Close But No Cigar...

With her indoors out for the evening I managed to fire up around a dozen donkaments. After the disaster that was Saturday, I wasn’t feeling particularly positive but was happy to get some play time in all the same.

I failed to cash in all three on Stars (obv) and all three on Party but managed 7th in the $163 for $2k and a small cash in the $22.5k gteed on FTP. The bust out hand on FTP was gross, I got all in with a quite bad Russian pre-flop with TT vs JJ, spiked a T on the turn and he rivered a J, which was unsporting of him and stopped me typing “on your bike, Russian” in the chat box. The final table wasn’t particularly strong but I’m not unhappy with my play overall (managing to constrain my spewy tendencies for the most part whilst maintaining a reasonable amount of aggression) and it was good to get something approaching a result under my belt.

I also enjoyed playing with Jonas (Joka) for a while in one of the $26 FTP tourneys, until he open shipped T9s over a button limper from the SB and I overshoved in the BB with AK. I failed to improve and he made two pair, so I crossed him off my Christmas card list and sent him a dog turd in the post as a token of my esteem. I’m joking, obv, you know you’re my hero and doubly so for five betting Moorman with AK at the WSOP Europe after he had four bet UTG.

Over the last few months (and having experienced a big upswong at the end of last year) I have really understood just how much variance there is in tournament results. As a result, I have come to accept this and (when I am in a reasonable mood) take the beats and successive lost flips as they come. Reading on 2+2 about 100 BI downswongs being pretty standard (aaaaaa was currently on a downswong of over 300 buy-ins), it gives a pretty good idea of what bank roll requirements are and why so many players are backed.

There is a certain poster on PXF he continually spams the Brags & Beats forum with how Pokerstars is rigged etc. I find it annoying, but like bad programmes on TV, even though they suck, I often watch them all the same. Interestingly, another poster looked up his results and his ROI is above 50% (considerably higher than mine on that site, FWIW).

We are all predisposed to thinking that we are don’t run well, where as the simple fact is that most MTT players will spend 80% of their poker lives running what they consider to be bad. As Bond18 said about Joe Hachem “He has the strange habit of talking like he runs bad, which we all know can’t be true”. This is probably just be due to Hachem being a whining Aussie douchebag. :)

I am off too catch up with an old friend tonight for a couple of beers. I am looking forward to it, we can reminisce over how shit our haircuts were back in the day (to be fair, his has hardly changed).

I’m likely to be able to squeeze in some donkamenting on Friday night. Otherwise this weekend I’m planning to see my parents (Dad will just be recovering from another bout of chemotherapy but should be over the worst of it by then) and then go out for some beers with some friends on Saturday. On Sunday we are planning to go to Kew Gardens and then see “The Damned United”. I’m particularly looking forward to the film – the book was superb so it will be interesting to see what kind of job that they have made of it.

Quick Update

I managed to squeeze in a good amount of play time this weekend. Friday went well enough, I probably came out a few hundred dollars up after taking third in the Party $100NL for $1.1k. Saturday was absolutely horrific – not a single cash, I didn’t play well, I didn’t run well and had a nipping headache to boot. To be honest it has been coming for a while, I’m due a decent sized downswing, so this may well be just the start so I should really take my medicine.

Another bad beat this weekend was me waking up on Sunday an hour early swearing that the clocks went forward, when clearly they go forward next week. FML.

Lucy came back from her parents with some brochures of stuff for wedding venues. Its clearly going to be fucking expensive, but I’m glad she went out and had a look at some places. I’m not too fussed myself, so long as she is happy with it. Her parents (and mine) have been pretty good (well, amazing) and basically just said do what you want to do, which is nice as it is clearly going to be hard enough for the two of us to agree.

An under-strength West Ham side took a battling point up at Blackburn, despite getting battered for most of the game. I’m pleased with the result, but I shan’t get into how much of a knob cheese I think Sam Allardyce is as there probably isn’t enough bandwidth in the world to contain all of the bile and hatred.

Next play time is likely to be Wednesday night.

We've Gone On Holiday By Mistake!

There has been little action to report on the poker front, barring generating rake for FTP by playing some SNGs. I’m likely to switch sites for playing SNGs soon due to someone sorting me out a very profitable rakeback deal on an alternative site that appears to have reasonable traffic (FTP won’t allow me rakeback as I am already affiliated so fuck them IMO).

