I feel bad for not updating my blog sooner. Ideally I would have liked to have at least posted a weekly update about my whereabouts and plans. I think that naturally I have been very preoccupied with finding an apartment in a timely fashion, so it ended up frequently slipping my mind to write up a blog post when I would have had time and energy to do so. Also, when you are constantly engaged in some activity or another time goes by very quickly, so I didn't realize how much time had passed between now and my last update.
Taking off from where I last left things in my last blog post, I did end up leaving Oeiras for Lisbon city. I felt very idle in Oeiras, because I wasn't getting a lot of replies to my emails and I also got declined for one apartment that I looked at, which I am glad of in retrospect, since it would have been a large investment and my interest was partially due to the pressures of finding something in a timely fashion. It was a good place though. Very big for what I would have paid for it and in a very good condition as well as well situated. The downside was that the landlord only wanted to rent for 12 months minimum and it had no furniture or washing machine.
In Lisbon I was staying at Hotel DAH in Alameda (http://www.hoteldah.com/). It had the best price/value at the time when I was looking for hotels in the city centre. All I really wanted was a safe and clean place to sleep with a shower and Internet access. It turned out having those things more or less, but the Internet was not very stable and would cut out for quite some time. This was problematic as it hindered my ability to search for properties and there actually aren't that many cafes with Internet access here in Lisbon compared to other major cities. What I ended up doing was figuring out areas that I had heard good things about and then taking the metro there and just walking around and looking for apartments with "to let" (arrenda-se or aluga-se typically) signs in the window. I started off by going to the metro station Saldanha as I remembered Sly Caveat on 2+2 posting that he would recommend the hotel VIP Saldanha as a home base for looking for apartments in Lisbon. The area was pretty nice and I ended up walking around Saldanha until I reached Sao Sebastiao.
Map of Lisbon city centre
In Sao Sebastiao they have a large shopping mall called El Corte Ingles (http://www.elcorteingles.pt/informac...o_horarios.asp) that has free Internet access in the eating area. I ended up coming here frequently with the metro to get quick food on the go (Also not as common as you might think in comparison, assuming you want to eat something else besides a sandwich.) and to access the Internet. Another option for accessing the Internet is to look for a hotspot, such as the one I am currently using (The network is called ZON_FON_FREE_INTERNET and you can pay by credit card. It's free only if you have a ZON Internet contract.).
I ended up liking the Sao Sebastiao area and decided to focus on finding a place in that area. I think it is best to just find something you like and then focus on that specific part of the real estate market, otherwise it can quickly become overwhelming and discouraging. At least that is how I felt at times. At this point I also started figuring out how to game the search engines a little bit. My strategy was to fire up a couple of the main sites and then filter by date released and aggressively target places I liked that weren't older than two weeks by first of all checking to see if they were listed at multiple prices and selecting the cheapest one and then making some aggressive bids trying to take control of the negotiation and basically saving time in the process by weeding out people that weren't interested in my proposal for one reason or another. I ended up getting a viewing for a place I was interested in in Sao Sebastiao fairly quickly and ended up taking the place after negotiating the lease contract. The apartment was favourable as the rent was in an acceptable range, the landlord and real estate agent seemed competent and honest and they were ok with me being a poker player. So in brief, that is how my apartment search went and after roughly 12 days in total of being in Portugal, I was able to find a place. I'm pretty happy with my place, though it is not all upside. I've been waiting on Internet since the 1st of May. A guy came last week on Thursday, but said that there was an issue with the cabling and sent me to a place that I believe was in Oeiras (Leroy Merlin next to or in Loja de Alfragide), to buy some sort of protective cable tubes. This took a lot of time, but was an interesting trip. Some of the buses here have some serious G-force action going on when you are standing. The Internet guy should be back tomorrow and then hopefully install my connection. This has had a pretty large effect on the volume I have been able to put in as I have been avoiding playing on the hotspot I've been using due to stability issues (I've been folded holding the effective nuts on the river, just about to put in a checkraise) and have only really been able to play when at a friend's place that isn't super far away, but does require some time to get to.
