Double Trouble with Prim and Harrier - Poker, Sports, Cooking, Gardening, Mixed Drinks and more

Pre-Match Analysis

It's women's singles for Primrose tomorrow on the tennis court! Also some men's singles for her husband. The two of them have been competing as a team in mixed doubles so far this year, and now, it is time for some singles too. Prim hasn't done this in a while, due to injuries... but she will give it her best for sure.

It will not be an easy task, as both of her opponents are ranked a little higher. I believe her first opponent is 2.5 rankings above her, while the other one is only 1.5 rankings higher, and also quite a bit older. Much like in her last doubles match, Primrose is mostly banking on the second game, which she considers more doable, so she might conserve some of her energy in the first one if she starts noticing that it may be a lost cause. But much like last time, I believe Primrose might give both her opponents a bit of a rude awakening, despite their higher ranking on paper.

And if we are worried about those matches, let's not forget her husband's opponents, which are both 7 rankings above him! I heard he is going to take it easy and see these games mostly as practice.

As always, we are rooting for our cute and tough underdog. My prediction is one win for Primrose, but I do have a feeling that she might come out on top in both after all, in a troll-tastic way.

Thank you very much, Harrier. Indeed, I think the second match can be probably won, the first one: not so much. First Vilainesse seems to be an experienced and solid player, just one year older than me, so.... don´t know how this is gonna work, but of couse I´m going to try out, how far I can go. The second Villainesse could be beatable, but that depends on HER endurance and her experience. Let´s see what happens. I´m the underdog in that "reg-infested" tournament and of course I´m going to try my best and have fun. I have nothing to loose but body fat. :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

Bloodsports?

Well guys, my first women´s singles Trolland Gaross is played and - guess had some whine equity, because I won! Both matches! Unfortunately I also "destroyed" poor Villainesses, both got injured by playing me. We could finish the first match, but during the second set, Villainesse felt pain in her achilles tendon. Won the first set 6:3 but lost the second one and that means: Big Tie Break! Villainesse hoped to chase me around and hit some winners, she succeeded sometimes, but mostly, speedy Prim could get the ball and play it back. Villainesse was desperate! So desperate that eventually it was HER who made the unforced error. I got that quickly and switched away from hyper aggro tennis to clean and safe tennis. Well and the rest is "history", playing clean and safely, not risking too much, I managed to win the Tiebreak 10:3 - and to win the match.

In the second match Villainesse was clever and smart. She quickly figured out my weaknesses and besides, she is left-handed! :rage::rage::rage: Left-handers are really a BIG PAIN IN THE BUM BUM in tennis, but I managed to win the first set 6:2. During the second set, poor Villainesse injured her foot and that was it. Well, not a real "win" but okay.

So, Prim ended up winning her Troll Open, while poor Homer, who was a HUGE underdog, had no chance - but a lot of fun anyway!

We met a lot of people who we already know from our doubles tournaments and had a nice day with a lot of fun.

Huge congrats to Primrose for her amazing 2 for 2 victory against all odds! I never had any doubts that she could pull it off.

For me, things have been a little tough in the last few days. Mostly personal stuff, Prim already heard all about it, so I don't need to tell you guys too.

There should be some more OFC stats tomorrow. Not a good week there either. I actually just finished a 3-handed round at lower stakes which lasted for a whopping 17 hands. You know you have had quite a round when the points table won't even fit into the screen anymore, and this wasn't even the final hand yet. You can also tell by the recorded scores that it has been quite a ride, in both directions:

For those who don't know, an OFC round lasts until every player has had the button once and finished their hand, so it could be done in as little as three hands in a three player game. However, if one player receives a Fantasyland deal, the button will not be moved, so a round can potentially last forever if players keep hitting Fantasylands. And no, there is no option to leave until the round is over. Except for busting out by hitting the maximum loss, I guess.

Well done with winning both matches primrose.

Originally posted by SDK1987
Well done with winning both matches primrose.

Thank you, SDK! It was hard work, but a lot of fun!

All right, "eggie" was our motto - something involving eggs. I thought it was time to use that bottle of mirin that I bought a while ago.

What will we use it for? We will make some tamagoyaki, a Japanese omelette. We will use four eggs, a teaspoon of that mirin, a tablespoon of sugar, a 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce.

We beat the ingredients together with a pair of large chopsticks - not a whisk, because that might make the mixture too foamy.

Now we will pour about 2-3 tablespoons of it into a pan.

Let it set a little, then roll it to the side, as you can see in this "action shot".

Add another couple of tablespoons on the now exposed side of the pan, making sure some of it gets below the roll we just made...

