Monthly Archives: March 2011

Sometimes I Have These Dreams

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Sometimes I have these dreams. They only occasionally follow the same scenario. I am of course the main character in them. They are quite real to me and often I wonder upon waking if it was just a dream, a memory of a different me played out in my sleep, or me living in another reality or space time.

Last night in my dream I was part of a large experiment. I am not sure why, but I was looking forward to the challenge. I was not looking forward to one part of the experiment. I had previously experienced that part it caused me to become immediately anxious. The feeling passed through my dream and followed me into my waking state when my alarm went off.

There were a couple of hundred of us. We were all volunteers as far as I knew, though I did not seem to know any of the others. This experiment was supposedly centered on our health and fitness levels. I knew I was in good health and very fit, so I was looking forward to the trial ahead. I could not tell about the others by looking at them.

My body was different than the one I know. I looked quite different. My facial structure, eye and hair color were different. That body was stronger than mine, I noticed when I saw a reflection of myself in some stainless steel panels. The body I was in thrived on physical challenges, and I felt this experiment would really be no challenge. If I had a name, I do not know what it was as I never heard it said.

I was given an old olive green back pack, and told to run to the next building where I had come from while wearing the pack. It was about a mile away. Someone sprayed me with cold water, and pointed me to the path I would take. It was night and wet with cold rain and minor flooding. I went outside into the night as quickly as I could.

Water was flowing towards me, and varied from a trickle to a few inches deep. The water and rain were cold, but did not make me feel cold. I decided I was warm due to the exertion of carrying the back pack with whatever was in it and my fast walk.

I have a lot of dreams of this type for some reason. Sometimes I am in the Military in a ground operation, just a few of us. Other times, I am on a military base, and I repair equipment. At other times I am in briefings and making plans. Many nights I am roaming through mountainous terrain ensuring all is well within the area of my jurisdiction. One night I was attacked by several dogs while patrolling.

Occasionally, I am talking to a me who is living a different life. The most striking Me I recall was a Me I spoke with who belonged to an outlaw motorcycle club. He was forty-one at the time, and was telling me that he was old and tired. He did not think he would live out the year. He thought it was not a life choice he would make again, although he had no real regrets other than he was old before his time from the rigors and demands of that lifestyle.

One night in a dream I was being operated on. I was awake, and I was in communication with the people doing the surgery. I was face down, and they were repairing my spine, which I had somehow hurt. In another dream I was placing sonic buoys in a lake with a second person, filled with fish as big as me, who apparently had no interest in eating people.

In another dream I was visiting a planet with different life forms. An octopus type creature lived in the water there, and I was there as a tourist to see it in its natural environment. It was touristy family event with a guide, though I was there alone. The guide said the creature’s name, and it was unlike any name I had ever heard before, foreign to my way of speech.

My longest continuous dream lasted over six months, most nights of the week. It was ongoing for so long I started taking notes, so if ever I met those people in this lifetime, I wanted to ask if we shared the same dream. I never met them of course, but eventually the dream had an ending, one I would never have scripted.

These dreams are so vivid and realistic sometimes I wonder if they are me in a parallel life or time. Are there many Me’s living different lives in different realities, all at the same time? Does each major life choice spawn off a different me who continued on living the choices I chose not to make?

If these dreams did not feel so logical and solid, I would not think of them twice. The sticking point with me, is they are not like my average dreams where the flow does not make sense, and the situations could never happen in this life. Those dreams I know are dreams. These other dreams though, they always make me wonder.

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Holdem Style, Strategy, Tactics, and Winning

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Holdem in general is a contest of strategy and tactics contested in a fish bowl at moderate speed. While a full game of Holdem seems like separate and unique individuals of close but varying abilities in competition that idea is a little fuzzy about what really is going happening.

Time, Strategy, and Tactics are compressed. One complete round of hands can be enough to cause shift of both strategies and tactics, all in the span of a few minutes for a skilled player.

The obvious object of Holdem is for each player is to take chips away from other players, preferably as many chips as possible. To infer that taking chips is a Holdem strategy is about the same as a General planning to win a war without a plan. Between playing and winning is a lot of untested and unknown territory which must be assessed and conquered.

In most Holdem games there are two dominant strategies going at one time. Those who play strong hands and use their chips as battering rams, hoping to bash weaker opponents into submissive sheep, and those who pretend to be submissive sheep, waiting for those moments when their wide ranging tactical play scores massive damage to another players chip castle.

Unless the game of Holdem is being played for serious, causes intense pain when lost money, there is usually a sprinkling of other tacticians who’s goal is not to punish other players by taking their chips, but by making their own chips last as long as possible. They are at the table for other reasons than to win money and punish other players for poor play and inability to adapt.

Every player in the game takes on one of these roles after a quick observation of how they perceive most of the players are playing. A few players will change to what they hope is the optimum strategy of the moment, usually due to overwhelming strength of the combined opposition, the flighty nature of their hands, or turning of their luck (variation). Others find themselves on the high defensive wondering what happened, as everything was going so well, and now suddenly, it is not.

Highly sensitive skill is involved in consistently winning. Watching closely the ebb and flow of the two main competing strategies, the flow of chips around the table, general board texture, and your ones cards. While we all would like to have Aces, and make every straight and flush, some days no matter what choices you make the tide is not turning in your favor.

To be a consistent winner in Holdem, takes book knowledge, practiced and learned skills, and the ability to be flexible. To be more than a breaking even player or small winner one needs some vague and undefined skills that verge on an art form rather than learned behavior for the best players. A thick skin doesn’t hurt either.

Once a Holdem player becomes comfortable they have times when they feel invincible, and other times when they feel lost. Many players are not aware of it, but the difference of whether they are on the winning or losing coalition of the correct playing style at that moment is flexibility, other factors being neutral.

Only two factors are absolute when playing Holdem. The first written in stone absolute is the game will change from tight to loose, to aggressive to passive, sometimes in the space of a few moments. The second absolute is the most perceptive and adaptable player generally will take more of other players money than he or she give away over the session, all else being equal.

In an average game, the differences between playing styles at any one moment is negligible. Most players follow whatever the crowd is doing, depending on their insight as to who the crowd is. This is a result of safety in numbers. Everyone plays and finishes about the same state. Winners are determined by the fall of a card, rather than skill and creativity of an individual player.

There are a lot of fun ways to play Holdem, but not all of them are good for the next game you will be sitting in. Learning to successfully adapt your playing style to the players a requirement for success in building chip castles. Other areas of life are surprisingly the same.

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