Another issue I have is that there seems to be some smell issue in the entrance of the apartment which I think is related to old plumbing. It smells like rusty water. The landlord said the smell would go once water is running, but it didn't go completely, it just improved. This might be reason enough to look for another place at the end of my six month contract should I plan to stay in Lisbon. I will have to see how it develops and if there is something that can be done about it.
I've actually experienced a lot in the short time I've been here, despite having been concerned with finding an apartment. I could probably fill another blog post like this. I really enjoy being here, even though it was stressful at times due to the uncertainty of how long it would take me to find a place and also due to having to deal with a not overly competent bureaucracy in a foreign language (no offence intended to the Portuguese readers reading this ). It's also more motivating to work in an environment that one deems more worthwhile to live in.
I'm going to end this post with some photos of my surroundings and a video from a dance that is popular here called Kizomba and that I've had the pleasure of visiting a workshop for. I may be off on some of the picture descriptions as a lot of the times I wasn't conciously going to places, but wandering around trying to feel out the area and taking pictures of interesting things:
View from hidden cafe
Fountain near city centre
Park in Alameda
Port near Cais do Sodre
Fountain near Hotel DAH ...
I just wanted to post a brief update on what has happend so far. Essentially I arrived on Wednesday even though I was supposed to arrive on Tuesday. This was due to some fog in the Channel Islands which lead to the cancellation of my flight. I had however scheduled my flight with enough time to allow for some delay and I would have made my connection flight to Lisbon had it not been for further delay on the next available flight. This meant that instead of staying an extra day on the Channel Islands, I had to now stay in a hotel at London Gatwick. I ended up staying in the newly built Premier Inn hotel at the North Terminal, which was actually nicer than I expected. Had a Vegasy feel to it.
In any case I am now in Hotel Real Oeiras in Oeiras, Lisbon. Thanks to some help from my friend Gabriel, D33P on 2+2, I've been able to navigate myself fairly well around the area.
The area itself is very nice and peaceful. The weather right now is also very good, though one has to be careful in the sun as it is slightly windy so it's full impact is likely understated.
After a couple of reschedules, I now have an appointment today at 18:00 to view a place in Oeiras. Nothing too fancy, though well situated and at a good price. Right now my main concern is to find a decent place where I can just set up shop and then take it from there.
I've seen some pretty nice places, but they have no furniture or living appliances in them and some may require a car for transportation. I'm trying to keep my investments to a minimum at this point as it is not clear in which direction the government will take poker legislation. Though I feel somewhat confident that there will be at least six more months of unregulated online poker in Portugal at this stage and likely more. Regulation may also not be unfavourable such that I would be inclined to stay, so we'll see. There are a lot of ifs and maybes at this point.
For the next part of my blog I thought I would try something different and go for a quick question segment with brief answers, followed by some pictures of interesting things I've seen so far so here we go:
Internet?
- Download speeds seem above average at this point for Oeiras, Lisbon (compared to Austria and UK). Ping was fairly bad playing League of Legends (~150). Overall coverage is supposed to very good and above average in EU.
Is it easy to get by without knowledge of Portuguese?
- Yes, I think you can live here without speaking Portuguese, however I am not sure I would want to. It definitely limits your ability to interact with the populace and not even all young people can hold a conversation in English. I've already met two mid 20s males that could not speak English and they were working in gastronomy.
In contrast though I have met people with very high English skills from whom you might not have expected it.
Infrastructure?
- Seems pretty decent from what I've seen so far. Definitely everything is available that a modern day person needs. Where I am currently situated I have access to high speed internet, a shopping mall, health centre, park, transportation, et cetera et cetera.
Are people friendly?
- Yes, they are friendly. They are also laid back. Can't comment much more than that at this point.
Is it easy to find a place to live in?
