my experiences during the greatest natural disaster to ever hit the city of Houston.

 

except for a lack of water still in my hotel, hopefully all this will be over soon. But the front desk does have huge tubs of water stored in the back they will give u to bring to your room to put in your toilet tank to enable it to flush if u need it. Surely running water will be restored to the city soon. there were a few businesses that had it. Although very few. 

What i mean by the greatest natural disaster to hit the city of Houston, there were 10x as many people who lost power this time than the 393,000 who lost power during Hurricane Harvey. and hurricane harvey didnt cause people to lose power when its well below freezing outside. 

now notice this sign i took a picture of in the Krogers nearby my hotel. Notice how u are limited to 1 water, (a 24 pack of bottled water is ok, but not 2 single waters weirdly enough). and u couldnt buy any of the frozen food it was all closed off. must of been worried about spoilage. and even though the sign says no perishables i was able to buy a pumpkin pie. i ended up spending $90 in there so i think i probably bought too much but at least ive got plenty of food to store me up til next tuesday. and i even convinced the manager to let me borrow the stores cart and wheel it up the street 8 blocks and back to my hotel.

this morning when Ray called that Krogers, the lady said they wasnt yet open because they didnt have power. the HEB was about the same distance and we werent sure if it had power since they wasnt answering the phone. its been a major issue reaching businesses this week, most phone lines in Houston have been down lately. Especially poker rooms. the HEB was to be open between 10am and 5pm, and the Kroger was scheduled to open a little earlier and close a little later. and the lady at the front desk downstairs told me for sure the Mexican/asian grocery store next door was open. so i stood in line outside there this morning to get inside. and they sold all kind of things i didnt know what they were and not the type of food i like. so i bought very little. a few cans of soup, sardines, crackers, and produce items and exotic soft drinks since they didnt have bottled water. i never did make the much longer walk up the road the other way to Heb.

At least some poker rooms are finally starting to reopen after being shut down for 1-4 days, depending on which room we are talking about. Kings sent out messages this morning that they had power again and was reopening their cardroom. so i went over there, bought in for $50 minimum, lost it, rebought $60 and ran the $110 i was in for total up to $288. then they lost power and we were playing by everyones phone flashlight for a while and they said if they didnt recover power by 5pm when its dark outside, theyd shut down. i played for about 30 more minutes and once i found out 52 was open with power, i left to go over there. 

i was disappointed to discover they had no running water though to flush the toilets in the bathroom. nor could u wash at the sink. but i played NL for a while, lost my first buyin, then won off the 2nd buyin and was only down a small amount when the $15-30 hilow 5 card big 0 game started up. eventually i ended up winning about $140 in it, and was surprised to be almost out of time from when i last paid $100 the other day. so i left to see if the grocery store had opened before it got too late, still being up over $275 between both cardrooms minus some Uber fares.

was so nice to finally have enough drivers out on the roads today to be paying much lower prices again for Uber. none of todays 3 trips were over $15. and for the previous 2-3 days i was NOT able to get a driver on Uber, and i couldnt get one on Lyft either without using the luxury service for about 4x the price. one day i ran up a bill of over $340 driving all over Houston trying to find a new hotel to check into because my old hotel didnt have any power at the time. also my old hotel had so many broke bums hanging out sleeping in the lobby at night because of the bad area of town it was in near westheimer i didnt feel safe there walking in and out in the dark with about $1500 or more on me most of the time. and i sure wasnt going to leave money in my room there. this hotel im in now is totally safe, no one broke can afford to be here. instead of paying $179 for 3 nights i paid $930 for 7 nites. far nicer rooms on the inside and great heat and TV selection and good wifi. no running water but they cant help that. and a great fridge with a full freezer. 

yes i spent a TON on lyfts, and i bet in all in the last 7 days it was over $800 worth. usually in a week its about $175-225 worth. 

and at least im finally not in a room where the only way to stay warm was under the blankets because the room was probably only about 40 degrees.

i had half a mind to fly out on here to somewhere where it never gets cold in the winter, such as fort lauderdale, reno or vegas. but i had already paid for a week at this new hotel. and of course a little while before i paid for a week here there certainly were no planes running. i looked at the IAH departures list 2 days in a row and well over 90% were listed as canceled every day. 

even the ones which didnt cancel were fully booked by people wanting to go somewhere to get away from here.

without running water, u cannot shower, wash under the sink, or clean silverware or dishes, but im making do the best i can. at least im loaded up with food now and wont need no uber trips to get food. and there should be poker places open now to have a chance to get back the fortune ive been spending.

a lot of the $6000 plus ive made in the last month got spent this week for hotel lyft and food. probably close to $2000 worth. ill never deal with this again because next week this should all have blown over because this weekend it will be 50-60 outdoors which should solve the problems with power and water unless something is seriously fucked up with the utility company. 

