

 in this dream, im going thru a library looking at books that say the end on them and i find its interesting fiction like the kind i always read of my mothers and then im in a place where im staying with a lot of others living there and im in a big room downstairs that can seat several hundred and im wondering why they dont offer a religious services there for the residents and want to complain about it. then i am walking down a stairwell and i see arms loose on the floor, point it out to someone and notice that no one has any functioning arms to pick it up. and then a big guy wearing a uniform who seems a bit retarded is going to beat me up and his employer in charge comes up and says Danny we dont zap those who have the armband on. and i was saying how maybe he might be a nice guy cause i was worried about getting beat up. and i am walking with 2 other students with armbands who are being protected and this other guy keeps looking at us and then i a pinprick on my back and hes secretely inserted a needle they couldnt see and hes talking with them off to the side and i remove the needle and its on the floor with a bunch of other needles and im trying to extricate myself and the needles cant get loose from some other contraption and i finally do and hear him saying how he has to sell the research on the needle to get paid and i am running out outdoors in the other way around a building and he keeps turning back and forth into a woman to a man to a woman and comes after me and i want to go back to where there is other security but i cannot get over a large river and i see someone walking their dog who will stop him but they cannot get across the river to us and i wake up

this was written a few days ago so i would not forget the dream. 

today was not a good day, and its because i just cant fix my sleep hours because im too old to force myself to stay awake and lose a ton of money playing too long of sessions. so im still waking up about 7am and going to bed at 8pm or so which are horrible hours because the hours i tend to sleep because im too tired not to are the very hours i should be playing poker. 

so i found myself at 10am with nothing to do but go play blackjack and decided to go to the nearby silver 7 casino which offers $10 6 deck shoe 3-2 BJ to save a big Uber fare going to a much better game thats a DD and close to the same stakes. 

and i still carry way too much cash. i had the whole 6k i have at home on me because i might need it when i play BJ. im lucky i didnt lose more than $1000 of it. theres so many bums asking for money in the parking lot of the grocery store i felt very unsafe walking home in the dark at 845 pm with food with all that money in my pocket but luckily made it ok. 

and once i got stuck quite a bit at the $10 BJ game, i tried to bet 2 spots of about $300 each to get unstuck. the table said min 10 max bet 500. the pit boss said the 500 was the total of all bets combined and wouldnt let me do 300 and 300. he claimed thats true in all the casinos he ever worked at. and i dont believe it. ive played at many casinos with a max bet of 500 where u can bet 2 or 3 spots of 500 each. 

when i play the DD game i win most of the time at station casinos. i won 500 in there one day this week but i sure do lose on shoe games

maybe i should get a room in a station casinos property but theyre usually more expensive. 

then i went to the Palms to get my $200 in promo chips it was way before 2pm which is the earliest i can pick them up every tuesday at the cage. so i ended up losing about 100 in VP.

i had a shot to win $1000 or more when i got dealt 3 wild deuces as my starting hand but i missed getting 4 deuces on every single hand i was playing, a big disappointment. it was on the triple spin poker machines. the one at the Palms has a lower min bet making it easy to martingale plus a better pay schedule, even on the lower stakes. 

when i got my promo chips finally i was disappointed the DD 3-2 table wasnt open and all the tables were 6-5 except the hi limit room. i should have went to craps, last time i cashed out 113 off the promo chips when i played craps but instead i went into hi limit and then lost 2 hands of 100 in a row

after that i was pissed off i had not 1 dollar off the promo chips, first time thats ever happened. so i immediately got an Uber to play poker and sat in a $1-3 NL game. i played a few hours and eventually recovered $233 of what i lost but am still way down for the night. 

