Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Could Frangelico be used instead of crème de noyaux?

Not really, because of the color. Crème de noyaux is reddish, which, combined with the white cream and the colorless crème de cacao, gives the drink its signature pink color.

However, there is an alternative called the Chocolate Squirrel, which has a similar taste. Here is an older photo of it:

It includes around 20 ml (3/4 oz) each of amaretto, Frangelico, crème de cacao (brown) and regular cream. Like the other drinks, it is shaken with ice.

It's less creamy than the Pink Squirrel and more nutty and chocolatey, but also nice. Maybe some people would even prefer it.

Maybe some people would even prefer it.

I'm sure you would enjoy a Chocolate Squirrel as well, Prim.

But I'm glad you liked the Pink Squirrel, which was a good opportunity to showcase one of the rarer drinks in my assortment.

What I did not mention yet is that contrary to my expectations, I did have time for a session after our nice meetup on Friday. Unfortunately, the session was a complete bust, despite some promising runs.

I already mentioned before that the poor results in Five Card Draw make me consider cutting this game, but that I was waiting for more information on how these results stack up with my previous successes. However, my usual tournament tracking site doesn't seem to work well anymore, apparently hiding some previous features behind a paywall now.

This has inspired me to do something that I probably should have done much earlier: Create a spreadsheet to keep track of my poker results.

Of course, I always liked the convenience of outside services keeping track of my results without me having to bother with it, but considering that I already use spreadsheets to keep track of all kinds of things, even including alcohol intake, the constantly required manual input shouldn't be that hard to put up with. Creating a spreadsheet now, which is supposed to keep track of all results from 2020, will also take a lot of work with past results, but once it's done, the document should be pretty "future proof", with little effort required to adjust it for later years etc, since it will in a large part rely on formulas.

Just putting it all together will be a bit of a puzzle, but maybe even an enjoyable one. The good thing about it is that I will be in full control of my stats, having access to all the information I want, instead of only what some external service chooses to show. One of the things I didn't like about my previous tracking site was that even tournaments of the same type were seen as different entries with separate stats once the title changed due to a change in the guaranteed prize pool or anything else. With my own spreadsheet, the possibilities for stats are virtually endless and easily adaptable to my preferences, as long as I keep feeding it the relevant raw infos.

Once this is completed, I should be able to have a better idea of where I'm going overall, which games need some work, and which could be candidates for the chopping block, and also make better decisions about my overall gameplan. Knowledge is power. It could take a while, but it should be well worth it.

Originally posted by Harrier88
This has inspired me to do something that I probably should have done much earlier: Create a spreadsheet to keep track of my poker results.

Ooooh, you're making me all excited.
I have some that make extensive use of Excel VBA to automate entries.
They won't be much use in OpenOffice, and manual entry becomes tedious after a while.

I'll be installing OO on a laptop soon, and then we'll see if it can be automated similar to Excel.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I'll be installing OO on a laptop soon, and then we'll see if it can be automated similar to Excel.

Thank you very much!

I'll play a lot of the same games, so the manual input can probably be done with a lot of copy/pasting for the buy-ins - though I also plan to keep track of my non-standard games, which could help me identify promising new games to add to the grind. And I will probably still use online tracking services to look up my winnings.

But let me know if you can find anything about automated entries, it could come in real handy.

On the stream on Monday I'll do a walk-through of one of the spreadsheets.

Finding time for a good poker session is not getting any easier with my busy schedule, but today, I managed to hit the tables with plenty of time and a much improved mindset, and it showed. Excellent starts on all three games, but when it came to finishing the job... not so much. I don't remember the exact results, but all games were close to ITM, without making that final leap past the bubble. At least Badugi got me $4 in bounties, almost covering the buy-in for this game.

Work on my spreadsheet progressed pretty well, at least, and I'm done with all the manual input for earlier dates this year (unless I choose to include some additional stats at a later point, which may very well happen). Next is the fun part, where I can start putting it all together and mine the stats I'm interested in.

