Chistmas - A Time For Giving

Well it is on Ipoker. On the advice of a friend who works for a company that has an Ipoker skin, the £/€ tables are ridiculously soft, despite the fact that you get bum-raped for rake - so I took a stab at them. In just under 10,000 hands, nearly all at £50nl, due to some decent play, massive lucksacking and the generousity of some of my opponents, I am up approximately $2,000 in December. I'm fairly happy about this as I was really starting to question just how shit I was - so many thanks to Tommy Angelo for making me less of a tiltbox and Aero for making me less bad at heads-up poker.

I haven't run well in donkaments, although my horse has done the biz by clearing $4.5k of make-up and delivering a solid profit after a nice score. I also won a silly Full Tilt PLHE tournament earlier today for $1.1k which covered some over my other losses during the holiday period.

I doubt I'll play much more bar a little heads-up before 2010 begins. I have some administrative shit to do and the New Year begins with a hangover, followed by a wedding on the 2nd of January and then West Ham vs. Arsenal in the FA Cup on the 3rd, where we will have a spotty 17 year old up front and endure almost certain defeat to the French cheats. After that we'll sell most of our best players and prepare ourselves for a game with Leeds in the Championship, which should please Asterix.

I haven't got much else to add - although if you have a little time I recommend the recent posts in "Clarkatroid is not folding" - link on the right. His last post of 2009 in particular was superb and well worth a read.

I was sat thinkig about this time last year - when I went to bed on New Year's Eve my Dad was scheduled to have a massive operation to remove cancer from his neck. He was crapping himself as they were going to have to basically cut out two of the vertebrae in his neck to remove it. It turned out the cancer had gone too far for that so he spent the early part of 2009 receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy. He has responded well and whilst he still has cancer, he looks a shite sight better than he could and the doctors are really pleased. I hope I look that good when I get to his age. The whole episode has put life into perspective and I have received a lot of support from many people, including readers of this blog - once again, thanks for all of this, it has meant a lot to me.

I hope all of you had a good Christmas. Best wishes for the New Year, may you spike 2 outers where you receive them and may a flaming grease bus run over anyone that berates you in the chat box. Good luck at the tables and I'll see you in 2010.

Rolled

Yes, I got rolled. I had some problems signing in to my online banking on Friday. I thought nothing of it and tried again on Saturday, to encounter more problems. I phoned NatWest, who were fucking unhelpful and told me to call again the next day. After 20 minutes of bullshit from NatWest, I finally got through to their online fraud team. It turns out that some cunt had robbed £5k from my account on Friday. The guy put all the necessary blocks on my account and told me to call at 8:30 sharp on Monday to discuss recovering the money, which I did. By 9:15 they had told me I would have the money back in my account in two hours.

All of this is pretty scary. I’m not the most technologically savvy of individuals, but I’m better than many in this respect. It also happened when I was at work – I nearly always log in when I am at work for security reasons – so I need to have a word with the IT guys here. The NatWest online fraud team were first class to be fair – everyone else that I dealt with fell somewhere in between useless and unhelpful and did everything that they could have. It’s a jungle out there kids – be careful.

Pokerwise HU has gone well – I have logged 8 consecutive profitable sessions, putting me (excluding rakeback) back at even for the month. Donkaments last week were a disaster, and I cashed in precisely none of the ten or so that I played. My last day at work this year is Tuesday, so I am hoping to increase the pokerage from Wednesday onwards.

West Ham also got rolled up at Birmingham. By all accounts it was a pretty bad performance, despite Dyer hitting the post for us late on. We go to Bolton on Wednesday with me expecting to leave with the usual Kevin Davies-inflicted defeat and heading back to the Boleyn to play Chelsea on Sunday in shreds.

My Christmas shopping is now largely done, thank fuck. All I need to do now is wrap the stuff, which I am not looking forward to.

Good luck at the tables, I’ll probably try and prepare some standard end of year review entry.

Vomit Inducing

I’ve played a modest amount of HU over the last week or so. After playing half-pissed and dropping $130 to a mixture of coolers and my own bad play (and a lesson which hopefully I have learnt so I won’t play when half-cut again), I’ve recovered all of it and then some at the Ipoker £/€ tables, which are an awesome source of value, even if you do get ass-raped on the rake. The software has improved so that it now looks like it was made in around 1997 and I am reliably informed that they should be getting resizable tables in the next release, scheduled for January next year. You have to hand it to Ipoker, they make the Cereus network look cutting-edge in comparison.

Her indoors is due to be out all night tomorrow so I should be able to get in some donkaments for the first time in a while. Hopefully I can run like MI Turtle and win 70% of the tournaments that I enter.

A really weak Man Utd side thrashed West Ham on Saturday (they ended up with one recognised defender in the back four). They didn’t get out of first gear and won at a canter. I have serious concerns over some of the manager’s decisions (albeit that he is doing a job with half the tools and is probably the best man for it) – we keep chopping and changing our back four, surely somebody should have an idea what exactly our best back four is? We also left a clearly injured forward on the pitch for five minutes and the end of the first half, which caused us to concede the first goal – it was absolutely schoolboy and people around me were going mental before the goal went in about Zola not taking action and getting a sub on. I’m not sure what is going to happen but if we stay up it will be based on everyone around us being shit, and not us being good. Rob Green spent most of the second half throwing up on the pitch before being subbed off, I’m not sure if him being sick was a response to illness or the performance of the side as a defensive unit.

On the plus side, Spurs went 2-0 up against Everton, threw away a two goal lead and then missed a last minute penalty. I’m sure Redknapp was twitching like a good ‘un on the touchline when Little Arnold smacked that penalty straight at Howard. I was laughing so hard that I nearly shat myself and it made me forget a little about the defeat the previous day. The other highlight of the weekend was this incident – I’ve always thought Pulis was something of a twat and deserving of a slap.

We’ve had some good news at work which should hopefully help me out financially with the wedding coming up. Nothing is confirmed yet but this should all be ironed out over the next couple of weeks.

Good luck at the tables.

On The Rebound

Like the filthy whore that I am, I found myself utterly unable to resist the lure of rakeback at Ipoker and returned to playing HU there ($50NL). This has gone surprisingly well, due to various things – mainly (1) the terrible standard of play (2) me having improved considerably and (3) me being about 3% of the tiltbox that I was previously thanks to Tommy Angelo. A reg that I simply could not beat previously (not due to running bad, simply because I couldn’t exploit how he was playing) sat with me at two tables – despite not playing many huge pots or flipping at all, I beat him out of two buy-ins – not that this is much of a guide to how well I have been playing, but I felt totally in control of the match for the majority of the time.

I’m hoping that the last two week or so of me playing in a more considered and less tilty fashion and being less results-oriented will continue. I was off work yesterday, recovering from a nasty stomach upset and managed 1700 hands for a $200 profit, which was good for morale.

There has been little else going on – West Ham beat Burnley 5-3 on Saturday. After an hour of devastating attacking football putting us 5-0 ahead, our failings were exposed (i.e. not having a right back) and we looked really shaking at the end. The pluses (Parker, Franco, our attacking football) were largely overshadowed by the negatives (defending, letting a team that we had crushed back into the game, Cole sustaining a nasty knee injury that will leave him out for at least a month).

The FA Cup provided a nice home tie against Arsenal. Sadly I am at a wedding that day so hopefully Sky will move the fixture to the Sunday, thereby inconveniencing everyone else except me. Leeds (Boooooo! Hissssssssss! etc.) will play Manchester United as long as they get past Kettering, which will be the usual warm friendly affair, I’m sure Asterix will be watching the game in Austria in a sedate fashion and not launching beer glasses at the TV whilst shouting “cunt” every time the camera pans to The Imperial Lord Ferg. We have those cunts at home next week (The Mancs, not Leeds, we’ll be playing them in the Championship next season though), although I hold out little hope for a result.

I fucking love FA Cup third round day, it is still my favourite day of the football calendar. This is amazing given how often my own side departs the competition at this stage. I remember as a young boy when we got knocked out by Torquay and John Lyall’s excuse was “it was a warm night for January” which was an absolute pearler, even that cunt Redknapp would struggle to top that one.

I’ll update later on plans for the stag, although I can’t imagine why you lot are so interested in me spending a weekend with a chin-mounted dildo super-glued to my face whilst being heavily intoxicated.

Good luck at the tables.

It’s Oh So Quiet

As you can probably judge from the increased number of blog entries, work is pretty quiet at the moment. With the company being up for sale, a lack of clear price trend in the markets and Christmas approaching, there appears to be something of a “what we have, we hold mentality” going on.

I played some tournaments on Friday. I made the last two tables of the $50 1r 1a on Full Tilt and cashed in the $80k guaranteed on Stars (I was amongst the chip leaders for a while and had 9,000 chips after two hands when people threw chips at me like they were on fire) but failed to win crucial 60/40s. I managed to play most of the evening in a fairly zen state and even managed to type “nh gg” when busting in the 80k when someone shoved J7hh into my AJ and flopped a flush.

I then played some really good HU for a while on Sunday, played for far too long, got tilty and went from $300 profit to a $100 loss fairly quickly and hated myself for it. That said I switched back to Ipoker *spit* on Monday night and played a reasonably long $50NL session without getting tilty at any point.

Outside of work I’ve returned to the gym and an working on being less of a fat cunt. Wonderflop is doing the same thing but has some lame routine involving salads and fruit juice, which sounds a lot like hard work to me. Hopefully he’ll be back on two pizzas for lunch fairly soon to make me feel a lot better about myself.

