Stabbed By A Shark

I'm out of hospital. The surgery took place last Tuesday and there weren't any real complications. One minute, I was talking to the anaesthetist, the next I was waking up in the High Dependency Unit (a step down from Intensive Care but a step up from an ordinary ward), plugged into a multitude of tubes and cables - oxygen tubes in my nose; a chest drain (a large-looking tube coming out of my chest); a stomach drain (a smaller tube going up my nose and down my throat into my stomach); an arterial drip for measuring blood pressure; an ordinary drip for hydration; another drip for morphine* (which was patient controlled, giving me another shot of morphine every time I pressed a button); EKG pads aplenty for measuring heartrate; and even a peg on my left ear measuring blood oxygen.

The surgery was 'laparoscopic' (keyhole surgery) and as a result I have four scars varying in size from medium to small down the left-hand side of my chest and back. It looks a little bit like I've been stabbed, or bitten by a shark or something. I decided to compromise, and tell anyone who asks that I'd been stabbed by a shark - that kills two birds with one stone. People keep saying 'girls like scars', although I don't know how true that is. I suppose if people could like tattoos and body piercings, they could like anything! In any case, I'm hoping that within a few months they'll be barely noticeable.

The first night was quite painful. I could hardly move with all the cables and tubes, and if I fell asleep I'd go a few hours without any painkillers, then wake up in mild agony. There wasn't much I could do except press the morphine button as often as I was allowed! The next morning I had some of the tubes removed and a physiotherapist took me for a stagger around the wards.

After that, I recovered pretty quickly. I was moved back to the ordinary ward later on Wednesday, and had my first drink later that day. After finding that easy, I had a cup of tea, and the next morning I had my first semi-solid food in six months - a bowl of Weetabix (the same stuff I tried on my first hospital visit but was unable to swallow). Since then, I've gradually moved onto more and more solid stuff. Tonight I had a sausage casserole, and the other night I even had a slice of pizza! That might not sound amazing to you, but after not eating pizza for six months, I'd almost forgotten what it tasted like.

I left hospital on Friday afternoon and since then I've been relaxing at home. I'm still on a lot of painkillers, including codeine, which is powerful enough to send me a bit loopy and make me need time off work for at least a few more days. I should be back at the start of November. In the meantime, family and friends have been visiting and helping out with food, cleaning, and company, which has been great. I'm going to use the rest of the time off to do some writing (I have two half-written articles lying around, and a bunch of ideas), catch up on a few things I've been meaning to do for ages, and play some poker.

For the past couple of months, it seems all I've written about is my health problems. Despite what you might think, there is far more to me than that. I'm a gambler - sometimes a good one (poker, gin, backgammon), and sometimes a bad one (betting on fighting). I'm an agnostic amateur theologist with Satanic leanings. In my time, I've done some fantastically raunchy things with women (although not recently). I've been on TV, and as a child I modelled for the box of Bassett's Sweet Train. I have an IQ of somewhere between 131 and 178 (depending on which of the many incompatible scales you use) and am a former Mensa member.

Maybe over the coming weeks and months, I'll write about that stuff instead. I look forward to doing that, now that this unpleasant chapter of my life is mostly over.

*Morphine was a big let-down. After reading Johnny Cash's description of Morphine in his autobiography, and hearing that people get addicted to it, I was expecting a heroin-like euphoria. What a crushing disappointment. It just sent me to sleep.

Tomophobia or Sizing Up the Future

I'm going into hospital on Monday, for what I'm hoping will be the last time in a while. On Tuesday, I'll finally have the surgery to deal with the swallowing problems I've been having - since April I've been on a liquid diet, and after next week I should be able to eat a proper meal for the first time in quite a while. Achalasia, the technical term for what I have, doesn't go away, but it can be treated quite well.

The surgery is pretty serious. When I wake up, I expect to be attached to all manner of tubes including a chest drain and a couple of drips (I'm really hoping a catheter will not be necessary). It's going to be very unpleasant, and although I'm looking forward to this all being over, I'm completely dreading the surgery itself and it's immediate aftermath. Of course I'm concerned about the possible pain, but more than anything I'm worried about the boredom. I've been told I'll be in hospital until Saturday, and for the first couple of days I'll probably be attached to too many machines to move about very much. A couple of days is a long time when all you can do is stare at the ceiling - so please feel free to visit me. I'll be in Ward 102 at the new Royal Infirmary.

