In The Land Of The Blind...

New Year Swongs

2012-01-16T13:17:00.001-08:00

Since the start of the year I have continued to grind hard. I am currently at around $800 of profit for the month and have endured some pretty big swongs (down $800 on Saturday, up $1k the next day). I have been quite tilty at times but not unhappy with my play. I managed to pick up a free $700 in milestone bonuses for 2011 (I didn’t realise I actually had to claim them, I thought they were automatically deposited to my account, duh)

The changes Stars have made from dealt to WC “rakeback” haven’t affected me that much, but longer term I’m really looking for a new site to play on. There’s talk of some new IPoker software being released over the next week or two, which I’m sure will do what all of its predecessors have done and disappoint hugely. Failing that surprising me and actually making the site useable, it is basically a case of sucking it up with Stars and waiting for GBT Poker to emerge (fingers crossed).

Hood, xPeru, Krmont and a couple of others from 2+2 are going to visit Stars in a week or so to discuss rake/VIP programme changes, but I can’t see Stars being incentivised to do much in the absence of some proper competition. Basically the micros and (to a lesser extent) small stakes poker (PLO in particular) are raked so heavily where it basically stops a lot of people having a shot at moving up. I’m not impressed by a couple of the people that are going (who basically seem to want to protect the SNEs), but Hood seems very smart and xPeru has a pretty good understanding of rake at the micros – basically some sort of rake reduction, even a modest one, at the lower limits would be nice and would do the whole poker ecosystem good.

I’m hoping to do some sort of Teamviewer sweat with Gorvacofin/Wonderflop tomorrow. Wonderflop has been on a sick downswing (although I think things have turned for him over the weekend), Gorv hasn’t run so well of late and I find myself in so many spot where I am without a clue that I wonder how I have ever made any money at this game, so I’m hoping it’ll do us all good.

West Ham won (ugly) 1-0 at Portsmouth on Saturday. Those who went said it was a pretty grim performance, but three points against a team that doesn’t lose too often at home is always welcome. A lot of other results went our way (Boro lost and Cardiff drew), plus there were plenty of other enjoyable scorelines (Millwall getting trounced 6-0, Arsenal lost, Spurs failed to beat Wolves). We have some very winnable games coming up and need to put some pressure on Southampton.

The transfer window is now open and West Ham have signed an American defender. I know nothing about him so shan’t comment further. Otherwise I’m sure it’ll be the usual Gold/Sullivan deal – link us with a lot of relatively exciting players (Rhodes, Sordell), fail to get a deal done for them and end up with a couple of loan signings or cheap foreigners to hold the fort. There is some talk of offloading Piquionne to Wolves – shifting him from the wage bill would be a major result given that we probably pay him a couple of million quid each year and he has far too many poor games to be pulling down that kind of money.

Last but not least, my wife is pregnant. We went for the 12 week scan at the back end of last week, and all appears to be in order. We’re delighted (obviously), partly because we had to go through IVF (which hasn’t been as challenging for us as it has for many, so in that sense we have been lucky). As my Dad said “don’t worry son, hopefully the next six months of pregnancy will be fine – after that it’s just 20 years or so of wiping it’s arse, cleaning up puke, acting as a taxi service and an endless supply of money and whatever else, which should be easy”).

Godspeed.

Green and Pleasant Land

2011-12-29T15:19:00.000-08:00

Well, where the fuck did that year go? I started it struggling at heads-up, moved to 6 max, ran very hot at $50nl and moved up to $100nl, where I'm winning (but not at the most impressive rate). I'm happy with that, my game needs some work but that's something I need to do in the New Year. I have played a whopping 25k hands in January, for a very modest profit (c. $400 at the time of going to press).

The big chatter in poker right now is the Pokerstars VIP system changes. Their handling of this has been a disgrace. I think the change from dealt to contributed is the right thing to do, but the net result of what is proposed is basically Stars making more money and players making less. The "proposing" (i.e. ramming it down people's throats on the 28th December, making a crap change on the 29th) of this has been handled in the worst possible way. I'm not sure what the end result will be, and it doesn't affect me anywhere near as badly as many others, but I think that if and when GBT Poker arrives that players will remember this and they will have assisted GBT with what will likely be an initial push for market share.

I'm planning on having a quiet new year. I hate New Year's Eve, I'll try and get out with some mates on the 30th instead, I think.

West Ham's form has been patchy and we have a boatload of injuries and suspensions. These should ease early in January, but with games coming thick and fast they could have been better timed. Still, it's a squad game and we should be better placed to deal with it than most. The Birmingham performance was, to use a Sacchism, "shit on a stick", and we (again) kicked the ball away like a rugby team. We need to do better, as such an approach simply invites pressure.

I went to see Jerusalem at the theatre the other day. Obv I'm not a massive culture vulture. It is about to come to the end of it's run, but was completely awesome and well worth the ticket price. I have no idea how the main character does it once a day (twice on some days), he is basically on stage for three hours with a couple of short breaks. I'd be fucking knackered.

Godspeed to all readers/fish and their families, may you deliver many one-outers in 2012, particularly on any 24 tabling nits that slow games up and scare fish away. *glances in the direction of Russia*

Vote Garden

2011-12-08T13:17:00.001-08:00

Internet pokers is being kind to me right now. I finished November around $1,200 up, and December is going so well I want to stop for the month now, up $700 in 7,000 hands. I have been playing at the Euro tables quite a lot - there is one guy that is a regular and an 8.5BB/100 loser that seems to play a lot when I play. When he's playing it makes the games good, and the tables are often weaker anyway. It helps to rack up the FPPs and VPPs too, which can't be bad.

In troubled times, with our current political figureheads failing to offer any leadership, here is your chance to elect a man of the people. This fish runs hot, and whilst he can't turn water into wine, he can turn small amounts of cash into large amounts of cash in Donkaments. He is Dave Garden, and you can vote for him in the APAT awards - see below.

http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13692

The new job has gone well. We're still in the process of setting the place up and it is quite a lot of hard work - it isn't like a "normal" job in that we lack many of the normal policies and procedures because the company is less than a year old. The atmosphere in the office is good, although we'll have to start making some money at some point next year.

West Ham's unbeaten run ended at home to Burnley. We let in a couple of shit set pieces (they scored from their only corner) and hit the post twice. We'll play worse than that and win this season, and now need to pick ourselves up and move on.

Godspeed.

Shine On

2011-11-24T03:41:00.001-08:00

Having started a new job I haven’t played much poker of late. That and some other stuff outside of poker have been taking up a lot of time. I have been running super-hot to compensate though, I have played around 10k hands and am up $1,500 (AIEV: $500). LOL. I won’t be playing much in the next few days, we’re away this weekend with some friends but I might play a little this evening. I feel like I’m playing better than ever at the moment, which is no bad thing.

The news on Full Tilt seems positive right now. I had essentially written off the cash I had on there, so getting any of it back would be a major boost. I saw a Skallagrim post on 2+2 that suggested that even if the deal goes through, criminal charges against Full Tilt/its executives will remain. This is the right thing – Full Tilt basically defrauded its customer base, and it will be more through luck than judgement if punters are repaid.

Many people had substantial sums locked up on there and many lives have been damaged through a combination of recklessness and greed. It could all have been stopped when the payment processor issues began – all they had to do with withdraw from the US market and accept the considerably lower profits that would come with it. They still would have had a viable business that ran at a profit, albeit that they may have had to ease back on the lobster in the canteen.

West Ham continue to win ugly on the road. Having gone a goal down we fought back to beat Coventry 2-1 at the Ricoh, with an impressive 6,800 fans there. I will be missing the Derby home game this weekend (I would have missed it anyway but there is no need for games like this to be on at 5:30, thank you Sky), but they aren’t in the greatest of form so we should be looking to continue our good run (four wins and a draw from the last five games). Matt Taylor (our most important player) should return from injury and Guy Demel might make his debut at right back. We certainly aren’t pretty but with Southampton continuing to crush we need to try and keep up the pressure, especially with a tricky midweek game at Boro coming up.

At the weekend the wife and I are heading off to a place in Norfolk with some friends. We have hired a big house, it is something we do every year – basically get a load of food and drink, go for a nice walk during the daytime and sit around in the warm troughing and getting pissed for the rest of it.

I was going through my IPod the other day and stumbled across this classic piece of British hip-hop. Well worth five minutes of anyone’s time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7S6nKahDlo&feature=related

Godspeed.

One in the Eye

2011-10-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

Being between jobs right now (i.e. scratching my balls at home whilst getting paid by my former employer and awaiting my new job starting in early November) I have been grinding fairly hard. I am at 22kish hands for October, about to hit Platinum, up around $600 and with almost enough FPPs for the $600 FPP bonus on Stars. I have endured quite a few swingy sessions/days, which has toughened me up a bit and I am finding it far easier to cope with a 4 BI down session right now.

I have also been getting reacquainted with something called the fold button. It sits just to the left of call, and is apparently used when you want to muck your hand and not put further money into the pot. I have found it very useful at times when I think "he's really not raising worse ever here" and would previously have clicked the "call" button, to see exactly how much better his hand was than mine. After a while that got quite expensive and I heard about this fold thing.

Congratulations to Chris Moorman on his second place in the WSOPE main event. It was good to see Chris finally book a big live score, after 187 blow-ups close to or at final tables, the changing of 9 Prime Ministers and several aeons passing.

West Ham have been unable to string results together. We are away at Brighton tonight, which is a big game. After picking up a few injuries, El Hadj Diouf (gobbing at Celtic fans, above) began training with West Ham last week. There are obviously a lot of scrotes in football, however this particular piece of vermin once spat at our fans at Anfield (hilariously denied by both Liverpool and the Merseyside Old Bill until Liverpool climbed down and admitted he spat in front of us, which was as close to an apology as we were going to get).

I can't think of a single player I want to see play for us less than this horrible shit (I tolerated Bowyer twice and I could have coped with Barton), and this may well be the straw that broke the camel's back for my support if he does arrive. He's not even a good player any more, not that this makes any difference. I really hope that he doesn't join, he isn't fit to wear the shirt, and Allardyce should be prepared to steer clear on the advice of the board, who are well aware of the supporter's feelings.

Godspeed.

September wrap

2011-09-28T06:24:00.001-07:00

I have racked up around 23k hands in September, for winnings of around $1k. I'm not unhappy, I had one horrible day when I ran 7 BI below AIEV, but I thought that my play was generally good. I dabbled with a hundred or so hands on IPoker - the software tilted me beyond all belief, it seems to take ages to even open a table and it looks like the minimaxmod for the current software is still in development. This is kind of tilting but I will play October on Stars before making any decision.

Full Tilt failed to get their situation sorted, but the Ponzi scheme press release from the DOJ should have ruffled a few feathers. I would like to see the mooted French investor deal go through, purely for the sake of my bankroll (and those of others), however if it doesn't it will fully reveal the utter disaster that was FTP management. If what has been said to have been going on is in fact what did happen, then criminal charges need to follow. Jesse May wrote quite a good piece (I don't have a link) which is worth digging out.