On a more serious note, I was pleased to see Wayne’s coach confirm that he’d been running like total shit. We regularly go through his sessions and the poor bastard did seem to keep getting violated by either getting massively coolered or sucked out on in every big pot – stuff like this can really knock your confidence so it is reassuring to have a guy that knows (and virtually every source possible confirms that his coach should know).

West Ham contrived to throw a two goal lead away at Hull on Saturday and eventually drew 3-3. Clattenburg awarded a penalty that wasn’t even close to being one and Bullard scored a doubled deflected free kick. We really need to tighten up at the back and concede less from set pieces, but we did look somewhat unlucky. Upson and possibly Behrami are rumoured to be off in January (Upson hasn’t looked all too interested in the last few games) – we can’t continue to sell good players, not replace them and simply hope that everyone around us continues to be shit. Da Costa has been a pleasant surprise at centre-back so far though, so I hope his form continues.

We play Burnley at home next Saturday. I’m looking forward to it – there are four of us going, including a mate of mine who is (I think) Head of Online Gaming at William Hill. He normally has some good poker related gossip, so I’m looking forward to catching up as he lives in Gibraltar and I don’t see him too often. On Sunday I am going for lunch with my parents and Lucy’s parents, which hopefully won’t be too painful.

I spoke to a couple of people at a social gathering on Saturday and sorted out my best man for my wedding. We also agreed on a possible joint stag do in Amsterdam, where I am likely to be hugely violated by my “friends” so two months may not be enough to recover for the wedding.

Good luck at the tables.

GG Shaun Fucking Deeb, We (Alright, I) Hardly Knew You

Trawling TwoPlusTwo yesterday afternoon I was surprised to come across this post from Shaun Deeb. Before I go any further, I should make it clear – I don’t know Shaun and anything that I have picked up here is largely from stuff written on the forums.
When I first read his post I felt slightly sad (which is retarded given that I don’t know the guy) – Shaun is clearly one of the best, if not the best, tournament grinders out there. There was some stuff written by Seabeast a while ago where people were chuntering on about variance he mentioned Shaun and said that to him that it is no surprise that those that work the hardest and treat the game with the most respect seem to have the best results. I guess Shaun’s retirement (at a guess it will be a break and not a retirement, but what do I know?) shows just how playing a heavy schedule day in, day out can take its toll.

I read some stuff from Sheets a while ago where he mentioned that whilst Shaun had his run-ins with people, he gave advice very freely to people he didn’t know. He was always helpful around MTT strategy on TwoPlusTwo and helped out on threads from five dollar players – which I guess underlines his point. HIV mentioned that Deeb had probably taught the MTT community at TwoPlusTwo more than anyone else – I’d tend to agree. He wrote a pretty epic guide to playing the 180s, which was a total gift to low stakes players.

A while back I was watching the EPT Monte Carlo main event final table. They brought Shaun in to commentate. Shaun’s grammar is something of a standing joke around the forums so I was interested to see how he came across. He spoke really well and clearly, and along with that, gave probably the most insightful poker commentary I’ve ever heard which let me know exactly how little I know about the game and dispelled any ideas that people may have about him being some sort of variance monkey.

With the Deeb cock-sucking over, we should get down to the serious subject matter – Deeb related humour. Hopefully you will enjoy the following:

1) Shaun’s live record isn’t up to scratch relative to his online record. Here TwoPlusTwo speculates on what Shaun might be thinking just before he busts out of a live event.

2) Shaun and Derek8 have had something of a rivalry going for the Stars TLB and have a mutual dislike of each other, so it was nice to see Derek8 putting personal differences to one side to congratulate his opponent with a nice private message.

3) Shaun’s grammar on the forums has provided a lot of entertainment, spawning the gimmick account “Deeb Spell Check”and Bond 18’s comment following Shaun’s input on his excellent Things It Took Me A While To Learn series (this is excellent reading for any tournament player and would recommend you bookmark it if you are one). “Thanks for your input Shaun. It only took me 78 hours and two seizures to turn it into understandable English.”

So, whatever Shaun chooses to do in future – I wish him all the best and hope he finds happiness. On the plus side, every MTT player’s expected ROI just jumped up a notch with him not being around any longer.

I Rack Disciprine

Or in English (and to non-South Park viewers), “I lack discipline”. I played a pretty interesting 50NL session with Bart (one of Aero’s other students) which we both recorded to give to Aero. He’s going to use this to make a video where both of our cards can be seen, which should be pretty cool. I finished down around a buy-in to Bart, which wasn’t bad – I felt that he was a marginally better player than me and being down a buy-in was probably fairly reflective. I don’t think we managed to get all in at any point, so basically it was a four hundred hand epic nit-off.

After that I was pretty tired and played some $100NL. I felt myself getting kind of tilty and should have quit but, like an asshat, kept playing and made one blatant tilt call that cost me a full stack. I finished down $200 for the night, hopefully I will learn my lesson, and hopefully I will get to the Tommy Angelo video on quitting sooner rather than later before it costs me too much more money.

I’m considering moving back to Chili next month to benefit from the rakeback there. Hopefully I won’t get such a no-lube violation from their RNG this time. I’m not sure as yet, I like the liquidity of the player pool at Stars but the rakeback is a fairly hefty incentive.

I should be able to get a solid donkament session in on Friday night. Hopefully I can continue my epic run good from the last few sessions I have played and push on through for a top three place in something.

The action at the nosebleeds continues. DogIsHead wrote a pretty awesome blog post which gives some pretty good insight. I don’t necessarily buy into some of the USA vs. Europe stuff but the bits on Isildur’s game are fairly insightful and well worth a read.

The highlight thus far for me hasn’t been the sheer amount of cash changing hands but Ziigmund’s charming request for Isildur to loan him half a million dollars. I’m not sure if he got the money, but his novel approach below is an interesting alternative to putting a suit on and going and asking your bank manger for $500,000 so you can go and degen it up.

"Ziigmund: hey u f ag

Isildur1: what u say

Ziigmund: can u lend me 500

Ziigmund: back in 2 hours

Isildur1: ??"

The World Cup play-offs concluded last night. Thierry Henry proved that you can take the boy out of Arsenal but you can’t take Arsenal out of the boy with his handball that lead to the winning goal. I don’t buy all of the nice guy stuff that Match Of The Day and the rest portray, I still remember seeing a young Henry waving the imaginary card at Upton Park when one of our players dared to foul one of his team mates. I’m no Ireland fan but I’d rather them in the finals than France – they would have taken a load of support and are clearly a weaker team than France.

West Ham are away at Hull this weekend. I really wanted to go but we have a big do with a load of friends lined up in the afternoon. It is a relegation six-pointer, I’m hoping we catch a few breaks and defend a bit tighter than we have. On the plus side, Carlton Goal has recovered from injury and will be fit, whilst Phil Brown’s sun tan will continue to glow from the opposition bench. I’ve said it before – he has too much tan and too much jewellery for a bloke and reminds me of a bit of a Northern Alan Pardew. I wonder if Phil will follow in Alan’s footsteps and go roaring up various… I’d better end here to avoid legal action.

Good luck at the tables.

Value Range

Stuff has been fairly uneventful (for me, at least) on the poker side. I’ve played more heads-up, with some considerable improvements to me not being an epic tiltbox (more on this later). Due to her indoors being around a lot, I haven’t played any donkaments at all. FTOPS and stuff are going on right now, and congrats to Max (HotKarlMC) for his second place in the PLO event.

Well done also to Joe Cade for winning the little heard of WSOP main event. This was all the more significant for me backing him at 14/1 – thanks for the seventy-odd quid Joe, your mega gazillions that you picked up are insignificant in comparison.

As you are I’m sure aware, the action in the high-stakes cash games on Full Tilt has been frenzied this week, with Swedish newcomer Isildur1 tearing it up and beating Durrrr out of what looks to be in excess of $5m. This can be read about over on 2+2 and at multiple other places. I won’t try and describe what’s going on – much like what’s in Cameron Diaz’s knickers, I’m really interested in what is in there and think about it a lot, but I have no first hand experience and therefore am probably unqualified to comment.

One guy on 2+2 had drawn up a list of big winners/losers at the high stakes games in the last couple of years. The extent to which the French-Canadian bloke that recently went into space has funded these games is pretty incredible. It is pretty impressive to see a new guy (or new account, whichever) come in and shake things up and I’m sure the level of railtardery has gone up a notch over there in the last week or so.

Back to the infinitely less interesting heads-up that I have been playing. I think my game has come on quite a bit, although I’m still unsure in a lot of spots. However, on the recommendation of Wonderflop, I have started watching the Tommy Angelo “Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment”. I’m only as far as episode three, but it really is pretty incredible. For anyone that tilts at all (and that’s probably most of us) – do yourself a favour, sign up for a month at Deuces Cracked and watch it. You’ll recoup your money in no time – it is that good.



Thanks also to Yorskshire Pud for his recent comments on this blog. Matt’s excellent work has been given the obligatory link over on the right and hopefully his write up will get some additional traffic through here. Obviously the write-up didn’t come without a bribery, so Matt – the hamper will be with you for Christmas. However, the economic climate is harsh, therefore the contents will be exclusively from Tesco’s value range. Thank me later. ;)

Elsewhere there has been little going on. In-ger-lund lost a friendly to Brazil and got fairly well outclassed. On the football – an apology to Alan Wiley, who refereed the West Ham vs. Everton game well last week. My thoughts on Wiley are well documented (if you haven’t read previous posts: I think he is a thundercunt) but he did his best to let a reasonably physical game flow and didn’t book players mindlessly, without ever letting things get out of hand.

Good luck at the tables.