Her indoors is going to see her parents this weekend and with the weather forecast looking good I am going to use the time by sitting in a darkened room and playing loldonkaments, something I haven’t really done much this year. Jonas (joka from PXF) is also in London this weekend so I might be able to catch up with him for a couple of refreshing ales.

London is enjoying some unseasonably warm and sunny weather at the moment – we sat outdoors for lunch with some friends on the South Bank last Sunday and I somehow managed to get very slightly sunburnt despite having avoided doing so over a whole week in St Lucia. For all its failings, London is great in the sun – we see the fucking thing so little that when it does come out everyone is so happy and there is an unusually pleasant atmosphere about the place.

I am slowly getting back into the swing of things back at work. It seems slightly less pressurised than when I worked here previously (I left this job two years ago and went to work elsewhere and have now returned). What I think of the new owners of this company is probably best left for another time, although it appears on first blush that I’ll probably be relatively happy here for the foreseeable future and some of the reasons why I left last time have gone away (indeed I was informed that my annual leave is 25 days as opposed to 20, which it was previously, which was a pleasant surprise as it said 20 days in the contract).


Whilst I was away the auction of Sleddale Hall that appeared in the film “Withnail & I” went up for auction. For those that haven’t seen the film, you should, as it is probably my favourite film of all time.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Withnail-And-I-Farmhouse-In-Film-Called-Sleddale-Hall-Bought-By-Pub-Owner-Richard-E-Grant-In-Film/Article/200902315224421

Anyway, I’m pleased that this has been sold to someone that gives a shit, as opposed to Kate Moss and her cunty chums using it as some place to party. It is a little piece of history and the general public should be allowed to visit it.

West Ham’s turgid 0-0 draw with West Brom on Monday revealed the following:
1) That I will laugh in the face of the next person that tells me that the Premiership is the best league in the world.
2) That West Brom will be relegated.
3) That our squad is very thin indeed. With a full team playing only the bench that consists of has-beens and never-will-bes, we’re a decent side. With a few injuries to key players we are relegation candidates. Someone told me that we haven’t won a game without the much-derided Carlton Goal in the side in over a year – wtf?
4) Mark Halsey needs shooting if he didn’t see Lucas Neill’s umpteenth rugby tackle in the penalty area this season.
GL Bishes.

Back By Dope Demand

Well, a lot has gone on since the last update. I went to St Lucia for a week and ponced about on the beach. I also got engaged, which I am delighted about – Lucy was drunk enough at the time to answer yes and as far as I am concerned this is not retractable. We went ring shopping over the weekend, which was obviously not pleasant from a financial perspective (I was hopping she would settle for something from the Elizabeth Duke range at Argos but this wasn’t the case) and was also very dull. Still, it only happens once (I hope).

The holiday was good. Amy Winehouse was in St Lucia, looking fairly well and disappointing me by not getting utterly cunted and biting people in the bar. Otherwise I consumed moderate amounts of booze, slept a lot, read a few books and now feel a lot better than I have for quite a while.

I also started my new job today. I am back at my old company, so it has been nice to catch up with a few old faces. I seemed to be genuinely warmly received (apart from the inevitable and probably deserved piss-taking on the beard) and there is plenty to do here. The work will probably be harder but the commute is shorter and actually have some enthusiasm for the job, although I can’t see this lasting more than a week.

On the poker side, I have played a few SNGs since I have returned. I have run way above expectation but feel that I have played pretty well too, having adjusted my approach somewhat and tried to tone down some of the overly aggressive plays that I make all too often. The holiday seems to have done me good as I seem to be coping a lot better with the high number of beats that occur during playing SNGs, although I dare say that I’m going to give someone a world-class berating at some point soon.

West Ham racked up a couple of good wins whilst I was away, at home to Man City and away at Wigan. The loss of Behrami for the season is a big blow, hopefully he will come back the same player that he was before the injury. The goal we scored against Wigan was a joy to watch, although the red card for Carlton Goal is a big blow as the choice of replacements is really not attractive (and also a compliment to how Cole has made himself absolutely vital to us this season). Stuart Atwell copped a load for his refereeing display but really wasn’t helped by the players. Parker could have been sent off and Neill should have been, and even though Cattermole’s challenge on Parker was a disgrace, I wasn’t thrilled to see Parker rolling around on the deck afterwards. That said, the press over-reaction to the game has been somewhat over the top – as one Wigan fan said, a 1-0 defeat, a very good goal and two red cards, hardly World War III.