I went to see West Ham lose at home to Ipswich last night. Having seen us turn in a dire performance at home to Peterborough, we did the same again and got the defeat we deserved. We lacked any movement or pace and Ipswich played some really good stuff. I have to reserve a special comment for David Bentley. I have never liked him. When he joined Spurs I thought he was ideal for them - flash and lacking in substance, with the hair gel and the crap tattoos he could easily be a Spurs season ticket holder. All I have seen from Bentley thus far is good reasons why he is playing in The Championship - a lack of pace, an inability to get his head up and play a simple pass and a couple of bottled challenges. We have some big games coming up and it is time for both the players and the manager to raise their game - no goals in open play in three games isn't very good.

Godspeed.

Furst among wankers

2011-09-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have seen an open letter from Rafe Furst. To be honest I was astounded that someone could be such a cunt and write this without any hint of an apology to all the people that he has caused severe financial distress to. I won't comment any further, I'm sure you are able to form your own opinions.

I listened to Subject Poker's interview with durrrr earlier. Having listened to this, my view is probably quite different to that of many. Paragraphs are hard, so I'll use bullet points instead.

Tom comes across as having been really naive and appears to have taken people's word for things too often. That's no crime, he's a young guy and probably hasn't dealt with distressed businesses or simply businesses run by cunts and liars, which I have (and I am hugely suspicious of everything as a result).
For any stick that he gets, the bloke has already agreed to pay back c. $1m that FTP paid him. He wasn't a shareholder and yet has probably done more communicating on this than everyone at Full Tilt put together.
He seems to duck a lot of questions, but given the NDA that he signed and that he lives in the most litigious country in the world, he probably should be choosing his words fairly carefully.

Greg Raymer does a pretty good job on CNN of talking about poker here.

Godspeed.

The Poker Gods giveth, The Poker Gods taketh away (a.k.a. FU FTP)

2011-09-21T07:18:00.001-07:00

Given that I am currently in the office for only a few hours each day I have been grinding hard. Currently for September I'm at 17k hands/$1k profit, and I am hoping to make Platinum this month and next and (hopefully) trouser the $650 Platinum bonus. Beyond that I'm not really sure where I'm going to play - I'm tempted to go to IPoker and take the rakeback that's on offer and because I'll never make SN once my new job starts, but my volume would drop by 25% if I played there. The new Stars "Beta" themes make playing a lot easier (thanks to Daleroxxu for pointing that out). Does anyone know if Minimaxmod now runs on the "new" (i.e. 18 months old) IPoker software?

After dropping 8 buy-ins on a pretty bad Monday, I sat in yesterday and played one session with the intent of being more solid and less spewy. It seemed to work out, I think I focussed better and made a lot less mistakes and thought through most decisions. I am going to try and do that for every session in future.

The whole Full Tilt saga is starting to unravel. I wrote my money off a while ago, and now I really want to see Lederer, Bitar, Furst, Ivey and everyone else face having to repay funds. Every penny that they have needs to go back to Full Tilt and be distributed to creditors. They should also probably face fraud charges. I know Ivey wasn't a director, but he owned the best part of 10% of the company. Are we really meant to believe he didn't know what was going on? What a mess, and an example of both sheer greed and the stupidity of people prepared to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. If they had any smarts they could have left the US market and continued with a smaller company that remained profitable, albeit that a lot of the player endorsements would have had to stop. They are filth.

West Ham drew 0-0 at Millwall last week. For my own safety I didn't attend, Bermondsey is horrible anyway. It looks like we had enough chances to win it but a point is probably a decent result. We have two home games in a few days against Peterborough and Ipswich coming up. Six point is a necessity, but realistically I think we may only get four at best. Still, we're unbeaten in the league since the opening game, so I can't grumble.

Godspeed, and be sure to drop by www.raisetheriver.com for the Jared Tendler Q&A.

Q&A with Jared Tendler - all you bishes can participate.

2011-09-18T15:07:00.001-07:00

I'm not going to fuck about - the excellent www.raisetheriver.com has pulled of a huge coup by finding pictures of mental game coach, author and all-round good guy Jared Tendler in compromising positions, and as a result he has agreed to do a Q&A for any of you bastards that suffer from tilt or other mental game issues (that's all of you) to prevent these from being broadcast on 2+2 and causing embarrassment to his family.*

The thread is here:
http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13384

Signing up takes 30 seconds, so no fucking excuses.

A full blog post on how ace I am will follow shortly, until then you can ask Jared to pick around inside your twisted brains (I shudder to think what he'll find in there) and see if he can stop you going on steaming monkey tilt so often.

Godspeed.

* there aren't really any compromising pictures of Jared, he's just doing it because he's a good guy and because Buster has been cyber-stalking him for such a long time and he hopes doing this will get him to knock it off.

Back!

2011-09-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I finished August on around 10k hands and down around $500. After 4k hands in September, I'm up around $500. This is clearly a case of swings and roundabouts, although I'm not sure which I prefer. I'm a good deal happier with my play, having a break, playing only 6 tables and taking a look at the Baluga e-book again certainly haven't done me any harm.

I came back from last weeks after two weeks in Malta with the wife. It's a strange island, very busy and in a lot of ways unlike much of the Mediterranean. The people are very nice, the food is good and it isn't overly expensive if you are careful about it. On the minus side, if you are into long, sandy beaches it probably isn't for you, and the Maltese are utterly unable to drive. It's probably a better place to go in October or May, when it's quieter and slightly less hot. I had a quality break though, I slept a ton and didn't really do too much ("what's new?" I hear you cry), which was what I was looking for. This weekend I'm off to Amsterdam with a couple of mates for a slightly different kind of holiday.

I quit my job just before I went away. My new company is a start-up which is run by people that I have worked for previously. It is not without risks, but could potentially be rewarding if it goes well, plus I am bored out of my mind here. I should be in the office around half the time before I join, so hopefully I can chill out, play some poker and maybe get to the odd West Ham midweek away before I start there.

West Ham have started the season well enough. We have a 100% away record and have let ourselves down at home conceding late goals in three games. I'm not unhappy, we look like we're going to be a good deal more ruthless this year and we seem to have signed well enough at the end of the transfer window. I'm not a David Bentley fan and I would have liked to get shot of Ilunga, but we are going to have some decent players that won't get in the match day 16 that other sides in the division would love to have. Parker's departure was inevitable and I think him leaving will enable Allardyce to make some tactical changes that he wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Otherwise that's it, I promise to update with another poorly written and uninspiring post soonish.

Godspeed.

Trouble

2011-08-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

July finished around $300 down - I had one horrendous days where I played three sessions and finished over $800 down (basically I lost a ton of flips and AA vs. KK) - the graph can be seen below. It wasn't pretty but I have run like a God for ages so I probably deserved it and the end result for July wasn't so bad. Having made Platinum in August thanks to Star's generous deal that they have on (and collected the $650 bonus) it isn't so bad and I'm down around $200 in 4k hands during August. I'd like to get close to 10k hands before I go on holiday on the 19th.

The Full Tilt/Alderney meeting was a total wash out. I can't see them returning to business, so it is gg $3k I guess. I'm mainly grateful that it wasn't more and I was fortunate enough to have shipped five figures off there post Black Friday.

The football season opened for us on Sunday. We had far the better of Cardiff and managed to lose 1-0 due to a shocking error from Ilunga and Green failing to save a shot from the otherwise shocking Miller. I thought that on another day we would win that game, we hit the post and had a shot cleared off the line and were beaten by an old fashioned smash and grab. Nolan looked way out of condition and Parker looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. On the plus side I thought Matt Taylor was excellent, as was Joey O'Brien and the two central defenders. We are lacking a bit of pace throughout the side (John Carew certainly isn't going to provide that) but I think we're going to concede a lot less silly goals this season. We have Aldershot in the Carling Cup on Tuesday, which is a good opportunity to get a result under our belt.

The sky appears to be falling in on the financial markets. For anyone under any illusions about just how bad things are right now, I'd highly recommend Tim Morgan's excellent paper (linky). You might not agree with what he says, but it is well researched and has a lot of numbers and facts to back up what he is saying. He also (rightly) points out exactly what got us here - not the banking crisis, but the previous government's choice to spend their way through a boom time.

Godspeed.

The World Series of Ben Lamb

2011-07-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-07-12T01:52:00.000-07:00

I have been fairly quiet on the poker front, although with this in mind July has gone pretty well. I'm currently up c. $500 after around 4,700 hands, which is not to be sniffed at. I have developed something of a worrying habit of winning a buy-in or two (what's not to like?) and wanting to quit and lock up a win. This whole way of thinking is of course nonsense, and I need to nip it in the bud. I managed to played around 1,000 hands last night over the course of a couple of sessions, and should play at least one more session tonight.

Whilst I was playing Kysus appeared at my table. For those that don't know him, he is a winning MSNL player and (despite being an Arsenal fan) a good guy. He said he was slumming it at $100NL because he doesn't keep much money online right now. I hope not to see him at my tables again, as his Nasri avatar makes me want to spite three bet him and he's really good at poker.

I am going to see Dylan Moran on Thursday. I have always quite liked him, it'll make a change from seeing Michael fucking McIntyre on TV every other day. Other than that we're looking at taking a couple of weeks holiday - we are considering Malta, as I'm not sure we can be arsed with a long flight and the pain that goes with it to go somewhere more exotic. Plus the hotel that we are looking at has a casino in it - don't tell the wife. When I'm there I will be sporting the Dad on holiday look, as modelled by Mr S. Allardyce, below.

West Ham's pre-season kicked off yesterday, with a mainly youthful side losing 2-1 to Young Boys (snigger) in Switzerland. We have lost a lot of players and signed two (two pretty good ones, I admit). The season starts in less than a month and we really need to get our skates on. I think it is going to be mainly a side of has beens and never will bes, which is what The Championship is all about. Leicester have signed well and should start as favourites. Our squad is very thin and with Cole having turned his nose up at a move to Leicester, we are supposedly reliant on flogging two from three of Cole/Parker/Green to get funds freed up.

These are interesting times, and we will be placing an awful lot on the shoulders of some young or unproven players and need to keep people fit. In Sam we trust, I guess. There is no need to panic as the window is yet to close, but I think we have five or six games before the end of August - that's a lot of points, and we face a few of the better sides in that time. I shan't comment on The Premiership as we're keepin' it real, down and dirty in The Championship here yo.

Godspeed.

Halcyon and on and on

2011-07-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

I managed to grind out 16,000 hands during July, finishing up with a profit of around $600. I found myself auto-piloting a lot and probably playing some of my worst poker since I converted to six max. This disappointed me, and reminded me that I haven't really done any study of the game worth speaking of for the last six weeks. I have vowed to concentrate more at the tables and try and make some time to put in some more study.

It has been a while since I last updated here. The big news is obviously the shut down at Full Tilt (and gg $3k, possibly). Whilst there is the possibility of a new investor (as confirmed by their regulator), the longer they remain closed, the less valuable the business becomes. I hope they work something out, but my head tells me that this might be beyond them. Fingers crossed.

