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

I had almost forgotten....

..how frustrating poker can be sometimes! Yesterday, I just played some freerolls, was tired from tennis practice, but today, I used the 11 $ ticket, I had won in a freeroll. Okay, I played the Big Quarter completely for free, but yesterdays session was already a brick, today, there were two other unlucky busts from two Free to plays and now, after 2,5 hours of playing the Big Quarter phase 1: out! After hours of patiently folding junk and getting some good hands. And those are those moment, when I think that poker may be actually just a wasting of time for me, because I got plenty of other hobbies. Anyway, it was an interesting experience at least. Well, I would never say that I´m a good player, no way, because I´m lacking of time to do the study, due to work and - as I said - plenty of other hobbies.

But enough frustration! There was a winning session in the garden at least :f_wink:... you will see soon ....

Now let´s talk about the "winning session" ....

..which is a BIG ONE! We almost gave up on our broad beans, I was already thinking about an alternative, but hey, when you give up on them, they start to germinate and grow!

Never give up!

They grow ...... better late than never, right?

Let´s make Popeye happy!

We got spinach on the fields!

Yaay! We have moved!

Cauliflowers on the field (the white fluffy stuff is sheep wool - a potent snail repellant and fertilizer!

Yaaay! We have moved, too!

Spanish salad outdoor, in front of our house

Fresh herbs and salads?

YES PLEASE!

Beautiful cherry blossom

Sooon, there will be yummy fruit!

They are VERY determined to become gardening king and queen ....

...because the tomatos are actually a HUGE "winning" session: We got 17 tomato plants and 14 mini-tomatos.

The question was: What to do with ALL THOSE tomato plants? Well, yesterday we had a great idea, how we get away cheaply: Instead of buying more pots and soil for all those tomatos (only 8 were planned on the field), we quickly booked another bed in the greenhouse for them. Most of them (9 tomatoes, 3 mini-tomatos) will go to the greenhouse, some of them will be put on the field (8 tomatoes, 10 mini-tomatos), one mini-tomato stays on the terrace. So, we still got enough space for all the peppers and herbs on the terrace. ♠_biggrin:♠_thumbsup:

I originally wanted to post a short update on the half marathon training progress to cover for the lack of poker content, where I would have had only one bricked game on Monday to report (though with a decent run). As it turned out, however, we had a somewhat satisfactory run tonight as well, finishing 11th with decent bounties.

The chip graph reveals how much potential we had. See that game-changing sharp drop near the end? I had around 66% equity when I put my opponent all-in, who hit on the last draw, so the graph could have easily gone in the other direction there instead.

I have some plans around the weekend, so I'm not sure if I will be able to play again until Sunday. At least we had a minor success in the meantime.

Right. so about that half marathon training schedule - this is where we were as of yesterday:

Note that this is only the first half of the plan, there are seven more weeks after that. Last week was skipped due to sickness, so I repeated Week 4, after running four easy miles on Sunday to get back into it.

I did not register for the half marathon event yet, I prefer to wait until I see how I handle the longer distances in my schedule. There will be eight miles on Sunday, nothing to sneeze at, it's almost 13 km already. Still a far cry from the half marathon distance, which would be 13.1 miles / 21.0975 km.

At least running feels good so far, for the most part, though I tend to have sore legs in the evening. My four mile times are getting better already too, I finished below 40 minutes for the first time the other day.

It will be interesting to see how I fare when things really get tough, this was basically just the warm-up so far. I heard Prim is already warming up for some new poker adventures too, maybe we will hear about it this weekend.

Yes, we got news!

As Harrier couldn´t keep it for himself, let´s announce our news: We got a new "contestant" at our "team Koopa"!

Yes, it´s HER! The queen of waterland herself!

