One last time ...........
it´s TROLLETTE OPEN winter edition tomorrow! Our last matches! Going to play women´s singles and women´s doubles 50plus! We don´t know much about Villains. They have very good trollettes and some beatable ones and we have no idea who´s gonna show up tomorrow. Our team will show up with the three highest ranked trollettes (while I am among them). Villains are going to be a surprise box again ....
..and this is what AI thinks I´m doing! :mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr:
:mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr:
The context for this can be found starting here, and more specifically in my last post.
Yes, I'm definitely starting to see some issues. 
EDIT: I just realized that the donkey in the background is apparently supposed to be me! It has a very similar outfit and hairstyle to my character in the last few pics (linked above). What is ChatGPT trying to tell me? 
Well, it is very clear, that GPT tells me to play tennis with a sandwich! And guess, you are the donk who doesn´t know how to play tennis in the water with a sandwich? :mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:
The lovely "old lady"
It was our last round of Trollette Open winter edition - and I caught a lovely "granny" as Villainesse. Mind you! If you think now that I had an easy going win, then you´re WRONG! As expected, team Villainesse massively upgraded! They chose their strongest (!) Trollettes to play against us and that "lovely old lady" I played against was highly experienced, high ranked and a smart player! That "lovely old lady" turned out to be my TOUGHEST Villainesse so far! 
We played hard, we ran, we sweated, we had no mercy!
As Villainesse is smart and experienced, I decided to represent her as a fox! 
Even though AI is not able to draw a tennis match correctly, I think you get the point anyway, right?
It was VERY close all the time and very exhausting!!! But: We both had LOTS OF FUN!
Meanwhile, my team captain Trollette scolded me, why the heck it takes me SO LONG?! Well, WHY? GUESS WHY??!! :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:
But after 3 hours (!!!) I could snatch a VERY VERY VERY close win in two sets, while both sets went into tie break! :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:
After that singles match, my achilles tendon was hurting a bit, so I decided to let fellow-Trollettes play the doubles.
Nicely done, Prim! 
And nicely done, ChatGPT, for realizing that tennis does not usually involve swimming lanes and hot dogs on the court in the middle of a match.
It's about time I get back to the tables, but first, let's look at some long-term SNG stats.
SNG Stats
On average, we made $50.45 per year (the value in the graph is lower because it also takes 2020 into account, where no SNGs were played). The total profit is $252.27.
ROI, meanwhile, shows a consistent declining trend.
Winter 2021/22 was the best season, which is when I first really got into those 5CD SNGs. I made a strong comeback in Fall 2022, but otherwise, results weren't great.
Take the average values in the following graphs with a grain of salt, because they all include 2020, but this is the cumulative profit per month, season and fiscal quarter.
It is interesting to see that the colder seasons were the best for SNGs, which was not the case for MTTs, where summer was best (graph in the spoiler below).
Traffic may be a factor, but the ROI graphs look pretty similar for the most part.
The overall profit graphs look like this:
In my next post, we will break it down a little by game format.
Five Card Draw was usually the "main game", or at least the most dedicated grind among the SNGs. The graphs largely reflect this, looking quite similar to the overall SNG graph.
I also played other games, though. Because their grind was a lot more inconsistent, I will not include any yearly graphs.
One of the more interesting SNG side projects may have been Stud Hi-Lo, which was mostly dropped because of terrible traffic.
8-Game traffic was even worse, which is too bad, because it's an interesting SNG format. For a while, the results even looked quite promising.
The biggest roller coaster was probably Courchevel. Whether I play cash, MTT or SNG, success in this game only seems to be extremely short-lived for me.
Check out the different cut-offs in the season and quarter graphs:
The latest attempt, of course, was 6-max NL Hold'em... and that one was just lol.
Is a comeback to Five Card Draw SNGs in order? Well, let's see...
Well, I tried to finally play my first SNGs of the year, only to encounter this strange error message:
Not sure what's going on. I tried regging an MTT that runs at a later point as a test, at least that one worked.
