Fish and Chips

A poker themed blog, charting the demise of my degree and the rise of my poker career.


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Thursday, September 29, 2005

Reporting Back

In my last post I promised to have a bit of a think about employment options. I have and I've decided that working sucks. It's much more boring than playing poker. I do however have a stable income at the moment, although it probably wont be too stable if they discover I'm blogging at work! I'm just working through a temping agency at the moment doing a mixture of office admin and data entry; it's mindnumbing.

I guestimated that I could earn somewhere between £10-15 per hour two-tabling at the $1-2 NL tables on stars. This job is paying just over £7 but at least it's garunteed. This way I wont continually be having to skim off the top of my bankroll to pay the bills, which means that anything I make from playing in the evening can go to building the roll, whcih can then provide something to fall back on if I decide to go back just to playing poker at any point and/or allow me to move up to higer stakes.

As for getting a proper job...

The idea of getting a proper job was not one that had been forced to cross my mind untill recently and even now it's being viewed with serious scepticism.

I first started thinking about careers in my second year of university. I wasn't particularly enjoying my degree subject (Biochemistry) and thought a lot about changing to medicine (for trans-pond readers it's worth pointing out that you can study medicine over here as an undergraduate degree). In the end I decided to stick with Biochemistry and then do medicine as a second degree.

This was all before I discovered poker. Poker came along about half way through my thrid year and about 3 months before my first lot of serious exams. It completely distroyed my (already flagging) motivation to study and pretty much took over my life. This continued until the end of my course and I consequently ended up with a 2:ii. I'd also been convinced for a large part of this time that I'd be a sufficiently well rounded poker player by the end of my degree that I wouldn't need to worry about getting a job unless I suddenly decided that I wanted one, although the nearer I got to the end of my degree the closer I came to realising that this was more than a little unrealistic. However, my plan was that I'd spend the summer building up enough of a bankroll so that I'd be able to play for a living until I'd given some thought to what I really wanted to do. I figured that the summer was enough time to build up a healthy role and that if I failed to do so then it would be very clear that I wasn't destined to be a poker player. I had a fairly cushy summer job lined up in oxford working on an American Summer school. I'd done it over previous Summers and it had provided pleanty of poker playing time. However, I failed to take into account the amount of time that would be taken up with planning a wedding and finding somewhere to live in London. As it turned out I didn't get to play more than a few hours a week hence arriving here in London with as weedy a bankroll as I had at the start of the Summer.

I've ommitted one fairly major career consideration that I've been mulling over for almost as long as I've been thinking about medicine. I'm not entirely sure why I've never blogged about it. Some of it has to do with the fact that it would make quite an interesting blog, but would probably have to be kept anonymous. The other reason is that I've never been sure that anything would come of it (or still will). I'm still not sure if it belongs here, but with any luck I'll know one way or the other reltively soon.

Well I'd better get back to some more data entry. Mmmmm.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

(An attempt at) Playing Poker for a Living

Well, technically, I could bestow upon myself the title of professional poker player, but I'm somewhat loath to do so since it's more by necessity than choice. It's also not going to last too long since I should be getting at least some part time work next week.

I never got my arse in gear to consider my career options while at university and having had such a busy summer, I've arrived at this point with few clues and no treasure (discounting the wonderful Mrs Pink, of course).

Consequently I've been playing poker for a number of hours each day whilst also looking for some kind of temporary and longer-term employment options. The fist two days went swimmingly and I'd already made a months rent at the $1-2 NL tables on stars. Today I managed to loose it all back, which is kind of shitty, so I've cashed out some and will be playing on a slightly conservative bankroll for the rest of the week.

I've read a lot on various forums and other articles about people's playing for a living - about the stress of handling bad swings and about the boredom that can set in when you have to play for X hours a day. I didn't disbelieved these people, but I also didn't expect to be able to empathise so soon!

I need to sit down and really figure out what I want to do for a living, what I'm prepare to put in and what I expect to get from it. I'll report back on my findings!

It's our one month anniversary today. Hurray!

Monday, September 19, 2005

Married Life

Wow....Where to start?

So, I got married... and it rocks!

The wedding was an amazing day - by far the best day of my life. Everything went perfectly and everyone seemed to have a great time. The weather couldn't have been better despite worrying forecasts earlier in the week. I'll try and post a couple of pictures if I can find a way of doing it from this internet cafe I'm sat in round the corner from our new place in North London (my computer having died over the summer).

The day following the wedding we moved the rest of our stuff down from Oxford to the place we're renting here in London. We then had about 10 days to settle in and sort the place out before heading out to Barbados for two weeks on our honeymoon. We got back on Friday and we had an amazing time. The weather was excellent and we spent the majority of our time eating, drinking and lying in the sun. It was just what was needed after a Summer of rushing around like headless chickens. I'd just like to take this moment to thank the fish on Party Poker for making it all possible!

It's now time to get back to reality. My days are going to be spent playing poker in the mornings and looking for a job in the afternoons. I'll probably end up taking something temporary and/or doing some agency work until I find something that I really want to do.

Priorities on the poker front will be made much easier once we get round to getting a new computer and installing the internet. Until then I'm gonna be doing my best to improve the quantity and quality of posts here as well as trying to improve my online play without the use of Poker Tracker and Friends all from my little bunker in this cosy internet cafe round the corner!

I'm also going to be setting up a weekly home game, so stand by for reports of that (and let me know if you're in town and interested). I also heard a rumor that the Blogfather himself might be heading this way in the not too distant future. So, Iggy, hit me up (mrpinkmcpink[at]another[dot]com) if you want to consume some Guinness and/or play some cards.