I listened to Jonah Lehrer on NPR last week (of a re-run of a march interview).  Talking about, among other things, how dopamine effects gamblers.

As he illustrated via monkeys who got a squirt of juice, and their dopamine levels surged.  However, this surge diminished quickly, just like how humans have diminishing returns of happiness on new purchases.  But if you give the monkey cues before the squirt (lights flashing, bells ringing, etc), the surge doesn’t diminish with each squirt.

Hence gambling.

Slot machine sirens are obvious, but I think the roulette ball stopping on your number, the dice coming up seven, or the dealer flipping over a card that makes your hand are cues that are just as powerful, provide just as much dopamine, and encourage humans to try to find the pattern in randomness.

He described a Parkinson’s patient who was given a dopamine agonist , and suddenly, with no prior gambling tendency, was compelled to put her whole life savings into a slot machine over a six month period.  As she felt, in a rush of the drug that she could figure out the randomness of the system. This is the essence of how I tilt in poker, and I think the reason why I would lose control of myself at the end of long sessions regardless if I was winning or losing.

Anyway, as I pursue a career change to where I’ll be analyzing stocks for a living, which is extremely similar to poker, I wonder how long I can keep myself from doing something incredibly stupid.

are a new band I like very much. They they sound like Frank Zappa, kinda, maybe some Animal Collective? They are from Philadelphia. This is their MySpace. This is their record label. Here are some videos:

Pitchfork put out their top 200 albums of the 2000’s recently.  They got #1 right with “Kid A.”  But each successive entry pissed me off incrementally.  Arcade fire #2!  Wilco #4!  Ok, I’m sure that a lot of you True Slant readers like these picks just fine, and yeah, I guess most of these records are ok.  But, what really made me angry was what wasn’t there.  The 2000’s list is too new, so the flaws of omission that I see as obvious might actually be (gasp) my own aesthetic failings.  Instead for this post, and to really get my undies in a knot, I went through their list of the 90’s 80’s and 70’s.

So, let’s play What Are The Insanely Obvious Records Pitchfork Neglected!!  Yay!  In the first round let’s use their best of the 1980’s list… The rules are simple, stroll through the list and try to find missing landmark records.  Take your time, I’ll just sit here and sing the Jeopardy theme, do de do do, do de dum…  Ok did you spot the #1 and #2 omissions?  Yes!  Good call!  Metallica’s  “Master of Puppets” and “Ride The Lightening” are nowhere.

All right, good job contestant… For the bonus round, let’s play the same game with their 1970’s list.  Take your time, I’ll sing the Tic-Tac-Dough theme song, do de dooo did-da-le do de dum… Ding ding ding!  Yes!  Good eye again!  Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” is in absentia.

Ok, ok, I know, you’re a TS reader, so that means that you’re probably the right type of white person who likes his/her metal contained to the ironic days of his/her youth.  But, A. Why?? Don’t you know that metal is good for you?  And B. this isn’t about you, this is about 1. getting history right, and 2. about how the rise of Rotten Tomatoes/crowd-sourced/meta systems of review that work really well for video games, and reasonably well for books and movies, is terrible for music, and leads to sites like Pitchfork to generally put their blinders on and stick to NPR style music, and avoid anything out of their milieu.

(more about this last point coming soon)

I started a new semester this month, and with it an internship, and on top of writing novel #2 I have no time for poker. Yes, I could play on the weekends, or a few hours here and there, but this game is tough. Even at my level, without dedicating tons of time to it, it’s very easy to fall out of step and deteriorate rapidly in skills. There are about a million poker blogs out there written by players who neither study nor deeply analyze their own games. And I’m feeling that this blog is kind of becoming like that.

So, now I’m just a tired man, talking my dreams to sleep, blah blah blah… Anyway, no more poker blogging. I cashed out my bankroll, took the few thousand bucks of profit I’ve made since writing this, and called it quits. And to be honest, it feels great. I mean, my days feel great, I sleep better, more focused on what I should be focused on, blah blah blah.

FAQ
Do I miss the game? Yes.

Do I miss feeling compelled to either play or study poker? No.

Will I play again?
Of course, but not to the degree of obsession I was playing.

Is this blog dead?
“life tilt” is dead. However, I plan to start blogging about music in the near future. For which I need 1. a new title that I haven’t settled on, and 2. a better thought out angle than what I’ve currently come up with. I have thoughts, and some vague ideas of posts that I haven’t written out yet.

NBC’s Poker After Dark kicks off four consecutive weeks of original programming late night beginning on September 7 with a cash game that is sure to delight. The game will run for two consecutive weeks, and will feature many of the biggest names in the game today. Taking part in this highly anticipated game are Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Howard “The Professor” Lederer, Eli Elezra, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, and Phil Ivey. The minimum buy-in for this game is $100,000, and the game will begin with blinds at $200/$400 along with a $100 ante.

via New Poker After Dark: “Top Guns”. Long-awaited two week cash game begins on September 7 | Online Poker News.

Well, this is somewhat exciting.  Maybe they can get an announcer who isn’t a complete moron like all the other poker guys on NBC seem to be.  I don’t hold my breath, however, I will check this out on the Hulu when they post it.