I haven't paid much attention to what has been going on at the WSOP, but I was delighted that Hellmuth didn't win his 12th bracelet, was disappointed that Chris Moorman didn't win his, and am impressed at how well Ben Lamb runs.

I went to Edinburgh over the weekend with a few friends. We had an awesome time, drank a lot, ate a lot and didn't get much sleep. It's a fine city, wasted on the Scottish ;) .

I am now into season three of The Wire, which seems to get more awesome as it goes along. I went with Lucy to see Butley at The Theatre (really, I did) with Dominic West and Paul McCann. I have never been to the theatre before (I don't think panto counts) and really enjoyed it.

I am meeting my old boss this week. He works for a new company that has just started up - it is a bit of a risk, but I'm interested in seeing what he has to say. It has the potential to be fairly lucrative and a lot more fun than my current job. I lose my messenger and 2+2 access at work this week (boo hiss), so I will see how that pans out.

Godspeed.

Warming Up

2011-06-09T03:42:00.000-07:00

Poker has been slow of late. I was away for a few days (see below) and came back demotivated and didn't really feel like playing. However I have finally got my finger out and my luckbox seems to be working again, and am at 4,300 hands/+$600ish for the month so far. I was sat at the tables the other day with Gorvacofin (a very god player and great guy), who 4 bet shoved over my squeeze with 66. The button had set a tarp (obviously knowing that Hoopie1 in the big blind was an aggro mega-fish) with QQ. Gorv did what good players do and spiked a 6 on the river and apologised to the guy that had QQ, who is obviously someone that he knows as he said something about "I know you have been running bad". The guy replied that he was only 7 buy-ins off being 100BI below his AIEV number for the year. Imagine that? I think I'd kill myself. I made a note to shove crap on this guy more often, I'll probably win given that I run hot and he runs like shit.

Congratulations to Sadan Turker (the_snail03) for his second place in the $1k shoveament at the WSOP. Being smart he made a deal that guaranteed him $500k when it got to HU. Sadan is a rare creature in that he is an Arsenal fan that I actually like. Well done him, I'm just about to send him a begging PM on 2+2.

Not quite as good as this is what happens when you put Bill Chen, 2+2 and Photoshop together:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/bill-chen-photoshop-potential-1049364/

I spent a few days in Cyprus with the wife for a friend's wedding. It was a decent do and I needed some time away, I haven't had a break for a long time.

I went to see the Senna documentary film on Sunday. I hate F1 but it was awesome, even her indoors liked it. The director did a Q&A afterwards and said some interesting stuff, despite some fuckwitted questions from the Hackney trendies.

Godspeed.

Downtime

2011-06-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

I finished June up $1,700 or so, which is an amazing result (although I lost a good few BI towards the end of the month). Since then I haven’t played any poker – I was away for a few days at a wedding and haven’t really got back on the horse.

I came back from my break to see another non-statement from Full Tilt on returning funds. I have some funds on there, I’m sort of tempted to pull them out, but the games are soft so I might let them ride for a while. The whole Phil Ivey thing obviously has more to it than meets the eye. As far as I am concerned, Ivey is a cunt for pretending he is doing this for any other reason than his own interests, and Full Tilt are cunts for making out that this might delay the return of player funds.

It is becoming clear that Full Tilt are something of a cowboy outfit. Whilst Rainey’s claims on QuadJacks may have been somewhat overblown, and he is a little shit that loves the limelight too much, there is clearly something up at the company (the deposits that people played with that were never withdrawn is very worrying) and they are blatantly short of cash. I think they’ll try and keep the non-US players raking whilst attempting to get an equity injection from somewhere.

I was away in Cyprus at a friend’s wedding over the weekend. I don’t really like Cyprus, it is a long way away, quite expensive, the food isn’t great and the island isn’t so nice to look at. However it was good to catch up with some old faces and I haven’t really had anything approaching a proper holiday since the honeymoon last year.

The wedding was attending by the Crown Prince of Jordan (complete with security guards and entourage) - Samy’s family are fairly wealthy, I (obviously) don’t normally mix in those circles. His great uncle also attended – aged 91 and having been told not to fly by his doctors, Samy, and his daughter, he booked himself some flights and went on his own. What a legend.

I’m quietly reasonably happy with the appointment of Sam Allardyce. I think he’s a miserable northern cunt, but probably the best of the realistically available candidates – much like Craig Bellamy, I’d rather have him inside the tent pissing out than the other way around. He’d better not bring Diouf with him though, the spitting at our fans at Anfield will never be forgotten and he’s a waste of oxygen. I’m hoping that his desire for the England job will be enough to make him play a bit more football – as some pikey pointed out to me, he won’t let us get rolled at The Den in the way we did on our last two visits. We have also bought probably the best fake twitter account in football: http://twitter.com/#!/TheBig_Sam

I have just completed the first series of The Wire. What a totally amazing programme – probably the best thing I have ever seen on TV. The second series seems somewhat slower paced, but fascinating all the same. We’re going to see Dominc West in Butley later this month, which should be good (I have never been to see a play before, which will not surprise regular readers). If you haven’t seen The Wire, buy the box set, send the wife to her parents and book the week off work. Thank me later.

Godspeed.

If you can’t be good…

2011-05-16T03:32:00.001-07:00

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.

Boomswitch

2011-05-10T03:08:00.000-07:00

My plod along at $50nl was just that until Saturday, when someone at PokerStars must have accidentally flicked my boomswitch, and I won $500 in around 500 hands. LOL. Overall the six max is going well, I’m still running hot and my win rate is well above the expected number. I am currently at around 8,000 hands for May (34,000 overall) and will hopefully press on towards 50,000 hands, which I hope to read by the middle or end of June.

Full Tilt looks to have made some improvement to its pay out situation, although their PR is still piss poor. I hope they sort themselves out, Stars needs a competitor and Full Tilt has the edge in some respects, but lags badly in many areas where it counts (customer support, for example).

You can read various accounts of the Cereus situation at many places (I’d recommend Dr Pauly’s blog as a decent start). However, I’d also like to bring Joe Sebok’s blog to everyone’s attention, after Cereus apparantley ditched all of its pros.

http://www.pokerroad.com/blog/joesebok/129

The best description I have seen of Joe being dropped is “sinking ship deserts rat”. Joe – you really are a disgusting piece of shit. Your conduct since you joined Cereus has been nothing short of a fucking disgrace, and your defence so full of holes that it doesn’t even warrant being pulled apart, although many others have already done a better job than me.

The “I’m in the same situation as you guys” line makes my stomach churn. This is because you aren’t – you were pulling down (supposedly) $30k a month for churning out your bullshit and failing to answer any questions in a satisfactory manner. You said you would quit if you didn’t get the answers or meet your goals – you didn’t, you just kept on taking the money. In some ways, if you had just gone there as a site pro and taken what they were offering you like Devo, Roothlus or BaseBaldy, then I could understand. But when you started talking the talk, you opened yourself up to all the shit that is going to come your way over the next few years.

West Ham took a big step towards The Championship on Saturday by failing to beat Blackburn. We were crap, and despite Keane missing from inside the six yard box going into injury time, we don’t deserve to stay up. I won’t be sorry to never see most of our players in a West Ham shirt again.

David Gold was on Football Focus on Saturday and gave a pretty decent and frank interview. On Monday, Sullivan made a tit of himself in the press by pleading poverty and thoroughly fucked me off, saying relegation was going to cost him £20m personally. Perhaps if he had spent some of that £20m at the start of the season on a left back and a couple of other players, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Godspeed.

Lights out?

2011-05-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

Firstly - a quick update: I received my Full Tilt withdrawl yesterday. This has left me feeling a lot more relaxed, a lot of the FTP withdrawls seem to be flowing through now. I am currently looking into opening a USD bank account to house poker funds - the best account seems to be Citigroup, although I'm slightly reluctant to have gambling funds housed with a US bank, even though I'm sure it won't be a problem as it is all legal here. If anyone

More interestingly - it looks like Cereus could be drawing dead:
http://deadmoneybook.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/the-twin-memos/#more-3881

I have mixed feelings on this - firstly, I don't want to see anyone lose their money. However, I don't see how any non-Americans, who have a wealth of sites to choose from, would ever have any money deposited there. If they go, then I'll be delighted to see the back of them - they're scum, and online poker could do without them - but I do hope people recover their funds, although things look very bleak at the moment.

I'm sure there will be some more developments in the coming days and weeks.

Nose to the grindstone

2011-05-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

April saw me finish with around 24,000 hands under my belt, for a profit of around $450. I’m pleased to have got a large number of hands in, and with around 30,000 already registered at six max, I’m hoping to get a 50,000 hand sample together at $50nl and then review my play (or have someone else review my play) with a view to ironing out some leaks and possibly moving up. My current win rate is around 8bb/100 (EV adjusted is c. 6.5bb/100, because I run good), which I am more than happy with.

I already have 3,000 hands played in May and am hoping to try and clear the majority of the $200 SCOOP reload bonus and $300 Full Tilt bonus that I have. I have found the games softer and the software faster on Full Tilt, but I don’t have rakeback there, so I’ll probably continue to mix up my play between the two sites and see how it goes.

I’m still yet to receive my cash out from Full Tilt that was requested on the 16th. In your own time chaps, it isn’t like it is a large sum of money or anything. Cunts.

The Black Friday fall out continues. If you are at all interest in any of the legal ramblings, then take a look at Karak’s excellent blog: http://www.lawdonk.com/

More importantly, good luck to Rupert Elder and Max Heinzelmann in today’s EPT San Remo final table. http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2011-european-poker-tour-san-remo/main-event/ For those that haven’t had any dealings with them, they’re both incredibly nice people and fine players, and either of them would be a deserving winner.I can’t bring myself to talk about West Ham, so I won’t.

Godspeed.

Bat Chan

2011-04-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting few weeks in poker, to say the least. I have tried to cash out a large portion of my bankroll from the two main sites. Pokerstars, after what appears to have been a genuine technical issue, got me my money inside a week. Well done Stars – your reputation as the best in the business is well deserved (particularly with the news that they are now paying out US players). I am still waiting on a substantial cash out from Full Tilt. They have been fucking useless, which is par for the course – other people that have attempted to cash out after me have (using the same method) have had their funds processed. To say that I am a little annoyed is an understatement.

Cereus, where I have no funds, have taken a different approach by only letting people cash out $250 at a time. That’s fucking disgusting, but pretty much what I expected. I’m actually somewhat surprised that they haven’t cut and run, particularly when the DoJ documents indicate that Scott Tom and his gang are still running the show over there. Meanwhile, Sebok continues to make a prize cunt of himself by not knowing what is going on and telling people to sit tight, whilst not acknowledging anything about Scott Tom’s continued involvement. Good work Joe, you fucking moron.

I have continued to plug away at six max. I continue to run very well and not play too badly. I think I have around 16,000 hands under my belt this month now, which is good, and I took advantage of the SCOOP reload bonus that Stars have offered.

From the twoplustwo MSPaint before and after Black Friday thread, here is a light amongst the gloom:

The last bank holiday was bliss. These three days at work look like being as quiet as fuck, and the next four days off from Friday seem awesome as well. I’m hoping to take some exercise and get a few hands of poker in, whilst doing a good amount of relaxing.

