$16,000 Richer

Tiredness makes people stupid. It's a fact.

I'll often wake Rachael up accidentally if I go to be after her, and despite her undeniable intellectual prowess (she’s a few weeks away from being a doctor), she is reduced to a massively, gibbering mess during the first 2 minutes of consciousness. Most of the time this results in a harmless zombie-like groan as she falls straight back to sleep, but sometimes I'm blessed with involuntary comic genius as she makes some illogical remark about a pantry or a unicorn! This month I caught the end of a dream, and still half asleep, and with the hugest smile on her face, she mumbled that she was swimming with Skye (her horse), wearing a snorkel... I'm not exactly sure which one of them was wearing the snorkel, because she fell asleep during cross examination, but at least I know her unconscious self is getting enough exercise, even if it does seem a tad dangerous. Undoubtedly though, my favourite part of her sleepy stupor is on the occasions she'll venture out of bed to grab a drink, because without fail, she'll stagger a few steps sideways for each of her first couple forward. She basically moves like a knight across a chessboard, but with the elegance of a drunk..

This month I was lucky enough to make it to the final day of PKR Live in London, which consisted of a series of heads up matches. Head's up poker is basically a one-on-one dual, and it’s far more taxing than playing poker against a full table of players, simply because you play the entirety of every hand. Most of my games were marathons and as I played around 15 hours of heads-up poker, it's safe to say I was pooped (the late nights and hammering we gave the bar each night probably didn’t help!)..

Anyway, fatigue definitely showed and during my semi-final game I kept doing rally dumb stuff like posting the big blind and instantly mucking my hand, litterally passing my opponent free chips. Many coaches stress the importance of not playing out of position, but I don’t recommend actually giving you big blind away as a strategy. My biggest blooper came when I got it all-in with A4s vs. 99 and lost on 4KJ23. There was a huge crowd of people eagerly leaning in to watch the action and after the river I got up shook my opponents hand and left the table. He must have thought that this was a huge needle on my part, as I’d misread his hand, he actually had 96 off-suit, and I’d won. That was an embarrassingly delightful walk back to my seat..

I played seasoned pro Jeff Kimber heads up in the final. Re-charged after a Redbull and some food, I felt like I had an edge early on and got off to a great start making a couple of good reads and over-bet bluffs. Within an hour I got it all in for the win with TT vs AJ and unfortunately for me Jeff flopped and won doubled up. After this Jeff made some good adjustments and I think fatigue got both of us during our 7 hour battle! Unfortunately, it came down to winning coin flips, and I lost 3 out of 3 all-in confrontations. It’s impossible to win if you can’t win your all-ins. Wp Jeff. Fortunately we did a deal before heads up started and so I took home around $16,000 for my second place. This softened the blow (thought not as much as getting in to bed that night did!)! .

I also had another two-part article published which seems to have been well received. Here’s a link for it:

http://www.pkr.com/en/raise-your-game/multi-table-tournaments/monkey-see-monkey-do-1/ .

This is my favourite Video this month. Love it:

Video of the Month

Gee Gee, Danshreddies

Facepalm

This month the unthinkable happened.

On the 14th March 2014, the world facepalmed. Now, I don’t mean that every human on earth stopped and slapped their foreheads in unison. Not at all. I’m saying Planet Earth actually facepalmed. The Pacific Ocean literally sprouted an arm and slapped the North Pole clean on the brow. Why? My mum, the woman so technophobic she can barely work an iron, got Facebook.

This can't be a good idea. Aside from reading that your mum has “poked you”, being as bizarre as it would be literally, this is the woman that calls laptops “internets” and who at one point, genuinely thought she’d deleted Google...

Now some of you may think I'm exaggerating, and others may be giving it the whole, “you go girlfriend!” in admiration of her commitment to bringing herself into the 21st Century, so If those naysayers could leave their name and numbers in the comments below, I’ll happily refer the midnight, “where is my timeline? is it private?” or, “why have I been tagged?” style questions. Go get'em!

