Expat Argentina

I think that this blog, Expat Argentina , is a great resource for people thinking of moving to Argentina. I know that it's been useful for me at least. I should probably add it to my links list on the right hand of my blog.

Not that any of the two people that read Slipperily are considering a move to Argentina-- but....

Back in Buenos Aires

So I'm back in Argentina again.

I got back Tuesday afternoon. It was a long flight. I got to the airport in Ft. Lauderdale at around 3:30pm, and didn't arrive home until 3:00pm the following day (though, it was actually 1:00pm EST).

Atlanta had bad weather, and so I missed my flight to Buenos Aires. There is only 1 flight every day, so they tried to tell me that I would have to wait in Atlanta for 24hrs., but with lots of jumping up and down, I was able to get on a flight to Brazil and then hop a connecting flight to EZE.

It was a pain in the ass. I really dislike this whole flying-thing.

The cruise was fun however. I didn't do very well in the tournament (as expected), though I didn't do horribly. There were 530 people playing, and I finished somewhere around 210th place or so. It could have been worse.

I met a lot of people on the boat. Quite a few other professional players. I was actually surprised at the number of non-professionals that were on the ship. It really confirmed to me the fact that it is very difficult to make a living playing poker--- that it's not something that everyone can do.

My dad and I watched the filming of the final table. It was interesting (except for the game-- which, being limit hold'em, is less than breathtaking). The interesting part was seeing all the little things that go on in order to make poker into a TV program. If I was playing, I would have been very annoyed with all the breaks and camera set-up stuff (even as a spectator it was a little much), but since it was my first time seeing something like this filmed, I enjoyed it.

The weather during the trip was great. I didn't care for Ocho Rios, Jamaica at all. Georgetown, Grand Cayman, was very nice, though my father and I didn't do much except hang out on the beach.

Not much else has been going on. I need to start working again--- get back into my routine.

I'm happy to be back in Argentina.

Leaving Buenos Aires for 10 days

Tomorrow I leave Buenos Aires for 10 days, to go on the Party Poker Million cruise/tournament.

I'm not prepared. Either for the flight (too long... I hate being in an airplane) or for the tourney. When I first won the cruise, I figured that I would brush up on limit hold'em a bit before the trip. Play some limit hold'em tournaments, some short-handed ring games, etc... I planned on putting in maybe 30 hours or so of playing time. I didn't though. I didn't play any limit hold'em at all, and now I just feel like "whatever".

It'll be fun to play though. I don't expect to do well, since it's not my game. But putting in a bunch of time to play limit and basically make no money (relatively) for my work just didn't make any sense to me, especially since it wouldn't guarantee me success anyway. Maybe my "not caring" attitude will actually serve me well this upcoming week... we'll see.

I'll need some luck. At least my chances of winning $1.5 million are a lot better than in the lottery.

I'm looking forward to spending some time with my dad though. That'll be a lot of fun.

Also, I bought a new laptop and had it shipped to my parents house, and he will be bringing it with him so that I can transport it back to Buenos Aires. I'm excited about a new computer--- I'm not a very extravagant person, and this is a pretty big purchase for me. Top of the line everything. I really splurged, but I deserve it. :)

It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.

Marge: Homer, it's the thought that counts. The moral of this story is a good deed is its own reward.
Bart: Hey, we got a reward. The head is cool.
Marge: Well then... I guess the moral is no good deed goes unrewarded.
Homer: Wait a minute. If I hadn't written that nasty letter, we wouldn't've gotten anything.
Marge: Well... then I guess the moral is the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.
Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Marge: But it certainly was a memorable few days.
Homer: Amen to that!

I think that perhaps I should have made the title of this post the title of my blog, instead of "slipperily".

A few weeks ago, Julia and I were walking to dinner (yes, we're back together and things are much better and either she's less crazy or I'm more crazy, I'm not sure which). It was pretty early in the evening, around 10 PM, and the restaurant wasn't very far away from my apartment.

I have a habit that I always try to walk a different route than I have before. This particular night, I lead us along a route that was parallel to some railroad tracks. The street was busy--- lots of cars--- but no pedestrians on the sidewalk.

As Julia and I were walking, three teenagers passed us going the other direction. One of them asked me for money, and I responded that I had none. As we passed, one of them put something in the middle of my back and told me to give him my money. I swung around with my fist closed and caught him on the shoulder with the back of my hand as he stumbled backwards. At the same time, one of the teens grabbed at Julia's purse and necklace. I stepped close to help Julia, but she had already fought herself free and they ran away.

