Vegas Thus Far

Now: At Tuscany. Recovering from a cold. Poker has been rough the last few days playing sick and mostly online.

The trip thus far: Every hand I get dealt is more experience of myself and the other. I have pretty much immunized myself to live play, for the most part, keeping my heart rate down and not really worrying about the outcome of events. I'm trying to get in the business of faking tells more than I actually have them. The games are not really easy per se, but the players are too loose and have a few fundamental flaws. They bet too often to see where they are at. Semi-bluff raising is very profitable post flop in 2/5 games. Overall I am certainly a winning player in these games.

I have played some PLO and have found that the basic strategy of draw to the nuts is incredibly powerful against the weak opposition. This is an easy, easy game to play profitably live from what I can tell. Of course, it still has that sick variance thing going on.

Getting sick really dampened the whole vegas experience. I was just getting into the groove, my live game becoming more powerful, more comfortable, and then all of the sudden I was struck by a cold and had to put things on the backburner for a while. This also involved me paying for the internet much more than I would have liked to. I am embarassed to admit how much I've spent on the internet thus far in vegas. Damn 14 dollar a day fees.

Psychologically I am dealing ok with the loneliness of being here. Holding up quite well in fact. Having a cell phone is very nice. Travelling will be a much different story. I wonder if it will be more taxing? Or maybe less so. I suppose I'll find out.

Unfortunately, when you have no friends it makes the emptiness of not having any sex or women in life even more apparent. Vegas is a strange place for that, a sort of surreal environment where I don't feel like the women around me exist as real human beings but rather as charactatures. So I guess I don't really feel any opportunities in that department. But I, as always, try my best to ignore that, as I simply do not have the game necessary to attract women successfully in any short-term environment. So I just try to exist and move day by day without concerning myself with this. But, that doesn't change the fact that every day I think about it, and every night I feel a sense of nihilism and wastefulness to my life. The genetics are torn. There's the intelligent/adapative side of me which pushes me away from women, and the fundamental basic side which of course pushes me towards them at all costs. The intelligent side reigns but not without severe costs to my happiness level and perhaps overall sanity.

This, I think, will get easier when I start travelling. If I can keep my brain occupied with different surroundings constantly I think I can keep it less occupied on women or my lack of them.