- I don't think it's hard, but I feel it's more difficult than I expected based on the impression I was getting from people that already moved here. This may also be due to my current location or budget. If I were closer to where the action is, i.e. Lisbon city centre, I would probably be meeting more people with knowledge of available places and be encountering more places with "to let" signs in the windows. My current hotel is booked until the 23rd, so depending on what happens today after I view this apartment, I may decide to get a hotel nearer to Lisbon city centre and try looking at some places from there or prolong my current booking.
Is it expensive?
- I definitely feel that it is below average for European standards. Much cheaper than UK I think and also cheaper than Spain for example (compared to Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona). I think you get a decent bang for your buck here, which is why it's an attractive place to live for a poker player as you are not dependent on the local job market, which isn't very good at the moment.
Food?
- Pretty decent selection of food so far (I am close to a food court though). Haven't tasted a lot of local cuisine yet, though have gone for steak Portugese style when I arrived with Gabriel. The coffee is very nice. I almost feel offended in the UK when I order a cappucino and they serve it to me in what seems to be a 0,33l cup. Here normal coffee is like an espresso and it is very satisfying.
Shots from Parque de Poetas opposite to Oeiras Parque Shopping Centre
Shot of a tram connecting Paco de Arcos station to Oeiras Parque shopping centre
Naturally I think a lot about efficiency, productivity and work-life-balance. What I consider to be ideal regarding these issues changes all the time. It also depends on my current living situation and level of social activity.
From my experience with other players, very few have actual schedules that they follow strictly. Some will have an idea of what they want to achieve on a daily basis and then follow that idea loosely, whereas others will intentionally try not to follow any sort of schedule whatsoever.
I am somewhere in-between the first case of a strict scheduler and somebody who loosely trys to follow a schedule.
I am fully capable of following a strict schedule, almost to a fault. I actually think I have harmed myself in the past by being too strict. This manifested itself as passing up on unique social interactions, living an unhealthy lifestyle, a decrease in my earnings or simply not allowing myself enough time to create distance between whatever it was I was working on at the time and myself so that I could potentialy detect where I was maybe spending too much time on things that didn't matter or were potentially harmful. I think this came from a place of trying to brute-force results and in doing so also try to shortcut my way to success, which I now think is a flawed approach as it is neither fulfilling nor necessarily productive. By this I don't mean that you shouldn't work hard on whatever it is you are trying to achieve, but as the Germans would say, you shouldn't try to get something done by slamming your head through a wall.
That being said, it is important to me that my schedule allows me enough time to reflect on my work and also on my life so that I can maintain a sort of mental flexibility and agility to reevaluate whatever it is I am doing as time goes on and also to be alert enough to seize new opportunities as they arise, should I wish to do so.
I would like to say this is the most important concept in scheduling to me, but health has to come first. I think being mentally and physically healthy should lay the foundation for all we do, with an emphasis on mental health first.
Mental health is a complex issue and I'm probably not the most qualified person to give out strong recommendations on the issue, but I think being mentally healthy is a continuous process of self-development and self-improvement and does not lend itself to simple solutions, but rather must be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Physical health however is much more simpler and easier to create structured guidelines for. Essentially to what extent you want to maintain your physical health depends on the individual, but I think at the very minimum one should do some form of cardiovascular excercise (such as walking for thirty minutes every day), make sure that one drinks enough water, eats healthy food (on average) and sleeps enough. It really doesn't get more complicated than that, but I think once you start doing less than that or less than some equivalent of that, you start to get into physically unhealthy territory.
Something I've been contemplating doing for some time, which relates to mental health, is meditation. I have tried it in the past for several days, but ended up only remembering to do it on and off, so wasn't able to see any potential long-term benefits. I think that in this ADD day and age, daily 20-minute meditation sessions could be very beneficial for piece of mind and also focus of mind.
