Hey guys,

I was going through some old files today and stumbled across recordings of some private coaching sessions I did a while back. They're from a couple of years ago so I'm not sure how educational they'll be, but if people find some value in them I might be able to get permission from some other students and post a few more.

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K_Man Private Poker Coaching Sessions Episode One

K

I am not afraid of being dead.

Sure, if I was being chased by an axe wielding psychopath, doubtlessly I would be absolutely terrified. But my acute fear in that situation is largely of not being hit in the face with an axe which, although I have not experienced it personally, intuitively feels like it would be quite unpleasant. If someone were to a hold a gun to my head and ask for my wallet, I think the correct decision is to hand over your wallet and run away. But again, this is not due to a fear of death itself. It’s partly a fear of being shot in the face, and partly an expression of a built in genetic desire for survival.

But we humans are unique on our planet in experiencing consciousness, and this consciousness allows us to arrive at intellectual conclusions beyond the scope of our genetic wiring. If we simply followed our genes, every man’s goal should be to father as many biological offspring as possible with the minimum amount of parental involvement. But the rarity of meeting the guy who says his life goal is to have 100 children is quite telling.

Likewise, biologically it makes complete sense to be wired to avoid things that can harm us. If we die, we may do so before we’ve had the chance to pass on our genes. And indeed intellectually most of us have genuine reasons to want to continue to live. Assuming that there are reasons for not killing yourself beyond not wanting to upset your loved ones, in any situation of danger it is perfectly logical to attempt escape.

But beyond the notion of actually being killed, most humans seem to carry a fear of being dead. Of death. As in ‘not being alive’, as in ‘non-existence’. And, in a purely logical sense, non-existence is a truly bizarre thing to fear.

If I ask you to think about the 19th century, barring an unusual perceived psychic connection to the victims of Jack the Ripper, it is very unlikely for you to be filled with dread. And yet this is a time when you didn’t exist. The concept of a 19th century where you didn’t exist should be just as terrifying as that of a 22nd century where you don’t exist. And yet, we don’t feel this way.

We seem to have an intuitive feeling that we’re going to be able to reflect on our non-existence somehow. That we’ll be trapped behind some kind of window between ourselves and reality, torturously reflecting on the fact that we will never again experience the beauty of a sunset or the smell of a freshly baked bagel. But of course, intellectually we know that there is no reason to believe this.


This requirement for self-reflection is however exactly why a fear of others dying is completely rational. The idea that your parents, brothers, sisters, friends, wives, husbands, children can and will in many cases die before you do is a sobering and terrifying thought. But it is only terrifying because you will have an opportunity to reflect on their absence, to experience the pure grief that accompanies their passing, something you cannot do with regards to your own death.

So, it seems that there are two major reasons for a human to fear personal non-existence. The first is very reasonable; you are responsible for a family and believe that should you die the people you love most will suffer in your absence, just as you would have in theirs. I think a fear of loved ones being upset is not the driving force for most fears of death, but if the absence of your income and influence would have a crippling financial impact on your family in additional to the emotional trauma, then it is an entirely valid concern. The emotional toll is unavoidable, but we can at least solve the financial part of this fear by adequately providing for our families, or by simply buying life insurance.

The second reason is confined to religious individuals, and that arises from a genuine fear of ‘hell’, or some variation of it. The principal reason I’m so concerned with this is that, unlike our first example of the head of a family with responsibilities, this concept of hell also gives children a horrifying and seemingly necessary reason to fear death.

I am not exaggerating when I refer to the teaching of hell to children as child abuse. When an 8 year old girl who attends a Catholic church asks if her recently deceased Jewish grandmother will be ok, and the girl is informed that her loved one is currently burning in hell for eternity as a result of her religious affiliation, this is morally detestable in every way. Indeed it is tough to imagine a more egregious ‘sin’ than putting a child in the position of reflecting on the ‘certainty’ that someone they loved are currently, and will always be tortured mercilessly.

Of course, hell as a concept exists as a misguided attempt at preventing misbehaviour. But children, like adults, will make mistakes. They’ll get into trouble. And filling them with the fear of a never-ending torture chamber as a result of these ‘mistakes’ is not only grossly unethical, it is an example of exceptionally lazy and poor parenting. If you teach a child that the reason they should live morally is to gain a ticket to heaven, and that the reason to avoid immorality is to avoid hell, you are leaving them with a severely stunted capacity for moral judgement.