...and then just roll it on top of that once again and keep repeating the process until the entire mixture has been used up.

Now we will get a sushi mat - I put a little plastic wrap over it to make the cleanup easier later on.

Roll it up...

...put it on a plate...

...and cut it into little pieces with a sharp knife.

It wasn't my best attempt at this ever, honestly, but still pretty good. I guess it should have cooked for a bit longer, it seemed still a little moist.

This Week in OFC

Not a good week, we couldn't recover from that bad Wednesday session in particular, which even required a few reloads. I didn't even manage to start many tables in the first place, though I think I tried to every day, if I remember correctly.

It was mostly µBTC 1 per point, with a single session at lower stakes thrown in yesterday. It was that wild round that I posted about earlier.

Well, I made it through the program - yet again. Will shorter breaks in between sets have done the trick? We will see tomorrow, I intend to take another shot at the 100 then. If it still won't work, I may have to try a different approach.

We took a short break from the plank. Primrose was more than busy with her intense tennis matches, those tough plank sessions would have been the last thing she needed - let alone going for the final five minutes.

I decided that we will skip tomorrow too, then we will try to get with the plan again.

It will look like this:
Tuesday: 2x 2:00 minutes (2:00 minutes rest)
Wednesday: 4:00 minutes
Thursday: 2x 2:30 minutes (2:00 minutes rest)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: 2x 2:30 minutes (2:00 minutes rest)
Sunday: Five Minutes Plank!

The Bigger Picture

We will enter a month with a lot of holidays soon. I could use a bit of a break, but the last few days have taught me that I need to take my mental well-being seriously - not just my physical one. I have a vague idea of how to approach this already, maybe I can find a concrete solution soon that I can implement into my daily schedule.

Of course, we will continue to train our bodies too, and poker should continue as planned. Mostly OFC, not sure if games on Stars will be added this week already. I suppose it would be a good moment, with an extra holiday thanks to May 1st.

Still can't do it... It went even worse than usual today, I think I had to give up after the 71st rep.

Guys, this just isn't working. I may have reached a plateau, it seems like I could repeat the final week of that training program forever and I still wouldn't get to the 100. We need another approach...

Maybe the program is simply a little too soft. I will take over from here: Every day from now on, I will squeeze in a couple of sets at my own leisure, and make another attempt at the 100 reps every other day or so. Ideally, I will come a little closer every time, until I eventually crack the 100.

I think I did around 300 reps throughout today, but only in sets of 60 or less, not counting my initial failed attempt. The 100 I'm shooting for need to be consecutive, of course. Last Friday's workout featured 274 reps in total, so this should be a good pace.

I wanted to wait until I am done with this before I introduce any additional fitness challenges, but at this rate, I'll never get started... so let's skip right ahead to our next challenge - it's less than two months until the Trollympics, after all!

You followed along with my progress to work up to running 5,000 meters last year on the Troll Challenges blog, and now, it is time for the next steps. Let's double the distance, preparing for a 10 km run.

This is the schedule, courtesy of our friends at Runnersworld.com:

The distances for my practice runs are in miles, the final 10K are in meters, of course. I may have to make adjustments to fit it into my personal schedule, but for now, I am going to leave it as it is, and see how it works for me. This means that I would have to start tomorrow already.

The program is supposed to last for six weeks, so maybe I can even make a properly timed 10K run for the Trollympics / German Sports Badge at the end to wrap it up. Would be perfect, two birds with one stone. For reference, the Gold time for men my age would be 56:50 minutes. The other times... don't matter, frankly, because we won't settle for anything less.

Our opponent previously hit a few backdoors to get a gutshot straight draw with three outs, which he will need in order to avoid a foul. Will he do it? We hope he won't, of course.

Oh, you can't be serious... not only did he hit it, but he also got a third King in addition to that, to really take us to the cleaners. Meanwhile, I miss my own 3-outer, and I am therefore defenseless against this monster hand.

It was another terrible session tonight. In those kinds of situations, we could really use a little session saver... let's go for that draw, you know which one.

Okay, that was fast...

We don't get anything else, unfortunately, but our opponent fouled, and is therefore settled for the full amount. Not bad!:f_thumbsup:

And yet, even that round ended with only a minimal profit for us, because our opponent then countered with quads and two straight flushes in a row in the following three hands.

This is not going to look good in the weekly stats. And I don't believe our monthly stats will look very good now either.

Yame!