I believe that in the past people were much more likely to engage in activities that involved meditation-like states, such as fishing or walking by the country side. Today it is like we are always jacked-in and bombarded with information and doing less is considered something to be avoided, a waste of time, but I think the potential upside on well-being could be fairly large.
So all this being said, here is what I currently think my ideal schedule should look like:
* Go for a 30-minute walk
* Meditate for 20 minutes
* Study poker and or related topics
* Eat healthy food
* Play poker
* Socialize
* Relax and read up on topic of interest (typically in form of fiction or non-fiction books)
* Healthy amount of sleep
This isn't meant to be considered a strict time schedule which is why I omitted times when certain events happen. It should be seen more as what I think an ideal schedule/daily routine would look like for me. If I could do these things on every working day, I know I would be a very healthy and balanced person. I currently also take every 4th day off. I like to do this so that I ensure that a) I don't burn out and b) I make sure I have time for eventualities and exploring other areas of interest (such as writing this blog right now). I will also usually engage in some sort of sports activity where I can work around my knee injury. Right now this is doing various kettlebell and body weight excercises in form of circuit training, but I hope to be able to include some surfing in the near future.
Daniell
Film recommendation:
This film came out in 2001 and I've been meaning to watch it for some time now. I'm really glad I eventually got round to watching it. It's definetly a different experience to your average Hollywood movie (which I think is what the majority of us are accustomed to), but in any case a worthwhile one.
I've narrowed down my search to Oeiras, which is in the south of Lisbon by the beach (there is a map of Lisbon in my last blog post). Originally I actually wanted to stay in Ericeira which is in Mafra. The reason I initially chose Ericeira was because I thought it would be nice to have a place directly by the beach and near a good surf spot, which I am told Ericeira is.
However, due to a knee injury I suffered in the past, I think it would be optimistic to think I could surf on a daily basis. I tested this hypothesis by longboarding and snowboarding when I still lived in Austria last year and I think I will definetly be able to surf on selected days, but not daily. If I will have to take days off from surfing regularly, I would rather be better situated in a place that is closer to the Lisbon district, which holds true for Oeiras. Another benefit of Oeiras is that it contains one of Portugal's technology centres in form of Taguspark. Technology is an interest of mine and potentially a field that I could see myself working in if I weren't currently involved in Poker. I think it can't hurt to be located near your area of interest.
All this being said, this is where my current plans lie to look for an apartment when I get to Lisbon. When I touch base in Oeiras, I will be looking at the area and feeling it out at first, so nothing is set in stone just yet. Also depending on how long I choose to get my lease for, I might look to relocate at some point. I think this is all the planning that I can really do at this point without being personally present.
I'm not quite on schedule regarding my audio cd language courses, so I have some catching up to do. But I have decided to try an alternative learning technique by reading "The Alchemist" in Portuguese, which is the language in which it was originally written by Paolo Coelho.
I'm not sure how this is gonna work out since I have basically never read anything in Portuguese before, but the idea is that I read it with the English copy on the side and in doing so learn about the structure and vocabulary of Portuguese and the parallels and differences between English and Portuguese. The idea behind this comes from reading one of Tim Ferriss's blog posts on how he learns languages. If I am not mistaken, it was this blogpost: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog...ning-language/ in which Tim mentioned it. I will see how that works out.
On a related note, I've also started reading Mastery by Robert Greene. I've had high expectations for this book and so far it hasn't disappointed. It's part biographical, part self-improvement, so if you're interested in those topics, I would highly recommend it.
I will be flying out to Portugal on the 16th of April to look for an apartment in Lisbon. I had actually planned to make this move last year, but was unable to complete it due to complications at Uni and travelling elsewhere in the Summer, plus I also had a lot of catching up to do with my poker game so I had some more immediate issues to tend to.
Right now I'm making preparations regarding my move. These include figuring out where to stay initially when I'm looking for a place to stay, but also stuff like learning some basic Portuguese. I've also been trying to look at appartments while still in the Channel Islands, but seems that I won't get much feedback from landlords/real estate agents that way. Most people I've spoken to have also confirmed this suspicion of mine that you actually need to be in Portugal to get anything done in that regard.