This view will also better inform you of the reasons as to why I take such a passionate opposition to religious teachings, where other non-religious people take the laissez-faire approach of not interfering. I’m not for a second suggesting that people shouldn’t be allowed to believe whatever they want, but I am directly stating that effectively forcing these beliefs on children is fundamentally unethical, and a genuine threat to the progression of humanity.

But, crucially, this is not an indictment on religious individuals themselves. They, like any of us, are simply a combination of genes, upbringing and environment. Because I was raised by non-religious parents (not passionately so, it just never came up), and developed into someone with the often annoying trait of searching for the logical answer to every question, I could not and could never possibly believe in any religious ideology. It’s not a choice for me to not believe in a God, it’s simply impossible given the makeup of my personality.

Similarly religious people, following straightforward genetic instructions to believe their parents in their formative years, are always going to believe in God/Gods for at least some of their lives. If they were raised to truly believe that hell is a real place, a genuine danger, then when they teach their children the same thing they do not and cannot perceive it be to unethical. If hell is a real place, then warning your loved ones of that most horrible place can be the only ethical, ‘logical’ decision.

This is why the ‘leave everyone to themselves’ model of thinking is in my view unacceptable. Without any outside influences, the chain of religious parents to religious children will never be broken. And without even needing to invoke the obvious additional dangers of continued religious belief to our survival as a species, we can focus on something as simple as the morality of creating fear in children where it absolutely does not need...

Hey guys,

This is a script I wrote a while back for a mock documentary on an online poker player. I had originally planned to produce it, but since it doesn't look like I'll be doing that anytime soon I thought I may as well post it here. I think this kind of thing would specifically be a lot more effective as a finished product, but if you use your imagination I'm sure there's still some enjoyment to be had.

From Robusto to Busto: Tim ‘Mouse Hand’ Legs

[Tim was an online poker crusher in 2003, but in his excitement for the game and unexpected wealth he went a little crazy: having his right hand removed and surgically attaching a computer mouse in its place.]

Interviewer: So that thing allows you to control a computer with it, pretty cool.

Tim: Ah, no actually. Here’s the thing, I didn’t necessarily research this as thoroughly as I might have. It turns out that there’s actually a pretty complicated set of nerve endings that connect all the way up to your brain that allows you to move your own hand, whereas my mouse doesn’t have any of that. So I can think about moving it all I like, but my stump just can’t do it. It’s just a hollow mouse… attached to a stump.

I: Can you still use it like a normal mouse?

T: Yeah it was still functional, but I had to plug it in and unless I leaned up really close to the mouse connection on the back of the computer, it really hurt. It would pull on my raw stump. And also obviously I had to click the buttons with my left hand, and that was pretty annoying.

I: was functional?

T: Yeah, isn’t anymore. Most computer mice only last a few years, and mine was just an ordinary mouse so it just stopped functioning at all in 2005. But ah, I still find ways of making it useful.

[cuts to making a glass of chocolate milk, stirring it with the cord]

I mean it’s still certainly better than nothing.

One of the things I most regret, is that I didn’t foresee the advances in technology. I mean I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll always have an unusable mouse attached to my body, but the fact that it is such an out-dated one is really embarrassing. I mean they have really cool, wireless mice nowadays, and I’m stuck with this giant piece of #$%*.

I: Why don’t you just replace the mouse?

T: It’s actually not that easy, to replace the mouse I’d have to have another complete operation. And that costs a whole lot of money, I ended up using most of my net worth on the first operation.

I: But you’re an internet poker genius right, can’t you just make the money for it again?

T: Well here’s the thing. I used to play in 2003, and I was the one who came up with the, without being overly modest, genius strategy of like, your opponent raises, then you re-raise him, he calls, and then on the flop he checks, you bet and he folds. I just did this over and over again and it was like printing money. Before I knew it I had 1M dollars. I mean I literally didn’t do anything else, I didn’t even know if a flush beat a line.

I: A line?

T: Like when all the numbers line up together in a row

I: A straight?

T: Yeah whatever, see it didn’t matter. It was: Raise, re-raise, call, check, bet, fold. I had that written down on a post- it note, and had it stuck to the top of my monitor at all times. But my operation put me out for 6 months and when I came back I didn’t play for a long time because..you know I was depressed about not being able to operate my mouse hand with my mind.

I: So you used most of your money to pay for the operation?

T: Yeah, it was probably a pretty silly thing to do looking back on it bankroll management wise, but hey I took a shot. If I had of come back with a fully functional mind controlled mouse hand then I would have been the f%*king hero of the online poker world. Some people are happy being mediocre; I always wanted to be the King.

