If you can’t be good…

I remember looking back a couple of years ago at a post on Clarkatroid’s blog that said that when people convert from tournaments to cash (as many do), it is important that they run well, as many run bad, will simply think that they suck at cash games and quit them, without ever having the opportunity to discover whether they were winning or not.

Having run pretty hot and been winning at a decent clip at $50nl over 35k hands, I threw the “should I move up?” question out on www.raisetheriver.com. I wanted to get some feedback from people that I respected and that knew their stuff, and some of the RTR guys too. HONK! Joking, obv. Anyway, the general feedback was that the games don’t play too differently, the player pool between $50nl and $100nl overlaps and that if you are rolled, go for it. So I took a shot, and so far it has gone splendidly, I’m winning comfortably over 5k hands or so. I cleared the Stars SCOOP bonus and am hoping to try and clear some more of the Full Tilt bonus that I have before it expires at the end of the week.

Full Tilt provided another update on the current situation there. This really doesn’t bode well – I have no idea what the fuck is going on there, but they need to sort their shit out. If they have the cash, they have no reason not to pay it back, and given that they are taking a while to pay non-US players, I wonder if all is well. I’m going to leave the balance I have on there for now – it isn’t an earth shattering sum of money and the games are quite soft there.

West Ham confirmed their relegation yesterday by bottling a 2-0 lead at Wigan. I genuinely wasn’t that bothered when I found out, I will be glad to see the back of a lot of the players that were there and we have been living on borrowed time in the division for three seasons. Someone mentioned that we have dropped 21 points from winning positions this season, which explains a lot.

With Grant gone, there is a lot of debate over the next manager. A lot of people seem keen on Fat Sam. I think he would be the best choice to get us up at the first attempt, but I’d rather not have someone come in and fill the squad with guys on big wages in the event that we do go up. Allardyce isn’t exactly Mr Popular with some fans, and I think people would be quick to get on his back if it wasn’t going well. The last time we came up we did it with a young squad on a modest budget, had a cracking first season back and then fucked it when the Icelandics started bringing in big reputations on massive wages. I don’t want to repeat the second part again. Given that Paul Lambert is probably too smart to want to take a step down after promotion, I would like to see us go for either Malky Mackay, Gus Poyet or (rank outsider) Paul Tisdale.

I keep hearing about “the West Ham way” and stuff about tradition. The West Ham way is nonsense, we have played no more or less good football than any other mediocre top flight (most of the time) sides over the last 20 years. What the club needs is a kick up the arse and some strong characters to come in and shake the place up. The club’s scale and reputation should give us the pick of The Championship’s better players – I’d like to see us have a good look at the Swansea squad if we don’t go up, but I think Ashley Williams will be destined for the top flight either way.

Next week’s game at home to Sunderland should be fun. My prediction is for a lot of the more established names to pick up minor “injuries” in training this week and rule themselves out of the grief they will get from the crowd.

Godspeed.