For Sale

Well, it has been an interesting week. I had a couple of deep runs on Friday night as my good run continues, coming 7th in the Stars $20 1r 1a for $1.2k (I went totally card dead at the last two tables and ended up busting shoving JQ into AK). I busted around 30th in the FTP $28k (the field was 1,500 runners), getting QQ in vs KK blind vs. blind. I also cashed in the $129 bounty on FTP. HU cash games have sucked, so I shan’t dwell on that.

My horse has also been running good, clearing all his make-up and paying out a substantial profit due to two scores on consecutive nights. Well done to him, he thoroughly deserves it after a pretty long rough run (he tends to play the larger fields so I guess its no surprise



Elsewhere West Ham were 2-0 up against Sunderland and in control, Sunderland pulled one back and then had a man sent off before half time. From this position we somehow managed to draw after getting a good going over in the second half. We’re at home to Villa and Everton tomorrow and on Sunday, and really need a minimum of four points although I can’t see us getting them.


Elsewhere my employer has been put up for sale by our 51% owner, RBS. It kind of leaves things up in the air for a multitude of reasons, however I can’t see either the business being sold or me being laid off in a hurry. I’m on a three month notice period minimum so whatever, even though it is going to be a total clusterfuck as far as the business is concerned unless things are handled well (which they won’t be, if past evidence is anything to go by).

Good luck at the tables.

Carlton Goal

I squeezed in some more donkamenting last night and managed a respectable fifth place in the Party Super Monday $162 buy-in for $2.2k. I thought I played fine and the generally shit standard of play (even from some players with healthy levels of profit) bodes well for tournament poker, at least on Euro sites, remaining profitable for quite a while. Overall I’ve had a nice little run of late, picking up some solid scores and renewing my confidence in my MTT game.

I have played very little heads-up, apart from a 400 hand session against a total lunatic which ended when he quit me after getting over 200bb in vs. my second nut flush with a lower flush and OESFD. My results have been absurdly good so I’m due a pretty awful run soon, but I shall enjoy this whilst it continues.

The stag weekend was a lot of fun. It was the usual shit – drinking with some quad biking and clay pigeon shooting. I didn’t know many people on there but they were a good bunch of lads and the wedding should be a good laugh.

I got a lift back on Sunday and went to the football in the afternoon. Having gone 2-0 down (both goals down to soft defending), I was expecting fuck all. Fair play to Zola, he made two substitutions that changed the game. Hines was very lively and prepared to run at players and Diamanti displayed plenty of enthusiasm (which appeared to rub off onto his team mates) and his usual quality delivery from set pieces. Cole was (again) top quality and must have impressed Capello. Once we started having a go at them in the second half the crowd got going and we had them rattled for a while. The silence from their support was also particularly enjoyable. Hopefully we can use this as a bit of a springboard as things really haven’t been looking good.

I probably won’t be playing all too much in the next couple of weeks, although I have a lesson with Aero tonight. Good luck at the tables.

Cheese?

I’m going to be needing some to go with my whine. And it is a totally unjustified whine really, just so you know. And I’m not so much pissed off about it, just slightly deflated. And I don’t really even have any right to be, and I know that.

Anyway, last night I played a bunch of donkaments having stolen out of work half an hour early. I was in two minds whether to play the $50 1r 1a on FTP, but decided to anyway as the field is modestly sized, which I like. I ended up final tabling that and coming 7th for a shade under $1k, which is nice. I was down to < 1bb in this at one point when I called a 20bb open shove from the CO with TT and lost to KJ, which is a totally standard spot.

Elsewhere (and here’s the whinge) I was deep in the FTP 163, 18k for 1st place, approaching the bubble. I get KK all in vs AK when we’re into the money for a massive chip lead, obv the guy rivers and ace. So down to 20bb and in the middle of the pack, I open QQ UTG+1, 20bb stack in the small blind (who I suspected was loose/spewy) jams (I’m never light here, virtually never folding and have him dominated a bunch of the time when he has me dominated never), I snap vs his KQs, he flops a straight and turns a flush and that’s me. So I’m left in the $55, into the money, in decent shape (20th out of 50 or so), I lose KQ < KT, AJ < 99, 99 < AQ and I’m out of that as well.

Here’s what is really disgusting – my attitude. Over the last week I’ve played the best tournament poker of my life, by quite a long way. I turned a decent profit in the last week, and last night alone. I should be happy – I have absolutely no right to complain. Guys that play more regularly than me go through this day in, day out. As a tournament poker player, in fact as a poker player in general – stuff like this is totally standard, and when you’re turning a profit of any kind you really can’t grumble.

One of my pet hates is people that make money playing poker and complain about how bad they run. I mean, we all run bad (or perceive ourselves as running bad) at times. A lot of the time. And I vent occasionally (which is basically all I am doing above) but I try to keep a lid on it, it isn’t productive and is about as fun for the recipient (who also has to pretend to care) of the venting as having their nuts beaten with a steak tenderiser.

Cliff Notes: I’m a cunt

With that out the way, there’s (yet another) multi-accounting scandal going on with Bryn Kenney and Lildolhem (and others) brewing. I quite enjoy stuff like this, providing that people keep up the number of drama bombs to ensure stuff remains interesting.

I’m off on a stag do this weekend to Bournemouth. I’m looking forward to it, my liver isn’t.

GL at the tables.

Shine a Light

Right, I have quite a lot to say, mostly of little consequence, so I apologise if this post seems badly thought-out. It is badly thought-out, in fact it is barely thought-out at all, but whatever.

Firstly – pokerz. With Lucy being away I’ve played a solid amount of tournaments over the last weekend, and probably played as well as I can remember. I basically cut out the number of “I’m beat here but fuck it, I call, er, pot odds” errors that are a hallmark of my game and picked a couple of nice spots for bluffs. To be honest, if I want to keep up playing at the $100 buy-in level it was something I needed to do as I simply was making a lot of mistakes and not giving myself a chance by even having a seat late on by making sloppy mistakes and playing badly when deep-stacked.

Results-wise I went super close to a score on Full Tilt, making the final three tables of the Saturday $75 6 max (13th) and making the last two tables of the Sunday 20r and $75 later tournament. I was pretty gutted not to final table one, but then came 4th in the early Stars $109 for $2.3k on Monday.

I was slightly annoyed not to win the $109 – I busted for what would have been a huge chip lead, getting 77 with a heart all in vs AK no heart pre. The flop was 3 low hearts, sadly he binked one of his 4 remaining outs on the turn and I couldn’t river him.

I chatted to HotKarlMC for a while on MSN afterwards. He’s a cool guy, always helpful around the forums and it is always nice to meet new people through poker. It never ceases to surprise me how an essentially individualistic game has such a big sense of community associated with it.

Heads-up has gone pretty well. I’ve been playing at 100NL, which has been going absurdly well (I have only played a couple of regs at 100NL). I have a two hour lesson tonight, reviewing a session I taped on Camtasia from yesterday, which I’m hoping will be productive. It was really hard to find suitable opposition to video (I wanted to two-table someone) – basically I got refused/quit by at least three people at 50NL when I tried to two table them, which makes you believe what a massive bunch of bum-hunting wankers everyone is. The guy I eventually played I lost about four buy-ins to, which is fine, its probably better for the purposes of the lesson than me beating someone soundly.

One of the other things I love about poker is when somebody posts something that is so retarded you wonder if they are levelling. I actually played with Jorgo for a while on Sunday, he played a couple of pots pretty badly – this isn’t to say that he may or may not be a good player, but I wouldn’t want to be selling my fucking car to fund what are likely going to be losses, especially at the higher buy-ins. So, to conclude, for the good of the MTT community - sell the car, you don't need it, Belgium is pretty small, you can probably walk around it in an hour.

The football has been lame, we’re looking like strong relegation candidates unless we sort ourselves out. I shan’t talk any more on this subject as it is depressing. I was delighted to see Alan Wiley fucking up (again) at the Man City vs. Wigan game. Another week, another mistake – keep it up Al. I also laughed heartily at the Darren Bent goal against Liverpool, mainly because it was some dopey Scouse cunt’s balloon that caused it. The kid that knocked that balloon onto the pitch will probably be stabbed at school, but that will mean one less future criminal on the streets. Joke.

If you care, at the moment the Hoop jukebox favourites are:
The Beach Boys - Sloop John B
Stereolab - French Disko (Apologies for two seconds of Terry Christian at the start).
Spiritualized - Shine a Light
The Wedding Present - Getting Nowhere Fast
Pixies - Debaser

I went to the gym on Sunday. It confirmed what I thought I knew – I’m fucking unfit. On that bombshell I’ll leave you to it. Good luck at the tables.

A Musical Interlude

There has been little going on poker-wise in my life of late. I’ve switched my play to Stars and moved to $100nl, which is largely the same ($50nl and $100nl fish are much the same, but the latter are more profitable). Due to various reasons I’ve had to scrub my last two lessons, but am hoping to get a two hour one in next week.

Otherwise the WSOP Europe and EPT London have been and gone. Thankfully Teddy Sheringham missed the WSOPE final table, which prevents me from breaking out into a rant about what a thundercunt he is on here. The EPT Main Event was won by one of the 2+2 guys (his name escapes me at the moment), so congratulations to him.

Football has been fairly quiet, with England losing their qualifier (and 100% record) in Ukraine after a Ferdinand defensive error lead to Rob Green being sent off during the opening minutes. I feel for Green, who looks like he will lose the goalkeeper’s jersey to David James, but he hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory for club or country this season.

Otherwise, I have attended a couple of gigs of late – The Pixies and Spiritualized. Both were excellent in their own way, although The Pixies (which I wasn’t overly excited by beforehand) were absolutely superb and, like My Bloody Valentine last year, completely disproved my theory that old bands getting back together and touring was a crap idea because they would never be that good.

