So with my showdown winnings negative for 6K hands, and down more than I care to admit (but you will see in my PT stats), I went into Thursday. Being burned out, I was looking forward to getting my new motherboard and CPU in the mail to install in my computer. It would be a nice break from playing, as I was feeling burned out. So I go to put in the motherboard, after sticking the CPU and fan on it, and my chassis is too small. Off to Fry's to find the cheapest big chassis I can! Hour later, I am back, $40 lighter, and stick in the motherboard. So I unscrew everything else from my old chassis and strip it for parts and put everything in the new casing. And I plug it in and.... nothing.
Six hours later, in the middle of the night, after sextuple-checking to make sure everything was in the right place, I gave up for the night. Friday I took it in to a repair shop that said they'd be able to look at it before the day's end... and Saturday, right before they closed, I went in to pick up my computer with the information that the motherboard was faulty. So I dropped by Fry's again on the way home to get a new one of the same type, and get home to install it. Unplug and unscrew everything, gently and carefully replace the CPU and fan, reinstall everything, plug it in, turn it on, and.... nothing.
I lose a screw (in my head) at this point, and just give up for the night, pissed at the badness of the week, pissed at myself for wasting a large chunk of the week, and frustrated out of my mind that my computer isn't working. And I'm also pretty sure that the guy at the repair shop did not look at my computer with my than a cursory glance and just told me my motherboard was faulty in order to get me out of there, minus the fee...
Sunday, I took everything apart, boxed up all the motherboards and the CPU and the chassis, which are all in fine condition, and reassembled my old computer, which at this point was just a metal skeleton with a power supply on the table next to it. Sunday night, I plug in my old and rebuilt computer, turn it on, and... it works fine. So here I am, with the same computer as last week, having wasted four or five days of my life, $100 lighter in repair fees and gas and whatnot. And as soon as I get the refund from Amazon and Fry's for everything, I am going to use that money to buy a pre-assembled computer, and take the $100 or so hit that was the cost of the repair shop, gas, and extra screws and parts. The motherboard/CPU combo was supposed to be a cheaper fix than getting a new computer, but that just didn't work out. So for now, I will continue to play with laggy software that runs my CPU hot whenever I play poker, and without a HUD, since PT3's hud crashes every time I try to use it and needs more processing power than my computer can give it, being a 3.2GHz (single core) Pentium 4 processor. (Although PT3 CLAIMS that the newest beta update this week will fix that, although they've been saying that EVERY beta release....)
So not only was it a miserable and annoying week, I wasted a large chunk of it. I haven't made a video this week either, and I only watched one video... I feel bad about having such a bad start, but I am very optimistic. I am also going to cut down my weekly load a bit to something that I think I can do. I am not going to force myself to play when I don't feel I will play well but I will try to build up my stamina for playing. This is about making money, after all, and if I'm putting in -EV hands, then it's worth my while to play fewer hands, until I can learn to put in more hands profitably.
In other news, my donation for last week was a two-week's worth donation of $21 total, covering last week and this week. $7 went to the Poker Players Alliance, $7 to the Democrats to help elect Barack Obama, and $7 went to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. I have been eating about half of what I normally eat, but I did not exercise. I truly hate all forms of exercising except hiking, and I thought I could push myself to do it, but I just do not feel motivated enough to do it—so I am thinking of signing up with a mountain-hiking group to go on weekly hikes to beautiful spots around the Seattle area like Mt. Rainer. That would do me some physical good, as well as give me a nice emotional bump every week, and I could see some very pretty scenery before it gets too cold to do anything, which it will in a few months. The Mathematics of Poker was a bit too much for me to concentrate on this week, and especially since the main theme of most of the chapters I've been reading is "unexpoitable play is acheived through a mathematical analysis of figuring out what betting frequency makes your opponent neutral about his options"... so I read a few chapters out of Mike Caro's excellent “Caro's Most Profitable Hold 'em Advice” and Daniel Negraneau's “Power Hold 'em Strategy”. I recommend both books—they each have very good advice and there's golden nuggets for all skill levels even if you are an expert.
So that's it for this week. Here's my horrendous PT3 picture of the week, but again, I'm optimistic. Even with a bad run, with my earlier win and rakeback, I'm still a few hundred up for the month. And considering I only planned to be able to make $500-$1000 per month playing 50NL, still being up a little for the month after 6K hands of NEGATIVE SHOWDOWN WINNINGS, I'm really not in too bad of shape.
I hope to have better news, and more updates next week....
-Max
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