Stab people often?

I’ve been playing a lot of live poker over the last week or so, and you sure do meet some interesting people that way.

On the weekend I was at what is affectionately known as the “Leb Game”, which is a sort of private poker club for people who have no interest in poker unless they can win (or lose) thousands of dollars on a single hand. Basically it’s Nirvana. The game is always loud and loose, plenty of food and drinks (and other legally ambiguous consumables, if such is your desire) and even though I have never personally witnessed any player-on-player violence, a chair being thrown against a wall is a somewhat common occurrence.

On this particular occasion, one of the regulars was discussing “business” with a gentlemen of Arabic descent, whom I had not previously met. I overheard the following exchange:

“. . . yeah I agree, I mean, what else could I have done?”

“Yep. Sometimes you just have to do it and get it over with. You stab people very often?”

“Not as often as I would like. . . ”

Absolute. Classic. Conversation.

I also ended up winning just under a grand, so it made the evening even more pleasant!

In completely unrelated news, my mum’s new book is out! It is the second book in the Forsaken Worlds series that she is writing, and is called Wolf Revenge. My mum was instrumental in my recent desire to write a book of my own (albeit one with less space aliens, graphic sex, and wolves).

The poker book is probably still 6 weeks or so from being completed, but I have also been working on a collaborative effort over the last couple of months with my housemate and all round clever cookie Pip Foweraker. Pip is an author and an extremely funny guy as well, and we have often discussed various options for writing something amusing together, and we seem to have settled on a parody “Relationship Advice” guide. I figure I’m a permanent bachelor, and Pip is a divorcee, so why shouldn’t we tell other people how to run their relationships? It was originally just intended to be a bit of a fun way to get some writing practice in, but it has actually turned out to be funny as fuck. Should likely be finished over the next week or so, which is exciting. I even got to write out comics for it (Pip is doing the drawings), which is something I’ve always wanted to have a go at.

I’ve been playing quite a bit on 888 lately, and it seems like a goldmine. Lol. I had a little bit of trouble getting my pokertracker working properly, but now that I have, it seems just like printing money. The games are so much like playing a pub freeroll it’s ridiculous. The generic tourney strategy against players like that is to play quite passively early on, until you hit a big hand, then value bet the hell out of it and expect to make lots of chippies. Late game plays similarly to any other tournament, except people are less likely to re-raise you than they are on Pokerstars. There is way more calling-and-folding-on-the-flop, which is super good for me obviously.

Will be spending the next couple of days finishing off the relationship book, before sending it off to get formatted, and then I’m looking forward to a pretty chillaxed weekend.

Much love.

Ash.