In the forthcoming weeks a bunch of my friends are due to produce offspring, thereby making me feel even older. Good luck to all of them, I’ll enjoy my lie-ins for a little while longer.

Lucy is off to Poland this weekend to visit relatives. This should give me some good opportunities to slob about, play poker, watch football and generally remember what my life was like before she moved in. I’d like to have gone to Poland myself but can’t take the time off work and am kind of looking forward to some time on my own.

Treading Water

I’ve been feeling like total shit the last few days and haven’t been in work. On the plus side, I’ve played a bunch of heads-up. After dropping a bunch of money on Chilli (against the worst players ever) I’ve decided I’m through with playing there and have switched to Stars. Since then things have gone a lot better, I’ve played my A game a lot more often and my results have been a lot better. I’ve done 10k hands for the month already, which is pretty pleasing, and have nipped the habit of paying off obvious value bets in the bud.

I also had probably my best lesson yet last week with Aero. I’m not sure why, some of the things he said basically clicked and I think I have come on leaps and bounds in terms of how to play against certain types of players (most of which is really obvious but I was too retarded to work it out for myself).

West Ham turned in a terrible performance against Fulham on Sunday. Having gone 1-0 up and seen Fulham have a man sent off in the first half, we were comfortably in control. We then conceded a penlatly 1 minute into the second half (to me it was six of one, half a dozen of the other, but Upson should have known better) and then Green flapped at a corner to make it 2-1. We were lucky to equalise with a deflected Stanislas effort in injury time but our second half display was dreadful. To me we really lack a leader and need to get some support for Cole, who is doing a superb job up front on his own and already has four goals this season despite being forced to feed off scraps. It is going to be a long season and if you are a betting man I urge you to take a look at our price to go down – anything longer than 4/1 is probably generous and should be strongly considered.

Following my comments on Alan Wiley in the last entry on this blog, I was amused to see the Imperial Lord Ferg laying into the man that he was sharing a joke with a couple of weeks ago. Remarkably, I also noticed Wiley referring to Wayne Rooney as “Wazza” during this match. Whilst I fully agree with the “Respect” campaign, how the fuck can referees expect to be treated with any respect when they are too busy trying to be matey with celebrity footballers instead of doing their fucking job properly and trying to show some authority?

Football constantly harps on about rugby and how referees are treated in that game – I don’t see rugby referees calling Matt Dawson “Daws” or whatever in the vague hope of getting some free tickets from him for Celebrity Cunt Cooking Factor or whatever. Rugby referees call players by their number - which I like, as it sets out the idea of who exactly is in charge. Perhaps if the referees started to get their own house in order then some of this stuff might improve? I don’t blame them for the way things are, but they don’t help themselves sometimes. That said, with Graham fucking Poll as head of referees, I don’t hold out much hope.

Good luck at the tables.

"I don’t know who the **** Shaun Beeb is"

After being anally violated by both my own bad play and the IPoker rng over the last six weeks, I ran absolutely nauseatingly good HU this weekend. I was up around $500 yesterday and $700 or so in total for the weekend, they must have read the instant message I sent to Wayne where I launched my toys out of the pram and said I was done playing on Chilli due to how bad I ran on there. Long may it continue. I have another lesson with Aero tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to.

Donkamenting last week started how it ended. Start:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=13217854&postcount=191

End: Deep in the 20r on FTP my internet connection goes missing in action. I find out I came 16th. GG me.

West Ham good rolled by Liverpool on Saturday. I thought we did ok but they had a world-class forward and it showed. Zavon Hines did well and caused their defenders all sorts of problems. I’m not convinced by the new Italian fella – he looks about as fit as I am but delivers a good dead ball. F London Underground/The FA, who decided to shut all the tube lines and play the game anyway, which meant I didn’t get to go and had to listen to Chris Waddle talk utter bollocks on ESPN, the thick Geordie cunt.

Otherwise the Mancs beat City in the derby in the sixth week of injury time. I was sickened to see Ferg sharing a joke with Alan Wiley (4th official) afterwards, particularly after Wiley disallowing our goal up at Wigan due to him deciding it was the end of the first half. Wiley – you are a disgusting piece of shit, wankers like you and Graham Poll explain why everyone hates referees, laughing it up with Ferguson like you are great mates when he thinks you are a turd and will only entertain you in conversation because your mate on the pitch can’t read a watch. You were probably beaten up at school and I hope the chef is a City fan and wanks into your Chinese the next time you order a take-away, you cunt. Howard Webb also failed to award the most blatant penalty to Spurs against Chelsea which cost them a chance to equalise. Still, there’s no sympathy where they are concerned, hopefully Redknapp twitched another five years off his miserable lifespan when that happened.

The WCOOP main event day 1 ended today. When I look through the thread for the event on 2+2, I realise just how gross donkaments are. I have no idea how these guys play these things for those stakes (backers, I guess). But when I see guys like this, it reminds me of what great value tournament poker can be:

16 pages, but great entertainment

Oh, and I’m 34 this week. How did I get this old?

Par For The Course

I’ve been lazy of late in terms of updating the blog. I’ve thought about doing so, then have decided against it as I have had little to say of any interest.

I’ve done no donkamenting to speak of recently, but have played 5.5k hands of HU. I am down, although my AIEV is modestly positive. I’ll play well for a long period, then do something retarded and titly and hand over a load of hard earned winnings. Being 7 BI below AIEV for the month hasn’t helped, although I feel a lot happier with my game than I have in a while.

Wayne (Wonderflop) continues to do a lot of lucksacking recently at $100NL, which is good news. In all seriousness it looks like hard work is paying off, hopefully the trend will continue.

Otherwise I have got quite frustrated with wedding planning. Everything that comes up seems to lead to me getting pissed off with her indoors, and at a guess she gets pissed off with me as well. She has proposed a half-hourly meeting each week to discuss wedding plans and ensure things get done, which is seriously fucking annoying as was kind of planning on breezing through the forthcoming months and not getting too involved.

West Ham lost 1-0 at Wigan this weekend, after having this goal ruled out for the end of the first half (when the ball strikes Cole’s head is when the ref blows up). We were otherwise pretty poor as far as I can gather, although the new Italian fella hit the post with a cracking effort.

http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/3408374/

Stuff like this happens all the time, but it is absolutely no surprise to me to see Wiley make an enormous fuck up when he can simply blow up as the free-kick is taken. Is he going to blow up if Rooney rounds the keeper at Old Trafford and is about to roll the ball into an empty net? Of course not. I’ve never forgiven the cunt for the spineless display of refereeing he produced when Arsenal came to our place a couple of years ago and he basically handed the whistle to Fabregas and Flamini and let them get on with it.

Otherwise I watched “This Is England” on DVD over the weekend. It’s a pretty awesome film and captures quite a lot from the era fairly well. The kid that plays the lead character is amazing. It turns out that he had never acted before and wanted a fiver just for turning up for the audition. Nice to see the scally is alive and well.

We also had a presentation from the new CEO at work the other day. It was fairly standard stuff, the company is doing ok although a lot of shit still needs sorting regarding our integration at with the bank before we can operate as a coherent unit and not miss out.

I have no plans this week. Due to social arrangements I might have to give the West Ham vs. Liverpool game a miss next Saturday. Thursday her indoors has said she might be out for the night which clearly means donkamenting.

Stop Press - A Win!

Warning: upbeat post in progress. Look away now if you are expecting any of my usual whiny shit.

Her indoors was out on Wednesday so I decided to opt in for some donkamenting. After a recent slump I’ve decided to move down in limits and primarily stick to the below $100 buy ins, with the odd $163 thrown in.

Anyway, I shipped the $20r on Party for $2.8k, which was a welcome boost to morale. I came into the final table around 4/10, but with the Party structure this doesn’t really mean a lot. I then snap called a reshove with JJ when my opponent had KK, flopped quad jacks, and, in the words of Francis Begbie “after that, well, the game was mine.” Basically I had a pretty big chip lead at this point and proceeded to abuse the fuck out of people in the remaining shovefest as people are calling way too tight in these situations and simply trying to move up the pay ladder.
I also managed a creditable 17th in the $20 1r 1a on Stars. I was short and pretty card dead for the last 50 hands and busted shoving 55 over a limper’s KJ, who snap called. I played a little HU cash last night and have felt a lot more comfortable with my game of late.

It is international week on the football side this weekend, so I shall be hoping that the West Ham players involved come through unscathed. On deadline day we sold James Collins (for a pretty decent price) and addressed the striker shortage by signing, er, nobody, and coming out with some waffle about how a deal didn’t come off. I await the arrival of Mark Viduka, who is out of contract. Our accounts were (finally) released for the previous financial year and showed an enormous loss – congratulations to the Icelanders here, your reign was an utter fuck up.

Crap on your desk, dawg

I played a bunch of tournaments this weekend, with limited success. I managed a couple of min-cashes on Friday and Saturday night. On Sunday I won a small (60 man) $40 buy in on Party for $888. Not a reason to pop out the champagne corks but better than a kick in the nuts. At the same time I was in this I was down to the last two tables of the Stars $33/$10k guaranteed. With 14 players left I got all in with KK for the chip lead – unfortunately my opponent had AA and I failed to improve. Clearly Stars can suck my hairy nutsack – I felt I played pretty well all weekend and I could have done without the standard Poker Stars ass-fucking that I get every time I log on there and am seriously tempted to go to the Isle of Man and lay a steaming turd on the CEO’s desk as a token of my appreciation.

Heads-Up has been bad. I pretty much suck and need to do some work on my game, big time.

