Giving Up Poker And Doing Penance

So much…. so much stuff to talk about…. so much…. change!

First of all, I’d like to wish everyone reading this a happy new year! My christmas was standard, not at all boring – a traditional, simple Piper family Christmas. Good presents were exchanged, a lovely bbq (intended to invoke murphys law to make it snow, never works) with lamb chops, and a bottle or two of good wine, followed by Christmas crackers with awful jokes and useless trinkets inside. On boxing day we have lunch with the same family every year, in hopefully a nice restaurant, but the ones that stay open then are becoming few and far between, so this year we had to settle for Pizza Express, but still nice and relaxing.

I can’t remember the last time I actually had a decent new years eve – this one was no better. I just wasn’t really in the mood, was quiet most of the night, and got wasted. Last year was a bit of a horror story that I’m not sure I want to share publicly – ask me in person if you’re really curious.

Anyway. Lots to catch up on since my last entry, which was around the time I got up on stage with Jimmy Carr.

For the last four and a half years that poker has been my only source of income, and my longest break has only been two weeks. I can’t quite describe what I’ve been feeling the last six months as burnout, as that would suggest I’ve been working hard; hardly working describes it better. When I have played, I’ve been tilting a lot, and I’m on a sizeable downswing. I’ve tried numerous things to solve this problem, but it seems the solution has been out of my grasp. My expectation was that if I continued down the path I was on, I’d be broke before the World Series.

My conclusion is that extended time off is needed. In mid-December I self-excluded myself from Stars, Party and Full Tilt until early February, and resolved not to play live at all during this time. Living with two other poker players (with a communal office) means that poker is going on around me all the time, and inevitably I’m going to be discussing it a lot. That’s ok; the break is only intended to be from playing, rather than completely dissociating myself from poker. If that’s necessary in the future, well, I don’t know what I’ll do – probably destroy my laptop!

In the meantime, my plan has been to do lots of reading and writing and gymming. As you can see from the lack of blogs, the writing part hasn’t really gone to plan; nonetheless, I’ve read a lot in the last month. My favourite was Alex’s Adventures in Numberland – probably quite a tough read to those not initiated in the world of Maths, but I found it fascinating, and got through it very quickly.

Unfortunately, after a big night out last month (Deadmau5 and then a drum’n’bass club after – eight hours from start to finish) amongst the snow, I picked up a little bug, and I’ve since gone from fluey to sniffley. Sniffley could easily last me the rest of the winter, so it’s not really a big deal – but I was quite ill for almost a week, so I didn’t really get anything done during that time. Meh.

My other intention (sorry for the rambly, roundabout nature of this blog post!) is to do something for charity. I’ve only sporadically done anything charitable throughout my life, and next to nothing over the last four and a half years; I’ve taken a lot from society without really giving anything back.

So I’d like to do something. I don’t know exactly what form that’s going to take, but I started today by volunteering for a charity that does conservation work, i.e. gardening. Which I remember hating, the last time I did it, which was maybe 15 years ago. The idea was that doing something I hate for charity would make up for all the work I haven’t done – sort of penance. But that backfired, as I ended up enjoying the work! It was somewhat manly work – chopping and sawing, and so on – but still gardening!

Lastly (for now, I have at least one more blog post planned for January), I’ve given up smoking. I wasn’t smoking much – maybe 5-7 roll-ups a day, equivalent to 3-4 normal cigs – but it’s obviously still fairly significant. I’ve given up so many times in my life, I’ve got pretty damn good at it, but I’m not so good at sticking to it.