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.