2+2 has been very helpful in obtaining intel on where to live, what to avoid etc. I think this thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/92...tugal-1025113/ is a good place to start for anybody interested in finding out more about Portugal from a poker player's perspective. I've also been told googling "expat forums Portugal" can get you some good forum resources.
Initially I was looking to stay in Oeiras, which is in the south of Lisbon and by the beach. Here is a map of Lisbon and it's districts:
The reason I chose this area is because I read on Wikipedia that this is where Portugal's main tech hub is. I am very interested in technology and startup business, as I follow this in my spare time, so it was a natural chocie for me, especially since it is also near the beach.
I am however not so sure anymore as some people chimed in over on 2+2 that they do not find Oeiras ideal to live due to it's locatin and would recommend something more central in Lisbon such as Bica or Chiado (which I belive are areas in the Lisbon district of Lisbon that are very centrally located).
I guess at the end of the day I really just have to get to the areas I've been looking at and walk around/sit in some cafes and see how I feel about them.
Poker has been very interesting/exciting lately. I'm still really enjoying PLO and learning about the game, but also now, more than ever, learning about poker. I guess now that I have more sophistication in my way of looking at and thinking about the game, the more interesting it is getting and the more what I learn becomes applicable to other fields outside of poker which is a nice side effect. I definetly think that the way I switched from NLHE to PLO was crazy from a financial standpoint, but definetly very +ev from a happiness standpoint. I simply wasn't enjoying poker at the time and as I'm sure many will agree, buying happiness isn't easy, especially not with the sums I was dealing with.
This will be all for now, still have a lot of preparing to do. I'm really a little worried about the language though I'm sure I will be able to communicate with a lot of people in central Lisbon in English should it be necessary. I've been studying Michel Thomas audio CDs (Total Portuguese), which I think is a great way of learning how to communicate verbally in a very short period of time, but it would also be nice to have some written language skills, which I know may not be able to be acquired so quickly, though I guess it may not be as much of an issue, because usually when writing emails and similar you have a lot of resources at your desposal and more time.
So I handed in my thesis in December. My work was well received and I feel happy to have completed a task that seemed so daunting to me at the time of initiation. It definetly was very consuming, not only time wise, but also mentally, which is why I took time away from poker to complete it, along with exams and courses. This was a difficult thing to do, because it involved cutting myself off from income and making sure to keep my lifestyle in check during the time period, but I'm glad I did it, as it gave me some time to gain perspective on how I feel about poker, my life and my studies.
Towards the first quarter of the year, I definetly wasn't the happiest I could have been. My poker results were bad, as were my uni results and I couldn't seem to find a way out of it. Reminding myself that I don't need to play poker and can concentrate on my studies was immensely liberating. For the first time in my life I felt like a real student and sort of envied others that did not have to deal with the stress that poker can cause all these years.
Now I have to take one more final exam in February and then I will have completed my bachelors degree in economics. However I don't plan on persuing a career as an economist, at least not in the traditional sense. I know myself and I know that if I really enjoy doing something, it is easy to put in the hours required to be good and/or succesful at it.
Do I like economics? Yes, but I'm not sure I feel passionate about it. I believe that to be happy and/or succesful at life, is about finding things your passionate about and pursuing them. It's about finding your intrinsic motivation.
So how does poker fit into this equation? This was a difficult question for me to answer. Why? Because I think I'm heavily biased when it comes to poker due to the success I've had in the past with it and the possibilites it has given me. I think making a significant amount of money at an early age has helped me realize that money doesn't bring me happiness. It's the experiences along the way that bring me happiness and also sharing those experiences with others.
When poker to me became just about making the next paycheck, was when I was the least happiest in my poker career. The process of learning about the game and playing the game didn't bring me joy. That is why I now make it about enjoying the process, rather than the outcome and letting the outcome deal with itself. I make it about being passionate about learning and playing and not about making money. Don't take me wrong, the money does matter, but I make sure it doesn't matter the most.
