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Re the keyboard, it is a one off designed specifically for me.
I occasionally misclick but most of my errors are down to me!
Most likely scenario for a misclick is when I have two monster hands on both of the tables I am playing. If I get stressed or over excited, I have even less control over my muscles so I struggle to get my mouse on the button I want to click (it shoots all over the screen) before the timer gets to the end... and when the timer goes orange, I panic even more! ...and then I finally click "All In", press enter and my pocket Aces lose to 7 4 off!!!
Actually, my lack of control under stress is the main reason I didn't learn to drive sooner. When I hear sirens approaching I jump about abit but a few years ago I got an outdoor powered wheelchair and was able to remain in control of that whenever there was a sudden noise, that is why I decided to get assessed for a drive from wheelchair vehicle. It turns out that I was just a rubbish passenger because I feel more relaxed and in control when I am driving. It's my passengers who panic and jump around now!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGreal1ctbc
The increased grip hasn't completed got rid of oversteer as these clips show. The cars still have to be driven. Let's hope the races don't become an exercise in tyre conservation once more. The FIA have specified more durable rubber this season.
Less impressive is my poker. £60 down after 11 £11 TDYMs last night. Just about every game went to Level 7 or higher and I seemed to be on the wrong side of loads of the 60/40 hands I was involved in. Even lost AQ to 76 both suited to clubs.
Same thing happened last week and then I had a good run Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Maybe I just shouldn't play on a Tuesday!
Bit of a shocking week on the Poker. Down from £450.57 to £370.77 having played 64 £10 TDYMs. At one point, post registration I was down to £284 thus I have pulled some back.
In work, I used to get paid on the 6th of the month and I still do my accounts on the morning of that day therefore tomorrow is going to be the first negative month for Poker since I got on my roll in October. I hope it’s just variance. I’ll find out in the next week or so! I believe I had some terrible luck, but Poker players only remember the bad beats and not their bad play.
I have had further adventures with my van:
Up on the Wirral, at Willaston, a former rural railway line was converted to a cycle path/walking route where the station is now a small museum.
Yesterday, having dropped my mother off at the hairdressers, I went and got filled up with diesel (due to my speech impediment I had a note tucked in my seatbelt to tell the attendant what I wanted) and then drove up to Willaston.
This was the first time after passing my driving test in January that the weather had been warm enough for me to leave the car and go for a trundle in my wheelchair. Even so, the clouds were looking menacing and I didn’t go too far down the cycle path.
Since I got my outdoor powered wheelchair 5 years ago, I’ve gone wandering around my home town many times. Doing so having driven elsewhere was scarier than I expected. I felt quite isolated and a long way from all those who know me and could help if I got into trouble even though I wear a tracking device that plots my location on my mum’s mobile phone.
It was also very exciting and liberating. Only a few years ago, going to Willaston on my own was as likely as flying to the moon! I felt really satisfied with myself driving home. No doubt these trips are going to become more enjoyable as my experience and confidence build.
@jac35: Connected to my love of big engines, I have an interest in 'planes so the viewing platform at Manchester airport is on my bucket list as is the museum at Cosford. I am keen to see the A380 land at Manchester. The Airbus factory in North Wales used to be on my route to work and I often saw the Beluga cargo 'plane that ferried the completed wings for the smaller Airbus models to the sister plants in Europe taking off and landing. That was always impressive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQfI2fUIIo so the A380 should be even more so.
The A380 wings are also built at Broughton but they are so large, they have to be sent to the final assembly plant at Toulouse by sea.
Last week’s balance £370.77
This week after 57 games £390.17 (One of those was a normal DYM that I accidentally regged for, the rest £11 TDYMs)
So one winning tournament up on breaking even!
I usually begin a session of poker at around 9 pm but on Wednesday I started a little later as I was on the edge of my seat watching the Barcelona v PSG match. I love to watch Barca and always try to catch their La Liga games on Sky.
Like many people, I thought they had little chance of getting through once PSG scored their away goal and, with 10 minutes to go, I logged on to Sky Poker. Barcelona then seemed to score every time I played a hand to get the 3 goals they needed to go through!
What an incredible turn around… It took me back to Istanbul in 2005 – when I was there!
There have always been two football teams in my life, Chester and Liverpool. I suppose many people who support their local team also have a big club that they follow.
