The wife was baby sitting her two nieces on Saturday, which let me get in a good few hands of poker and cross the 10,000 hands mark for the month. I don't feel that I have played that well of late, and have tried to open up my game and play a little more aggressively (I'm currently 22/19ish) and I have also added a couple more tables (to eight at a time), which I don't think has been detrimental to any significant degree. I played last night and when I woke up this morning I was having a think about the things that I thought I was doing right when I started playing six max. I think a lot of it was playing absurdly tight in a lot of spots when I just thought I was never getting bluffed. I have stopped doing this, and I think it is costing me money. Having been reading through some of the Baluga e-book, he does mention that you just aren't getting bluffed/three bet as often as you might think. With that, I have vowed to try and fix a couple of things (I probably need to do some study as well) and see how that goes.
The World Series Main Event is getting down to the business end. It is amazing that as I write this, Ben Lamb is still in with just over 20 players remaining. He has had such a sick series - I guess when you put being a great player, running hot and being full of confidence together, that's what happens. Personally I'd love to see Eoghan O'Dea (Donnacha's son) win it - a friend of mine that knows Donnacha always speaks of him in the most complimentary manner, so it would be good to see his boy ship all the gold.
I watched the John Murray vs. Kevin Mitchell fight on Saturday. The two fights on the undercard were a bit of a damp squib, but the main event was genuinely sensational. I like Mitchell, and not just because he's a West Ham fan. From the second round onwards I wondered if he had it in him - Murray was walking through his punches and threw a considerable volume himself, which didn't give Mitchell any room to breathe. Credit to him, he completely turned the fight in the seventh and Murray looked to have shot his bolt, finishing him off in the eighth. Both fighters were extremely complimentary about each other afterwards and seemed to be reasonably good mates. Hopefully Mitchell will get his career back on track, I think he was extremely brave to take this fight on as it could easily have been the end of his career had he lost to a dangerous and unbeaten opponent.
I booked a holiday with the wife over the weekend. We decided on 12 nights in Malta, basically sitting on our fat arses doing nothing. We looked at New York/Boston/Cape Cod, which would have been an awesome trip we felt that we really needed to put our feet up as we haven't had a week long break in over a year.
The football seasons starts in around two and a half weeks. Whilst our activity in the transfer market (inbound) has been limited, I'm still looking forward to it. The word is that the manager likes some of the kids that he has in the squad, but doubts their ability to do it for a full season. I think we'll do a good deal of business at the close of the window (there is some talk of Ryan Bertrand coming in on loan as part of a deal to take Parker to Chelsea, who can't be any worse than our current left back).
West Ham concluded a sponsorship deal for the West Stand (or Rio Stand, or Dr. Marten's Stand). Whilst it is small news, and the thing has been sponsored before, it does lead on nicely to last night's documentary on Channel 4 on how to buy a football club (and the prostitution of football in general). I was saddened to see Robson involved in this - he was a genuinely great England captain and shouldn't be short of a few bob. I did agree with what he said when he mentioned that football is no longer about sport, it's about business - and he's correct, as much as I don't like it. And when it became about business first and sport second, the people that genuinely care about the game suffer and a few people get rich. The Thai bloke was bigging up his contact with Ferguson, but is obviously mates with him and (as we saw with the Preston loan players thing), it's a grubby business where being mates with the right people count for a lot.
Speaking of grubby cunts in football, I think Redknapp is meant to be back up in court this week. If the judge is reading, I'm indifferent to either death by firing squad or lethal injection. Thanks.
I should probably take a moment to mention the whole phone hacking thing. The developments in the last two weeks have been incredible, and it wouldn't surprise me if the PM ended up going over this. I am glad to see that people now have the bit between their teeth, and this needs to be taken right to the bitter end. I saw some of the news last night about the murder of Daniel Morgan and subsequent stalking of two detectives (who were at the time married, one of whom went on to present Crimewatch) by the NOTW. The case has collapsed five times due to police corruption.
I read an article by Chris Bryant (who has done a fine job throughout the whole phone hacking thing) last week. He said a lot of things that I agreed with - that basically we need to be looking at whether Murdoch is a fit and proper person to own any UK media (including the 40% stake in Sky). He also spoke about Sky's monopoly position and that this needs to be challenged. I agree wholeheartedly - the idea that selling one of the three football packages to ESPN in some way represents competition is bollocks. You need to have different broadcasters with access to the same games. With any luck the recent EU ruling on TV rights could make a huge difference - EU regulations are not about protecting monopoly positions but about encouraging fair and free trade within the block of countries. Anything that might deflate the football bubble can't come soon enough.
Godspeed.