From now on, I not only drive as Wendy O´Koopa in MarioKart, but also play as WendyOKoopa on 888! Yes, made a new account on 888-Poker and will play also there under the name WendyOKoopa. :f_ugly::f_biggrin:

As summer season is coming, my whole sports schedule will change. The plan was acutally to discuss my new poker schedule with Harrier tomorrow live in person, but well, ok, let´s announce the news first then we will see ... :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:

Time for a Break

Primrose and I took the day off today to take another trip to the beautiful Palmengarten in Frankfurt. We hadn't been there in almost two years, so we figured it was about time. It was another extremely enjoyable day there, even though we didn't have as much time for it as we had hoped.

I know that I have posted several sets of pictures of it before, so I didn't snap as many this time, but some things are worth the re-post.

First, though, let's look at some fauna. There are the exotic fish in the "cave" section of the palm house again, of course.

The English translations of the signs in the Palmengarten have not always been perfect, and this one immediately struck me as odd too. After looking it up, however, it seems like "fishes" can indeed be used as the plural form of "fish" in some cases, including this one, since it's about different species.

When Prim and I had our first picnic of the day in the vicinity of one of the lakes, we even witnessed what seemed to be a territorial fight between several black geese. They were pretty loud, and whatever triggered the conflict, you could tell that it was serious business.

Also, there were loads of other squirrels in the Palmengarten today. I had to tell Prim to stay close to me so she won't follow the wrong one by accident.

This big insect sculpture is new, I believe. At least I don't remember it being there before.

We briefly went to the butterfly house too, though we were a little pressed for time by that point. The blue morpho is my favorite, and they had many of them this time. They also seemed really "trusting", almost flying right into your face. Prim nearly managed to get one to land on her finger.

Couldn't get any good shots of those blue morphos, but these ones are nice too.

The main attraction of the Palmengarten are obviously the plants, though, so we will deal with those next.

One of the good things about visiting the Palmengarten during this time of the year is that you can catch glimpses of some spectacular looking blossoms outside.

Also, we were in luck - there was an entire exhibition on camellias on display, which only lasts until the end of the week. Prim was thrilled - she loves flowers, and had to stop to smell several of those, as always.

The "main event" of our visits is always the tropicarium in my book, with its many different sections based on the plants' geographical locations.

I don't care that I have posted several pictures of the cacti in the semi-desert section before. It remains our favorite exhibition of the tropicarium, and contrary to what some people may think, the temperature - which is based on the environment where those plants would thrive - is pleasantly cool in there.

Then there is this part where people are always tossing coins into the water, apparently making a wish or something. Several coins landed on the lily pads instead, and if you look closely, you can even find a €2 coin at the bottom. We could have paid the streetcar fare back to the central station with it if we had fished a bunch of them out of there.

Then there were several palm trees, of course...

...and a few things you can do with coconuts on display.

Got a sweet tooth? Here is a cocoa tree.

This one is a cocoa pod...

...and here is a ripe one.

Nice photos!
Your bonsai are doing very well!

Troll-in-One

Of course, we had to do some activities there too, even though we probably would have been happy just chilling for a couple of hours in this beautiful garden. In fact, Primrose told me that she would have loved to do just that, and I would have been in the mood too... but come on, we would have missed out on all the laughs if we had done only that.

Like during our "Palmen-Golf" session, which we previously used twice in our Troll-Challenges before. While we didn't do a formal challenge around it this time, Prim sure was a massive troll throughout the game. I'm sure she remembers this track near the beginning...

...where I told her that she can adjust the location of her ball a little after it landed next to one of those tetrahedron things. First, she proceeded to "adjust" it about half a meter towards the hole, then she "dribbled" it hockey-style during her next stroke, and even proceeded to gently guide it towards the hole while it was still traveling, still as part of the same stroke. When I called her out on it, she then simply said "it's okay, I'll just start over".

She then managed to sink it in two shots, after having touched it about five times during her previous attempt. I just put down "2?" as her score.

Right after that one, there was this track, where she almost hit me in the face with her putter during her exaggerated motion. At least I was able to retrieve the ball - I paid a deposit on it, after all.