I: Do you still play poker for a living?

T: Ah no, I had to give that up. Once I got over my depression it was a couple of years later, and for some reason I just couldn’t win at any level. And it was starting to drive me insane cause I literally wasn’t doing anything differently than I was in 2003 when I made my 1M dollars.

I still had my post-it note. Raise, re-raise, call, check, bet, fold.

[cut to footage showing the post-it note]

But it just wasn’t working at all. I even starting contemplating conspiracy theories, like maybe someone who was jealous of my success came in during my operation and replaced my post it note with a fake one. Like maybe it was meant to be raise, call, bet, re-raise, fold or something… I don’t know, I tried every combination I could think of. Some of them worked once or twice, but ah, none of them would work every single time so I knew it wasn’t my golden theorem. Looking back now I think I should have made some kind of back up, but you know, hindsight is worth two in the bush.

I: So what do you do for a living now?

T: Well for money I take internet surveys.

[cut to example of internet survey]

You know how companies are always asking for you to give 5 minutes to complete one? Well I’ve got time you know, so I complete as many as I can, and then sometimes they give you free gifts, or gift certificates, and I sell those on EBAY.

[cut back to interview]

I also live with my parents, so they take care of a lot of the food/rent/bills stuff so I can focus on my career.

I: What else do you do with your time?

My passion is definitely working with the community, doing celebrity events, school speeches, anything to help the kids, but ah I’ve found it tough to get too much work in that area recently. I mean at my peak I was really famous in the online poker world, on the early 2+2 forums, but apparently all the people who used to follow me don’t actually make up that big a part of the entire world’s population. And even the few of those guys I’ve tracked down, actually tracked down to their own houses from IP searches,

[cut to Tim showing up at a guys door, guy looks puzzled, he shows him his mouse hand excitedly]

I went door to door to those guys asking if they wanted to buy an autograph… but most of them apparently didn’t remember me.

I think they were just star-struck really. I mean who is going to forget a guy who was the best poker player in the world, and also has a mouse as a hand. If you want a modern example I guess it would be Phil Ivey… except one of his hands…is replaced by a 2003 styled computer mouse. That would be memorable right?

-I: So you’re known as Tim Mouse Hand Legs. What’s different about your legs?

T: Oh no, my legs are fine, that’s actually just my given surname, ‘legs’.

I: You don’t think that’s a bit confusing?

T: Well I mean it might be, but you don’t go to all the trouble I’ve gone through and not get an accurate nickname out of it….’mouse hand’.

I: Yes I remember.

Are you the only person in the world who had...

I was planning on playing quite a few tournaments this time round, but a lot of the ones I was interested in clashed with other things.


So I'm down to a couple of events, but they should be pretty cool ones. I'll be playing:

Event 7

NL HU

High: $1,575

Event 21

NL/PLO

Medium: $162 and High: $1,575

Check out the complete schedule of events here.

And an added incentive of playing (for those of you still allowed to, obviously) is that if you can make one of the 8 final tables I'm hosting, you'll be able to hurl vicious insults at me and I'll be forced to reply politely. That kind of fun, in addition to winning some amount of money, should make for a pretty good day.

K.

Welcome to another edition of 'Twitter highlights', the posts where I try and justify the time spent writing jokes on twitter. Here are my latest 10 picks:

- “Um, my name's Sarah. You know I really have to get going…”- lady in bed with Citizen Kane, after he calls out ‘Rosebud’ while making love.

- “The grass is always greener on the other side”- man, trying to explain his unique vision problem.

- “I’m not playing anymore, you’re too competitive for this to be fun”- Wile E. Coyote, to his douchey ‘always has to win’ friend RoadRunner.

- Homeopathy says that water has a memory. Its users can’t remember the time ‘fix-me-worries grape juice’ turned out to be a scam.

- “Oh…ah…I don’t mind what colour. They’re both super in their own way.”- guy trying desperately not to appear racist when playing Chess.

- “I’m a duck, motherf%*ker”- duck, after a gangster cow shoots a goose, points the gun and says ‘what’s good for him is good for the gander’.

- I feel like if the Ghostbusters were a real company they could charge whatever they want. "$575 for 30 minutes? F*%k you. The ghost stays."

- “Not literally though, obviously, or you couldn't be speaking. Do you mean you want to be tutored or..or what?” – Dorothy, to the Scarecrow.

- “Baby, I think it's incredible too, but I’m not really at the stage in my life…”- awkward scene after the first ever all-mule pregnancy.

