Third day of high-volume grind and I’m starting to feel a bit sleep deprived. Four to five hours of sleep combined with a 12- hour days in the office and some physical exercise isn’t the best but I’m determined to play a lot and if possible – keep my game intact. I wasn’t even pushing that hard on the earlier days with party but mixing 4 tables of fastforward with some 5c PLO heads up on PPP does take quite a lot from my win-rate and also feels relatively exhausting already after a couple of hours. As a tilt prevention I do a 1km of swimming with some stretching and meditating before my session around 18. After four hours I notice that my game is deteriorating so I decide to take a break. It is an uncommon day at the office as Mr. Jouhkimainen and Mr.EEE27 had also found their way to the office. Around 22 in the evening I collapse on the bare stone wall of our office:
“They’re mocking me at the tables – you should’ve seen my lines. I just played an hour like a total fucking vegetable” – I say to Mr.E and Mr.J, now lying on the floor between their desks, where I just crawled like a wounded animal.
“Same here bro, I’m operating at the level of a six-year-old – and I have the pro badges and everything on the tables…” -Mr. J replies.
“I mean, look how they destroy me”, he continues and shows a hand where he gets annihilated by his obviously recreational opponent.
“Yeah, you better sit out too”, I tap on his shoulder. Now standing next to his desk and reviewing some of the hands he’s showing to me.
“What about you E?”
Mr.E haven’t said anything – he’s doing four 50 100 6max tabs and two 25 50 heads ups.
“Yeah, you know. Have to play until the tabs die out” he replies.
“How’s the retirement going, have you won a million this year yet?”, I ask.
“Wait till Summer”
I’m trying to figure out what to do. I can’t play yet – I’m not in the right state of mind, but I am bored. The degenerate in me wants some action.
“How about some Chinese poker?”
“YES!” Mr. J shouts.
“Well, I guess I can play some Chinese at the same time if you push the “Chinese table “next to mine”, Mr.E replies.
Mr.J in a moment of pure madness bought a special table just for Chinese poker to our office, and in no time it’s pushed next to Mr.E’s desk and the cards are flying. Time is around eleven in the evening.
I play for one hour maximum and then continue online grind.
Around four o’clock in the morning I’m down like 4k and we have to stop playing because everyone is too hungry to think.
“Should we go to X (name of nearest 24/7 gas station that also serves some shitty food), eat, and also play a couple of rounds?”
“Sure”
We head to the gas station and notice that it’s full of homeless people. I would like to eat something but Pampo has somehow convinced me to go on a ketogenic diet and there’s obviously nothing to eat. So I’m losing, tired, hungry and surrounded by homeless when we start. We play two rounds – I lose a lot.
“This is the absolute final round – anyone who suggests more rounds has to pay 100 euros instantly” Mr.J declares.
“Agreed”, we say with mr.E
“And it has to be paid by instant wire and not by points so it means something”, Mr.J continues.
“Agreed”, we say again.
We play the round. I lose a lot, Mr.J loses a lot and Mr.E wins everything. Now there’s an interesting dilemma. Mr.E’s eyes tell me that he doesn’t want to quit, I’m losing – so I obviously don’t want to quit but Mr.J is tired and cranky and I’m not entirely sure about him.
“Theoretically, if someone would propose continuing the game – they would have my consent” I say.
“Yes, mine too” Mr.E replies with a grin.
Mr.J is looking at us with his mouth open:
“You are fucking degenerates… Let’s at least first see the results”
We are playing with 200e per point but I only had 40 or 60 euros of my own action. At this time Mr.J was winning a bit from his own games but I was down so much that I had drawn him too in the red.
“For fucks sake, I thought I was winning. I guess we have to continue now” Mr. J says when the results are calculated.
“So I get that we have your consent?” I ask.
“Yea yea, whatever. I consent”
And that’s how no one had to pay the 100€ fine.
We play a couple of rounds more and Mr.E is winning every hand. And now, given that from our last 20 chinese sessions he has lost twice (both under 5k) and won at least 10 times more than 10k and 5 times more than 20k – I should’ve gotten used to the feeling already. But no, the funny thing is that it does still hurt. Running bad in Chinese year after year you create this delusion that at some point you’re bound to run well. But no, Karma is a bitch, there’s no god nor justice and everything is shit.
I’m going over these thoughts about the unfairness of life and how I’m the unluckiest human in the world until I’m distracted by hard coughing on the table next to us. One of the homeless next to our table is not feeling too well.
He sleeps here, every night
We quit our games, settle the score and as I drive home, I’m not sure how to feel. On the other side I have the Yacht-owning, every fucking possible Chinese hand winning, eskimo-hat wearing multimillionaire taking my money and on the other a homeless man coughing his lungs out as he just tries to survive the night.
This time Mr.E didn’t only take my money – this time, he also took away my ability to tilt properly.
What a fucker.
