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.