West Ham drew away at Blackburn this weekend. Tuesday against Millwall was a lot more exciting – massively over-hyped by the press and hugely under-policed. The last few times we have played them there have been more police than fucking supporters and it has passed off without much trouble. This time the police were utterly unprepared and outnumbered.

I’m not condoning what happened, but am pissed off at the media coverage. The things that need addressing are:
1) The two sets of people hate each other – like many other clans and tribes do across the world. You’ll never change it – accept it.
2) If there was a riot at Notting Hill Carnival people would (rightly) look at the police. Nobody would dare suggest banning the Carnival, we’re just too PC. And there are lots of stabbings etc. every year at the Carnival (I pick this as an example as it happened this weekend and I know a copper that used to work on it) – the statistics simply get massaged so that certain incidents aren’t attributed to the Carnival, when they blatantly are.
3) Millwall were not blameless in all of this – unless I imagined them launching plastics seats from their end and also imagined the monkey noises made at Carlton Cole.
4) The pitch invasions were just that. Nothing more. There was a pitch invasion at the Palace vs Man City game, which wasn’t front page news.
5) The press described it as “the worst violence in 30 years”. It wasn’t even the worst in the last year. I could go on all day about the various lies reported by the press but I can’t be bothered.

Next week is International week so should be quiet. It is the transfer deadline day today – we have brought in an Italian mentalist with tattoos and wild hair (Brescia) and some reserve defender from Fiorentina, shipped out Savio and look to be moving James Collins on to Villa. We could do with another forward as well but I dare say we won’t be getting one.
Adios, bishes.

It's Worse Than That, He's Shit Jim

Disclaimer: I don’t like Star Trek, despite the quote.

I haven’t played a bunch over the last week but I had my second lesson last night. Basically, I suck much harder than I thought. This isn’t a problem, I’d rather find this out now. The lesson was pretty cool, Aero explains things really well – he made a point about three betting which was so blatantly obvious that it seems retarded that I didn’t notice it before. Anyway, efforts must be redoubled and I basically need to work a lot harder.

I haven’t played many (virtually any, in fact) tournaments of late. I was reading through a sweat thread for a guy that is on an absurd heater who was deep in an Omaha tournament. As one guy commented in the thread:

There is no such thing as an awful Omaha high play....its either....

OMG I GOTS COOLERDZ!!!

or

OMG I MISSED MY OUTS!!!!

This is true IMO. ;)

West Ham were a bit unlucky to lose to Spurs on Sunday. We fucked up for both goals but matched them pretty well over the pitch and scored an absolute screamer to take the lead. Still, fuck them, Cole gave King and Bassong (who didn’t look all that) a pretty tough afternoon and given the resources we had available I was pretty happy with the performance. Clattenburg, without actually influencing the result, looked (like most referees) a man completely out of his depth and should probably be demoted forthwith.

A couple of really fucked-up things happened at the club this week. Jack Collison’s dad dying on the way to the Spurs game was pretty nasty, but the situation with Calum Davenport was really horrible. The Guardian has what appears to be a fairly factual version of events here, I’ll leave the moralising to the forums, which do this in a far more hysterical and entertaining fashion than I ever could.

Anyway, with the warm-up against Spurs over with, the more serious matter of the game against Millwall is this evening. We haven’t beaten them since the early 90’s and they are massive cunts, so we deserve a result. I can only imagine we’ll rest a few although I can only imagine that Cole will play as we can’t really go into this game with a couple of spotty kids up front.

Anyway, good luck at the tables.

A Jelly Doughnut?

After weeks of messing about I’ve finally pulled the trigger and got a coach for HUNL. I’ve messed about long enough and looked at a few options and probably should have done it long ago, although I’m glad that I took the time selecting someone that I thought was right for me. I had my first lesson last night and would summarise as follows:
1) I have got the right person coaching me. He comes across as smart individual and a cool guy and an easy person to get along with and his methods are somewhat more subtle than those of Sgt Hartman, pictured above.
2) It went a lot better than I could have hoped - I learnt a lot, and also learnt that I’m quite bad.
3) He explains himself really well and has a clear thought process. His approach to the game is exactly what I need. He is also patient and managed to go throughout the whole session without saying “this is the most standard spot ever and you’ve managed to fuck it up, you don’t need coaching, you need a lobotomy”.
4) His coaching is more than just “you give me $100 and you get an hour of my time”. He has a genuine interest in his students doing well.

His name is Aero1441 (although his parents chose the somewhat more orthodox name of Erwin) and can be contact via 2+2, where he does a lot of excellent work on the forums. He’s a Dutch guy and everything went so well that I managed to avoid mentioning Ronald Koeman’s cynical shirt-tug on David Platt during our session. He also has the dubious honour of me linking up his blog to here, which may reduce his street cred by several notches.

He’s also going to ship me $500 for the positive review that I have just given, although this may be something of a waste as nobody ever reads this. Joke, obv.

Otherwise the poker hasn’t really gone well. I’m still running badly/playing worse, which is bad for me but good for the community. On the plus side, Wonderflop (Wayne) is doing pretty well having moved up to $100NL. I’m pleased for him as he has had a bit of a rough year in various ways and hopefully has sorted his game out and will be on the up and up from here.

I don’t really have a lot else going on. I might be going to buy a car this weekend. I’m not looking forward to it as I know nothing about cars, which is probably understandable given that I have never owned one. Given the situation with my parents I really need to have one now, so I’m going to have to bite the bullet and hand over the money. We’re also looking at buying the freehold for our block of flats, which is even more boring than buying a car, so I’ll stop there.

The Premiership kicked off last weekend. West Ham won 2-0 away at Wolves, which is a good way to start. Uncertainty continues regarding transfers but there is a strong rumour about us selling James Collins for £5m to Stoke. Whilst I like Collins for his attitude, he makes a lot of mistakes and the price being mentioned is too good to turn down, providing the money is spent on a forward.

We take on Spurs on Sunday, who beat Liverpool very impressively on the opening day, and then extend yet more East End hospitality to Millwall in the Carling Cup on Tuesday. Some poor bastard on one of the West Ham forums is livid as he has caught swine flu and misses both games, and has sworn revenge on the guy that sneezed on him on the tube.

Wasps 1 Guests 0

I’ll summarise poker first and then move on. I played around 10 donkaments on Friday. I felt I played pretty well for the most part and had a pretty big stack in the 20 1r 1a on Stars before managing to run AA into JJ on a T hi flop where the guy binked a J on the river and then AA into 66 where the guy turned a straight. Being the calm, rational individual that I am, I was absolutely fucking livid having managed to lose with KK vs. KJ on a J hi flop in the 109 on Stars where I had tripled up early and was going well and only just refrained from a standard TCarnage doomswitch email to Stars. J

Anyway, enough of the positives. The HU has been going terribly. I haven’t played well, managed to run KK into AA twice yesterday and am suffering from tilt of Hellmuthian proportions. I have been in touch with a guy that I want to coach me so hopefully can get something going with him fairly soon.

TBH I hate writing lame stuff like I have above. The game is a tough one and if I don’t like it I can go and take up something else. All I can do is:
1) Be less of a pussy and quit fucking moaning like it hasn’t happened to anyone else ever.
2) Try and improve and iron out the (many) errors in my game.

Otherwise I was at a wedding on Saturday. The reception was at the Groom’s family home, which was an absolutely massive gaff outside Cambridge with gardens to boot. It was a pretty cool day, the only downer being Cambridge having the largest wasp population in the country, and they were angry cunts as well, and managed to sting multiple people. There was some sort of dual Vicar/Priest thing going on in the church (she’s Catholic, he’s C of E), it was probably the best crossover collaboration thing I’ve since Run DMC and Aerosmith decided to make a record together.

Given the way that I am pissing through poker funds I have strongly considered making a withdrawal. The longer life goes on I’ve decided I need a car, having never owned one before, so I might as well use some poker money to buy it. It should be a cheap one as I haven’t driven for over 15 years so probably will be a complete liability behind the wheel. Watch out pedestrians.

The football season kicks off next week. Surprisingly, nobody seems prepared to either loan or give us for free a striker of any repute, so we’ll all have to wish really hard that the one we have doesn’t get injured. We lost 1-0 to Napoli in our last friendly, but supposedly didn’t play that badly. More importantly the Napoli fans did what Italian fans are best at – attacked anyone that didn’t look like was up for a fight and they had outnumbered by at least five to one. A 15 year old kid got stabbed as well, which all seems fairly par for the course after the charming reception we got in Palermo. Hooliganism, the English disease, for sure.

The Charity Shield was reasonably entertaining, although I was less than pleased at the performance of Ben “he’s Manchester United’s reserve, therefore England’s number one” Foster. The Mancs played some lovely football at times and Nani looked good until he popped his shoulder out (alright, he looked like a 1980s Bronx pimp, but he played well).

Retard Frog-Squirrel

At the end of each day I quite often watch an episode or two of South Park. I enjoy the childish humour, particularly at the end of a long day. The other night I think I saw possibly my favourite sketch. It doesn’t really need much introduction, except that it features Mr (well, Miss) Garrison trying to explain the theory of evolution, despite her disagreement with it. The rest of the episode is notable for Cartman’s attempts to freeze himself until the release of the Nintendo Wii is too painful and Ms Garrison flinging poo at Richard Dawkins.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5027481876893938900

Otherwise, it looks like an American guy by the name of Clarke Hunt is interested in buying West Ham. Given that he is unlikely to reduce our transfer budget below its current level of zero, this can only be good news. Hunt is the nephew of a guy called Bunker Hunt, who made himself famous (and busto) by attempting to corner the silver market in the 1970s.