We are done with the beginner's crash course - now we can start for real. I already took care of the formalities and ordered my uniform... but I also got something else for my troubles:

Yes, we actually did a belt graduation exam of sorts today. Pretty much the graduation to the white belt, so to speak. Not sure if that exam was even possible to fail, I guess it had more of a symbolic character, just to make us demonstrate what we had learned so far. Maybe it was also supposed to mentally prepare us for the "real" exams that lie ahead.

Well, it's technically another passed exam, and with another nice certificate to boot. Not the kind of thing you would scan and add to your CV, but a nice conversation piece to hang on the kitchen door.

Okay, so we started off the week with a very bad session, and today, I had a much better one which appeared to put me back on track... until I lost more than twice that amount in another session later tonight.

The losses from this week have been so bad that we are now officially in the red for the year. That makes it questionable if I want to continue with OFC at all. It's not like I would be very excited about re-starting the games on Stars, of course.

Things are looking grim when it comes to both poker and fitness goals, I'm afraid. I did complete my jogging session as usual today, so at least that's something, but no need for daily updates on that. I wish I could be more positive, but it seems like 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty bad year in general. I will have a vacation day tomorrow, I hope I can recharge my batteries a little and develop some more positive thoughts. I already tried getting into meditation this week, it seems to help a little.

Let's end on something more uplifting, like this week's Surprise Menu spin, which we did on Monday:

Okay, no good news there either. This (or vegan) is probably my most dreaded spin on the wheel... but I have an idea already.

Let's leave poker alone for a moment and do some cooking... some paleo cooking.

I have been informed by Prim that meatballs are okay as long as you formed them yourself.

Mushrooms are certainly okay.

And bacon should be too. Please don't tell me that air frying is not allowed...

I also made some scrambled eggs.

Put it all together, and we should have a nice and hearty paleo breakfast.

I originally wanted to squeeze some oranges too, but I didn't want to make the clean-up even worse.

April Stats

The stats are in for OFC last month. We can start with the overall profit by week:

While this may not look too bad, keep in mind that this graph doesn't include yesterday night's bad sessions.

The overall graph until now for this year can be seen here, and paints a different picture:

The above graph is converted into USD at last Sunday's rate. You can see that we are slightly in the red now.

The following graph shows the profit in points instead:

This time, we are up quite a bit. What's the reason for this?

You will see when we break it down by stakes, starting at the lowest, where each point is worth µBTC 0.25:

Now for the µBTC 1 stakes:

And finally the µBTC 2 stakes:

Those bad hit-and-run sessions at these stakes that I commented about a while ago really had a bad impact on our overall profit.

Note that these three graphs do not include one game of Progressive OFC I played on April 11th, which ended in a µBTC -96 loss, and which is reflected in the overall USD and Points graphs.

It certainly doesn't seem hopeless, but it doesn't look good either. Maybe I can give these games another month or so.

Same, same, but...

I don't think I had this situation before: The two flushes in my hand were completely identical in value. Therefore the hand in the middle row is not any stronger, but also not any weaker than the hand in the bottom row. Will it count?

Yes it did. I made sure to put the spades at the bottom, just in case there is a suit ranking, because whenever there is, spades are usually considered the strongest suit. And I am aware that I could have made a K-high flush instead, but not only was I curious what would happen, I also thought that the K on top might turn out to be useful.

Very good session tonight, we managed to recoup some of the losses from last night. Next Sunday's graph might look interesting.

Tech Aftermath

Well... better late than never. I finally received the refund for the non-existent laptop that I attempted to buy in late February. It took a few not so friendly letters and a deadline until I would settle this in court. Finally, I can put this thing to rest, but man... what a mess it was.

Incidentally, a new guy came to do a trial shift today at work under my supervision, and it turned out that he once used to be a warehouse laborer for that very same store that I was dealing with here. I was not at all surprised to hear that they treated their workers poorly, and that it was a bad experience for him.

Fitness Updates

Primrose would like to announce that she will gracefully bow out of the Five Minute Plank challenge. And I do mean gracefully. She did very well, sometimes holding the plank a little longer than me, but she realized that the ultimate five minutes goal may be a little too unrealistic, and that it is not that easy to combine the plan with the rest of her activities.

And honestly, all of this is a bit of a problem for me too, though I am still a little too stubborn to quit. I guess I will stick to the plan for now, do an attempt on Sunday, and see how long I can hold the plank. It will certainly not be five minutes yet, but maybe I can get another good result. Not sure how much longer I will give this challenge a chance, I don't really see the five minutes as feasible, despite my decent progress. Maybe it will eventually be within reach after all.