In today's games I believe a lot of people don't care about the game of poker itself and this saddens me. A lot of people don't care about the art of poker. Online sportsmanship seems to be at an all time low. Surely there will always be a certain kind of player that just treats poker as an ATM and is succesful at it, but I believe these players will be short-lived.
I care about good sportsmanship, good poker culture, the person who is sitting across me from the table and I hope that others start caring more too.
In 2012 I hope to become a little bit more open in my blogs and share my thoughts on poker and life with you guys. I've become a lot more active on Twitter. And you can follow me on @uptodan. I'll be leaving Austria in about one month and am still contemplating my options. I'll post more on that in my next blog post.
I know I haven't been very rigorous with my travel updates, but I haven't completely abondoned my old ways, I just toned them down a bit for the duration of me working on my thesis.
So I'm currently on the Channel Islands visiting my Mother. To be more precise I'm on Guernsey. For those who don't know the Channel Islands, they are famous for being a tax haven. I've been contemplating what it would be like to live on a tax haven (Malta, Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands for example) some over the course of the last year and it's nice to get a taste of it.
So far my opinion is that on the one hand it's nice to live by the sea, the air is really good and you can go swimming (though it's pretty cold here in the Atlantic), but on the other hand there's also not a whole lot to do and you aren't really where all the action is happening. It seems really good for internet business though as the taxes are super good.
I'd have to check out some more warmer tax havens I guess, because maybe the nice weather will outway the feeling of being far away from things.
Been getting in some more poker hands and I've been having fun playing too. If I felt I wasn't having fun I'd just quit, but poker is pretty fresh to me right now and I've had a lot of time to reflect on my game and what my plans are for the next couple of years so I'm in a pretty good mindset. I hope to continue this trend and work on my game so I get better and better.
That's all for now, just wanted to post a small update. Here are some pics of where I'm staying and I'll make sure to post any updates as they arise:
Mhhhh fat.. err fish and chips
Tha beeaaaachhh
More of the beach
Nice little tea room by the sea side where I plan to go for lunch tomorrow
The last couple of months I've been concentrating on my bachelor thesis as I mentioned in my former blog post. Since then I've also taken a lot of exams and I'm getting closer and closer to finishing. Originally I was aiming to be finished by the end of July, but now it looks like it will have to be the end of September as I pushed an exam back to give myself some more breathing space.
It wasn't an easy decision for me to make, but I esentially removed myself from the games for some time to fully focus on my studies. I was stuck in a rut and I had to make a decision. I had to take a break from poker. It was a very liberating experience for me, because I had never really taken a prolonged break from the games since I started playing in around 2006. The feeling of allways worrying about how much it is costing me in opportunity costs to walk over to a supermarket to do some food shopping or study for some exam wasn't there anymore.
Don't take me wrong, I think as long as there is no reason to take a break, your motivated and running well you should push that as much as you can. It is a common fallacy in trading to sell winners too early and hold on to losers for two long and I think a similar concept applies to poker when it comes to managing yourself. It is however still nice to just be able to relax and be a normal university kid. It helped me put things in perspective and I feel like I've begun to develop a new joy for life and reflect on what I've been doing so far and what I want to do in the future.
This semester I took two game theory classes. One class was on decision theory with a very reputable professor named Pablo Blavatsky and the other one was a mixture of classical game theory and decision theory. What I like about decision theory is that it incorporates things like group psychology and personal preferences into it's models which leads to some interesting insights on how people tend to behave in poker aswell. I'm sure a lot of concepts will be known to poker players, but seeing them in concrete models was very interesting to me.
An example I could mention is that some players tend to become more aggressive when they are losing. This can lead to situations where people become risk seeking when they are losing as opposed to risk averse or risk neutral when they are winning. In prospect theory (a subdivision of decision theory) this is referred to as the reflection effect.