- We've come a long way since the networks banned the Transformers episode where Bumblebee decided he wanted to transform into a woman.

I figure that if you enjoyed somewhere in the region of 3 of these, it was worth your time reading this post. If I didn't quite make it with this list, let me know and I'll promise to try harder next time.

K.

This entry is only going to be interesting to a very niche audience of Survivor fans, but hopefully for those 2 or 3 people it will be pretty fun.

I’m going to try to explain why I enjoy watching Survivor. I treat the show like an interactive strategy game, where in any given episode I can take the situation of any player and try to map out a theoretical way for them to make the final tribal council (and hopefully win).

This week was episode 9 of the 22nd season and I’m going to take my position at the start of that episode and map out what I think is one way for us, as David (lawyer from Zapatera) this time, to win the game. (Spoiler alert if you haven't seen this season yet, of course).

First off, we have to approach Boston Rob. Rob is completely controlling the game, and his 'buddy system' means that it will be tough to get one on one time with anyone else. We tell Rob that we’re playing this game to get as far as we can, mainly for the increase in prize money. We also says that we know at this point we can’t win, but that we have a proposal that would see Rob win the game and us finish 2nd or 3rd. His current plan is to take Natalie and Philip, and while Phil isn’t ever going to win, Natalie could easily win by default if enough people are pissed off at Boston Rob by the end (ala Russell's previous two seasons).

Our plan? We're going to start playing a 24/7 Borat-like character, 'The biggest douchebag in Survivor history'. If we don't act well enough, Rob can vote us off. If we do, he will never have a reason to.

Here’s what we tell Rob:

- We start fighting with Julie about anything we can think of. Over a few discussions we get more and more insulting, and Julie will almost certainly respond genuinely. But rather than do anything as obvious as flipping to the other side (something that would create suspicion amongst the existing Ometepe alliance when they don’t need us), we simply become an alliance of one. At the next tribal council, despite the fact that Mike is going home, we vote for Julie (as well as writing something absurd like ‘time to leave bitch’ on our voting paper).

- The next few votes should go pretty smoothly. We fall out with our previous tribe because they feel legitimately aggrieved at us turning our back on them for no reason, and we simply fuel the fires by saying we doesn’t want to be affiliated with them anyway. With us lacking any bond with anyone, we would be seen as the most logical number 7 (after the 6 in the Ometepe Alliance). As the days go on, we make sure to fall out as much as possible with every former Zapatera member, thus ‘ensuring’ they will never vote for us at the end.

- When they reach that number 7, it’s going to be clear that the previous 6 are very close to needing to vote each other out. With everyone looking to get further in the game, we invoke the fear that if any of the women make the final three they will have a great chance to win by default having not directly sabotaged anyone. At this point it shouldn’t be too tough to convince Philip and Grant to form a 4 way alliance with ourselves and Rob, with of course the plan being to vote us out at number 4.

- At this point of the game we will destroy our chances of getting any jury votes from the girls. As soon as the first girl is voted out, we start to arrogantly boast about our ‘all man’ alliance, making misogynist comments wherever we can fit them in. Just as with the Zapatera members, none of the girls (including the first girl out who hears our horrendous statements at tribal council) will ever vote for us.

- Next two votes are pretty simple, down to final 4. Whenever a person comes back from redemption island, we should always have the numbers to immediately vote them off again.

- While Philip is a crazo, Grant has definitely remained pretty likeable throughout. Given our track record with the jury so far it should be a no-brainer that we should make the final three with Rob and Philip.

All of the recent seasons have ended with a final three, so barring some crazy redemption island twist this should be the case again.

We tell Rob that we’re just hoping that we can get one vote from the final tribal to beat Philip into 2nd place, but that in all likelihood we will both get zero and Rob will win with 100% of the votes.

Our real plan is, come the final four, hopefully have someone other than Rob win immunity (if we win it will be a lot easier/risk free to push this plan). We take Grant aside, let him know he’s going home and Rob is happy about it, and offer him the chance to stay. Once we tell Phil both us and Grant are voting for Rob, and that Rob is clearly going to win the game, barring a meltdown he will have no real choice but to follow.

At the final tribal council, we recount the entire story starting from the day Mike got voted out. We apologise to everyone for everything we said, but assure them that it was all an act and that keeping such a character going for so long, in addition to creating your plan to go from 10th to top 3, has to make us the most deserving Survivor winner of all time. Say that when everyone is watching on tv they’ll all know we were simply acting, and we actually said really nice things in the private interviews to balance for the in person stuff (whether we actually do that or not is a personal preference).

