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Gareth Chantler, who first appeared on Episode 6, once again graces us with his presence. This time around, we discuss James Joyce, Syria, SCOOP, and, begrudgingly, a bit of Limit Hold ‘Em strategy.
Timestamps
0:30 Hello and welcome
52:44 Strategy
Links
Gareth Chantler on Twitter
Gareth’s Stories From Syria
Hassan Hassan on Twitter
Iyad El-Baghdadi on Twitter
Samar Yazbek’s A Woman In the Crossfire
Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell
Strategy
PokerStars – 500/1000 (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com
Hero (UTG): 8.06 BB
MP: 3.26 BB (VPIP: 27.23, PFR: 15.57, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 213)
CO: 9.48 BB (VPIP: 29.03, PFR: 21.49, 3Bet Preflop: 13.73, Hands: 126)
BTN: 14.55 BB (VPIP: 24.02, PFR: 15.23, 3Bet Preflop: 11.22, Hands: 490)
SB: 24.19 BB (VPIP: 41.38, PFR: 31.25, 3Bet Preflop: 18.87, Hands: 146)
BB: 43.16 BB (VPIP: 34.92, PFR: 24.59, 3Bet Preflop: 26.92, Hands: 64)
SB posts SB 0.25 BB, BB posts BB 0.5 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 0.75 BB) Hero has Kh Td
Hero raises to 1 BB, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to 1.5 BB, BB calls 1 BB, Hero calls 0.5 BB
Flop : (4.5 BB, 3 players) Th 3s 6c
SB bets 0.5 BB, BB raises to 1 BB, Hero calls 1 BB, SB calls 0.5 BB
Turn : (7.5 BB, 3 players) Ts
SB checks, BB bets 1 BB, Hero ?
Time stamps:
0:15 – James Joyce.
34:56 – poker?
55:45 – Syria and the epistemics of modern current affairs.
Could only be one podcast <3
It's always nice to catch up with Gareth. I for one thought, as the section on bs began, 'oh, maybe Gareth can clear up the whole sarin attack thing for me' – I have to confess that the left wing counter narrative muddied the water for me to such an extent that I gave up trying to know what to think about it.
Thanks Ian. What happened after over eighty people died in one of the worst ways to go was completely unconscionable. And actually, in many of those pockets of the media where opposition to American hegemony is the leading sign of moral superiority, that narrative of a false flag attack has yet to go retracted. I even had a Maltese yoga teacher friend of mine telling me that it was obviously some American plot — and I got the same earful from a high ranking employee of the International Red Cross(!). It is unclear how I managed to refrain from telling either of them to fuck off.
People’s bar for knowing something just seems to get lower and lower as we go on in twitter world. The worst part, perhaps, is that these people (as well as the media outlets) co-opt the language of critical thinking to justify what boils down to sloth. They want to reason everything out from an armchair — not to read about testing procedures for the bag of sarin-positive soil transported from the site of the attack. And of course the truly critical thinker could reverse their previous hasty positions in light of evidence and corroboration and so forth. And it is okay to not be able to form an opinion on everything. Especially if you are a yoga teacher in Malta, how the fuck could you presume yourself to be informed on Syria without having read a single book or having met a single Syrian and spending most of your time on other subjects? Yet the norm actually seems to be the presumption of one’s own knowledge (she never asked me a single question, no coincidence), not one’s own ignorance. And the asymmetry in price boggles me, between the cost of over eighty people losing their lives in agony, and the value in time one assigns to make one’s mind up about it. This has a most unwelcome result: the appearance of an absence of reverence for human life.
In any case, I appreciate that you recommended Murakami’s Underground a while ago. I recommenced and finished it last month and it was appropriately helpful.
Hey guys! Thanks for your hard work on this podcast. I listened to my first episode, after finding out about you from another podcast. I have to say, catching 215 as my first episode was interesting. Your buddy Gareth is a little lost and was a super bummer. I’m sure he’ll come out ahead, but in the meantime, brutal audio.
Ben,
Gareth is winning at life, but he’s quite frustrated that he cannot save the rest of us.
Welcome to the Thinking Poker nation. Go listen to some past episodes, including others with Gareth. It’s worth it.
Russ
Russ, Ben Hiza almost certainly a Russian troll. #FakeNews, Gareth
Gareth, sure, on the other hand there are a lot of things one would like to be informed about and need some sort of handle upon if we want to be informed citizens, but life is short and so is my concentration. So I need some sort of shortcut/proxy that I can look to. And unfortunately, western governments have been revealed as more or less as dishonest actors as anyone else in the propaganda game, so whilst I’d trust them somewhat more than other sources, it’s a messy world and there aren’t many unquestionable sources of fact out there.
But I think you had the right approach (if my first reply didn’t give you that impression– I was angry at the yoga instructor and Jeremy Corbin ‘progressives’), namely that you had left it undecided. Less scrupulous people than yourself see the muddy water but would rather speak with authority or put on some water-unmuddying spectacles. I would go a bit further than you just did on trusting government sources — western governments are maybe the worst sources of information. On the sarin thing I just meant to say that there are numerous smaller organisations that have protocols and can show their work (and aren’t always particularly interested in posting on twitter or participating in the public dialogue). And that’s where the whole pro-Assad leftist movement in the west gets its credit — their criticism of the western state is true in essence, even if they are inarticulate about it. And even if they have no grasp of the implications and offer no alternatives.