Her technical know-how was showcased perfectly by her first status update which was rather concise, as you can see below. I think the lack of picture makes it  all the more charming...

After accepting her friend request I wondered what incriminating pictures and posts she’d find during the inevitable (and obligatory) Facebook stalking. Mum has a knack of jumping to conclusions and it didn't take her long to blow something out of proportion. After sharing the YMCA picture in the top right,  she lovingly stressed her concerns at my “blasphemy”, commented that this post would “get the critics' attention”, and then went on to reminded me that “this kind of thing can start wars.”

Now, I know there have been countless religious wars throughout history, but I think it’s highly unlikely that someone like the bald critic from Master Chef will stumble across my Facebook page and be so outraged by my blasphemy that he éclairs war (see what I did there). Besides, I'm pretty sure the closest he comes to any kind of warfare is an explosion of caramel, softened with a creamy punch of vanilla. Yes, I think we can all sleep safe, confident that there’s much more chance he’d simply laugh hard enough at it to choke on his soufflé… Come on, it is pretty in genius after all!

As flattering as it is to think that someone of great importance would read my Facebook profile (no offence friends), clearly my mum has no concept of how big the internet it, and how insignificant my page is in comparison. Bless her naivety, she'll get there eventually. In fact I'm sure she'll be posting her own neck-nominations in no time, which given here current ill-health, will almost certainly involve a litre of Calpol! Yummy!

In other news, it's PKR Live this weekend, and I'm looking forward to two days of card based drinking games, poker, and guacamole with the usual suspects. It comes at a great time too as I've been working hard on my game and managed to maintain Feburary's momentum. Although I've had a few frustrating final two table finishes in bigger field events, I was lucky enough to win the 'Antes Only', Springfest event on PKR. Even though first prize wasn't huge in comparison to some of my other deep runs (around $1,100), most of the players had no idea how to approach the structure, which made the tournament soft, and great fun. I also wrote another article which should be going up at some point this week. It's hardly revolutionary, but I think it deals with a modern concept and will help a lot of players understand the differences between certain spots.

The highlight of my month was learning a new word. Now, I didn't get, 'subterfuge' or  'assonance' on my word a day toilet paper (though there's often some "asson" it!), and to be honest, it's not even a real word, but I stumbled across it in a convo with my brother and love it nonetheless. I was chatting to my bro on Facebook messenger and after cracking a joke he signed off with,"lolocaust". Now I know the root word has pretty harsh connotations, but it's an amazing pun, and to be honest, there are worse ways to go than death by laughter.

I like to close each month with something lollable so here's an awesome letter:


Gee gee, Danshreddies

Urination

A week or two ago I woke up in a wet patch!

Now I know some people are prone to bed-wetting their whole life, but fortunately I haven't had a dreamy-dribble since I watched the original Terminator when I was little (confession!).  Anyway, as you can imagine, this was a shock, and with a twist, I threw off the brand-new duvet, catapulting my girlfriend's hot-water-bottle onto the floor, and peered into the pool of misery with bewilderment. Yes, I'm 26 now, but I'm certain I'm not the age where bed-wetting makes a Steps style come-back ... That would be a Tragedy (a-thank-you!).

However, something wasn't right - my onesie was totally dry aside from a small bit on my hip, surely if I'd wet the bed I'd still be a bit damp in the crotch, wouldn't I? I glanced over at my slob of a dog with disappointment who had somehow been watching my every motion without moving his head. There was no way he could have snuck into bed, squirmed under the covers and relived himself at my waist height without waking me up, his alibi was concrete!

Anyway, assuming I must have been lying in my own filth long enough for my crotch to dry, I reached for my phone, opened up Google and keyed:  '26 and I've wet the bed, am I normal?' Unfortunately, this is a direct quote (  I checked my history!). After panic-skimming a few articles, I convinced myself that I had either diabetes or one of a number of psychological disorders and concluded that this was now me.