West Ham lost 3-0 at Chelsea. I didn’t see the game, supposedly we played alright (especially given the side we had out), however the main upside was that I won a few quid on my Torres to score bet. It was inevitable it would be against us, stuff like this always is. The other teams around us picked up no more than a point, which is excellent news, but we need at least seven points from the last four games and I’m not sure we have it in us. We have Man City away on Sunday – I expect another defeat.

Godspeed.

Cack Friday

2011-04-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

I’m not really sure where to begin regarding what has happened over the last few days. I came home from work on Friday and saw some of the stuff on 2+2 and sat there with my mouth open, completely dumbfounded. The first thing that I can say is that I think what has happened is a real shame for a lot of the good people that I have met from America through poker. I have a good few friends that I have known for a number of year, and it makes me a little sad that I won’t chat to them like I used to and that they won’t be able to spend their spare time enjoying what is (in most cases) their hobby, or, worse than that, aren’t going to be able to earn any money (not to mention whatever funds have been frozen). I hope things get worked out and that they get their money back and a place to play. Hopefully they won’t have to move to another country with a less oppressive regime where they can play, like China or Russia.

From a personal perspective, I’m down around $4k from unpaid make-up from my horse, who is based in the US. There isn’t a great deal that can be done there, so I’ll write it off and move on.

I have a substantial amount on Full Tilt and Stars – I have a cash out pending from Full Tilt, I dare say it’ll take forever as they’re useless. There is some sort of technical issue with my account at Stars, but I hope that will get resolved. I’m planning on leaving a couple of thousand on each so I can play there when I want and take the rest off. I should have done this ages ago but have been bone idle.

There has been a lot of discussion on whether your funds are at risk on these sites. My thoughts are as follows:

1. Whilst my gut instinct is that there is nothing to be gained by keeping substantial amounts that you don’t need to play on these sites. You have no upside to retaining them on the site - they can always be moved back there.

2. I know our funds are meant to be kept segregated, but I have dealt with enough bankrupt companies to know that things aren’t always done as they should be.

3. People seem to think that because this is lead from the US, non-US players won’t be affected. Well, if Stars and Tilt can’t pay the fines, then they will be bankrupt and you could be waiting a while for your funds (at best). I don’t want to take that chance.

It looks like the games are reasonably soft at the moment and that player liquidity on Stars seems reasonably good. It’ll be interesting to see how things develop regarding traffic at IPoker and Party.

My results at 6 max continue to be good. I’m running way above expectation, but long may that continue. I should make gold star this month fairly comfortably. Basically I am grinding my ass off to try and get a reasonable sample together (50k hands? 30k? Any input on what is reasonable is welcome) to see whether I am beating this games (and if so by how much) and then reassess where I am at and maybe have a think about moving up (or down).

West Ham were terrible this weekend and deserved to get beaten. With that result I think we’re down, so I’ll say no more.

It has been a really fucked up weekend and I’m still a bit shellshocked by what has happened. I’m probably in for a nervy few weeks with respect to recovering my funds, as are many others, so fingers crossed – I hope everyone makes out whole.

Godspeed (I love that word).

PS the best joke I heard to come out of all this was “we should spare a thought for those in Full Tilt customer services, as if things are as serious as they seem, both of them could lose their jobs.”

Man cannot exist on FPPs alone

2011-04-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

So, this six max thing - what's all the fuss about? Having taken Friday off and played a ton of over the weekend, I have now clocked up 10,000 hands of six max at $50nl. I have managed to do what I do best, which is run a long way above expectation (see garph, above). Probably for this reason, I have rather enjoyed the my switch to a new game. It certainly has a ton of benefits over heads up games - the variance is lower, I seem to tilt less (probably due to the whole game being a lot less personal), there is no hit and running, you can start and end sessions whenever you want - the upsides seem endless, although a lot of the games seem reg-infested. I tend to jump tables fairly ruthlessly instead of sitting in zero-sum games with a bunch of nitty regulars (which is probably where a lot of the mass tablers fall down).

I watched some of the CitizenWind "99 Problems" Cardrunners series, which was very useful. I think the best thing in there, which I have been trying to remember at all times, is don’t level yourself, as it is a really expensive habit. I think I have cost myself at least 4/5 stacks when I should have lost a lot less where I have had a moderately strong hand (overpair or whatever) and villain has been repping something massive, I have clicked call on shove, he has turned over aces or whatever and I have thought "yeah, that was about what I thought he had." Which begs the question, why didn't I fold?

The other thing was that people seem to love getting out of line with each other for absolutely no reason whatsoever. CitizenWind's point was that if you can get someone to react and start three betting you from the blinds a lot, at some point you're going to pick up a hand and get them to commit a lot of money with something second best - so at the point they start getting overly aggressive out of position, you have won the game. Whilst I like to project a somewhat loose/spewy image pre-flop, I tend to play relatively snug post flop (I think people look and go "this guy is 25/22, he's nuts" and react accordingly) and am trying to c-bet a lot less (or at least a lot more selectively). Anyway, overall it has gone really well so far. I'm bound to spew a ton of money back fairly soon, but the challenge will be in controlling that and not getting tilted.

I had a look at some of the other $50nl regs PTR winnings. There are a lot of guys out there that have played a ton of hands and haven't made any money whatsoever - I assume they're just playing for Supernova/SNE. In fact, very few of the regulars are winning at any substantial rate at all over some pretty enormous samples.

Elsewhere in Poker: 1) Full Tilt's response to this thread shows how their reputation for customer service is well deserved.

2) I haven't heard it, but the Donkdown radio with Joy Miller was meant to be hilarious.

3) A drunk Phil Ivey and the wierdness of French Canadians leads to some amazing photoshopping. West Ham got their annual dicking up at Bolton on Saturday. Having played reasonably well of late the performance was very disappointing. Next week's game at home to Villa is a must win, but I can't see us doing it. Good luck at the tables.

P.S. I'm thinking of signing off these crappy posts with "Godspeed" instead from now on, it's slightly less clichéd and makes me feel more like someone in Apollo 13.

That's a Fact

2011-03-28T03:38:00.000-07:00

After a lot of deliberation I have decided to take the plunge and switch to six max. I found the lack of action at the HU tables quite frustrating and not a good use of my time given how little I play, so being able to jump into a few tables, play for an hour or so and then jump out without any of the bullshit about hit and running etc. makes for a nice change. Over a whopping sample size of 1,500 hands I am up around $500 at $50nl. Obviously I run sick good, so long may that continue.

My initial observations comments (I have been playing on the fast tables on Stars) are as follows:

1) Whilst rakeback is nice, boy do you pay a ton less rake on Stars, and you get to play a lot more hands and benefit from a bigger player pool.

2) My natural game is really quite LAG pre-flop.

3) People suck and I have been the recipient of a couple of massive spews in deepish pots (including flopping the nut flush in a limped pot 180bb deep and somehow managing to get my entire stack in vs. a flopped overcard and 9 hi flush draw which turned third pair and rivered two pair).

4) I find hand reading and range analysis a lot easier than I did HU. 5) Regulars generally tend to play fairly straightforward and as a result I think it is generally easy to make a disciplined fold a lot of the time when the action gets hot. I have also found it easier to control tilt, although having not been coolered or outdrawn very often (in fact hardly at all) then this is a lot easier.

I basically jumped in without doing any learning at all, but over the weekend I read a large chunk of Baluga Whale's "Easy Game". I spent most of it thinking "I'm going to need to read this again" - this isn't a bad thing, more that there is a lot of information in there (which many regular 6m players will probably find standard but I don't) and that I really haven't got enough game time under my belt to have a lot of practical examples to apply it to.

The whole Sebok/UB thing rumbles on over on 2+2. For me, it's clear that Joe doesn't have any of the answers and UB has had ample time to send a rep over there (which really needs to be Leggett) to start providing some proper answers. Given that they haven't done so in the last three years, I can't imagine they'll change their mind now. Joe clearly likes whatever UB are paying him, but he's an asshat for taking it and can't really be annoyed with all the grief he gets. I saw his "I tried…" on Twitter - Joe, you might have tried, but it was a dismal effort and all the unanswered questions are still there. If you don't know the answers to most of the questions yourself then you can't trust your employers, and either way you should stop making out like it's 2+2 that's in the wrong here and not UB.

I have had a couple of pretty decent weekends, watching West Ham play out a thrilling 0-0 at Spurs last Saturday, which had everything but a goal. Whilst Spurs had plenty of chances I thought our defending was outstanding (Jacobsen and Bridge were immense) whilst Rob Green pulled off a world class save to tip Bale's free kick onto the bar. We also had three or four very good chances ourselves. This is the first time this season I have seen us dig in for 90 minutes and battle, which leaves me feeling a little more optimistic, despite our difficult run in.

This weekend I was in Paris. The weather was awesome, the city is amazing and even the Parisians were a lot more tolerable than I have found them before. My French was pretty shit, natch, but we managed to get by. Some things were disappointing (the Sacre Couer is an amazing building but the hordes of people trying to flog you shit outside there drove me nuts and was better when we went before when it was quieter). Lots of the city also smells of piss. Le Louvre was amazing, although totally overwhelming in both the size and amount of stuff in there (it would apparently take 9 months to see every bit of art in the museum).

Anyway, enough of all this shiz, good luck at the tables.

Before A Fall

2011-03-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

Having been so happy with how things were going, I moved up to the $/£/€ 100nl tables. This proved not to be the best move from me, and I have run like total AIDS. I'm down $1,600 for the month, around $1k below AIEV. I'm not overly concerned by my play, but I could have done without getting God moded. The most fun experience was at the end of a stinking session getting AA in against KQ 200bb deep at €100nl on a QTx r flop and losing against a retarded that couldn't fold top pair if his life depended on it. Still, enough moaning, I'm not overly downhearted about the situation, I just need to get on with it and I have played nearly 7,000 hands this month.

There has been some awesome poker gossip going on of late, principally:
1) Sebok doesn't like it when people are nasty about UB.
2) Poker isn't fun when you suspect people of playing on each other's accounts according to Prahlad.
3) Pocket money discussions could get interesting.

For anyone that knows Wayne (Wonderflop), he has had a bit of a difficult time in recent months. Anyway, he is now playing for a living, and things seem to have started off well enough. Good on him, he deserves a break, and he should probably ship me half of his manies for the good luck wishes.

West Ham got beaten by Stoke in the FA Cup quarter final. I think the best side one, although Mike Jones clearly got intimidated at half time by Pulis and fell for a lot of their snide tactics. They're a set of cunts and nothing would please me more than to see Pulis, his nonce cap and his horrible, ugly side get relegated. I can't see it happening though.

We're away at Tottenham tomorrow. I can't see us getting anything, but I'm looking forward to going to the game, it is only a short bus ride away. I'm not a fan of lunchtime kick-offs, but this one suits me as I am around at a friend's house that night (sadly he is a Spurs fan).

