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.