Not sure how long it will take me to get this thing finished, but I look forward to present some nice statistics.

Looks like Monday and Thursday will be the only grinding days for the time being, unless I'm up for some late regging sometimes.

Better make them count, then. We made $2 in bounties in the Badugi, but narrowly missed ITM mostly because of one embarrassing blooper where I misread my hand (I think it was 3379) as a Badugi because it was all different suits, but didn't catch that one card had paired. I don't believe this ever happened to me in my four years of grinding this game, at least I always managed to catch myself in time before the showdown.

I did not go all-in with it, my opponent caught a J-Badugi on the 1st draw and we both ended up checking from the 2nd draw on (so I can't even claim I was snowing), but it was a decently sized pot not long before the bubble was approaching, so it definitely had an impact on the game, and I believe it's fair to say that it may have cost me ITM this time.

Oh well, those things can happen when you're multitabling. 2-7 TD didn't run, and we finally made a cash in the Five Card Draw - barely. I lost one unfortunate all-in with a drawn two pair vs (probably drawn) trips against an only slightly shorter stack, and then somehow managed to carry a <1BB stack past the bubble after the other shorty was facing the blinds and went all-in with a draw that didn't get there. We got $13.13 for the super close mincash.

Thanks to the kind help from Vorpal, who went the extra mile once again (despite being in a session himself, as I later learned), I made some great progress on the poker spreadsheet as well. The input and overall results sheets are now largely finished, so I can already announce that we made a profit of $3.23 in tonight's session, resulting in an overall profit of $1,161.84* so far in 2020.

*Not accounting for occasional Badugi rebuys, because I got the data of my previous tournaments from a tracking site which does not keep track of rebuys.

As you know, Monday is one of my few poker days at the moment. But today, things were a little different:

Yes, mahjong. It has been a side project of sorts to poker for a while now, and today, I was finally able to meet up with a bunch of old friends at my place again. We played for a bit in my backyard, and later finished our session inside, when it got a little too dark to see. I was a little worried about space first, but that wasn't an issue at all, as it turned out.

Of course I served some mixed drinks too, since we were at my place. We had a Japanese Slipper, a Cuba Libre, a Punchin' Prim and a Blue Arrow.

It was great to get into contact again after all those years, and I look forward to more meetups in the future. Mahjong players are a rare breed over here, so it's good to stay in touch with those few who made their way into these largely uncharted waters.

Poker should continue on Thursday at the latest. But now that we're at it, maybe I can grow my online mahjong bankroll a little too...

Sounds like fun!

We currently are only having meet-ups with family or those where everyone is known to be healthy.

All right, finally time for a poker day.

All three games were running tonight. No chance in the Five Card Draw yet again, got a mincash plus $2 in bounties in the Badugi, and... a 2nd place for $64.59 in the 2-7 Triple Draw! Even in those few sessions I could play, 2-7 TD was rarely running, so I'm very glad that I was able to make it count this time.

Thanks to this nice finish, the losses for this month are almost recouped. Not sure when I'll have time for my next session, possibly Wednesday. Hopefully, I'll be in a better mindset then too, because I noticed a lack of focus towards the mid to late stages. Maybe I'm just not used to the grind anymore.

Really happy with the results tonight, though.

Didn't think I'd get to play today, but I did. And what can I say? It was pretty much a complete copy of my last session. Mincash plus $2 bounties in the Badugi, 2nd place in the 2-7 Triple Draw. This time, the 2nd place was only good for $59.86, but since I decided to skip the Five Card Draw altogether tonight, I still achieved a slightly higher profit.

Mindset was still pretty bad, mostly due to a lot of personal stuff I have to deal with lately, but sometimes, you just get the cards you need at the right time.

Those last two sessions alone made around $100 combined, turning what seemed to be a doomed month into a slightly profitable one after all. Only up to two sessions left until the end, so it's virtually guaranteed to stay that way too, though the profit may shrink to a pretty negligible amount in the worst case. But who knows, maybe we can even pick up some extra bucks.