The stag do in Liverpool was fun, and featured one person being kicked out of a bar, one person getting knocked out and three people so ill after the first night that they didn't make the second. Classy.

I'm off to Paris with her indoors next week - I'm such a romantic. I quite like Paris, it is wasted on the French, but fucking expensive. I hope they have resolved the dog shit problem there too.

Good luck at the tables.

P.S. I watched the excellent Hoop Dreams on DVD on Sunday. For those that haven't heard of it, this is a documentary following two young American basketball hopefulls in Chicago. It is a fascinating insight into inner city life and the American education system, as well as a gripping story where you find yourself really rooting for the two subjects of the documentary (who both come across as genuinely decent kids). It's quite sad watching William speaking to the camera and saying "People always say to me, ‘when you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me’. Well, I should’ve said back, ‘if I don’t make it to the NBA, don’t you forget about me’." If you can get your hands on a copy I'd recommend taking the three hours to watch it, it certainly beats the crap out of X-Factor on a Saturday night.

Dissecting an Opponent

2011-03-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

After very little play during February, a week into March and I have already played 4,500 hands, for a gargantuan profit of $20 (although I think I’m due around $150 in rakeback). My sick level of run hot seems to have disappeared (if anyone finds it, please contact me so I can collect it), having been set over setted in a 200bb pot by a pretty terrible villain, which is bollocks as I should be set over setting people, always. I was down around $600 at one point, however thanks to one villain, I’m now back to even.

I sat in yesterday at a few tables and it is pretty hard finding fish on a weekday morning. Having struggled to find any regs to play, I stumbled across a guy that I had played before. He is a winning player but pretty awful as I remembered, so I sat in and three tabled him. His playing style is as follows:

In position:
1) Open around 85% of buttons.
2) Only c-bet around 40% (this appears to be the top 40% of his hands).
3) Often two barrelling (c. 60%), which makes sense given that he seems to be mainly c-betting his strong hands, so he is often going to follow up.
4) Folds to three bets around 60% of the time, but isn’t massively tricky in three bet pots.

This isn’t terrible, but obviously it is massively exploitable and he folds to lots of turn bets when the flop checks through.

Out of position:
1) He plays around 40% of hands, three betting around 12% (this goes up when he’s tilted and is lower a lot of the time).
2) Folds to c-bets around 40% of the time and to second barrels around 60%.
3) Check raises around 10% (this is really low, for most regs this will be 15%-20%).

Overall, his pre-flop game isn’t awful but he’s really passive and massively exploitable. When I look at my stats against him, I’m playing really aggressively (three betting often and c-betting a lot of flops in three bet pots, because I get folds so often), two barrelling quite a lot in single raised pots when good barrel cards arrives (if you simply do the maths, this is really profitable given how often he folds to c-bets and second barrels) and folding anything but very strong hands when he check raises. He also gets very stubborn with top pair, which isn’t unusual at these limits.

He dumped off a good amount to me yesterday over two sessions, which is awesome. The lesson is that you can be as exploitable as you like, as long as you aren’t actually being exploited, and to always be able to adapt when you’re getting worked over (and if you can’t adapt, quit). This probably applies to heads-up way more than any other form of poker because villain’s playing styles can vary so widely.

This guy has now become my second most profitable opponent in my database. At some point he’s going to stop giving me action (which might be the next time I sit him), however guys like this don’t come around too often and people should be lining up around the block to play him (I’d imagine that most people see his PTR and give him a miss).

I should be able to play a good bit more poker this week – my wife is out for part of tonight, tomorrow and Thursday (fistpump.jpg), so I’d like to get in at least another 1,000 – 1,500 hands. My cash bankroll is now at nearly $12k, so I need to be less of a wuss and play more $100nl.

Elsewhere in poker, there are lots more UB shenanigans (shame on you Joe Sebok), suspicious UB player xblink is now taking on all-comers on Full Tilt, Erik Seidel crushes live souls in 2011 by winning the heads-up donkament on top of lots of other things and probably lots of other stuff that I can’t think of right now.

I went up to Liverpool for a stag weekend and missed West Ham beating Stoke 3-0. We’re right on form at the moment, and given how the league is shaping up we’ll need to keep this going until the end of the season. I’ll give the Scousers credit (which is a first), they were a pretty decent bunch. We take on Stoke again next week, this time away in the FA Cup. It is something of a distraction but hopefully we can keep the run going and book a semi-final at Wembley.

Good luck at the tables.

Appetite

2011-02-28T04:03:00.000-08:00

After a break from poker during the majority of February, I have returned reinvigorated. It’s surprising how much easier I am finding playing when it is something that I want to do, instead of something I feel obliged to do because I have some spare time or whatever. I think I’m at around 3,000 hands for the month (sick grider, eh?) and around $600 profit (weeeeeeeeeeee!). I’ve run pretty damned well (having held up in two 150bb pots with AA and KK vs. QQ both times), but I think my general level of play has been decent too. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – playing fish is really absurdly profitable.

For those that don’t play heads-up games, you tend to get hit and run. A lot. This used to bother me, however I’ve tried to let it go – it is nothing more than an occupational hazard. I am now a bit more ruthless with who I am playing – against various fish I tend to play a max of three tables (with a different player on each), however if my fourth table gets filled with a full stack fish and one of the others only have 25bb left I’ll ditch the shorter stack and move on to the guy that is deeper. Getting action against regs is virtually impossible right now, which is amazing given that I’m not that good.

I have been watching the UB stuff developing of late. The whole thing is totally amazing and it is good to see things prompting more discussion on it again. Given the lies that have been told and the fact that the company is still in operation, I think it is important that this is not forgotten.

West Ham turned in their best display of the season to beat Liverpool 3-1 yesterday. I thought we dominated large stretches of the game, created the better chances and ran out deserving winners. Demba Ba and Thomas Hitzelsperger were both excellent and Upson’s return alongside Tomkins at the back was timely, both played very well. Given how other results have gone for us of late this was a timely win and makes staying up look like something of a possibility. Keeping the back four fit will be key.

The cherry on the cake on Sunday was seeing Arsenal’s failboat crash onto the rocks against Birmingham. It looked like a pretty decent game of football and I never tire of enjoying seeing Arsenal lose.

Good luck at the tables.

Back in the Saddle

2011-02-21T05:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve had probably as long a break from internet poker, bar when I have been on holiday, as I can remember. I have quite enjoyed the time off. I’ve vowed to try and play more when I want to play, instead of when I feel obliged to do so. So far I feel a lot better about it – my life probably isn’t particularly well suited to meeting volume targets.

I played a bit over the weekend, went on a massive heater (helped by having some fish dump 3BI to me at €50nl) and some decent play by me at times (seriously). I made a few mistakes which I didn’t get punished for, but I was happy to have thought that I’d done something wrong. There is a quick line check thread in HUNL on 2+2, which has been really useful – I rarely post it but the hands and thoughts that people get are great, and it means that “standard” hands get discussed (which is where I think I’m falling down). Thus far I'm up around $600 in February after 1,500 hands. MBN etc.

I have caught up on some of the gossip/stories that have been doing the rounds of late. Some of these bits are quite awesome:
1) Somewhat old and not really poker, but $75k is a pretty epic rolling. It starts getting good around page 30, before that it is largely penix pictures.
2) Sorel Mizzi is allowed to play on FTP again. Don’t worry though folks, as Sorel has started cheating in the live arena instead.
3) There's a lot of bullshit going on with PeachyMer. Cliffs at post 3426, epic Slicknasty rage comic at post 3377.
4) The whole UB thing might get interesting again, with Travis Makar calling into Donkdown Radio with a whole bunch of shit. I listened to the interview, I thought he was FOS a lot of the time but it’s worth hearing all the same. There is also a pretty good post from Haley in her blog on brainwashdodo (link on the right).

A lot has happened at West Ham since I last posted, not all of it particularly good. Matt Upson seems to be out for the rest of the season, which is a huge blow. We play Burnley in the FA Cup tonight, which should see Thomas Hitzelsperger make his long-awaited debut.

At work we’re about to see a bunch more people laid off this week. We have also been involved in a massive spat with another department, which doesn’t bode well, I’m not really overly bothered as the redundancy terms are fairly appealing.

Good luck at the tables.

Failure is an Option

2011-02-02T02:41:00.000-08:00

January finish with me balling out of all control. I managed a stunning profit of $0.86 (that's roughly one shiny new fifty pence piece to British readers) plus rakeback. Pretty sure Antonius and Ivy will be ducking me at $500/$1,000 soon enough. I'm lacking motivation to play much at the moment, which isn't helped by me seeming to really struggle to get action on IPoker at the times of day I usually play at. I'll see how that develops, I might need to considering getting some funds on another network (Entraction?) if it doesn't work out.

The North vs. South HU challenge on RTR has seen something of a change in fortunes, with early luckboxing from the North having been erased by great play from the South. It is now pretty much even, and I have a single game left with Snakey to play. The main problem will be if Amatay fucks off travelling before completing all his games, so I'll probably call Heathrow with a bomb scare to try and prevent this.

Elsewhere in poker:
1) Yet more attempted scamming from the same guys that attempted it at the Partouche Poker Tour.
2) In a fairly awesome final table featuring Moorman, James Keys and Antonius, some bloke I have never heard of won the Aussie Millions main event.

West Ham got dumped out of the Carling Cup, crumbling to an aerial assault lead by Birmingham circus freak Nicola Zigic. For the third time this season. Having done the hard work and got an away goal, I was very annoyed to go out one step from Wembley. Fair play to them, they probably deserved it over the two legs. In a sulk I gave the FA Cup game to Forest a miss, which we won 3-2, and drew Burnley at home in the next round.

I thought we did well enough in the transfer window. Bridge and Keane will definitely improve the first XI, I have never seen Ba play but a German dude I know reckons he is alright. We also signed some kid from Dulwich Hamlet, who could easily be the next Steve Jones or Dean Martin (for anyone old and nerdy enough to remember them). Blackpool away tonight and Birmingham at home on Sunday are two massive games for us, sadly Blackpool signed Andy Reid and James Beattie, both of whom always score against us, the bastards.

I shan't comment on the Andy Carroll or Torres deals, it is fucking boring and gave Sky material to spam their TV channels with. The main thing is that Carroll now has a whole new city of people that he can get into fights with.

Good luck at the tables.

Back to Square One

2011-01-19T08:10:00.000-08:00

Despite my hatred for the cunts at Chili Poker, I have to hand it to them, they have seen sense and shipped me the run good since I started playing there again. I have erased all the massive losses I racked up at the start of January and am back to even again for the month. Huzzah!

I drew 1-1 with Hutch in the North vs. South Challenge and am 1-0 up vs. Snakey (he failed to set up the other game, must have been scared) when he attempted to set a tarp with teh pocket king king and I flopped two pair and turned a boat. I am looking forward to the next one, I also have NoCash (hopefully tomorrow) and Ant left to play.