I'm starving to death

 and heres the reason why. ive got no food in my hotel room, and its too late at night to buy groceries and i forgot to stop at a convenience store enroute home. this is why i hate the fact theres no 24 hour walmarts no more since the virus. And i dont want to get back out of bed. i bought a little food when i took this hotel room for 3 nights, when i had to check out of my other airbnb. (i had been doing one month at a time and someone had it booked up for moving in mid february so i couldnt renew for another month). i didnt buy quite enough, i wouldve bought more, but the fridge was so small it didnt have a freezer. i dont want to say which hotel im at of course, but i thought this was a far nicer brand because in many cities, this chain would be over $100. but i paid $209 for 3 nights. still thats high paying by the day, because if 3 days is $209, guess how much that makes 30 days when u add a zero. 

not only did i not buy enough food since i didnt have a freezer to store burritos and frozen meals, the shower will not work properly because i cant adjust the water to make it hotter so its not too cold. i cant imagine anyone not wanting to use hot water for a shower. only thing that does work really well in here is the wifi. 

and some (but i doubt 52 social but maybe im wrong) will be closed monday, due to very cold icy lousy winter weather which is unheard of here in texas. its rarely below 40 in the winter and certainly no snow this far south. but we are supposed to be 14 degrees monday. Kerrville TX, a couple hundred miles or more further west, is only going to be 7 degrees. no one is used to driving on ice so there will be hundreds of accidents hopefully not as bad in the terrible one in fort worth the other day all over the news which involved 100 vehicles and multiple deaths. i dont think id have an easy time finding an Uber that day to buy food without huge surcharges. local schools are closing. a lot of texas will have ice and snow, theres winter storm warnings for almost the entire state. 

now about that hand i promised to share on twitter in this blog, i had made so many rebuys and addons due to not getting any hands and starting to get tired since id played at a different casino for 3-4 hours earlier, id totally lost track of how much money i was in for and i dont normally do that, but i wouldnt know til i got home and read the paper listing the amount of cash i had when i left my room. id just got done adding on a few more hundred and had a bit less than $500 in front of me when the following hand occured. 

a guy makes it $15 that id seen capable of folding the other day when i reraised big preflop. one guy called and i decided to make it $70 with Q4 of clubs in late position, and we are deep stacked, all 3 of us. the only thing i have working for me is my tight image and position, and of course i am very much on tilt and want to quit the game, but sure not when im stuck.

one guy called. the original raiser. flop comes 225 or 255. i dont even remember. all i remember is i bet but not the amount i bet. and he called me. Turn comes 3 which improved my hand slightly to a draw, but no flush draw. i remember betting $150 and he thinks and then goes allin. turns out later he has 99. i guess he read my tilted image well.

we agree to run it twice, and i hit the A on top for a straight, and a Q on the bottom for two pair and i scooped the pot where i doubled up and cashed out $1036 and left due to the fact i couldnt play worth a shit and knew id got unstuck. turned out when i got home i was up over $300.

a little more than i thought i was. Since i was up over $180 at one point before i got stuck, i felt stuck more than i actually was. i thought i was only up about $200 after winning the pot. 

How the coronavirus has changed my life

 I know a lot about how the coronavirus has ruined the lives of a lot of people, especially for those who own businesses and for those who live in blue states and have lost their jobs. (yet some of these people still vote democrat, lol). i know a lot of people long for the wearing of masks to be over and for the vaccine to be readily available to anyone who wants it. (and we pray to God its never forced on anyone and especially not forced on people like me who have a form of autism). but it seems like those days will never come since the wrong guy won the election. But of course its very obvious he didnt win fair and square. 