My mum used to take me to Chester as a child but when I got over excited and threw up during a game, resulting in us being escorted from the ground by the police, she refused to take me any more… as my Dad couldn’t be contacted to come and pick us up, at least I got a ride home in a cop car. Many years later, it was discovered that I had gastric defect known as a hiatus hernia which caused so many sudden bouts of illness when growing up.
In my 30s, in the late ‘90s, my cousin Ade asked me if I’d like to go to Anfield. It was a fantastic experience. Once I’d been, I wanted more. I ended up with a team of family and friends who took me to most home games which is how I ended up going to the 2005 Champions’ League Final in Instanbul with Ade and his brother Ian where Liverpool came back from 3 nil down at half time to beat AC Milan on penalties.
What an emotional rollercoaster that night was! At least 40 people walked past me out of the ground after the first 45 minutes but by the end of the game it was hard to take in what we had just seen. It didn’t really hit us til the next morning and we saw the photos on the front of the Turkish newspapers while eating breakfast at the hotel.
It seemed then as though Liverpool were going back to their glory days but they couldn’t keep up with the great Premier League cash race, in fact new owners came in and nearly made the club bankrupt.
Instead of watching Alonso and Mascherano, I had to endure seeing footballers who just weren’t in the same class while Roy Hodgson introduced a mind-numbingly dull playing style. To my amazement, going to Anfield became a chore.
Around this time, Chester had gone bust but were being reformed on a wave of hope and optimism by a group of supporters. This seemed to offer the answer to all the things that were wrong with Liverpool where I had begun to feel like little more than a customer.
So I paid my money, signed the forms and became one of nearly 2,000 owners of Chester FC. It was like becoming part of one big family with the players and officials accessible to everyone. The club is run by an army of volunteers where I am able to do my bit by proof reading the match day programme. Everyone works towards a common goal.
The quality of football was better than I thought, I would go to Liverpool with high hopes and come away disappointed, particularly as most teams parked the bus and stifled the game. I go to Chester with low expectations but the matches usually exceed them, albeit everything is played at a slower pace.
For the first three years there were smiles everywhere as a trio of promotions saw us regain our place in the National League but now that the club has reached a level which equates to its current status, we are not winning every game and football fans always seem to over-react to defeat… abit like bad beats in poker, I guess.
At Liverpool, everyone used to complain because there was too much money in football and the game should be handed back to the supporters – such talk inspired me to get involved with the reformed Chester – but now when Chester lose there is a grief-ridden wave of out-pouring on social media that we need to find a rich sugar daddy to put money into the club but no one is going to do that without wanting to take control.
The directors who the fans elected at Chester have instigated a Youth Coaching Strategy which it is hoped will generate future stars that will be sold thus raising funds that will help build the infrastructure of the club. One product of the Academy has already captained the first team and a number of league clubs are interested in signing him.
This season has been a good one after a couple of years battling relegation, we were challenging for a play-off place before Christmas but our form has dipped to push us down to mid-table. At this level, with such small squads, the loss of one player can make a huge difference. I hope the club will continue to make progress and one day be back in the Football League.
Last week’s balance £390.17
This week after 50 tournies (all £11 TDYMs) it is £485.87. With a fiver of rake back to come, that’s £100 profit. If only that was the case every week but sadly poker is not like that.
Volumes are down as I have been busy getting ready for the fast approaching motor racing season.
Usually, I am rubbish on Tuesday evenings for some reason but this week I was a chip magnet. Every flop matched my hole cards. I ended up with a balance of £475 at the end of the night. A run of luck, good or bad, can upset your game however and I think I was too loose on Wednesday which meant I spent the rest of the week in the low £400s… but then on Saturday and Sunday I ran good again. I just getting kept my chips in when I was ahead and there were no bad beats.
So, since early February, I have had a £250 downswing followed by a £200 upswing. How’s that for variance? May be 20 buy-ins for TDYM is about right for variance. We’ll see…
Anyway… back to Tuesday. Earlier in the day, I had gone back to school – literally. The wife of one of my motor racing contacts is a teacher and, after I posted the video of me driving on Facebook, she asked me if I could take my van to her school so that I could show off all my technology to her Year 8 form – 12 to 13 year olds.
I went with a friend who read out the speech I had prepared in early February. The kids were amazing. We talked to them for an hour with a ten minute break half way through when everyone piled outside for a live demonstration of the car and no one seemed to lose interest. Their teacher later told me that the children who got involved and asked the most questions were the ones that usually find school not really “their bag” which made me feel quite proud… may be they were just grateful for not having an hour of maths!