Rather amusingly, two of the HU4ROLLZ challenges on 2+2 have concluded before reaching the full number of hands. Gary_Neville threw the towel in against Chemztry having started well and then been generally violated (I think this was a combination of Chemz being really good and running well in some massive pots), I know he took a shit load of action on himself, so I hope he recovers soon. Also, WhateverSon vs. TooCuriousso failed to conclude after the youngster ran like shit taking a shot at £1k NL and then seemed to spit the dummy. I dunno, TC handled it pretty well and gave him a good part of the $5k side bet back, so fair play to him.

If anyone wants to read a rather good and amusing post, I’d recommend the most recent entry on Vegas One Day (see my blogroll). As a man that spends around half of his working day passing time on the web, I can imagine how he felt, although I didn’t go quite as far as having an MTT schedule to play each day. I won’t spoil the story, but DoV is one of my heroes (despite his alarming views on Liverpool FC) and you should take five minutes and have a read.

We got told our pay and bonuses today at work. I won’t go into details but it I was fairly pleased with how it went, hopefully this place will keep me on as it appears to be a reasonable place to work based on what I have seen in the first six months. My boss is something of an acquired taste, however he is a decent guy at heart and is happy to go into bat for his staff.

West Ham won their FA Cup game against Barnsely and drew Nottingham Forest (one of the few other clubs in English football that I don’t hate) at home in the next round. We edged out Birmingham 2-1 in a cracking cup tie in the Carling Cup semi-final first leg, and then got rolled by Arsenal in the league fielding a really weak side. Martin O’Neill seems certain not to be coming, and the board look to be back-tracking after massively undermining Avram Grant in the last couple of weeks. Whilst his debut was poor, the signing of Wayne Bridge can’t be a bad one (on loan and even with his feet cut off he would still be our best left back).

I hate the transfer window, it’s an excuse for the cunts at Sky to stand outside football grounds like they know what is going on, when in fact they are just a cunt with a microphone stood outside a football ground without a clue, telling you who has driven in and out over the last few hours, and then repeat it on an endless loop on one of their channels.

Good luck at the tables.

Sour Times

2011-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, Happy New Year to everyone. I’ve been rather shit at updating here of late, partly due to being rather busy at work (I did fuck all for 50 weeks last year and then got overwhelmed in the last two weeks of December), and partly due to me being a lazy, useless bastard.

I have played quite a lot of poker over the Christmas period, and managed to successfully donate a lot of cash to the poker community as a result. The usual combination of run bad and tilt-induced poor play were the reason, although I have made something of a fight back in the last few days. I switched my play back to my old IPoker skin, their rakeback deal is so much better than the William Hill one, although I will keep limited funds on there as I think they are shady, or at best incompetent.

I need to get my ass in gear and complete my part of the North vs. South HU challenge. The match between myself and BurnleyMik finished and honourable draw, featuring an epic suckout from Mik and me fading Mik’s massive draw with top pair when he made the key error of having far too many outs to actually hit any of them.

I had a pretty good Christmas, catching up with a lot of family from both my side and the wife’s. It was nice to get out, and I’m glad that this cold snap has eased, it was getting seriously fucking boring.

West Ham had a good Christmas, picking up 8 points out of 12, and then went up to Newcastle and got smashed 5-0. We beat Barnsley in the FA Cup on Saturday and have Birmingham in the first leg of the Carling Cup semi tomorrow. The Birmingham game still isn’t sold out, which is fucking embarrassing and doubtless lots of cunts that didn’t go will be chuntering about how they deserve a ticket if we make the final, which we probably won’t. After that it is Arsenal at home on Saturday in a rather annoying 5:30 kick-off, which is convenient for anyone but the cunts that are actually attending.

Avram Grant’s position remains in doubt, to be honest I doubt anyone else will come in and do a decent job with the shit we have in our squad and we’re skint, so I’d rather spend the cash it would cost to fire him on something important, like a left-back.

Cuntfair

2010-12-08T01:56:00.000-08:00

November was a pretty awesome month for me on the cash game side, finishing up $1,200 plus rakeback. This basically erased all my losses from my incredibly awful October. In December I’m down $300 or so over 3k hands. My horse has delivered some nice scores of late as well, although I need to speak to him regarding what to do if this whole legislation thing blows up.

In other poker news:
1). Betfair are absolute cunts. This may not be poker, but this is absolutely not on. Take the mistake on the chin, pay it out and shut the fuck up.
2) The whole US legislation shit makes me really sad. I’m not really going to comment on the ins and outs, I don’t even know if it is going to happen. It’s just such unbelievable bullshit that in “the land of the free” someone is suggesting you can’t play poker on the internet, all over a few tax dollars and to let the big casino operators have a crack. It may even work out well, but I can imagine that rake rates are going to be horrendous and I think a lot of people may just pack it in now. I have met a lot of good people from all over the world through poker and a lot of them are going to lose their hobby and a source of income if this shit happens.

I was up in Edinburgh last week. It’s an awesome city, I would recommend a trip to anyone. The train took ages because of the snow, but I was surprised I got there at all given that a lot of the country was over a foot deep in the stuff. It was fucking cold though, I’m pretty sure I saw a penguin walking down George St at one point. It does provide a good opportunity to roll out this picture though.

West Ham beat a terrible Wigan side in the league and then, with a weakened side. I met celebrated fish Amatay for a quick beer beforehand, I could tell that he was in awe of my presence (joking, obv). Obviously it was good to put a face to a name, I’m pretty sure the next time we go out he’ll be getting his credit card behind the bar. We then trounced the Man Utd stiffs 4-0 in the Carling Cup (I had a ticket but also had a stinking cold, it was freezing outside so I opted to watch it in front of the telly). I thought we were absolutely excellent, with Jon Spector appearing to have turned into Scott Parker in midfield. We lost 1-0 at Sunderland on Sunday. I thought we defended way better than we have, so the acquisition of Wally Downes appears to be an astute one (James Tomkins has gone from fourth choice centre back to playing really well in the space of a week) although we didn’t create a great deal.

We take on Man City on Saturday. I think we have improved but am now of the opinion that we are going to go down. I just don’t think we have the quality in what is basically a much tougher league this year.

Good luck at the tables.

PS I read an issue of Viz on the train. The letters page was brilliant. My favourite was “I watched the Simply Red last ever performance on TV the other day. I’m not a fan, but I wanted to be sure.”

Backed Up

2010-11-23T06:27:00.001-08:00

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...

2010-11-10T03:27:00.000-08:00

...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

2010-11-01T03:03:00.001-07:00

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.

The Great Depression

2010-10-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

This month has been utterly devastating. I was down $2.5k at one point, after two horrendous sessions where I don't think I have played great but have run like absolute shit. I clawed back $400 or so on Sunday (clawed back - what the fuck is that about? It isn't even my money to claw back, it is gone) after having someone played spewy aggressive and running really well and finally working out just how mental he was and completely owning him after that. I should be able to play tonight, Friday and Saturday with any luck, which will probably be expensive.

I got an accounted sorted on Ongame last week. I have yet to play a hand on there, the software is legendarily awful and there is no auto top-up, but the deal I am on is good (thank you Chris, much appreciated) and it does add an additional place to play MTTs too.

Regarding my bad run, it might be the kick up the arse I need. I don't really work hard enough at my game, despite some of the excellent resources available. If anyone can recommend a training site beyond Deuces Cracked for HU cash games, I'd be most grateful. I was impressed with some of AEmotherfuckingJones's stuff on Leggo for a while but I'm probably looking for something more basic and aimed at lower limits.

Elsewhere in Poker:
1) You cannot be Cereus! It’s another UB cheating scandal.
2) I'd give the keno a miss there as well.
3) WPT Festa Al Lago is down to a final table featuring Randall Flowers, Andy Frankeberger, Noah Schwartz, Andrew Frankenberger and Michael Benvenuti. Celebrated nit Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler bubbled the six-handed televised final table.

West Ham drew 1-1 at Wolves, having a last minute winner wrongly ruled out by Mark Clattenburg (I can't blame him, it took me four replays to make my mind up and by all accounts he had an excellent game otherwise). It is a shame really, it would have lifted us off the bottom - supposedly we stank the place out in the first half but were excellent in the second. We have Newcastle at home (5:30 kick off, thanks Sky/ESPN) on Saturday. They look to be playing well enough right now but these are the games we need to win.

Following Liverpool's takeover and subsequent derby defeat, the other big story has been Tabloid Wayne's explanation to The Imperial Lord Ferg that he won't be signing a new contract. The Mancs are all up in arms about it, I'm not sure what they expected given that he did exactly the same to his boyhood club and that all is clearly not well at the "Theatre of Dreams" (my fucking arse) right now and given that money clearly now prevents them from buying players at the top of the market, it isn't unfair to suggest that they are now no longer going to be right at the top of club football for the next couple of years. I can't see him going abroad unless they now have chip shops in Madrid and apparently his missus is keen to stay in the North-West, so it looks like their nearest and dearest is the obvious destination.

What his fee ends up being will be interesting. I'm told there is a "gentleman's agreement" between Europe's top clubs to not invoke the Wilson ruling to enable players to buy their contract out, which would enable Rooney to depart for £5m and change at the end of the season.

On this matter I would suggest three things:
1) City weren't part of that elite group of clubs, to my knowledge.
2) I tend to agree with Harry Vaisey's definition of a gentlemen's agreement. “A gentleman’s agreement is an agreement which is not an agreement, made between two persons neither of whom is a gentleman, whereby each expects the other to be strictly bound without himself being bound at all.”
3) I wouldn't class people like David Gill or Florentino Perez as gentlemen.

Anyway, interesting times. Ferg looked fairly upset during all the press stuff yesterday. I wonder whether he might bow out at the end of the season, given the current financial constraints, his age etc.

I booked a weekend to Edinburgh with her indoors in early December. I've always wanted to go, although I dare say it will be fucking cold up there. There seems to be loads of stuff to do there and I hope to quaff a good few pints over the course of the weekend. First class train tickets were £105 each, which is pretty good value in my opinion, and prevents all the hassle of flying. If anyone has been and recommends anything to do or to avoid there (beyond announcing what a top bloke Oliver Cromwell was) then I'd be glad to hear them.

Good luck at the tables.

Tilt Is Expensive

2010-10-11T03:42:00.001-07:00

As you can probably guess from the title, I lost a shit load of cash (in excess of $1k) at the HU tables over the weekend. I have no excuses – I got Godmoded but at least half of the losses were my fault. Overall – no excuses, I felt that I was due a bloody nose at some point. It’s the nature of the game that you get them from time to time – it is those that deal with it best that do better at poker IMO.

Fortunately for me (and everyone else), Barry Clark has written an epic post which has come at exactly the right time. I shan’t offer any comment beyond that, his post on its own says everything.

On the plus side, the weekend saw some glorious weather. I was out in the countryside with my wife’s parents – we went for a couple of walks and ate some excellent food, all of which helped to take my mind off the losses. For a part of the weekend they kind of weighed me down – they really shouldn’t as they aren’t a significant financial burden in the context of my overall bankroll size, so I should just man up and move on.

Elsewhere, ChiliPoker continue to mess around with cashouts. I’ve had my fill with these guys already and said my bit in earlier posts here, but if any of you guys have material sums on Chili I’d seriously consider whether you want to keep them there.

