Backed Up

I have been suffering from some back problems recently (a worsening of a long term thing). Last Thursday I woke up in absolute agony, and barely made it into work. I had a session of physio booked that day, who sent me back to the doctor, who has referred me to a specialist (next Monday). The result of all this was that I couldn’t make it away this weekend, so her indoors went with her friends, and I sat at home and played INTERNET POKERS.

My back is slightly better, I can walk without much pain, although getting out of bed can be excruciating. I hope this doctor can help me out, he fucking wants to as he was formerly a club doctor for Millwall and I don’t want to have to put him in line.

So far this month I’m up approximately $700 playing cash over around 10,000. I played an epic match later on Saturday against Fuentalbilla, who plays the weirdest style I have seen from any winning player. He is a winner at $1/$2, and by the end I thought I had the best of him (I finished up around $200 over 1,000 hands). I played some tournaments on Friday, taking 5th in the Party $30r to approximately break even on the day.

More important than any of this, fuck the Durrrr challenge, the Gary_Neville vs. chemzstry HU4ROLLZ match has pissed all over it. Sick action (mandatory 100% button opens and chemz’s 30% three bet ratio have meant lots of massive pots) and lots of side bets, plus a willingness from both players to play whenever possible has lead to this being one of the best things in online poker for a while. The smack talk has now started and I highly recommend tuning in the next time these two get it on, it has been awesome.

Slightly less epic, but more fun, is the www.raisetheriver.com North vs South HUSNG challenge. Doubtless us southerners will win, shag their women and drink their beer, because we are massively superior.

West Ham were lucky to lose 3-0 at Liverpool at the weekend. We were absolutely pathetic. There are rumours of Avram’s no. 2 departing, him moving upstairs and Wally Downes, Steve Lomas and *spit* Di Canio coming in to coach. Not sure whether this is good or not, but the first thing someone needs to do is sort our fucking left back out, who has been beyond pathetic and is probably the worst player in the division. Wigan at home on Saturday, which I expect us not to win.

Good luck at the tables.

Those who can...

...do. Those who can't, like me, have a horse that can do it for them. I played some tournaments on Monday, ran like absolute shit due to various mouthbreathers doing retarded stuff and getting there, despite playing pretty well. I woke up the next morning thoroughly fucked off, and saw that my horse had shipped a donkament, clearing all of his make-up and delivering us both $1k profit. Nice.

I have played almost 6k hands of HU this month, currently I am up $150 (my AIEV, which is a partly spurious number when it comes to measuring luck, but whatever, is $650), so I don't think I have had the rewards that my play has deserved. I'm going to keep plugging away and probably subscribe to CardRunners for some of MasterLJ and CPar's videos.

In other poker news:
1) A quite big poker tournament finished in Las Vegas. After an epic Cheong spaz out 3 handed, the Canadian bloke won.
2) Joe Sebok, UB, etc.
3) WPT Barcelona winner disqualified.

West Ham threw away a two nil lead at Birmigham to draw 2-2. We scored two excellent goals and conceeded two shit ones. We had a clear penalty turned down late on, but that counts for fuck all and if we weren't so fragile it wouldn't matter. We have West Brom tonight and Blackpool on Saturday. West Brom have a couple of suspensions and this is our opportunity to get our season going and stop the hard luck stories. If we don't take it, we'll be staring relegation in the face. I'm hoping to meet well-known fish and wank-blogger Amatay for a beer prior to the Blackpool game. He will be buying, obv.

I read a book about the whole Bernard Madoff ponzi scheme scandal. It's amazing how so many wealthy people were so niave. If I knew any rich people, I might be tempted to open one up myself.

I hope to play some more tournaments and HU cash over the weekend. GL at the tables bishes.

I Shit 'Em

Having been over $2,200 down at one point, I staged something of a fightback, finishing $1,300 down for the month (excluding rakeback) after around 11k hands. I was reading some comments from a guy on twoplustwo, who was saying that we have a default response of when our play sucks to go “well, I was kind of tilted, and definitely not playing my A game, so that sort of doesn’t count”. And he’s right, and that mentality is of course bollocks – your lifetime results are not from only when you play your A game – they are from when you are playing your best and your worst.

I’ve been slowly getting bits of my life in order – I hate dealing with form filling and general admin, but have made some progress of late. Work remains up in the air – I don’t think I’m going to get fired, but you never know. I think we’re going to sell the flat in the new year and rent a small house down in Kent, with a view to buying somewhere after my employment situation becomes clearer and (hopefully) after house prices drop.

West Ham lost in lame fashion at home to Newcastle last weekend, beat Stoke in the Carling Cup in midweek to earn a quarter-final at home to Manchester United, and then went to Arsenal on Saturday. As I have probably made clear before, I fucking hate Arsenal – they are the lowest of the low. Every time I go there, I wonder if I am being too hard on them, but then I see them, and I realise that they are exactly the cunts that I thought they were.

I turned up at the Echodome to witness some laughable attempts to create at atmosphere. Our lot made a decent job of making some noise, the Arsenal fans largely sat in shiny new red and white scarves in silence. It is more like going to the cinema than a trip to football. I realised that there were 57,000 other people in the ground (every one of them a smug twat) on the 88th minute when West Ham’s resistance was broken by an Alex Song header. They probably just about deserved all three points, although I was very pleased with our performance.
Arsenal’s midfield saw a good performance from Nasri. Fabregas was off colour and spent most of his time convincing Mike Jones that football is a non-contact sport. Since the days of Elbows and Ljungberg, I have found this their most unappealing trait – they spend the entire game in the referee’s ear. Two years ago at our place it was so bad that Wiley might as well just have given Fabregas and Flamini the whistle, because they were effectively running the game.

In summary: not a bad game, we were maybe a little unlucky not to come away with a point. Fuck Arsenal, fuck Arsene Wenger, fuck your new stadium that might bring in the zillions but is no sort of football ground and fuck your lame, limp-wristed bunch of noveau football fans that probably love nipping off for a cappuccino at half-time.

We have played well enough at times but after ten games have just one win. We have Birmingham, West Brom and Blackpool coming up – we need to start winning games here. Six points is the minimum requirement.

Good luck at the tables.