The whole thing was over in about 5 seconds.

The chain on Julia's necklace was broken, and we believed that they had made off with the pendant, but after 5 minutes of searching the cracked sidewalk, I was able to find it. The only reason I decided to search the sidewalk is that the kid that grabbed at Julia did a slight hesitation after she pushed him away, like he saw that the pendant fell on the ground and thought about going for it, before seeing that I was at her side.

Avenida Juan B. Justo, as I found out, is not a place to walk at night. My Spanish teacher later told me that she is nervous walking that street during the daytime, and that it's suicidal to walk there at night.

I have NEVER been attacked before, and I've walked in some bad areas (of the US and Buenos Aires). Buenos Aires is a safe city-- it's just that there are a couple of areas which are not good, and I happened to unknowingly decide to explore one of them, while dressed nicely with my girl. Not very smart of me.

Plus, I also blame the fact that I cut my hair last month. In my opinion, long hair is like having a "Club" on your car's steering wheel. I feel like Sampson must have felt.

So I guess that there is a moral-- Don't walk Avenida Juan B Justo at night. But really, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened, and in the end it was so trivial that I didn't think to write about it until now. The only reason why I did remember to mention it is because I promised Julia that I would buy her a new chain for her necklace, and I finally got around to shopping for one today.

Melodramatic. Me

So my bad luck streak continues, but I've managed to recoup my losses, and if Friday and Saturday aren't losing days, I will end up having an okay week.

I'm melodramatic. I have a hard time losing. I hate it more when I have no power to change it. I'm become spoiled though. It's been so long since I had a really bad streak that I've forgotten what it's like.

I had 7 losing weeks in 2005, and my last one was in the second week of October '05. I'm way overdue for a loss. It sucks, but my "poor me, poor me" attitude isn't going to change the fact that if you play for long enough, you are eventually going to see a lot of statistically improbable things.

In actuality, I think that I must be pretty lucky. It wasn't until tonight that I looked back through my records and realized how few losing weeks I've had--- ONLY 7 in the last 16 months (unfortunately, I lost my records from before Oct '04 due to a computer hard-drive issue).

There isn't really a point to this post, except to kick myself in the ass for being such a wimp. I need to learn to be a little more envious of myself.

But last night I had a lot of fun playing poker-- more fun than I've had in a long time. After I finished for the night, there was an invitation to play at a private 1/2 No-Limit cash game table with a bunch of other Sit-N-Go pros. Normally I wouldn't ever sit down at a table filled with a bunch of professional players--- there's not much profit in it-- but after my bad luck streak, I felt the need for a little camaraderie... plus, it was low-stakes ($200 max buy-in... though a couple guys dropped quite a bit of money)

So I had fun. We had a rule that you had to show every hand that you won with, and so it made it a lot of fun to make crazy plays and pull off bluffs. It also made me remember how big of a difference there is between tournament and cash game play. I hadn't played a cash game since leaving Vegas, where I put in a lot of hours at the Wynn's 2/5 NL game. I basically learned to play the NL cash games while I was in Vegas, and it cost me quite a bit of money for the education at first. My education paid off though, and last night it was fun to be the one doing the teaching.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

There are times when I think that the entire universe is against me.

I haven't been on the wrong side of a coin flip 176 times in a row yet. The past 5 days have felt close though.

Many situations in poker are like coin flips--- or close to it. Preflop, one of the best situations you can be in is a 80% favorite. Lose 5 of those in a row, and then maybe you start to get paranoid (and then go on to lose 10 out of the next 15 and you might have a little less hair than before). Combine that with losing 30 out of 40 situations where you were a 60% favorite, and losing 30 out of 35 situations where you had a 40% chance to win, and the simplest explanation ends up being that you are in some sort of gambler's hell.

It's either that, or the universe is against me.

It's difficult to quantify the amount of money that this bad luck streak has cost me, because these were 10-person tournaments. Oh-- I know how much I've lost, that's easy. But many of these "flips" meant the difference between certainly winning money and certainly losing money--- other "flips" were just the difference between probably winning money (or at least, having a better chance of winning money)and certainly losing money.

The crazy thing is that if I just count the times when I was in a certain to win/lose-money situation, and won the correct number of times, the past few days would have been very good, rather than horrible.

There's really nothing that I can do about it. I can't play better. I can't get myself into better situations.

It's not easy being a poker player. It is completely frustrating at times. People who don't do this for a living have no idea how psychologically difficult it can be.

At least February was a good month overall. And I am looking forward to the cruise, which is less than 2 weeks away.