Brief Update: Stuck at The Stick, Bovada Success and Living in the State of Illinois Suckitude
Life continues to be just a little too busy and interesting in my corner of the world. So in case you were wondering ... yes, I'm still here, but just busier than heck. What's been going on?
Trip to Scottsdale
Mrs. lightning and I had a wonderful trip to Scottsdale earlier in January. We were able to visit with friends, have dinner with my brother and sister-in-law and attend a dinner for my niece for her 40th birthday. Family and friends stuff was great. The weather wasn't as warm as we would have liked, but at least the highs were in the upper 50's. On the day we left, the temperature in Phoenix was 68 degrees. We returned to Chicago, where the temperature was just above zero and the wind chill was about seven degrees below. Welcome back to Illinois!
My poker at Talking Stick Resort was largely a disaster. I had long periods of being card dead, had good hands crumble (K-K lost to A-5sooted on a board of 5-rag-5, A-A lost to 6-something when a six hit on the river -- you know how it goes) and unfortunately, for unknown reasons, let some player get to me and put me on tilt. The guy did nothing that was bad or inappropriate, but for some reason he was just getting on my nerves. When tilted, I made an amazingly bad hero call that I never in a million years should have made. The result was that even though I had a good session or two, some bad luck, poor play and tilt saw me lose a couple of buy ins plus. I just had this feeling most of the time while there that I was crashing a huge home game with people who were not my friends. Meh.
Bovada
I decided to deposit a bit on Bovada to give myself some online playing options for times I was bored. I really like playing Omaha online. Much of my play has been $.25/.50 PLO with some $10./25 PLO thrown in. I have taken a $50 buy in and have now grown it to somewhere over $650. It looks like the Bovada operators or the poker gods forgot to throw the doomsday switch on me, at least so far. However, I am enjoying the ride and deciding how far to let the money grow before I make a withdrawal. At least this takes the sting out of the Talking Stick loss. Until the sessions in Scottsdale, I was on a nice win streak.
Living in Illinois
You may or may not know that the state of Illinois is having terrible financial problems. The state has underfunded its pension obligations for years, incurring huge debts and threatening the future of faithful employees like me. On top of that, the Democratic legislature and the Republican governor are butting heads and refusing to pass a state budget for 2015-2016. Wonderful. We are already almost seven complete months into our budget year and still have no state budget or money. There is talk that our friggin political dickheads might not pass the budget until November -- after 2016 elections are over ... AND OVER FOUR MONTHS AFTER THE 2015-2016 BUDGET YEAR IS OVER!
As a result of the lack of money and a budget, higher education is in huge trouble. One state university has said that it will not be able to meet payroll after March. Two major state universities are planning massive layoffs with other institutions to follow. My own school is using February for a period for employees to consider accepting newly offered retirement and separation incentives. After the end of the month, layoffs will start, with the number and severity of job losses depending on how many employees opt to take the separation incentives. And all of this is due to our legislators and governor playing a game of chicken with students, faculty, staff and administrators in higher education stuck right in the middle of the road between two stubborn out-of-control vehicles. It pained me to have to tell a member of my staff that it is possible that she might lose the job she has been faithfully working at since June 2015.
On the bright side, I have a trip to Las Vegas in the near future -- less than three weeks away. Perhaps even a "bad player" and "f**king donkey" (links to my poker "fan club") like me might be lucky enough to have some success there.
posted by lightning36 at 1:35 PM
8 Comments:
Good luck with the Vegas trip. I signed up with Betonline.ag for online play - it's been decent so far; you can use a HUD and there's no anonymous play. What does your job security look like? Are you in danger of being laid off yourself?
Just my opinion that using HUDs takes the fun out of poker, which is why I like Bovada over other choices.
I have been at my present employer for over 20 years and am as safe as can be. However, I am thinking more and more that it is almost time for me to give up my current leadership gig and go back to my regular duties until I retire. I long for the days when I didn't always have things hanging over my head and when I took time off, I didn't have to even think about what was happening at work.
I grew up in Illinois and lived there until age 28 or so. From the things I've heard, no desire to move back. Besides the budget thing, there were a series of governors (including Blogashit) who went to prison, wow.
Fuck Illinois MOVE TO VEGAS sTART POPPING CAFFIENE PILLS AND B A FULL TIME GRINDER BUT ONLY ONLINE U SEE. the smell of the strip feel of the cards and chips is too much.move he fam and 3 random strangers into a 3br shithole in North Vegas. Heaven!!!!!!!!!!! or see if Univ. of North Colorado is hiring. we can go Fat Shack 4 lunch on Fridays and eat fried funnel cake pieces and philly cheese steaks topped with gravy and fries
Perhaps you could retire and take care of your mother full time? I'm sure she'd love the country air of downstate, after living in Chicagoland for 90 years. As long as you know how to use the washing machine at home, you should be OK.
Take the package and move in with Ray.
Back in 2011-2013 lock used to be the only site worse the bet online for payouts. I haven't heard anything about them since then. Has something changed to prove they are reputable for real cashouts? I recall all the stories of folks having to jump through hurdles to get real money off the site.
Granted it's been a few years.
Bovada has a clean history... To date at least. Hold em indicator works but obv it's pre session. I do miss using HEM to track my OWN stats the most.
i think iron mike is right if u dont moveto Vegas or Colorado
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