Nice session.
I didn't have one today.
Too much stuff to do.

How can I not have time since I have no job?

Normally, the grindette is known for her crazy Paxil-inspired dreams, but we have noticed in private chats that my own dreams could give hers a run for their money, even without any medicaments.

Poker sessions are scarce lately, so here's what my mind came up with the other night:

There was some kind of event where people were doing a trip to my home town, and I was staying for the night in a cheap hotel room with some small Japanese kid who was named Tokugawa, but liked to be called just Toku. He told me about some shoddy shop in town operating out of a trailer, which nevertheless apparently sold some of the best ice cream in the world, and I promised to get him some the next day.

So I went there, and it turned out that the vendor looked just like that guy who I've charged with illegal parking a few times at work. I got the ice cream and put it into some egg carton together with some of my other belongings, including my wallet and phone. I then stop for a break on a sofa behind a meeting hall, which is right next to a deep lake that isn't there in real life (well, neither is the sofa). On the other side is a forest and a huge screen which I'm using to access the internet, somehow operating it with a TV remote. I also see Vorpal working on something in that forest, and we greet each other. From the meeting hall, I can hear people talking about some kind of therapy center, and I notice a flyer for some therapist on the ground, which includes a web URL. Out of interest, I check it out, but only see a page with the name of the fictional therapist and a picture of some bored looking man in a doctor suit holding a coffee mug, with some female assistants in the background. Nothing else, except for some minor reference to an event from four years ago.

Suddenly, they loudly play "Advance Australia Fair" from the meeting hall behind me. Vorpal shouts out to me from the other side of the lake, asking me what all the racket is about. I tell him “I don't know, it's the Australian anthem, maybe they're preparing for some international meeting”. I also noticed that the sofa got slanted, and I have to keep adjusting my balance to avoid falling into the lake. Since we're now in a conversation, I mention it to Vorpal, and he is like “yeah, better watch out for that”. The egg carton with the ice cream and my belongings is also about to fall into the lake a few times, and I have to pull out one massive reflex at one point to save it. I realize that it's time to go, so I open the carton and check on my stuff. Everything is still fine, and the ice cream is still immaculate. I also notice that it's shaped like a miniature portrait bust of Caesar Augustus, with some kind of hat which is apparently designed to help keep it cool.

I return home and look for Toku in my backyard, there are a lot of people there. No kids, though, I only find two young women talking and picking up fruits and nuts (which is allowed in our garden, even in real life) on the other end of the yard. Hearing some noise, I decide to return to the garage, but notice my current football team playing a practice match with full pads in my backyard on the way. My coach sees me and yells at me to join the practice too, but I yell back “I can't, I have to deliver this ice cream!”. In the garage, I find a bunch of kids playing around a big SUV which doesn't belong to us. Toku sits in the opened trunk and doesn't even notice me at first. I tell him that I got his ice cream, but then realize that the “cooling hat” is gone and that the head of the ice cream bust has melted away as a result. I apologize for it, but Toku tells me that it's okay, because the ice cream is just that good.

Around that time I woke up...

So, yeah, just a little TL;DR trip into my crazy mind to hold you over. More drinks and poker coming up soon.

Perhaps the grindette would let you try a Paxil?

I also see Vorpal working on something in that forest

Whoa! Dude!
That was supposed to be top-secret!
I've removed it from the forest now, though, so feel free to return any time.

VS

Noooo Paxil.

Don´t take Paxil anymore, only Lamotrigine (Lamictal) but the latter can make crazy dreams too. :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:

I'm sure I read a science fiction story years ago that involved a drug that gave you wonderful dreams.
I can't remember what it was though...

LSD gave me some of my best dreams, while I was awake.

Originally posted by Lazza61
LSD gave me some of my best dreams, while I was awake.
I don't remember sleeping under those conditions.