Today's attempt, which was more of a PB attempt than a proper shot at the 100, stopped short at 75 once again. This seems to be my plateau at the moment. I always notice getting quite tired out at around the 60 mark, and then barely edge out a few more until I have to stop in the mid-70's.

This challenge is in that awkward stage where I got too far to quit, and yet I am too far away to just power through. This week, I tried adapting a more loose schedule than the program I previously stuck to, but it didn't seem to go noticeably better or worse for me.

I did a web search for other plans, and found this, calculated for my current max of 75 reps:

It's a six weeks plan, but maybe I can start at a later point. My last plan had me doing a total of 740 reps per week (though the last sets of each day were open-ended), so maybe I can start at Week 4 with its 720 reps, and continue from there. I will then try to do a "Weekly Best" attempt, either on Sundays or on Mondays before the rest of my workout, as suggested in the chart.

So far so good. I even did a little more than the four miles each day due to some minor navigational errors.

I actually didn't run at all on Tuesday - but this is consistent with the schedule (0-4 miles) and even recommended in the plan:

Day 2, Tuesday · 0–4 Miles Easy
Ideally, you should do no exercise at all. But it’s okay to go for a short easy run, or cross-train with a no-impact activity like stretching, yoga, or swimming

I did some karate that day, and also pushups and the plank, so I think I'm fine.

The descriptions for the other days also explain what is meant by "aerobic intervals" and "gentle pickups":

Day 3, Wednesday · 4 Miles Easy with Aerobic Intervals
2 miles easy
4 x 1-minute aerobic intervals
2 miles easy
Start by running two miles at a comfortable pace that feels easy enough to carry on a conversation. For your aerobic intervals, push the pace a bit, but don’t run all out. After each bout of fast running, jog slowly until you feel rested enough to speed up again. Finish with two easy miles.

Day 5, Friday · 4 Miles Easy with Gentle Pickups
4 miles easy
3 gentle pickups
Maintain your easy, conversational pace for four miles. Then do three gentle pickups. Gradually increase your pace over 100 meters until you’re running at 90 percent of all-out effort, and hold it there for 10 to 20 meters, then gradually decelerate. Walk in between the pickups to recover.

My jogging track starts with a nasty uphill section, so it doesn't really seem like a "conversational pace" to me in the beginning, but once I'm through that part, it's literally downhill from there.

It seems like a realistic plan so far, but I wonder how it will fit with my schedule, especially when it starts to intensify towards the middle. Wednesdays and Thursdays may need to be swapped.

Oh, and I briefly considered a squats challenge... that one will definitely have to wait until I am done with this.

Yes Harrier, I can admit my "fail" in the 5 minute plank challenge, have though tennis schedule and now, as it´s outdoor-season, tennis has of course first priority! The next Troll Open is near and this time, Villainesses will be tougher, cause my ranking has improved. This means: even higher ranked Villainesses. I´m really curious, whether I can beat the next one, it´s going to be interesting for sure. But as for this weekend: Let´s have a little break from sports.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Yes Harrier, I can admit my "fail" in the 5 minute plank challenge, have though tennis schedule and now, as it´s outdoor-season, tennis has of course first priority! The next Troll Open is near and this time, Villainesses will be tougher, cause my ranking has improved. This means: even higher ranked Villainesses. I´m really curious, whether I can beat the next one, it´s going to be interesting for sure. But as for this weekend: Let´s have a little break from sports.
I'm sure you will do great against your next opponents, you showed before that those rankings don't always tell the full story. And there will be plenty more challenges for us this summer, after your main tennis season.

Bowser junior´s idea :f_biggrin::f_wink:

Yay, a Saturday without tennis? Yes, that still exists here! :f_biggrin::f_ugly: And Baby Peach (Omaha), Bowser jr. (Holdem) and I hit the satty tables on Partypoker! We played the Free to play around the clock Omaha, two Holdem Free to plays and the 0,2 $ satty we had won the ticket for about 2 weeks ago. All tournaments were a full success today and we´re the lucky and happy owners of new 0,20 $ satty tickets and a 1,65 $ satty ticket we just won in that 0,2 $ satty. So that 1,65 $ satty ticket should be the satty for the "Big Quarter" which we are eager to play. Otherwise, we got 3 other 0,2 $ satty tickets, so there will be more chances to qualify to the "Big Quarter".

Meanwhile, Bowser jr. had an idea: Why not do a little freeroll-fun-challenge? JUST playing freerolls and see what we can get out if it? As I don´t have much time to build a whole BR or so, it could be cool to see, if I eventually can win some money only with freerolls? Seem a nice little challenge for a recreational player who plays once per week, doesn´t it?