"Hi, my names Daniel O'Callaghan, and I am a bed-wetter."

However, as I stripped the bed and picked up Rachael's hot water bottle from the floor, already having condemned myself to a life of dirty underwear and embarrassment, I noticed that the carpet was wet. In hope I grabbed the bottle, and like a male nymphomaniac, I longed for a hole! I squeezed it and to my joy there was a little bubbling slit in one of the edges. 

I was so relived, mainly because at one point, I had touched the wet patch and sniffed my fingers....

Needless to say, the month got better for me. I got a great opportunity in the part time job I do coaching newbees, and this marked a turning point for me poker-wise. I finally began to find some heat, which is almost certainly down to my  new "disciplined" way of ensuring I'm in the right frame of mind before playing. Nice timing too as after inspection it turned out that the $6,000 down-swing that I thought I was on was closer to $10,000, by far the biggest losing run of my poker career.

It's nice to have some good news as just after my last post I was Xbox-controller-smashing  levels of tilted. I'd spent a year preparing an application as I planned to apply for a Graduate Scheme (I'll leave the company nameless to prevent hate-mail!). I had emailed them to check the deadline and they'd told me that applications had to be submitted by the 19th January. My application was rejected on the 17th Jan when it transpired that the deadline was December NOT January and they wouldn't accept my application despite me forwarding them the email they'd sent me... Perhaps I should send them a home-made calendar with variations of a certain finger so they can learn the difference between December and January!

I think I'll leave you with my two of favourite neck and nominates, one from a guy that I went to uni with, and another from THE most modest guy I've ever met. enjoy:

Neck and Nominate Thomas Connelly

Neck and Nominate Tom Fleischer

Gee gee,

Danshreddies 
Follow Me: @dan_ocallaghan

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Mid January Resolution

The Very fact that I'm setting my New Year's resolutions on the 15^th January sums a flaw of mine perfectly.... I procrastinate waaaay too much!!

This year I will be more productive. Simple? I doubt it.

Last year I developed a bunch of bad habits, I stopped going to the gym (although I did rekindle my football passion twice a week), I increased the percentage of days I slept for 10hrs+ a million-fold , and I became a lazy poker player. I played almost all of my online games staked and without the usual strategy talk that I was used to, andI feel like I lost a lot of passion for the online game as a bi-product. Laziness leads to half-arsedness and subsequently incomplete thought processes. There's a name for people that don't think things though properly when they play poker – they're called fish!

“It's not enough to be a good poker player, you must also play well.”

I can play well, I know I can, but I need to make sure that playing well becomes a default. In a poker world where buoyancy is becoming increasingly difficult there's no room in the winners' circle for a lazy poker players.

I don't want to take up karate or learn to play the clarinet. I can already horse ride and I don't want to set any meat-eating world records. I want to become more focused and so my first resolution is to become more disciplined and eradicate my bad habits”....

In fact, this is such a comprehensive resolution that it will be my only one!

The main step in this will be to increase routine in all areas of my life; I will exercise regularly, I will walk the dog more routinely, and I will stop half writing words expecting the auto-correct to save any legability! I will play poker only when I am prepared to play well and I will resist the urge to watch spiders fighting lizards on Youtube when I do so - trying to navigate 16 online MTTs whilst willing an imminent “death blow” is definitely -EV!

In essence, my goal is to return to being a well-oiled poker machine. My old staker had some personal issues and collapsed the stable, so I'm back on my own money now, and there's even more incentive to ensure that my bankroll doesn't mirror the Black-Widdow I saw being torn apart but the Brown Recluse spider (at least I was paying attention to that episode!). In fact, the only time Youtube and poker will clash, will be on the rarity that I treat myself to a Kate Upton “Cat-Daddy” when I win a tournament.

… Oh! And if you didn't notice I spelt, “legibility” wrong, perhaps you should work on your thoroughness too ;)

Gee Gee

Danshreddies 
Follow Me: @dan_ocallaghan

And this is just to save your time and fingers: