While it’s a rather small and fluffy, this study (fluffy news version) provides yet another result indicating CR’s effects are beneficial in humans. The research studied the results of 6-months of Caloric Restriction in humans. It showed improvements in three health indicators. There were measurable reductions in insulin levels, body temperature, and DNA damage.
Somehow I let a long time pass without posting anything. Ooops. It’s been a mixture of alternating crazy-busy then hedonistically sloth-like. My parents are coming to visit on Thursday — hoorah! I haven’t seen them in a long time. I was also very manly this past week — I fixed our upstairs toilet! It was totally leaking and I totally replaced the whole tank mechanisms all by my self. Today I looked hard and found a hair on my chest.
Saturday, Christine & I dusted off our bikes and went for a ride, as spring is finally arrived here. There’s still plenty of snow, but it is retreating fast. That night we went out dancing at New City Suburbs (your standard goth-industrial-punk club scene). Yesterday was uber-lazy. We got up and went to Humpty’s for a late breakfast (the classic greasy diner style breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, and toast) and then lazed around the house the rest of the day feeling bloated and greasy. Christine has started a little blog of her own using her MSN MySpace.
I got back to Edmonton Thursday night, just before midnight. After going through customs, waiting for bags, and an hour drive home I wasn’t in bed until close to 2am…..snooze snooze snooze and then up at 7:30 am for work again.
Friday it snowed….a lot. Saturday, I shovelled. Today, I haven’t gotten out of my PJs.
Today’s nutrition: Breakfast was a blueberry smoothy, lunch was yogourt, pickled beets, 9 almonds, and a mega muffin. Dinner was a huge serving of home-made chilli. A total of 1800 calories.
This morning we went to visit the Gambler’s Book Club, and Gambler’s General Store. Both stores sell Poker Academy so I wanted to check up on them and see how things were going. I picked up a copy of Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, mainly to see what all the fuss is about, as I keep hearing it references in poker circles. Looks like a breezy read, but it might have some pearls of wisdom (but it could also have some insidious errors).
In the afternoon all the PA Rendezvous folks played in a $65 buy-in tournament. Unfortunately, I went out in 9th place when I went all-in with AK and got called by AJ. Naturally, the flop came jack high. This means the Las Vegas tournament circuit put me at a total of $200 in the red.
I played another session of $1-$2 NL tonight and managed to drag a few big pots off of some terrible tourists with deep pockets. I cashed out the session up $107, putting my Vegas No-Limit cash game total at +$99.
And if you do the complicated mathematical analysis, that sets me $101 in the red overall. I might have another quick session tomorrow afternoon before I have to leave for my flight home.
Alan has some pictures from the trip posted here.
After dinner, me and two other PAO players (Mr & Mrs Samarama) went out for a walk on the strip. After getting back I popped down to the $1-$2 NL table for another go at it. I started out a little shakey, playing a little weak and loose, and quickly found me down to $30 (I had bought it for $140). I waited a bit and pushed with Ace-Jack of spades and tripled up. A few more steals and I found myself floating around $60 for at least two hours while I got dealt an endless string of unplayable garbage. Patience is a virtue in this game. In about 5 hours of play I was dealt only two pocket pairs. The first one was 66 and I was forced out of the pot early with some heavy action between two other players. Ending my long streak of crap, I finally got a playable hand — AQo. Since I’d only limped into pots most of the night, I didn’t want to tip my hand by raising pre-flop, which is what I would normally do. Instead I limped in (90% of the hands at this table were not getting raised pre-flop) The flop was AQx rainbow. The tight little-old-lady to my right bet out $20 and I pushed all-in. She quickly called with her AKs, but my top two pair held up, finally putting me back to my original buy-in after four hours spent in the hole.
A few hands later I woke up to my second pocket pair of the night — black Aces, in late position. Four people limped and I raised to $12, getting one caller — a fishy looking guy who had recently joined the table. The flop was Qd4cQc. He bet out $10, I re-raised $20. He looked at his cards again, then called. The turn was a blank. I bet $30 and he thought long and hard, then called. Another rag on the river, he checked and I paused for a while. I figured he had probably been on the flush draw or possibly a medium pocket pair, but I was definately scared shitless that he might be sandbagging trip queens. From watching him closely, my best effort at reading him said he didn’t have it. I bet $50. He again thought a long while, then mucked with a big sigh. Woohoo! I was finally comfortably back in black!
I checked my watch — 3AM. No wonder I was sleepy. So I cashed out with a $45 profit before I got too tired and stupid to keep it.
So that puts me now at -$8 net for the $1-$2 NL game. We’ll see how tomorrow fares. Good night and good luck.
Well, the dinner last night went swell. We all had a fantastic time, and there were plenty of laughs to share. We all went around and introduced ourselves, discussing how we got into poker, how we chose our online nicknames, and so on. It was kick-ass meeting all the ‘characters’ from PA Online. Matching up faces to nicknames and online personalities. I’d post the pictures I took, but they didn’t turn out so good and I haven’t asked if the subjects mind to be posted on the net. Lots of others took pictures, so I’ll post links to them when I get them.
Afterwards we played in a tournament at The Orleans. It was a rebuy tournament with incredibly short stacks from the get-go. I had a table full of jammers. It was not unusual to have four players all-in each hand . They were all playing to get lucky and build a big enough stack to play in the post-rebuy stage of the tournament. I decided to not take any rebuys when I busted early as it was looking like it would be very expensive to buy back in and still be very short stacked. So I am out $45 for the buy-in there. I then went and sat in the $1-$2 NL table and quickly lost my $100 buy-in to some unlucky hands (first hand I had JTo vs JKo with a JJ5 flop, and the second hand had my QJ losing to J7o. I jammed with a jack-high flop, but a 7 spiked on the river to bust me). A tough night for poker, so I called it quits and went to bed early. I had been awake over 36 hours, and was starting to see double, so it wasn’t a bad idea to go recharge the batteries.
Today we all went to Harrah’s for an early NL tournament. It was a $50 buy-in with a single $40 add-on/rebuy allowed. I took both and bled slowly without ever really going on any rides. The poker room there was nice — it’s closed off, very clean, and well managed. Lots of WSOP pictures on the walls as well. Next we went to MGM Grand which is just enormous. The poker room there was excellent and some of the dealers were top notch professionals. We played some more $1-$2 NL Hold’em and I cashed out with a small $35 profit. So I’m down $53 in cash games, and down 135 from tournaments. I plan to play some more $1-$2 NL tonight, and hopefully I’ll be able to turn things around. If not, well, that’s Las Vegas for you. I know my EV is much better playing online in my hotel room than down in the casino, but I can do that anytime.
Alan has a great writeup of the events so far at his blog. As per usual, my blog entries are fairly short and general. I don’t like writing so much. Alan’s got awesome detail (he’s been walking around with a pocket recorder to take notes), so you’ll learn a lot more o’er there.
Before continuing my Vegas report, a quick update on some ongoing research on Caloric Restriction in primates: The ongoing study in monkeys is producing some serious results. More evidence supporting the conjecture that CR will translate to health and longeivty in humans as it does in smaller, shorter-lived mammals.
Had some time to kill before the dinner so I went down to the poker room and played a little $1-$2 No-Limit Hold’em. I bought in for $100 and cashed out $122. The final hand of the session was a heartbreaker. I lost $62 to a flush. If I had just folded the moldy batchelor hand (KJo) preflop, I would have cashed out a much nicer session. Unfortunately I limped in middle position, got re-raised a measly $5 by a seasoned veteran at the table, with another caller, so it was easy to see a flop. Unfortunately I connected… He bet $10 on on the flop, I re-raised him $20 more, and the next card made his flush. We both checked, I paid him another $25 on the river to see his flush. Not an unusual hand of poker, by any means, but not a fun way to end the session. But on the bright side, I finished up a little.
I only ran into one PA Online player (“Arizona”) while down there. He was wearing his Poker Academy Shirt and spotted me wearing mine. I expected to see more gathering in the poker room before dinner, but I guess they must be out on the town. Anyhow, off to set up the private dining room!
So I’m here in my hotel room at The Orleans, Las Vegas. It’s only noon here but man I’ve had a long day. My flight from edmonton left at 6:30 am. Since I live nearly an hours drive from the airport, I had to get up at 4am to make it there in time. Since I was excited, I didn’t manage to get any sleep, so I didn’t so much ‘wake up’ at 4am, but went vertical.
The flight was interesting….they announced we were beginning our decent into Las Vegas and I looked out the window…..all snow on the ground. I thought wtf?!? Then about 5 minutes later, the snow just ended abruptly, with no transition at all…just BOOM, red desert. Bizzare. It isn’t terribly warm here this week (currently 53F/11C).
I was blown away by the portion sizes last time I was here. Well, I can assure you nothing has changed. I just got back from having breakfast in one of the restaurants downstairs. I ordered a harmless sounding ‘itallian style fritatta’. I so wish I had brought my camera to take a picture of this behemoth. The fritatta itself was the size of the dinner plate it was served on. At first blush, I could not see any egg…just cheese. In fact, what itallian style meant in this context was a PIZZA with eggs instead of dough. It had sausage and tomatoe sauce and mozza on top. I guess it makes perfect sense in hindsight. Anyhow….that would be only moderately interesting to report. But it also came with three other medium plates: 3 slices of toast, a big slice of melon, a plate of oily hashbrowns, and a large (as in not small) cake thingy. Seriously, this $8 breakfast probably contains my entire calorie quota for the day. I made do with the fritatta, melon, and just a nibble of the rest. In my home setting, I have remarkable self-control. But I have trouble when food is put in front of me, so I consider that a mild CR victory for the day. Unfortunately, this evening I have dinner with all the PA Online crew, with little more than 500 calories left to spend today if I’m to remain CR’d.
Anyhoo, in a few hours I go to meet everyone and have a grand time. After that we’re all going to play in a poker tournament here at The Orleans and see how we fare. I’m sure there will be many pictures to post this evening. Stay tuned!
We’re finally having winter here in Edmonton. It seemed like fall just extended all the way through the normal winter territory of December through February. Now that it’s -15 degrees celcius and a foot of powdery snow on the ground I suddenly feel the urge to go skiing.
Christine & I have tuned our and waxed our skis and tomorrow at 5 AM we’re embarking on one of our traditions — the Hell Trip, as we’ve always called it. It’s a four hour drive from Edmonton to Marmot Basin ski resort in Jasper. We leave at 5am and show up at the hill just as it’s opening, ski ourselves silly until the hill closes at 4:30, then hop back in the car and drive the four hours back home.
We’re picking up Christine’s younger brother and sister on our way. We’re looking forward to it. Instead of eating over-priced gak at the hill like we used to (and by over-priced I mean it’s on par with movie theatre concession pricing), we’ve packed a lunch and a thermos. I made a fresh batch of muffins today, so yes that lunch includes muffiny-goodness.
Today was a light day of about 1600 calories. Breakfast was a super-smoothy, lunch was salad, tuna, and yogourt. Dinner was a tofu stir-fry (with kale, cabbage, peppers, garlic, and onions), a side of cottage cheese, and a class of red wine. Nutritional targets clobbered.