No SNGs yet though. I assume the problem will eventually go away on its own.
It's no use, the error message is still around, I guess I will have to contact support about it this weekend or so. In my experience, while Pokerstars support used to be excellent, it is now abysmal, so I am not looking forward to it.
Until then, I hope to have a little "sliding match" with Prim at the pool tomorrow. My current record is 10.18 seconds, with a top speed of 21.90 km/h - will I be able to beat it? Probably not... bad back. And I heard Primrose isn't even too keen on the idea.
Maybe just one go? 
Originally posted by Harrier88
It's no use, the error message is still around, I guess I will have to contact support about it this weekend or so. In my experience, while Pokerstars support used to be excellent, it is now abysmal, so I am not looking forward to it.
As is all customer support everywhere.[1]
So it goes.
[1] Still seems OK at PokerStrategy.com though 😁
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
As is all customer support everywhere.So it goes.
The hardest part is usually to reach a real human being. The second hardest part may be to get them to stop with the generic copy/paste responses and deal with your actual issue, without regurgitating the FAQs.
With Pokerstars support these days, reaching a human being appears to be tricky, at least it was when I had that terrible experience while trying to do the background check for the new regulations. They would take multiple hours to show up (almost nine hours in one case), at which point I would have already logged off, saying that I needed to go to bed or get to an appointment. Nevertheless, they would still show up several hours later (at 5:18 AM my time according to a screenshot), and then log off again after less than 30 minutes because "they haven't received any reply from my side".
I expect more of the same, but who knows, maybe they were simply overwhelmed back then and things look better by now.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
[1] Still seems OK at PokerStrategy.com though 😁
You stole all the good help didn't you, ya cheeky basterds! 
We have a payment website/app for bills, taxes etc. and if you forget your password - you gotta go to a real world payment place to reset your password and it costs like 50 cents... at least that's what's written on the website OR you gotta record some clips and send photo of your ID from the app, which I didn't want to do. So I went out. Waited for an old lady to finish her small talk with the clerk about her grandson's school. My turn:
- Hi, I wanna reset my ePay password.
- Sorry, this is not an official office, just a checkout. Go a mile this way to the office.
So I went. Started raining. People in the way with their umbrellas poking me in the eye. Here it is. Almost there.
- Hi, I...
- Sorry I'm boutta get into my 1 hour break, come back in 2 hours, or you know... never *sees my face*, ehh... come in... *locks the door*
- Wanna reset my ePay password.
- There's no need to come here, but ok. No payment needed.
- Well, that's not what the site says.
- Rat fuck the website, I am the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the no-50-cent-truth!
- ... I also need confirmation of my personal details.
- Sigh... They are about to *some fancy bureaucratic words* me, got not time...
Confirms my details anyway and resets my password for a total of 0.00 euro. I thank her and wish her a good *bureaucratic word*-ing.
Go back home. Have to do the whole confirmation with recording a video and photoing my ID online ANYWAY!
You just go with a smile and a greeting and they look at you like you fucked their mother. That's my experience with customer service, police and anyone who feels they have some kind of pathetic "authority".
Originally posted by nsavov
You just go with a smile and a greeting and they look at you like you fucked their mother. That's my experience with customer service, police and anyone who feels they have some kind of pathetic "authority".
I've had some good and some bad experiences, but many of the bad ones were outright terrible. What you described above does sound familiar.
I'm willing to cut the police some slack since I have been working in that field in the past too, and I know that especially in big cities, their job can be very hard and may often be met with unreasonable hostility. That said, there definitely are a bunch of massive pricks in that line of work, and I have had a few of them as colleagues there too.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Until then, I hope to have a little "sliding match" with Prim at the pool tomorrow. My current record is 10.18 seconds, with a top speed of 21.90 km/h - will I be able to beat it? Probably not... bad back. And I heard Primrose isn't even too keen on the idea.
Well, the back didn't cause any problems, so I gave it a few goes. I was certain to have a new PB when I read 10.50 seconds and 21.60 km/h on the display, but according my quoted post, this was not the case.We had a lovely time at the pool, and also at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, even though I may have overeaten a little...