Then this labyrinth track again... I believe we both failed to sink it when we first played almost three years ago, and considered this track a real troll. During our last visit, we then both got a hole-in-one on it, and today, we both repeated that feat. I guess it really is a troll.

On this track, Prim managed to get the ball through that opening on her sixth stroke (we agreed on eight strokes as the maximum, after which we would note down 10 as our score if we fail). She then knocked it around that part at the end several times while saying "seven! ... seven! ... seven! ..." Fair enough, we noted down seven as her score.

And then there was the one with this yellow ramp, where Prim managed to get the ball flying off it so far that it landed all the way at the track behind it and passed the obstacle there.

Well... okay. I allowed her to play on and sink it, so we could note down a score of two for that later hole with the red obstacle. I guess she was just playing them out of order - and with a different starting location.

Final score? No one cares, and nobody can read it anyway. But we had loads of fun, and that's what's important.

More fun at the Palmengarten - I insisted on going to the boat hire on the larger lake again. Normally, we would use the pedal boats, which are by far the more popular option, but this time, I wanted to row with Prim... mostly because of a running gag between the two of us that started last year, when we were playing a canoeing minigame on the Wii as a not so coordinated team.

Well, here we are. During our last visits, I did not see a single rowboat in use, this wasn't quite the case this time, there were a few other rowers too. The pedal boats still remained a lot more popular.

I asked the guy at the boat hire if, in his experience, it makes more sense to have one designated rower or if both people should take one oar each. As expected, he told us that having one person on both oars is usually the better option, so that's what we did. I wasn't even facing the right direction when I was getting in, giving me flashbacks to when I participated in a rowing tournament at my university's sports day with no prior experience.

I think we were doing well, though. But Primrose seemed to think something looked weird? She told me I was "spooning" that water. Still not sure what she meant, and she couldn't really explain it to me either.

Nevertheless, our tomboyish grindette couldn't just sit idly by for long while I was doing all the rowing - she had to pick up an oar as well... literally. She accidentally ripped it out of its mount in the process.

What followed were a couple of attempts to get coordinated, not unlike in that Wii minigame that started this whole running gag. But forget about timing - it started with basic things like in which direction the rowing motion needs to go... and where left and right are. Imagine if we had used port and starboard instead... Did you even pull the oar out of the water at the end of your motion, Prim? I remember you flailing around a little in the beginning.

We could tell that the people watching the lake or using the other boats had some fun watching us, and we made sure to avoid any collision when boats were close by. Well, eventually we were doing all right. We still had some "exciting" maneuvers, especially around the narrower parts and near the fountain, and even when things went well, other people seemed to be amused by the awkward calls we gave each other to make sure we stay as coordinated as possible.

We were constantly reminded of yet another minigame on the Wii that we played before, one from Mario Party 8. Two teams of two would have to do motions to control each oar of a rowboat, trying to be the first team to make it to an island in the middle, while trying to navigate around obstacles. It was exactly like what we did today.

But yeah, we ended up doing pretty well, and had literal boatloads of fun again. Looks like some other people did too.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Nice photos!
Your bonsai are doing very well!

Well, even the massive trees in the Palmengarten had to start out small at one point.

Yes, there was some MASSIVE trolling going on yesterday! And a LOT of laughing! It was a lovely day with great weather, unfortunately, I already had to leave at 3:30 p.m because I had tennis practice. Too bad! But next time we will spend a bit more time. By the way, found out, why I was caughing yesterday in the morning and why I felt pretty lazy during the day: Got a mild common cold - and today at tennis, Homer was not feeling great during tennis practice either.... turned out, I infected him!

Even though it´s not a great idea ...