So I'm currently finishing up on my bachelor thesis in econometrics (for those who have not heard this term before, econometrics can roughly be described as a combination of statistics and mathematics applied to all sorts of data). Tomorrow I hope to get back to the books and get some work done. I'll also be getting back into some poker. I've been reading blogs again and watching some videos and I'm starting to get motivated for the game again. I probably will not be able to go on full blast for now though as I'd like to get done with my degree asap.
Finally here is a pic of (from left to right) me, my friend Alex and Steve and in the middle Sami Khedira from Real Madrid.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
I was in Madrid in April to meet up with my friends who were studying in Spain at the time and we decided to go to Mecardo de San Miguel to drink some wine and eat some of their tapas. We were standing right behind him when my friend goes hey, isn't that Sami Khedira and I was like it could be. In an instant he had asked him to take a picture with us and he was down with it so that was cool.
Thought I might write a brief update on my progress with my degree. This semestre I'm currently enrolled in Decision Theory, Empirical Economic Research and Managerial Decision Making. I wanted to do Risk Management instead of Managerial, but it was not possible due to my time schedule. It's a shame, because it would have been interesting, on the other hand it would have been a lot of work for me aswell.
I've decided what I'm gonna write about for my bachelor thesis. I originally wanted to write about Rogue Traders in either Risk Management or Decision Theory, but that didn't work out. Now I'm writing about the effects of natural catastrophes on macroeconomic indicators in Empirical Research. I haven't really done much for it yet, just figured out the topic a few days ago and looked for some basic data. I should start to do some more serious work come tomorrow.
Poker has been more fun lately. After a very frustrating February I took it easy in March, just playing when I felt like I wanted to play. I've dropped my HUD stats for now and am just playing with the active players window so I can check on unknowns preflop tendencies in certain spots or stats from other players as I feel necessary. I can do this quite comfortably as I am only six tabling. I know common consensus says one should be using a HUD. In fact Jungleman says not using a HUD is a leak and he doesn't think he can be beaten without one. I really feel very comfortable without one though. I know I used to be a little paranoid that I would go on a massive downswing the first time I turned it off, but that didn't happen and I did pretty well without one. On the other extreme there are players like Samo and Benefield that don't use HUDs (Benefield might be using a HUD now it's just what I remember him saying back when he was a more active player) and also don't think it's good to use one. I guess everyone needs to figure out what works best for themselves. I like to mix things up.
I'm currently on the fifth season of The Wire, so things are coming to an end slowly. It has been an interesting watch so far and there is a lot of character diversity. This never seems to get old:
So after my big downswing last month I took a break and decided to play 200NL so I could remember what it felt like to win again. I really learnt a lot about myself and my game in that period and I don't regret the experience though obviously I would have preferred not to lose.
I've cut down a lot on tables (from 10 initally) and to me personally poker is a lot more fun playing fewer tables. Right now I'm playing anything from 1-6 tables and just trying to play as well as I can and as high intensity as I can at all times. I'm also not playing on a schedule, I just try to stay in good games as long as I can and quit as soon as possible if I feel I might be off my game or am not confident about my play. I will take frequent breaks in tougher lineups. I also try to play with more conviction when I play. By this I mean making sure there is a reason behind everything I do.
Uni starts back last week. This will be my last semester for my Bachelor of Economics. I have pretty cool courses this semester:
Risk Management
Decision Theory
Emprical Economic Research
I think I'll write my thesis in decision theory. Emperical Economic Research is esentially econometrics, which is kinda cool too. Will have to see what I end up doing.
Got my copy of The Wire today. I'm looking forward to watching it as I've only heard good things and the ratings are through the roof.
Looks like Dre will be bringing out a new album soon. He's already released two songs I believe. This one is pretty sick and reminds me of "back in the day" ^^:
). It's also more motivating to work in an environment that one deems more worthwhile to live in. 
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