In sport, Europe won a thrilling Ryder Cup, everyone at the Commonwealth games has the shits and West Ham drew 1-1 with Fulham, which was probably a fair result, despite the best efforts of Andre Marriner to be the new Mike Dean and confuse the shit out of players, fans and coaching staff by blowing his whistle at random intervals.

England play someone (Montenegro or Moldova, I don’t know which) away on Tuesday. I shall probably watch the game in order to spite the wife and prevent her watching some other pish on TV that I have no interest in.

I watched Mullholland Drive last night, which we got free with the paper last week. This got rave reviews, I thought it was unmitigated David Lynch pish, although I did get to see Naomi Watts’ tits, which was a bonus. I also watched Full Metal Jacket, which was considerably more awesome than Mullholland Drive, but didn’t contain any tits.

Good luck at the tables.

Kick Start

2010-09-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

I played a reasonable number of tournaments last week, redeeming some poor results with fifth in the Party $109 for $930, which meant I pretty much broke even. I played some HU cash yesterday, with a measly 6,500 hands on the board for Semptember I am up around $850. This featured a session against a reg that claimed he was formerly a $2k NL player that got his roll busted by Isildur (yeah, right). I finished down to him before he quit me when he claimed I was running good (I wasn't) and talked a load more shit.

I turned 35 on Friday and enjoyed a pretty good Italian meal at 500, an Italian Restaurant at the top of Holloway Road near Archway tube station. It's kind of an odd location for a good restaurant as most of the places around there are Irish pubs with alcoholics propping up the bar. One of my friends tells an amusing story about some bloke in one of them having shat himself in the toilets and walking out through the pub naked apart from his shoes, clutching his soiled trousers. Nice place. The meal was good though.

The highlight of the weekend came on Saturday when West Ham produced an excellent 90 minutes to deservedly beat Spurs 1-0. Not a single player had a poor game for us, Rob Green made a world-class save from Luka Modric, and Frederic Piquionne in particular was excellent up front and deserved his goal. We played exactly how I want a West Ham side to play - everyone gave everything and we passed the ball nicely but didn't shirk the physical stuff. This resulted in a rousing atmosphere - credit to both sides, they came out to win the game and there was barely a bad tackle in the game. I thought we outmatched them all over the park and overall we have had a nice seven days after our draw at Stoke and win in the Carling Cup at Sunderland.

The Sunderland win coincided with the birth of Leo, my friend's son. His father is a West Ham fan, so I think the least he could do is get the date and result tattooed on his little boy's forehead. Overall it has made a mockery of some early suggestions that Grant should leave (I'm looking at you, Steve Stammers at The Mirror, you fucking wanker - I look forward to your admission that you were wrong and that your paper is a shitrag).

Good luck at the tables.

A Satisfying Weekend

2010-09-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

With her indoors out on both Friday and Sunday I have played some tournament poker. I won two freezeouts on Party for $1,400 and $600, giving me a solid profit for donkaments for the weekend. I defintely prefer smaller fields, I get extremely frustrated playing big field tournaments and definitely play below my A game in longer sessions. Thanks to the http://www.raisetheriver.com/ crew for their support during both tourneys.

In cash I played (and won) my biggest ever cash pot (getting all in 300bb deep at GBP 100nl vs. a mentalist when I rivered a set vs his two pair on a dry board, sadly most of the money in his stack was from my bankroll). Cash has been kind to me, I played a session this morning against a guy that I don't rate but has run well against me before. He was majorly tilted and made a couple of absurd river overbet bluffs - I only know that they were bluffs as I thought they were good spots to hero call. Overall I'm well down on volume playing cash (just 5k hands for the month so far), but I have been playing a mixture of fish and regs. The previous two months I have been playing almost exclusively regs, the problem being that the rake just kills your profit. Whilst it's harder to get good volume in playing fish, it's certainly more profitable and I'll endeavour to do more of it from now on. Overall I'm up almost $1k for the month playing cash.

I'm off work on Tuesday as the wife is away, so I hope to play a mixture of cash and tournaments on those two days.

Elsewhere in the poker world, Jeff Lisandro beat Joe "Floes" Serock heads-up in the £5k WSOP Europe PLO. The field looked ridiculously strong - well done to Jeff for winning his first non-stud bracelet and not knocking his opponents block off, and better luck next time to Joe, who is ridiculously good at poker and should ship a bracelet at some point fairly soon. Congrats also to Phil Laak for winning his first bracelet in the first event.

West Ham drew 1-1 away at Stoke in the televised game early on Saturday. I was heartened by our performance, we were absolutely excellent in the first half and were unlucky not to be awarded a penalty for a clear handball and play against ten men for most of the match after Ryan "he's not that kind of player" Shawcross elbowed Cole off the ball, but the ref's back was turned. I fucking hate Stoke, it's bad enough having Blackburn in the division without having a carbon copy of them as well. More importantly, we showed enough guts and determination that we should be able to move off the bottom of the table soon if we keep playing like that. Arsene Wenger should also be up in front of the beak after pushing the fourth official when they played Sunderland, but being Arsenal manager I'd imagine he'll get away with it.

I'm 35 next Friday (gulp_. You cunts can feel free to send hookers, champagne and fine items of clothing to me, just leave your email at the bottom and I'll get you my address.

Good luck at the tables.

Signs of Life

2010-09-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

I’ll get the boring stuff out of the way first – poker. I played a set of tournaments on Wednesday, managing only a min-cash in the FTP $109. On the cash side things have gone surprisingly well, I’m up $450 or so over 3,000 hands and I hope to play some more tonight. I did a bit of bumhunting yesterday (I was kind of knackered after doing a lot of domestic stuff so couldn’t be arsed getting snap sat out by some regs) and I had kind of forgotten how ridiculously profitable it can be. I still find it somewhat tilting though.

After the tournament session I played I managed to get a guy to three table me. He had all the momentum at first, but after a while I managed to turn the tables and I think I had him fairly well figured out by the end of the match and executed a pretty awesome triple barrel bluff in a three bet pot, which made my willy grow. We played six tables for about ten minutes (he suggested it and he had been both very game and polite so I found it hard to refuse) – it was absolutely mental. My wrist was aching through all the mouse clicking and my retina bleeding from IPoker’s software (although it is much improved after a recent upgrade).

I sat last night and read through some of the Microgaming scandal stuff on 2+2. I’d been aware of it previously but never looked into the details. I always find these things interesting and to say that Microgaming’s image comes out of it tarnished to say the least. It’s not quite up there with the UB/AP scandals but it is getting close – whilst your money is almost certainly safe on somewhere like Ladbrokes, I wouldn’t be giving these guys a bean. It also illustrates a lot of the problem with rakeback and under the counter deals that get done and kind of back up the guy from William Hill saying that this business model is pretty much unsustainable.

I went to see West Ham vs. Chelsea on Saturday. We conceded two cheap (well, they were pretty much fucking free) early goals and Chelsea pretty much cruised through the rest of the game, but I thought there were a reasonable number of positives. Our new right back actually looked like a right-back (this is awesome as we haven’t had one at West Ham for over a year) and Victor Obinna looked a genuine threat. We also scored a nice goal, but we really need to tighten up at the back.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of going to a restaurant called Inamo in Soho. It is a Japanese place with an interesting twist, for anyone that is interested I’d suggest checking out the website for details. On Saturday I was shattered after a few pints and the football (and a total of four and a half miles walking, thanks London Underground) and watched Un Prophète, a French film set in side a prison. It’s quite long and brutal at times, but incredibly well put together and acted and well worth two and a bit hours of your time – be warned, it is in French and has subtitles, so if foreign language flicks aren’t your thing…

Good luck at the tables.

First Amongst The Losers

2010-09-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

With the wife at a wedding on Saturday, I chose to get all retro and spend the day donkamenting. I decided to try and cap the number of higher buy-ins that I played (nothing higher than two $109s). I cashed in three, all on Stars (which isn’t particularly hard given that they seem to pay around half the field these days) which included a 2nd place for $2.1k in the $44 6-max. I went pretty deep in two of the early Stars rebuys but ran out of cards/lost flips at crucial moments.
The 6 max was pretty epic, and railed by the http://www.raisetheriver.com/ crew and some of the 2+2 guys I felt I played as well as I could have, and busted HU with top pair second kicker vs. bottom set in a three bet pot, which was a pretty standard cooler (although villain’s call pre-flop was probably pretty bad). It was nice to go deep for a change and end an $8k MTT downswing. Thanks to Joppa, Burnley Mik, Snake_Eyes et al for immense railage, although obviously I was disappointed not to pop my cherry on Stars and win a tournament there.

I generally really enjoyed the chance to play some tournaments on Saturday and felt that my HU cash game play has benefitted my tournament game enormously. There were so many times that I have busted in tournaments previously where I just couldn’t find a fold ever. Whilst I’m not particularly an advocate of huge folds in tournaments, so often when your opponent is repping a massive hand it is simply because he has a massive hand and folding is basically the only thing you can do. I also think I use my position much better these days.

Following on from this, hand of the day in the 6 max when HU:
***** Hand History for Game 49131941616 ***** (Poker Stars)Tourney Hand

NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, September 04, 04:16:23 ET 2010

Table 328010356 19 (Real Money)

Seat 5 is the button

Seat 1: FBorges ( $597389.00 USD )

Seat 5: Hoopie1 ( $371611.00 USD )

FBorges posts ante of [$500.00 USD].

Hoopie1 posts ante of [$500.00 USD].

Hoopie1 posts small blind [$2500.00 USD].

FBorges posts big blind [$5000.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to Hoopie1 [ 8d 9s ]

Hoopie1 raises [$7500.00 USD]

FBorges calls [$5000.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Ah, Qs, 4d ]

FBorges checks

Hoopie1 bets [$10500.00 USD]

FBorges raises [$23000.00 USD]

Hoopie1 raises [$44500.00 USD]

FBorges folds

Hoopie1 wins $32000.00 USD

Hoopie1 wins $67000.00 USD from main pot

Basically, villain’s value range is 44 and A4 and his FOS range is huge, hence three-betting the flop is definitely in order. J

I’ve played very little in the way of cash this week, but did watch a fairly interesting bosoxx video on DC where he talked about some stuff that got me thinking. He was talking about barrelling, and saying that in a situation where you are planning on firing three barrels, you can get the same (or more) fold equity by overbetting the turn and then shutting down on the river if called, which gives you the effect of a cheap three barrel. It’s an interesting idea which I’ll experiment with, almost certainly with rather expensive consequences.

Some fairly interesting news on the poker front of late includes:
1) Shaun Fucking Deeb is out of retirement on the MTT front, so everyone's equity just reduced a little.
2) WCOOP is underway.
3) Some really shady stuff going on in the Partouche Poker Tour. As an aside this absolutely makes me puke, I can’t imagine how the people that got bumped or angled must have felt.
4) Someone thinks that a $250k 6 max event is a good idea and 2+2 thinks it is a good idea to stake someone. I am keen to buy a piece of the 2+2 stake if they get one going, with Gus, Fitoussi, Deeb and Chan there I find it hard to imagine that someone like charder, jovialgent, mastr, Bakes, DJK, LuckyChewy, Jason Mercier or whoever wouldn’t be +EV.
5) Jake Cody runs quite well. The kid must play pretty well too – well done Jake.