Prim somehow managed to troll me there too, when she told me that she had found a nice duck dish at the buffet, and I circled around the whole thing like three times, inspecting every single dish while looking for that duck. It eventually turned out that Prim didn't pay attention to the labels at all, and must have picked some crispy chicken dish which she assumed was duck.
Another amazing meetup, either way.Mostly due to the grindette's workload, we didn't get to do them as often as we liked this year, but the two meetups we did were absolute home runs. Our next one or two may have to be scaled down a little, because the season of Lent is about to begin - Prim is Catholic and I am considering becoming one, so we both participate to one degree or another. That was also one of the reasons why we decided to let loose yesterday and pig out at the buffet.
Oh, and thanks for the nice homemade cheesecake you brought me.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Prim is Catholic and I am considering becoming one
I heard Catholics are incapable of Snowing and their Pat hands always get outdrawn. 
Also:
Originally posted by nsavov
I heard Catholics are incapable of Snowing and their Pat hands always get outdrawn.
Makes me wonder if I have been Catholic all along...
I will do the Lent thing either way. I have celebrated Hanukkah in the past without being Jewish, so having the wrong denomination won't stop me from stocking up on canned fish next week either.
Fun fact: When we had the old Troll Challenges blog, we once wanted to do a challenge involving the game of No Limit Texas Dreidel around the holidays, but it had to be cancelled for logistical reasons.
The video doesn't even get the regular Hold'em rules right, but that game is weird anyway.
Well ALMOST, Nsavov! 
My hands in PLO and PLO8 indeed got outdrawn almost all the time today! Same this week in CG! Lost three times with a full house. But that won´t last forever of course, sometimes fun-players get their 20% oder 30%.
Probably we went a bit "too piggy" at the buffet, but gladly, I mostly picked meat and veggies. For dessert I had fruit, covered in chocolate. I was brutally full but the at least the veggies and the fruit were quickly digested while Harrier picked mostly fried food which is - of course! - very heavy on the stomach!
Bringing back the "bankroll queen"?
Remember Wendy O´Koopa? The bankroll queen on 888? We were building a BR from freerolls until 888 decided to withdraw them. We cashed out and put our 888-BR on Partypoker. Some of the freerolls on 888 are now back, though: at 4 pm, 7 pm and the one at 9 pm (Spinner Winner), which has always been there. As MTTs are not exactly my cup of tea and are played pretty much just for fun, I´m thinking about bringing back the BR-queen on 888 as a little side project and focussing on sattys on Partypoker.
However, poker is not so much fun at the moment, to be honest. We´re in a downswing or at least in a phase of bad luck and missing 99,9 % of the flops and getting outdrawn by some crazy random hands is part of game, no doubt, but not exactly fun. We just played a trial freeroll on 888 today, where we ran with QQ into KK pretty much at the beginning of the tournament. Then, it was Baby Peach´s turn to play a 0,33 $ PLO and a 0,22 $ PLO8, while we were 99,9 % card-dead. At least in PLO we got some good hands and made it somehow ITM, but in PLO8 there was just a big NOTHING. Flops completely missed, rarely a playable hand and if we manged to get a solid hand on the flop, it got quickly outdrawn by some miracle gutshot or some random miracle hand. :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:
Even though loosing is party of the game, it suxx, to be honest! It´s never easy to go through such phases of bad luck....
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Remember Wendy O´Koopa? The bankroll queen on 888?
I would also like to point out that she somehow managed to finish exactly in 6th place (out of 15) in all of our Mario Kart races yesterday.
Also, Prim and I got a perfect shared victory for the first time ever, with each of us finishing 1st twice in a tournament of four races, with the other Troll finishing 2nd each time.
I know poker is tough at the moment, I think it may be a good idea to at least cut the tournaments for a while. Meanwhile, I hope I will manage to get back to the tables at all. Let's see if I can reach someone at support tomorrow, I haven't tried today.