We end by saying “I've clearly played the best game of the remaining three players, and if you don’t vote for me it’s because you’re mad at a character. Would you dismiss all gangster films because you don’t approve of murder?”

We’ll probably lose to Grant in the final three, but if our tribal speech is convincing enough we might just nick a victory. If not, we should definitely be polarising enough to take second place and a healthy profit from the game.


K.

I haven’t managed to figure out how to get anyone following me on twitter, so I thought I’d share some of the better jokes I’ve come up with so far. Keep in mind I'm restricted to 140 characters or less, so sometimes I can't use exactly the sentence structure/word choice that I'd otherwise consider optimal.

- Just found out that one of the ‘Loose Cannons’ on the next season of The Big Game will be a former detective who plays by his own rules.

- In 2034 we’ll avoid nuclear war when peace is brokered over one dinner. Breakfast will still have been the most important meal of the day.

- We poker players need to once and for all finish the 'hands run twice' debate. Is it is always good or always bad to win the first one?

- I tried to warn my friend that he was caught in a pyramid scheme, but he was selling miniature models of pyramids and my message got lost.

- “Beauty is only skin deep.”- man who isn’t turned on by skeletons.

- Violence is never the answer. But if I can’t figure out this 8 letter word for ‘physical act of aggression’ I’m gonna murder somebody.

- Twitter folk always claim they want more than 140 characters, yet they say my film ‘141 people with interlocking storylines’ has too many.

- To eccentric rich people, a zoo is just a pet store with more options.

- “Facebook will be the best idea of the century!”- Man with an idea for a paperback book of faces, days before the launch of 'Facebook.com'.

- “Yeah, I’m Tim Jones.”- 9th grade boy, whose name isn’t Tim Jones, playing a wonderful, hilarious trick on a substitute teacher.

Yours Sincerely,

K

My friends and I have recently been discussing the notion of antinatalism, the philosophical position declaring childbirth as fundamentally unethical.

The key discussion lies with the unarguable fact that to bring a child into the world is to guarantee that child at least some suffering (potentially a lot), and the supposed asymmetry that exists within the comparison of potential happiness and non existence versus potential suffering and non existence.

I personally took the position that the probability of suffering was an important consideration (as opposed to declaring that if a child is to suffer even the smallest amount it renders that decision unethical), and ultimately argued that it can be ethical to have your own child. But it certainly wasn't a straight forward decision, and I think the idea is a really interesting one to consider.

This is a good article discussing these ideas from Peter Singer, the professor of Bioethics at Princeton.

Should this be the last generation? And can a decision to bring a child into the world be a rational and ethical one?

Till next time.

I come to you fine people today with another of my possibly high variance television recommendations: Childrens Hospital.

I say high variance in the sense that I wouldn't be shocked to see comments from some saying they hated it and some saying it was their favourite ever show. A good rule of thumb would be if you've liked my previous recommendations you'll probably like it, if you've hated them you probably won't like it. Although if you hated all my previous tv recommendations and are still a devoted blog reader, you probably enjoy punishing yourself. And if that's the case, you should definitely watch this show in order to stimulate said 'sick' pleasure (it's not my place to judge).


Set in a children's hospital, Childrens Hospital (the lack of apostrophe is because the hospital was named in honour of its founder, Dr. Arthur Childrens) is a parody of all the medical dramas we've seen over the past decade. Its absurdist brand of humour means that some jokes won't resonate with all viewers. But if you're anything like me you'll find it rare to find a show capable of making you truly laugh out loud (I wish there was a short hand way of expressing that, I'm exhausted), and this is one of those chosen few. There is a particularly subtle background joke in the last episode of the first season that is one of my favourite things to date.

Childrens Hospital airs on Adult Swim and each episode is 11 minutes long, meaning if you do enjoy it you can polish off the existing 2 seasons in one glorious night. But if you hate the first episode I'm sure you'll hate them all, so giving it a chance will only take 11 minutes (plus whatever preferred method you use to acquire the show, but presumably your multi task skills extend to being able to do something else at the same time).

Thank me now, and then again later when you really enjoy it.

Just made a Twitter account this morning. (@TheRealK_Man)

I'll be using it mainly to post one liner jokes that wouldn't work as an extended blog post. If no one ends up following me I'll be deleting this post in addition to the twitter account, and you'll only make yourself look crazy by telling anyone it ever existed.

Till next time.