There's two other major pieces of other news too. First, my second article for Inside Edge magazine was published this month, called 'Sizing Up', which is about common bet-sizing mistakes in big bet games. I've been asked to write for the magazine more frequently, which was always my intention, but because I've been so distracted recently I've ended up with a lot of half-finished articles. Anyway, expect to see more of my work in the press in future, and if you missed my first article you can read it here : http://www.inside-edge-mag.co.uk/advancedplay/holdem/1407/talking_point.html

Secondly, Full Tilt Poker have been talking to me and want me to consider working for them. It's a tough decision for me. Full Tilt are based in Dublin, Ireland, and I'd have to move there which would be a very major thing for me. I love Edinburgh, most of my friends are here, and I hadn't really planned on leaving. Besides, I like my job at PokerStars a lot. They have treated me extremely well while I've been ill, the money and benefits are excellent, I still find the job interesting, and both my boss and myself believe that I have a good future with the company in the long-term. Plus, if I worked for Full Tilt I wouldn't be able to play there!

On the other hand, the job at Full Tilt is a real step up in the ranks, and it's also an opportunity to work closely with some of the major decision makers there. I'm told that if I come up with an idea that they like, there's a real chance it will be implemented a couple of weeks later. This is one thing that appeals to me, as at PokerStars I don't really have that opportunity except in rare cases (like recently, when I played a small but key role in changing the new five-card draw games from 5-handed to 6-handed).

It's a really tough decision and not one that I'm going to rush. I don't even know what the money would be like for the new job, and I've never been to Dublin - so it's early stages. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

God Bless America

You might expect a country founded by puritans to be a strange place, and you'd be right. Despite being one of the most modern major countries on the planet, America's culture is deeply ingrained with medieval morality and religious values that would be considered extremist if they weren't Christian.

To learn this, all you have to do is watch American television. Turn on your TV at 9pm at night in America, and you can watch brutal bloody violence like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or see people get shot to death on the news.

However, at no point during the night will you ever watch two people make love, swear or blaspheme, or discuss an abortion. If a woman in a programme like Friends or Frasier get pregnant, the option of choosing whether or not to keep the baby simply isn't discussed. Everybody in mainstream US TV either has the baby or miscarries. Why? Because if networks starting showing programming that broke these rules, some of their sponsors might pull out, and they'd lose money.

America's political system also boils down to money, and with the country's strange sense of morality, it's almost no surprise that a bill regarding Internet Gaming was recently passed. The bill was attached to the completely unrelated Port Security bill, which no senator in their right mind would have voted against. I doubt many of the Senators actually read the bill or were aware that Internet Gaming sections were added at the last minute.

Obviously the bill passed, and this has caused quite a stir in the poker industry. Although the bill is aimed at financial institutions, much of the media has been referring to the bill as an 'Internet Gambling Ban'. This is completely misleading - the bill does not make it illegal to gamble online. It will, however, make it slightly more difficult for US players to make a deposit into a poker site, or to cash out their money.

The bill also affects some large corporations who have staff or affiliated corporations based in the USA. Some companies, like PartyGaming and FirePay, have therefore decided to pull out of the US market.

That's basically it! At work every day since the bill passed we have had many questions about what would happen 'now that internet gambling has been banned', but the truth is in the long term very little will actually change. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker both announced their intention to continue providing service to the US market, as did NETeller (the most popular deposit method for many US players). Within days, PokerStars was the biggest site for real money ring game play by a country mile (it has been the biggest for tournament play for quite a while). Full Tilt shot up to third, just below Party Poker.

It saddens me as a poker player, however, to learn that smaller companies like JetSetPoker have been affected so badly by the bill that they have had to close. Smaller sites like these often pushed the envelope, and if they came up with something innovative, could break through into the mainstream much like Full Tilt have done.

Quite frankly the panic that has been going on for the last couple of weeks is unjustified. Anyone who has analysed the new bill in depth has not found it to be as significant a threat as the masses seem to think. However, it is worrying that such a bill can simply be attached to something completely unrelated and passed. The next couple of years will be an interesting one for the poker industry, that's for certain.