But for all the people who suffered, for all those behind in their rent and in danger of being evicted if eviction restrictions were back to normal, and for all those without hardly a dime in their checking account, those of us who make their living playing poker actually came out of it pretty well. (that is, if we werent tied down to living in the wrong state without the freedom to relocate such as Ray or Vince.) having a cash savings no matter how little, means a lot when u suddenly have no income at all. and most poker players can find a hidden underground game somewhere if need be and its the only option. 

also far more people are trying to find a source of income that cannot be cut off because of the virus, so more people who dont know what theyre doing it seems are trying to win at poker, but since they are so uninformed as to how to play correctly, they follow a lot of very poor advice, such as to straddle at every opportunity. and to buy in deep, even if u are the worst player on the table. the only real way to buyin correctly is to martingale. 

for a long time now i havent wanted to enter a blue state, out of the fear it would either be closed for the most part without an open poker room (which u see on bravo live how over 50 percent of rooms in other states still are not open) or that as soon as i went there, Joe Biden would shut the place down. but now that hes been in office 2 weeks and nothing has happened, id like of like a vacation before the vaccine or a covid test becomes mandatory to fly domestically. the test is so physically painful id never want to take one. 

many times in the last 2 weeks i researched flights to reno, vegas, memphis, and fort smith arkansas. and every time, i never could bring myself to take the 50 minute long Uber ride to the airport because its a real pain in the ass and drivers in Houston drive horribly on the highway, and every time i feel i just escaped getting killed in an accident. plus when i wake up i always go to work instead and when i leave the poker room, im too tired to pack my stuff up and fly.

plus i worry if i move out they wont find the place clean enough, wont like the condition of the sheets and bedding due to my allergies etc, and will either give me a bad rating on airbnb or ask for an extra cleaning fee, which id gladly pay over a poor rating. and im too scared to look on airbnb to see if this place is still available once it expires in less than 6 days. if not, i have plenty of money to get a new airbnb or hotel anywhere in the country however. but if i lose my good airbnb rating ill never have a way to rent apartments in the future. 

im tired of not being able to play vbj either. and i think i know of a place there might still be one worthwhile machine, and another place there might be a worthwhile promotion. but its so close now to check out i cant take the vacation i wanted to back in mid january right after Bidens inaguration because now i couldnt take my time returning. every time i went on a trip i was always going there to live, not to vacation and had i traveled say back on Jan 24, i couldve traveled on vacation instead of to live, and returned to houston on my birthday feb 10 before i had to move out. 

what i should be doing before anything happens to my roll is seeing a doctor ive not seen in 8 years or so before what happens to wec and mickey happens to me. but then again, i eat far healthier than most people. i quit pop and candy bars years ago and i do not touch weed or alcohol, or margerine butter or ranch dressing or mayonnaise or pizza. and most people eat junk nonstop because they cant resist ordering food at the poker table, i see others do this almost every day. and i buy frozen peaches in huge bags for $10 and sit them out to thaw and eat a little at a time. fruit is very good for u especially if u eat a ton of fresh strawberries alot. and i must also have a cleaning and 3 cavities fixed in my teeth soon. i was told this when i had the other tooth pulled and 1 more cavity filled when i spent the $1700. of course i have to wait til either vince or ray is here to do it. 

but the major difference between me as a poker player during the coronavirus and a person with a regular job is i increased my lifes savings about 300% during the virus, from a little over 10k to a little over 30k. i dont think it was because of the virus but because games are incredibly good here compared to other states and an extremely lucky VBJ run in deadwood, so much i got banned there, and a $5000 drawing in choctaw in oct 

having cash on hand helps ANYONE tremendously for unexpected medical expenses, any loss of a source of income, and it would be so great if massive deflation were to take place to where 32k would be worth more like 300k. imagine if everyone paying $100 a month for electricity $350 for food at home, and $1200 rent were to suddenly slash those bills by 90 percent, which is what massive deflation does, but it would need to be BIG, just like in the great depression magnified many times over. 

and of course the opposite, which is far more likely, is massive inflation (especially under the new socialist democratic administration which is in full power). that would soon make 32k unable to meet a months bills. especially if rental prices increased to $8000 a month for a ghetto room in someones home because of 80 million people suddenly relocating to texas and needing housing.

it is not just me thats done far better than the average american during the virus but most poker players and people in red states. there is freedom here still in places like texas, florida and south dakota. just like whether i win or lose at poker, it only matters where u live (and which casino u play in).