..to play tennis and poker when you have a common cold, but told coach today that I´m not exactly fit, so we just made some exercises without running. Homer noticed already during warm-up that we got totally out of breath, which is VERY unusual for him, he first thought we could be over-exercised but it quickly turned out that he was in fact infected with my common cold. So, this time we took it easy during tennis practice, just a couple of routine exercises for stability, no running, no getting out of breath.

After taking a shower and eating lunch (spaghetti bolognese, home made), I hit the poker tables on Party Poker with Baby Peach and Bowser jr. I do not think this was our best poker... but at least we had some fun. We played mostly freerolls of course, but Baby Peach hit the MTT tables at a 0,33 $ PLO and "our" 0,22 $ PLO8 tournament. Let´s make it short: Our todays session was a brick, which was a combination between "not so great" play (at least not our best poker) and pretty crappy cards and crappy flops. Long card-dead phases, fatigue and common cold are not really a great combination. :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly: Guess Morton Koopa stepped in and overplayed a couple of hands. :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

The outcome was ...let´s say ... not so good..:sifflote:

Let´s get started!!!

We also started our "Bankroll Queen" challenge on 888!!!

Like the Koopa-Freeroll-challenge, we start with 0$!

We won´t deposit any money but make our way to a new BR with freerolls. We tried a couple of them, meh, they´re all super turbo, which has its advantages but also its disadvantages! At least they´re quick and all you gotta do is getting it in good, knowing the ranges. Guess we gotta learn them, huh? No idea how to play those super turbos, but we will find out!

Let´s turn 0 $ into a BR on 888!!!

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Yes, there was some MASSIVE trolling going on yesterday! And a LOT of laughing! It was a lovely day with great weather, unfortunately, I already had to leave at 3:30 p.m because I had tennis practice. Too bad! But next time we will spend a bit more time.

Didn't we even spin around in a circle with our boat at one point, because one of us was rowing backwards and the other forwards?

Great day indeed. But I would still like to know what you meant when you said that I was "spooning" the water.

Didn't we even spin around in a circle with our boat at one point, because one of us was rowing backwards and the other forwards?

Yes, we did!!!

:mdr::mdr::mdr:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
We also started our "Bankroll Queen" challenge on 888!!!

Like the Koopa-Freeroll-challenge, we start with 0$!

We won´t deposit any money[1] but make our way to a new BR with freerolls. We tried a couple of them, meh, they´re all super turbo, which has its advantages but also its disadvantages! At least they´re quick and all you gotta do is getting it in good, knowing the ranges. Guess we gotta learn them, huh? No idea how to play those super turbos, but we will find out!

Let´s turn 0 $ into a BR on 888!!!

Certainly doable, but you have to play differently. Forget ranges and all that stuff. Play the odds, and just fold hands that likely won't win. I can't count the number of times I basically folded my way to a cash. Don't forget Desperation Equity is real.

good luck!

[1] Some freerolls are only available to depositors

Yes, some freerolls are only available for depositors, but there are also some which can be played without depositing. I saw, there are a lot of freeroll-sattys which are available for everybody. As I do not deposit, I can have only once per week a free spin, and mostly you win that Winner Spinners Freeroll ticket. At the moment I´m just overwhelmed how fast the blinds increase in those tournaments! The freerolls are all hyper-super-turbos, there´s a lot of gambling going on there, but on the long run, they´re beatable. I just have to figure out how the heck :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Yes, some freerolls are only available for depositors, but there are also some which can be played without depositing. I saw, there are a lot of freeroll-sattys which are available for everybody. As I do not deposit, I can have only once per week a free spin, and mostly you win that Winner Spinners Freeroll ticket. At the moment I´m just overwhelmed how fast the blinds increase in those tournaments! The freerolls are all hyper-super-turbos, there´s a lot of gambling going on there, but on the long run, they´re beatable. I just have to figure out how the heck :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:

Since it will not be possible to withdraw if you've never deposited, it might not be such a bad idea to deposit a smallish amount. The week you do so, there is a $1,000 freeroll on Saturday for people that deposited that week.