--a few more days later--

well yesterday Palace station backed me off from playing BJ. granted i was spreading a bit much on a $15 DD game, and this is why i was playing shoes so much, because its the ONLY way i know to be permitted to play BJ with no issues. but i just got so tired of losing with shoes. such as the 8 deck shoe thats cut off at 5 1half decks downtown vegas. i remember when it was cut off at 6 and a half decks instead before the virus with a min bet of 5 instead of 10 or 15. 

i was betting like from 150 to 500 or more as soon as the count went to plus 3 or higher (running count not the true) and 15 flat all other times. thats too big for my bankroll also. but i think if all the readers of my blog showed them how much i lose at BJ overall theyd realize im not nearly skilled enough to be a threat to them in the long run and its a mistake to back me off. Koala would know this. he used to be a pit boss. 

then i went and played poker and won about 600 but my belt broke and i immediately had to get another belt because it was a horrible pain holding up my pants. barely made it to Target before they closed. damn belt was $27 ($2 just for the tax) must be inflation. and then since its too unsafe to walk about 8 blocks home, paid 12 more for an Uber which most wouldnt do who wasnt worried about crime, but i had over 6k on me. 

I sure made a big mistake taking a place for a month in Vegas up thru May 10th. im dropping like a balloon.

 Actually a sandbag is a better word than the word balloon upon reflection. Lets say that someones bankroll has been going steadily downhill. and they had over 45k when they took the month and now have 33.9k and before i figured it up actually thought i was a few hundred less. And though i dont think Ray knows, there was at least 4k dropped online since taking the room. 

and then the other day i blew over $2100 on the bingo machine at the $7.50 level when the bingo wasnt nearly high enough to make it plus ev, but i was stuck so i played anyway hoping the bingo would hit really quick so i could still be up. 

But physicalogically it feels like it dont matter and has no effect on if i make minus ev bets or plus ev bets over the long run as to whether i win or lose so why not just make the minus ev bets if making plus ev bets isnt going to increase my long term odds?

For example tonight there was this one regular young kid in the poker room who usually has a ton of black chips on the table, even when the max buy is only $400. and we all know most people constantly add to their stack when the dealer isnt looking because the house doesnt care about it like they do when people try to put less. 

how else could he get all them chips? it sure isnt his play. 

like most of the heavy losers he straddles the button or UTG at every opportunity but at least he isnt texting other players to meet him outside of starbucks when he goes broke like some of the other losers are who like to straddle. (i not only saw that text i saw the guy next to me downloading cash app on his phone last week). 

But preflop tonights villian put $6 out for the straddle a few of us limped, and i was planning to call what i assumed would be a small raise. but when he makes it $61 UTG i wasnt going to leave myself with almost half my stack in preflop and i wasnt folding 99 so i just reshoved allin and we took the flop HU. he has A5 offsuit (a terrible way to play it) but im sure he considers himself a genius because the flop was ace hi and he got all my chips that were in the pot preflop. 

that and another guy busting my Q hi flush on the river with the full house he didnt bet on the turn when the original preflop raiser bet $15 and i called, made me leave stuck $350 and completely on tilt and i talked to Ray on the way home and told him i was enroute home instead of to a machine, but when i got home, threw away about 2k online BJ. 

i quit playing all shoe BJ games 6 or 8 deck and any machines. but online BJ sure dont help and the only real BJ ive played has been the 3-2 $15 DD game at station casinos. surprisingly thats the one place i havent lost any money. good rules since if u play 2 spots u only have to go to 25 and 25 instead of 30 and 30 and u can even play 3 spots of 25, which is quite rare. even if other places allow 3 spots unlike Palace station does, the min bet on a $15 table isnt $25 a spot on 3 spots. 

also im really concerned about if ill be able to get another ID in Lousiana since i wont have anyone giving me a lease this time to prove an address, and this needs done before August 5th so i can then get into a place longer term. i hate my family so much for having me born in Canada and hate anyone who travels overseas. it ruins peoples lives if they have kids. games wouldnt be nearly as bad in vegas were it not for all the fucking Canadians and the fucking Euros. and all those people look down on Americans because some in America still vote right wing and have Christian worldviews. all British consider themselves morally superior to americans.