To be honest the whole situation is really fucking boring but I would like to get the thing resolved as the club’s ownership was clearly shoved into an asset management company with a view to being sold at some point, so sooner seems preferable to later. Some of the internet cunts that should know about these things seem to be hinting that there is some truth behind it. So with American owners I guess it is out with Bovril and the romance of the FA Cup and in with big pointy foam hands, foot-long hot dogs and cheerleaders.

HU has been an unmitigated disaster this month. In an attempt to stop the rot I think I am set on a coach that I found through 2+2. He’s a Dutch guy, I like his forum posts. There were a variety of choices, he appealed for a number of reasons – including that he seems like a likeable guy, he seems to have a sound theoretical approach (which I really want for myself and is key to being any good), he’s in my time zone and he (and his blog) indicates that he does the coaching for more than just money (he indicated he was available for help “out of hours” as well). After the weekend I’ll try and get a session or two booked up with him.

I’ve also being looking at some 6 max cash game hands for Wayne. I have enjoyed them as they tax the grey matter, although they provide an opportunity for public humiliation as Wayne’s new coach has largely disagreed with me on every hand thus far, which probably explains why I have always found cash games bad for the bankroll. More importantly, Wayne’s new coach (linky on the right) seems like the man for the job and hopefully he’ll have Wayne moving up in no time.

I’m at a wedding this weekend. Her indoors is going down on the Friday night, which means I will spend the evening sitting in darkened room playing donkaments.

Bobby Hundreds

I managed to play around 25 donkaments this weekend. They largely ended up with the familiar not running or playing well routine (with which most donkamenters are familiar with, apart possibly from Breeth), but squeaked into three cashes which redeemed it from total disaster. I managed to finish 9th in the FTP $18k on Sunday morning – I wasn’t all too happy about my bust out hand but I was the shortest stack at the table and it can probably be justified.

I played pretty well during the tournament (including a sick 3 bet pre flop and then double barrel on the flop and turn), which was very weak in general and confirmed that there is still a lot of value in tournament poker. Dreday from PXF was on my left for a fairly long period, which kind of cramped by style. I 4 bet bluffed him at one point and we eventually got it in BVB with my QQ vs AK for a monster pot, where I held. The worst thing was that I felt like total shit throughout and promptly went and vomited right after I busted.

The HU hasn’t been going so well, but I’ll look to kick that off again soon and probably get some coaching. I tilted off an unholy amount of monies to a terrible French guy in the small hours of Saturday when tilted. Hopefully the rakeback I’m due should compensate somewhat.

This post on Andy Ward’s excellent blog put me straight after I was feeling somewhat down about the game this weekend. It also mentions Isabelle Mercier (no pictures though, to my lasting disappointment).

http://secretsoftheamateurs.blogspot.com/2009/07/unreasonable-expectations.html

Having ditched PXF last month, I signed up for a trial at PokerSavvy. The videos that I have watched there have been a breath of fresh air and piss all over most of PXF’s content.

Aside from poker and nausea this weekend, I saw “Man On Wire” on TV. For those that haven’t heard of it, it’s a documentary/film about a French tightrope walker that during the 1970s thought that putting a big wire between the two World Trade Centre towers and then walking across it would be a really good idea. The whole thing is absolutely awesome and the guy’s utter fearlessness and dedication to pursuing his art (which I guess is what it is) is amazing.

West Ham’s pre-season plods along. We got rolled by Spurs in China (we were lucky to get away with losing by a single goal and, more worryingly, they looked way fitter than we did) and then beat the stiffs of China’s best team a day or so later. We’re still horribly short up front and it looks like Upson will be sold to fund some firepower up front. I’ll be sad to see him go (he’s probably our best and most consistent player), but Danny Gabbidon (who was magnificent for us prior to his injury problems) may provide an adequate replacement. Dyer also put in a decent shift against the Chinese side, although he did flag towards the end. I can’t see us getting near the top half next year, but if we avoid relegation I’ll be well pleased.

It’s the last day of the third Ashes test today. A draw looks favourite but England do have an outside chance of a win if they can grab a couple of early wickets.

A quick hello to Amatay, who has been linked up over here à. He’s a West Ham fan and lives fairly close to where I was brought up, and therefore should be respected. The only reason I may change this opinion is if (i) he eats babies in his spare time or (ii) he is related to Harry Redknapp. Him taking a look here has probably increased my readership by 33%, making this one of the hippest and fastest growing sites on the internet that doesn’t feature naked ladies. Or something.

Bobby Robson popped his clogs the other day. I’ll sign off with some amusing Robby Bobson related stories and leave the mawkish stuff to The Daily Mail.

“Journalist to Shola Ameobi: Do you have a nickname at the club?
Ameobi: Not really, no.
J: So what do the lads call you?
SA: Shola.
J: And what about Sir Bobby? What does he call you?
SA: Carl Cort.”

“Bobby is at a book-signing in Newcastle. Little kid gets Sir Bobby to sign his book after queuing for ages. 'Have you signed a lot of books today, Sir Bobby?' 'Oh, hundreds, son. Absolutely hundreds'

Kid walks off with his signed book, and glances down at the inscription; 'Best Wishes, Bobby Hundreds.'”

“Gathering the England team at the airport before they went abroad for a friendly, Sir Bobby got into a bit of a flap when he realised Peter Reid wasn't in the departure lounge. After a frantic search yielded nothing, he asked one of the coaching staff, 'Where's Reidy got to? We can't leave without him!' 'Er, you didn't pick him, boss...'”

“And the time he got in a lift with Bryan Robson, turned to him and said: "Morning Bobby." "Err no boss, I'm Bryan YOU'RE Bobby."”

LOL Hachem

Last things first – a few people that I know from teh pokerz have been fairly supportive with the situation with my Dad. The kind words and wishes I have had from people have actually been pretty amazing. Anyway, the news was fairly positive – the existing tumour has shrunk and the pain in his lower back is almost certainly a disc problem, for which he is receiving physiotherapy. All of this news is about as good as we could have hoped for.

Thus far this month I have played around 9k hands of 50NL HU. This has generated a profit of around $500 (excluding rakeback), relative to an EV adjusted amount of $1,100. It has been absolutely brutal (although hopefully I should come out around the same amount of profit as in June) and I am overall running 8 BI below expectation. This is fine, as the rewards that HU poker brings are matched with high volatility. My main aim for the month is to finish having played over 10k hands, which I should accomplish with all things remaining equal and hopefully I can top the 11k that I did during June.

I played one guy (Italian, obv) and lost 4 BI to him by being all in three times with dominating hands (A9 < J9 and AK < AQ twice). Then I managed to chop two pots vs the same guy (the second a 4 BI pot) with AQ = AT on an AQx board and 77 = A8 on a 678 board versus a complete maniac. I find that these insane opponents are often very good value (partly because they three bet with a lot of hands where you get better value from flatting), particularly after reading DogIsHead’s advice that they should be “cock-slapped repeatedly” into submission, as it is indeed more fun than nitting it up and extracting their money a different way.

With this rather lame whine over, I am fairly happy with how I am playing (I spew a lot less) and one reg typed in chat “there isn’t much value in this for either of us so it is probably best if I quit you” – I have been beaten quite badly by some of the regs before and I actually quite rated this guy’s game, so I’ll take this as a compliment. I’d like to have $4k on Chilli by the end of September and be in a position to move up to $100NL (I’ll probably also seek some coaching at this time).

West Ham’s pre-season has seen us fail to generate any notable results. The jungle drums seem to suggest that Ashton will be off to Stoke – this is a shame, as for a short while he looked the real deal with us, but we can’t afford to carry someone that is permanently injured, particularly on his wage packet and with his reputed issues regarding training. I’m just hoping the 17 year-old we signed from Chelsea for a few buttons isn’t his replacement, as starting with one semi-proven centre forward and a couple of spotty kids is a recipe for disaster and has certain similarities with our previous relegation season.

I’m off to see the Bruno film tonight. The juvenile humour should provide a good end to a dull week at work.

Saving the best until last – Joe Hachem isn’t usually one to keep quiet when there is an opportunity to open it and look stupid, so here he is, true to form – from the Associated Press. As one guy on 2+2 said, “Joe has got disrespect down to an art form, so I trust his opinion here.”

“BC-World Series of Poker-Day 10,0234 - Stacks rise as players drop at poker world series
Eds: APNewsNow. By OSKAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer, LAS VEGAS (AP)

The 2005 World Series of Poker champion sayshe's lost all respect for a new brand of extremely aggressive pokerplayers who seem to want to gamble all their chips on every hand in the main event.

Joe Hachem said after two hours of poker on Monday that the pacehasn't slowed down at the no-limit Texas Hold 'em tournamentbecause many players are willing to risk their tournament with mediocre hands. Play started with 185 players and 38 were eliminated in two hours, despite starting with many chips relative to minimum bets.

Hachem says the overaggressive style is disrespectful to thetournament, its history and the $8.55 million prize. Hachem is one of two former main event champions left in thetournament, along with last year's winner Peter Eastgate.”

Please Seek Medical Advice Before Final Tabling

It is Monday morning and I’m really not all too keen on working, so I’ve decided on a blog update instead. I squeezed in some donkamenting on Friday night – I played really well to final table the $100NL on Party, after coming back from 3bb when my AK was no match for AQ and held the chip lead for quite a while. I busted fifth when the chip leader at the final table (with a massive 20bb) shoved 55 from the button, I made the mistake of snap calling with AA. He flopped one 5 and rivered the other, which was a fairly frustrating end given that I felt that I had played pretty well and that I have been due for a while.