The class asked me to return this Tuesday as it was their turn to deliver an assembly to the whole Year and they wanted to do a presentation about me. Each of the 25 children lined up and read a paragraph from my original speech. I had also set up a PowerPoint with photos and videos that were displayed on a overhead projector.
I guess it was good for the children to see that, despite having quite a severe disability, someone can still have a full and rewarding life… although I didn’t think it was appropriate to tell them how much fun playing online poker is!
Last week’s balance £485.87
This week after 51 tournies (all £11 TDYMs) it is £449.87. Been an up and down week. Lost 6 out of 6 tournies on Wednesday evening, then won most of it back on Thursday (3 times I committed my chips pre-flop when I was behind but either hit a straight or full house), had a down day Friday, Saturday I had motor racing commitments and then tonight was an upswing.
There were two hands where I felt I should have done better… one I forget but the other was when it was the bubble and 2 players went all in ahead of me in the late stages. I had pocket kings and a fairly comfortable stack. I was hoping the short stacks would knock one or the other out so I folded. Turned out, on showdown, I had a 60% chance of taking down the hand, and would have done. Then the shortest stacks kept winning until the blinds ate away at my chips to put me in trouble. Went AI from the SB with Q8 suited and was called by the BB with A2. I didn’t hit.
Had I won the two tournies I felt I made mistakes in, I’d be in profit by £9 for the week. Such are the fine margins in poker.
With today having been Mothering Sunday, I thought I’d write something about my mum.
When I came into the world she was in labour for 72 hours. The medics thought it was likely, given the trauma of my birth, I would have Cerebral Palsy although this wasn’t confirmed until several months later when I failed to develop physically.
As is often the case, the doctors painted the worst case scenario. I would never get an education, never get a job and die young. Fortunately, they were wrong on all those counts although in the mid-60s they would have had no idea how computers would open up such a vast range of opportunities.
My mother is a very determined person – I often describe her as a force of nature. While many others would have given up hope for their disabled child she carried on regardless, taking absolutely no notice of what she had been told!
In my early years she endlessly read Ladybird books and sat with me by the window saying the name of every object that passed by – bus, car, lady, etc. No wonder I like everything on wheels… and ladies too!
In the early ‘70s my dad, who was a fair bit older, retired and we moved from next door to his petrol station on a busy road to suburbia. My parents looked forward to many happy years ahead but 15 months later my dad had a heart attack – on Christmas Morning of all days.
He survived although mum now had two of us to look after until dad passed away in 1981 when I was 15. This was devastating for my mum… but she never gave up and continued to care for me with minimal support.
She spent ages turning the pages in my school and college folders as I revised for exams and supported me in my quest to find employment. Indeed, after she mentioned my situation to our local MP when he was canvassing for an election it started the ball rolling in a direction that led to me getting a job. He found out that the local disability “expert” at the Job Centre had been focussing on all the potential pit-falls when discussing my case with potential employers rather than emphasizing what an asset I could be.
Once I was in employment, we had the money to travel the Globe. We visited mum’s brother in Sydney, toured New York and Washington but, best of all, we went through the Canadian Rockies on a train where we upgraded to a glass roofed carriage.
In my 30s, I realised I was relying too much on my mum – to be honest I hoped to meet a beautiful woman who would look after me in the same way she had done and it took me a long-time to wake-up to the realities of life. So I got my act together, set up a bachelor pad within our home and became far more independent.
The year 2000, when the bachelor pad came into fruition, was huge for me. I learnt to drink through a straw, eat my own meals using a foot operated device, dress and undress (at least in clothes that don’t have buttons or zips), transfer myself from my wheelchair to an armchair/bed/toilet, I even got a wash and blow loo that relieved Mum of a very unpleasant job. Such independence gave her the freedom to go out on her own (although it took some persuading for her to believe I would be ok).
Mum’s duties are much less than they once were but even so, having turned 85 last week, she is still extremely active and has to bathe and cook for me on top of all the household chores. She loves walking and regularly covers 2 or 3 miles on foot without batting an eye leaving many people who are much younger in her wake.
She is a truly amazing woman.
Oh my word.
Not many posts on this forum, ever, have been so inspiring or moving.
A wonderful Mother's Day tribute to a very special Mum, too.