What's life like?

Life is pretty simple in terms of what it's like. Assuming that we all die at about 70, we all have the same amount of chips. 70 years of life, or maybe, 52 (when you're 18) - 624 months - approx. 18 985 days of living.

Some of us start with good cards, holding Aces, maybe AceKing, maybe pairs. That's the luck factor that you have. Maybe you're smart, good looking, or maybe your family has money, etc.

Then you bet, maybe you bet a year at college, then another year or two. Sometimes, you drop out, sometimes you stay on and see if your bet works out.

The flop comes, you graduate - do you get a good job? Do you hit your set? maybe top pair? If yes, you might bet a little bit more, maybe 5 more years... if not, you fold and reshuffle again. Spend another year looking for that dream job. Maybe you do an MBA - if it doesn't pay off, then you fold.

Maybe the turn brings a love, or maybe a promotion. Bet a little bit more, a couple more years. You get married, you bet more. Sometimes you don't feel good about it, so you reshuffle and redeal again. If you feel good, you bet more.

The turn comes, so you've got the job, you've got the girl. She wants a divorce, you lose that pot. Time to reshuffle and start again.

But remember, you only have 70 years. Everytime you reshuffle, you lose those years. Everytime you bet into the pot, your stack goes down...

At some point, you hopefully make it big. But you don't get the pot back in years, you get it back in other ways... money, love, satisfaction, children. Some people don't make it big... they spend their life looking for something that doesn't pay off. Some get paid off in ways they could never imagine...

And all this time, your stack goes down.

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Sean Pollo & Peryton - Invade

Semester 2: Start!

Here we go!

Semester 2 promises to be filled with plenty of all-nighters and unhealthy food, not limited to red bull, coffee, more red bull and funky pills that the military secretly uses to keep snipers awake and focused for 72 hours straight.

The holidays were pretty good all in... except for the non stop fireworks on the first day that started at 6.30am... and went on.. until... noon. And the last night, where I not only couldn't hear myself think (that's normal) but I couldn't hear my music either.

Heads up on the classes, China in a Global Economy by Prof. David Li is pretty good. Corporate finance has promises to be interesting and operational management sounds challenging - but from what I heard, it's not as hard as corporate finance.

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Had a huge swing in poker during a live game... down to the last RMB3 in my wallet and back to win everything that was lost earlier. All in 3 hours, no other game can provide that kind of adrenaline....

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DJ S3rl - Here We Go!

Sometimes, I feel like this...

me: you know, if we step back, out lives are pretty sad...

friend: well, honestly, it is kinda sad, but look at the bright side, we had out fair share of experience and fun

me: true, but then i kinda regreat the "fun" i've had

friend: i just hope that we get our second, third or fourth or fifth chance. I sometimes wished that I have a family, wife and kids.

me: me too, things would be so different, somebody to share life with

friend: yeah...



me: will you settle for a girl less than perfect?

friend: i would, but I don't think I would give up all my habits only for the prefect one, I will quit all not-so-good habits. the regrets i go through, on the mistakes I made, just made me feel like committing suicide sometimes...



friend: i guess on normal days, I'm ok. just when I recall certain things, then it starts to hit me again. But that's for a short while. Only sometimes, the pain prolongs, and that's when the depression starts..

me: i know exactly what you mean, I get this pain on the left of my chest, just below the heart, or just above the stomach...

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Sometimes, you don't know what it feels like until you look back and realize you've gambled everything away.. life, love, happiness.... just to see the flop one more time....

Maybe deep down, we all feel like that sometimes...

We just need to beat the pain, take it to the top...

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E-type - True Believer (Jorg Schmid remix)

E-type - True Believer (Styles and Breeze remix)

Give me, Give me everything you got!
You and I can take it to the top

Like the superheroes we can save the day
Let the music take us somewhere far away

Because of you (cause of yoooou)
That's what I do (what I do)

Come on, Come on
Because of you
(I'm a true believer)

Pain

The real pain of poker, the only chronic, threatening pain, comes from the daily loss of livelihood—how a player views himself in the face of losing. Pain tolerance, then, is not measured in how well the player can take a bad beat or how long he can sit at a table without questioning what the fuck has happened. Rather, it is how the player handles an inevitable losing streak and the extent to which he will allow losing to affect his idea of himself. After a month straight of losses, a player can become convinced that losing is his role. Going broke becomes his thing to do, his inevitable outcome. The fog of losing, which feels like a seething, dirty steam in the veins, seeps into everything.

The High is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High - Jay Caspian Kang

It hurts, somewhere below your stomach and your gut. Like a punch in between knowing that you lost because maybe you misplayed, misread, or just... were stupid....

I will beat the pain, the pain will never be stronger than me...

Jakazid feat. DJ Nicky Cerberus - Find Me

A8 vs 99

Although gambling is banned in Ukraine, apparently there is a poker club at Hotel Kreschatik. I've been told that it's run by the Russian/Ukrainian mafia! Nevertheless.. it's a "relatively" safe place to play poker.

With approximately 30 tables, they play in euros. Most games are 0,5/1 euro and there are probably higher stakes. Minimum buy in is 50 euros. It's fairly simple to get to, just get into a cab and tell them you want to get to that hotel - you can't miss it, it's on the main road of Kiev city.

However, it's never good to play against a table of foreign speakers when you don't understand their language. They were fairly curious to where I am from and how I played (amazingly tight). There are local pros that are very loose and aggressive - they buy in at about 300 euros, with a min raise of 10 - 15 euros pre-flop. Interestingly, they're all willing to take a gamble with some really strange hands.

The mafia also plays there. The people I played against were pretty talkative in Ukrainian - making jokes about their hands (from what I guessed). The pros today could speak english and chatted briefly with me.

With my 50 euro stack, I lasted 2.5 hours, which I thought was pretty good.

A8 vs 99.

I raised pre-flop 5 with my A8, had 4 callers, flop was A89. I raised 12, was reraised to 25.. and I went all in - needless to say, the guy instant called.... A 8 9 7 10

:(