The tourney was a reminder of how awful people are on Party. One guy (a long time winning player with an average buy in of well over $100) opened for 2.5bb and then folded to an 8bb shove. I don’t claim to be the greatest poker player in the world but I really thought we had moved on since 2005. Still, I guess it can only be a good thing that people are playing this badly and still winning.

The rest of the night was a bit of a wash out and the usual mixture of bad plays by me, suck-outs by my opponents (including losing to JJ with 22 on a 269 board and KK vs AJs on a K92r board), marginal spots and coolers. Which is a pretty standard night of donkamenting for me or anyone else, I guess.

In the subject of being due, one guy on PXF has won in the space of a week a 30r, 50r, 3r, WPT package and a couple of other things and claimed that he was “due” to win something else at some point soon, which made me piss myself laughing as he is clearly on an enormous heater and may well be “due” for some time.

I’ll leave out any discussion on the Main Event final table, but I’m delighted to see Joe Cade, Ivey and Akenhead there. My favourite poker related story of the week comes from the WPT final table at the Bellagio, where Justin “BoostedJ” Smith leapt up to celebrate winning an all in four-handed and suffered suspected anterior cruciate ligament damage and had to be helped back to the table and will spend the remainder with an ice pack on his knee. Poker, its more dangerous than I thought.

My Dad goes to hospital today for a final assessment on whether his cancer has spread or whether his lower back pain is a slipped disc. I’m anticipating his phone call but in some ways don’t want to receive it at all.

Good luck to England on the final day of the 2nd Ashes Test at Lords today. It promises to be a nail biter. New just in – Flintoff bowls Haddin, Convicts 314 for 6 chasing 522.

Life's Rich Pattern

Saturday’s donkamenting was something of a damp squib. I failed to get anything going in most tournaments, cashed in the $109 on stars and then shoved AQ into AA. I came 3rd in a silly 10r on FTP which I didn’t really mean to enter, for $400 or so – better than a kick in the nuts but I hate myself for not winning it (I basically lost two huge flips 3 handed) as the final table was really weak and I had the run of it for most of the time.

Also spewed really badly in the 50 1r (head says “fold, you are beat here”, fingers say “call, you know you want to”) which was a shame, as both Bakes and CompleteDonk were at my table, and I always enjoy playing against some of the 2+2ers that I see on the forums that are clearly so much better than I am.

Boring bad beat of the weekend came on Party when I had top set on a 3s4s5s board. I bet, get min raised and jam and get snap called by two red tens. Turn is the Ts and that was that. It was a fucking horrendous play from my opponent, who is a winning player, but kind of summed the day up as this tournament was one of the few I made inroads into.

HU cash trundles along – this month has been a struggle, which is fine, as I was running a long way above expectation. I’m strongly considering coaching as I’d really like to be playing 200NL within the next 6/9 months.

I’m enjoying the main event coverage that is going on right now. There are still some big names left in, including a couple of the 2+2 guys and Brit James Akenhead. I’m kind of rooting for Ivey, I would be good to see the guy that is largely considered to be the best all-around poker player at the moment win the major prize. Someone at his table said that he sat down with 300k yesterday and the rest of the table proceeded to throw chips at him for the next few hours until his stack was way over a million.

West Ham are a pre-season hotbed of transfer activity, having been turned down by a goalkeeper from two divisions below ours (to be fair he does get first team football at Southampton). Thus far our only signing is the loan of a Chilean midfielder from Inter. Our squad looks awfully thin and we’ll need either some luck or some money to survive. I’ll start bringing my boots to home games in future.

I went to see the film about John Dillinger last night (I forget the title, it has Johnny Depp in it). It was fairly enjoyable, despite deviating considerably from what actually happened. I’d definitely recommend it, although I got fuck all sleep last night after having bizarrely vivid dreams that involved me shooting several people. Don’t mess bitches, I’m well hard when I’m dreaming.

Lucy thinks she might have swine flu. Three people in her office have been diagnosed with it, which doesn’t bode well, as she’s going to have to find somewhere else to live to prevent me getting infected. J

We had some news on my Dad’s cancer. It is currently in his upper neck, but he has been suffering with a bad back. He went to the Doctor following an MRI scan, who diagnosed it as secondary tumours. This is obviously pretty crushing news, it hit me a lot harder than I thought. A second diagnosis said that it was not secondary tumours but in fact a slipped disc (I can’t imagine that anyone has ever been quite as happy to find out that their father has a quite painful back problem). A third and final diagnosis takes place next week, so my fingers are firmly crossed (which doesn’t make typing very easy).

Whilst on this subject (cancer, not bollocks), former West Ham striker John Hartson has been diagnosed with brain cancer. He is still in his thirties, which is no age to be suffering from something like that – whilst he was no stranger to controversy, his spell with us will be fondly remembered by most that saw him play for us. Hang in there John, if you battle the illness as hard as you battled for us the season you joined and helped keep us up, the result is a foregone conclusion.

Good luck also to Wayne, a sometime reader of this blog. He has had some tough times of late with the economy being in the shit and looks like he has devised a decent plan to get things together. If only the silly cunt would stop banging on about Liverpool and what a good job Rafa is doing, the world would be a better place.

No squeaks, motherfucker!

From the Popbitch archives and to coincide with the death of the celebrity freak who made some decent music once...

Lord Delawdy writes:
"A friend of mine was in Los Angeles 79 thru 87.
Michael Jackson had had a huge hit with Off The
Wall, and was recording the follow up.

"The sessions were arranged for a very late start,
and, after a night on the town, my mate popped
around to the studio to see the producer.

"He got into the control room to find that
everyone's attention was fixed on the glass
window. On the other side, Quincy Jones was kicking
a pile of rags on the floor while shouting
"Silent, you motherf*cker! I said NO SQUEAKS!"

"It turned out the pile of rags was a gibbering
Michael Jackson. They were recording a new song
called Billie Jean, and Michael had decided
to fill every gap with his trademark whoops,
clicks and squeaks. Quincy, however, had decided
that the track would be a pared down.

"After several hours of trying to get the
singer to do what he wanted, and having consumed
large quantities of ragedust, Jones had finally
snapped and attacked the poor freak. Needless
to say, after the outburst, MJ sang the song
how he was told to, and the rest is history."”

Upswongs

After a rather lame attempt at donkamenting on Friday where I had a couple of small cashes, I have put an end to a big downswong playing HU cash in style by running disgustingly well (see above).

Some sample hands from a big winning session vs a hyper-LAG. He really couldn't put a hand down so it was a fun game. We had already got it in for two flips as he was 3 betting a retardedly high percentange of his hands when this came up:

***** Hand History for Game 1684094037 *****$50.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, June 20, 11:23:00 ET 2009Table Archibald (No DP Heads Up) (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Seat 3: Funology ( $132.73 USD )
Seat 8: Hoopberg ( $116.22 USD )
Hoopberg posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
Funology posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards**
Dealt to Hoopberg [ Ac 9s ]
Hoopberg raises [$1.25 USD]
Funology raises [$4.50 USD]
Hoopberg raises [$11.50 USD]Funology calls [$8.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6s, 2s, 9c ]
Funology checks
Hoopberg bets [$19.00 USD]
Funology raises [$38.00 USD]
Hoopberg raises [$84.22 USD
Funology calls [$65.22 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8h ]
**Dealing River ** [ 2c ]
Hoopberg wins $231.44 USD from main pot
Funology shows [9d, Td ]

Clearly I'm not thrilled about playing such a huge pot with such a mediocre hand but the board is draw heavy and he could have a lot of hands. Much like my PC, he was lagging rather badly.


Given the above, this hand is somewhat standard.

***** Hand History for Game 1684096316 *****$50.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, June 20, 11:25:00 ET 2009Table Archibald (No DP Heads Up) (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the buttonSeat
3: Funology ( $55.65 USD )
Seat 8: Hoopberg ( $225.44 USD )
Hoopberg posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
Funology posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoopberg [ Qs 9h ]raises [$0.75 USD]
Funology raises [$3.50 USD]
Hoopberg calls [$3.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, Ad, Ah ]
Funology bets [$4.00 USD]
Hoopberg calls [$4.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3c ]
Funology bets [$9.00 USD]
Hoopberg raises [$18.00 USD]
Funology raises [$38.65 USD]
Hoopberg calls [$29.65 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 7d ]
Hoopberg wins $110.30 USD from main pot
Funology shows [4h, 6d ]

I'm really enjoying the HU cash. Its very good for realising the value of position and for hand reading and assisting with thin value betting etc. As someone said elsewhere, the DogIsHead series is a revalation and I recommend it to anyone, HU player or otherwise.

The British Lions lost the first of the three tests vs the Saffers on Saturday. After getting destroyed by the South African pack for the first 50 mins the last 20 were incredibly exciting and we nearly snatched a win with some thrilling rugby in the last 20 minutes. I can only see a 3-0 series defeat now but the Lions games are a superb sporting spectacle and I am looking forward to the next test.

OMG HU HU

Its been a while, mainly as I have been on holiday. Anyways, I'll bang down a quick update, but I'm not feeling overly inspired.

1) Holiday. A week in Cyprus, a friend was getting married out there. It was great, I caught up with a lot of old friends, spent some time with Lucy and sank a good few beers. Even the EasyJet flight was borderline tolerable.

2) Pokers. I haven't really played many donkaments, but have dabbled with HU cash. This has really gone fairly well, I have ran well and people are prepared to stack off in absurd circumstances. I need to control my tilt, but I'm happy with the start and the rakeback deal makes a good contribution. The Deuces Cracked Dogisheadsup series really is superb and makes me realise just how far PXF has fallen. I need to cancel my subscription to PXF soon - even if it is cheap, the forum tilts me and a lot of the better guest pros are no longer around.

Back at work tomorrow, the 20/20 cricket World Cup is on and the U21 European Championships as well, to take the edge off things. I promised a better (well, less bad) post next time as this one is fairly lame.

Fun Times

Her indoors was out on Friday so I managed to squeeze in some donkamenting. It looked like being a pretty shitty night, with me getting set over setted pretty early in the $215 on Party, losing some big pots in pretty gross spots in the 50 1r 1a and $75 6 max on FTP and struggling to geet anything going elsewhere.

After griding a <20bb> AQ and AA > AK versus the same guy and then making an overly aggressive Spaniard my bitch. The final table was a lot of fun, with HotKarlMC (who seems to be at every FT) and thesnail_03 there and some sick railtardery from various 2p2ers and the guys from Skype. I was kind of happy with my play but not my bust out hand, and came 5th for a respectable $2.7k, which has provided a much needed confidence boost.

The final game of the season against a doomed Boro side saw West Ham win 2-1. Boro went without a whimper and the Geordies got relegated as well. It is a heart-warming tale, mainly because I hate Alan Shearer and am glad to see him fail. The cunt.

A long summer ahead with no football beckons...

End Of Season Blues

A long Saturday of donkamenting ended in disappointment. I failed to get anything going in most of the things I entered and didn’t play particularly well. I cashed in the $109 on FTP and had a decent stack in the 50 1r 1a before getting all in with 99 vs 55 for a 30bb stack and then losing the rest of my stack in two totally standard spots, plus losing KK to ATo to quite a cool German guy in the Stars 20 1r 1a.

I sat with bdybldngpkrplyr (sp?) for a while in the 50 1r 1a. He’s very good and pretty aggressive and was sat a couple to my right. I three bet him a couple of times in a couple of spots where it really looked like I had to have a hand (thanks AJK Hoosier for the latest PXF video pointing this out) – he folded both times. Otherwise I felt I played quite poorly and have resolved to do better.

The Premiership football season is now one game from the end. The Mancs (deservedly) wrapped up the title on Sunday. All that is left now is for us to take the piss out of the Boro fans when they confirm their relegation at our place on Sunday and for Hull and Newcastle (and possibly Sunderland) to fight it out for the remaining relegation spot. Hopefully Ferg will field an under-strength side and allow Hull to win and relegate Mary Poppins and his team.

I don’t know why I hate Newcastle so much, probably to do with Mike Ashley, Shearer being an obnoxious cunt that the press love and Dennis Wise, amongst other things. I have enjoyed seeing Shearer undermined by some of his players regarding his training regime – having done exactly the same thing to Gullit, it is good to see him enjoying a taste of his own medicine.

West Ham have missed out on Europe as a result of a very thin squad, with our annual defeat at Goodison Park taking place on Saturday. We never win at either ground in Liverpool. I remember playing Everton once when they had scored only six goals at home all season. I think the game was in March. They beat us 6-0. We were so dire that our fans celebrated six imaginary goals to pull the score back to 6-6, much to the confusion of the home supporters.

There have been plenty of positives this season, notably the transformation of Carlton Cole, the emergence of Jack Collison and James Tomkins, the arrival of Ilunga and a good first season from the managerial team. The ownership issue really needs to be resolved (our accounts are still overdue – wtf?) pronto giving that Scott Duxbury seems to lie every time he opens his mouth. Other minus points are Ashton’s new (old?) injury, Dyer’s ongoing injury, Danny Gabbidon’s ongoing injury (can you see a pattern developing here?) and Bellamy’s departure, to be replaced by an unheard of 19 year old German-Ugandan playing in Serie B. Coincidentally, the Chairman of the Serie B club’s daughter is married to our Director of Football, who engineered the deal. No conflict of interest there, I’m sure.

In Germany it looks like Borussia Monchengladbach should avoid relegation after two last minute goals in recent games have pulled them clear of the relegation zone. This should make an occasional reader of this blog very happy indeed.

Creative License

Well, not so much creative license as an idea from everyone’s favourite German, Joka (Jonas). He suggested writing about this hand from the latest episode of HSP. Original thought isn’t one of my strong points, so all royalties from this part of the blog go to him. Luckily these amount to a total of $0.00, so I shan’t be further crippling the UK’s balance of payment deficit and Jonas is still going to have to take that job working in insurance.

Anyway, onto the hand. Asking me to comment on a high stakes cash game is kind of like asking me to comment on the workings of the Indian Railway network – whilst I might find both interesting, I’m not qualified to talk about over. In this instance, it won’t stop me having a go though.

When Dwan 5 bets Lederer here, why on earth doesn’t he stick it in his eye or fold? I’m assuming Dwan’s table image is LAG. I just don’t really know what The Professor (sic) is thinking. He clearly needs lesson for Jonas (see my description of his AK hand vs. Moorman in the WSOPE ME in an earlier entry). Howard – if you’re out there buddy, drop Jonas a line, he’ll coach you in how to play tricky hands like this for an hourly rate. Until then, stick to coming up with great comments like “he’s a freak and a very weird dude”.

There is little to update on the poker side or otherwise. I’d like to get some donkamenting in tonight and possibly on Sunday and next Tuesday as her indoors is likely to be out.

The weather has been glorious in London this week. I’m serious. No, really. West Ham take on Chelsea tomorrow, where I expect us to take our standard drubbing and it to revert to being overcast and raining, with Lampard playing the pantomime villain role (and scoring at some point). Hopefully Zola will manage to avoid another love-in with his former club, as much as I like him it showed disrespect to his current employers at the game at Stamford Bridge. Whatever happens, they’re still cunts, no matter how many millions of roubles they have funding them.

FU Jokerstars etc

This is basically a bad beat whine, so don't read if you are expecting any content worthy of your time (much like the rest of the blog really). I didn't get to play on Thursday, but squeezed in a little play today and on Friday.

Deep in the early PS 109. I am 4/35 or so, and think I have been playing well. I raised KK on button, get reshipped by AK, by 4th st there are 3 diamonds on board (I have the Kd, villain has no d) and he spikes one of the two remaining outs on the river to reduce my stack by 60%. Standard spot, so we move on. I then get all in with 44 vs 99 and fail to improve in a standard spot. Then I get TT and raise, flatted by SB (who has retardedly flatted me with AK previously and then called down two bets when I flopped TPTK with AT). Flop is all rags, I bet, he check raises all in with no fold equity and I snap call . The turn is an A and I am crippled. I then shove AKs into KK on the money bubble and its gg me.

I was absolutely fucking livid afterwards. I wouldn't mind but I run like a land mine victim on Stars, I wouldn't mind that changing, just briefly.

On the plus side West Ham picked up a point at Aston Villa with a late equaliser from Diego Tristan, which improved my mood by a notch. It was also further improved by some crude turd gags with the guys on Skype.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Hoop

Eurodonks 1 U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A 0

Friday’s donkament session ended with a 7th place finish and $1.7k score in the $109/$50k guaranteed on Stars. It was a nice result and I certainly ran well enough, but basically put in a pretty dismal FT performance after going in 2/9. I’d like to think I’ll learn from some of the mistakes I made. Overall I was again pleased with most of my play during the evening, despite spewing off a big stack in the $162 on Party.

I spent a little time playing against Timex in the aforementioned Party donkament (and even 3-bet his early position raise light, which gave me a slight lazy one). I didn’t sit with him for that long but it is always good to play against some of these guys.

I also got in a few hands of PLO over the weekend. Whilst I’m very bad at the game, it is played terribly and (if you can cope with the volatility) is definitely a game that should be profitable at the lower limits. Given that at some point I am likely to switch to cash, this will probably be my game of choice.

Otherwise the weekend was knackering, with various family visits which left me utterly exhausted. We’ve provisionally booked the wedding venue, which is something of a weight off my mind (and one less thing for Lucy and I to argue about).

West Ham unsurprisingly lost 1-0 away at Spurs. Whilst its never pleasant to get rolled by a Spurs side that blows hot and cold, a forward line with a combined age of nearly 70 that cost us a grand total of zero, I expected nothing less. Our squad was thin in certain areas going into the transfer window and the sale of our most lethal forward (replaced by a promising youngster is clearly nowhere near ready for big boys football) will probably cost us a spot in the UEFA Cup (or whatever it is called) next season. It’s a shame, particularly given the good work that Clarke and Zola have done – despite having their hands tied in the transfer market.

Congratulations to J.Thaddeus, who took home the SCOOP ME for the best part of a million bucks yesterday. I don’t know who he is (apart from that he is from Galway) but have played against him a few times. I’ve always regarded him as a strong opponent but didn’t know that he was quite good enough to achieve this. With a German coming second, it was a good weekend for Eurodonks.

John Duthie, despite being considered something of a mark, came second in the $25k HU event. Congratulations also go to him, however I do wish he would kill the idiot that co-commentates with him on the EPT and also does the music festivals/some of the football on Channel 5 because he knows fuck all, is an irritating cunt and has a really good job.

It is Lucy’s birthday next week – she still hasn’t decided what she wants, so I assume yours truly will be on some ridiculous dash next weekend to buy something. I did manage to book a table for dinner, however. We have to go and see the Catholic priest (I’m not Catholic, I’m not even religious) in order to sort out stuff as we are getting married in a church.

I’m also considering going to play in the £200 Spring Poker Festival event at The International, conveniently located a mile from my flat. I’m unsure as yet, I don’t like live poker and can’t really be bothered with a lot of the dumb things that livetards try and spew into your brain whenever you have the misfortune to sit at a table with them. Lucy is out on Thursday so I may get some online donkamenting done then.