After my second place in the six-max, I settled down in front of the TV with a couple of beers and a Jamaican Woodbine to watch some boxing. Scotland’s unfancied Ricky Burns took on undefeated champion Roman Martinez in what turned out to be an absolutely thrilling tear up in Glasgow. Burns won on points after a cracking fight that was full of drama. He seems like a nice guy as well, I was delighted to see him win – I think he probably lacks the power to hang onto his belt for long and I’d fancy Nicky Cook to beat him (who Martinez beat previously) but I hope he gets a big pay day out of it.

Otherwise this weekend I did some stuff around the house, coating the recently-installed decking that we have on the roof terrace and defrosting the freezer. I hate doing stuff like this, but I felt better having done it. I’m pretty sure the block of ice that developed at the top of the freezer could have sunk the fucking Titanic, which is no surprise given that it hasn’t been defrosted in five years.

I also watched Four Lions, the Chris Morris comedy on Sunday. I wasn’t particularly impressed, despite some very amusing moments it never really decided if it wanted to be a comedy or something more than that (making some sort of sociological point). Probably worth a watch though.

England beat Bulgaria 4-0 as they got their Euro 2012 qualifying underway. The sterner test will come away in Switzerland this week, but there were some encouraging signs. I couldn’t really give a fuck about the whole Wayne Rooney thing, I’m sure that Best, Marsh and just about every other footballer from days gone by was at it as well. I guess it is more of a comment of people’s obsession with celebrity, Facebook and other such pish that makes stories like this keep coming out (and I understand that the tabloids have more on Crouch and a couple of others lined up in the following weeks).

Good luck at the tables.

The Law of the Jungle(man)

2010-08-31T02:13:00.000-07:00

I played very little poker over the last week, choosing to busy myself with all manner of other shite. I will end up down for August by around $200 pre-rakeback, which is no distaster, having played around 11,000 hands. The wife is at a wedding on Saturday so I will try and play a fair number of donkaments.

I have been having some work done on my flat during the last week, which has been needed in advance of me attempting to sell it next year. It hasn’t been too expensive but I could have done without shelling out the cash all the same. I managed to complete my tax return as well, so HMRC is due to be shipping me £7k in the forthcoming weeks, which is a reasonable bonus (well, it’s my money, but I’ll be glad to have it back).

There have been a few reasonably interesting stories in the poker world of late:
1) WSOP Europe and EPT London begin soon.
2) Shady allegations about Sorel Mizzi surfaced, I don’t think anyone is that surprised.
3) The durrrr challenge part duex got underway, and plucky challenger Jungleman12 has been bringing the smack so far.
4) Shit is getting wierd with UB.

West Ham took a 3-0 beating at the hands of the Mancs, who barely broke sweat. I didn’t think we did too badly, but Spector showed (again) that he isn’t up to it and was at fault for two of the goals. We never got any support to Carlton Cole, and one of the few bright spots was another decent performance from Dyer, who hit the post for the second game on the trot. Hopefully he will find the net next time.

With several people sustaining injuries and requiring minor operations from various clubs, you can tell that the international break is coming up. England are (I think) playing on Friday night, I’m sure the wankers that attend will get on the team’s back, it’ll be just like a home game at West Ham.

It is transfer deadline day today, which is possibly the date I hate most in the football calendar. Last year Sky said that West Ham could be concluding a deal with someone as the lights were still on at The Boleyn, which turned out to be the cleaners. Fuck them and their self-generating hype machine. If somebody can wake me up at the end of it (as long as I haven’t killed myself first), that would be good.

Good luck at the tables.

They're One Thing

2010-08-23T03:41:00.000-07:00

HU has seen some sick swings for me in the last couple of days. The good news is that I have made my 10,000 hand target for August, which I am pleased about. On Saturday morning I managed to stack of 7 BI to a massive fish at £50nl, and then proceeded to win most of it back at $100nl last night. I’ve made a couple of pretty big errors in deep pots recently, which are expensive and I need to work on. Overall I’m down around $300 for the month.

Reading through 2+2 last week I picked up on a couple of poker truisms that I hadn’t heard before – the first one is truer than almost anything I have ever heard before and the second underlines the mentality of pretty much any HU poker player, myself included.
1) The more I learn about poker, the harder it gets.
2) A bumhunter is anyone that table selects more than you do.

I watched an “Ansky vs. Durrrr” video on 2+2 last week. I generally don’t watch the very high stakes videos, there is generally too much going on in them, but Ansky always explains himself very well and isn’t afraid to be critical of his own play. A lot of the stuff in there was pretty enlightening; I’d recommend it to any HU player.

After stacking off all those buy-ins to the fish on Saturday morning, things didn’t get any better at West Ham. The complete disaster area that is the tube meant that it is essentially a two mile walk to the ground from any station. West Ham played well for 45 minutes, missed a penalty, hit the post, came out at half time, got rolled over by two goals from long balls and another from a nice cross and that was that. I was fairly encouraged by the performance - Piquionne, Dyer and Barrera provided plenty of reasons for optimism, but we need to sort ourselves out defensively and sharpish. We play Oxford in the Carling Cup tomorrow, I’m sure we will struggle, as we always do against lower division opposition.

Young Boys produced a thrilling display against Spurs last week. Tottenham played badly and were clearly hampered by the plastic pitch, but with Berne missing a couple of great chances to make it 4-1 and the subsequent late Spurs goal, I can’t see anything beyond Tottenham progressing to the next round. Booo.

Good luck at the tables.

L’il Zé

2010-08-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

August has been up and down (mainly down) so far on the HU front. I’m down over $400, which isn’t such a disaster given the stakes I have been playing. It just seems like a real drag when you are getting ROFLstomped by someone that is a lot worse than you or hit and run by the worst players that just can fold anything. Anyway, enough bitching, I hate hearing about “OMG I run so bad” (particularly when I am probably not) so I’m sure you do too. On the plus side, midway through the month I have played 8,000 hands, which at least puts me ahead of schedule for my targeted 10k this month. MasterLJ made a pretty awesome post about variance a while ago here, which is worth a read.

Over the last two nights I have played 2,000 hands against a Vamo. Honours are approximately even – he won Tuesday’s session and I won Wednesday’s, despite being down about four buy-ins inside the first 200 hands. He plays quite an odd style (being Brazilian, I would expect no less) and basically three bets pretty much every hand that he plays from the big blind (c. 35%) and seems to struggle to put down a hand (any hand) at times (we played a massive three bet pot deep on a clusterfuck of a board where he had J2o for top pair having three bet pre and bet flop and turn he called a fairly substantial river bet). I made some adjustments in yesterday’s session (min-raising pre to try and keep pots smaller and make more use of my positional advantage being one) and definitely ran better.

Fair play to the guy, he’s one of the few game opponents on IPoker at the stakes I play, and has been courteous enough. I think he’s keen to play again, and much like me probably just wants to get some action and not be snap sat-out by some idiot reg nitfish.

Elsewhere on the poker front, congratulations to MTT superstar and all-around nice guy Mement Mori for becoming the latest CardRunners instructor. I don’t know Mement particularly well but has always been helpful and pleasant around the forums, and it seems well deserved so good luck to him.

West Ham started the season badly with a 3-0 drubbing at Villa. Given that they had no manger it was a terrible result, but it is just one game so hopefully we can put it behind us against Bolton on Saturday. Except that we always lose to Bolton, so we probably won’t.

Good luck at the tables bishes.

Weird Fishes

2010-08-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

Poker has been somewhat meh of late. I am down around $400, mainly at $100/£100/€100nl, which isn’t a disaster. I managed to stack of $600 to a lolbad guy on Friday, only to win a lot of it back from him on Sunday. Fair play, he’s keen to give action and hopefully will do again. I also 4 tabled one guy at €100nl for 800 hands, when I told him I was quitting in a few minutes he typed “scared?” in chat. This was funny for three reasons:
1) I had played him at 50nl before, when he had quit me after 50 hands as I was “too good”.
2) FWIW I felt I clearly had an edge over him, but some regs seem to think it is unfair to quit when ahead, which is retarded, as neither party would ever quit.
3) Yes, obviously I’m scared you moron, that’s why I’ve sat here for 800 fucking hands over four tables, and now I’m suddenly crapping it. Clown.

I played some donkaments last night, I played good but didn’t run good, including getting KK in vs. AQs for the chip lead on the exact money bubble of the FTP $163 against someone that seems to have a track record of sucking out against me and losing, and busting soon after for a min-cash. Fuck that guy.

There has been some relatively interesting/amusing/shocking poker stuff around of late.
1) Things don't look good at Cake Poker.
2) Bachelor Frog tells us about his life.
3) Jungleman is playing the durrrr challenge, which has the potential to be really good if durrrr and Patrick ever finish up.
4) Barewire speaks the truth.

Martin O’Neill has quit the Villa job in a huff over transfer funds. I’m not going to go into my views on him here, I can’t be arsed, but this is good news ahead of our opening fixture at Villa Park on Saturday. I’m sure they will rattle off a routine 2-0 win all the same. Roll on the new season anyway, this one has the potential to be interesting.

England have a friendly against Hungary this week. I’m not one for having a pop at Capello, given the resources he has available, but to drop various players that went to the World Cup but stick with the senior members of the side that let him down the most (Lampard, Terry, Barry, Rooney) seems ridiculous. I thought Barry had a shocker, Terry and Lampard were poor and Rooney looked like a different player. At least Rooney and Barry had the excuse of coming off the back of some injuries. The retirements of Robinson (which I entirely understand given the treatment he got and that he should have gone to this World Cup) and Brow plus the situation with Cole and Carrick at the Charity Shield (which was a fairly entertaining game) don’t bode well and I wonder how long it will be before England are looking for another manager. Whether he is the right man I don’t know, but changing the manager won’t be a solution to England’s problems, which run a lot deeper than that.

Good luck at the tables.

July Wrap

2010-08-02T03:28:00.001-07:00

July finished with me grinding 14k hands for a loss of one dollar and twenty seven cents, which made it feel really not that worthwhile. I’m not that unhappy given that I probably didn’t run particularly well over the course of the month and probably didn’t play my best overall. I’d like to get in another solid month of volume and try and mix in some more $100nl over the course of August.

The best thing I saw on the forums this month was this thread by that_pope. Everything about it is fucking hilarious and I highly recommend going through the whole thing.

We are creeping towards the beginning of the football season and West Ham have won all of their pre-season games (I’m not sure that this is a good thing, two of the best seasons that we have had have followed us losing every single pre-season game). It appears that Scott Parker will be moved on, which is probably unsurprising in the grand scheme of things – Grant supposedly thinks Hitzelsperger is a better player (and has done well so far) and Parker probably deserves better than playing for us. Whilst I find the Spunk Brothers constantly being in the press somewhat annoying, we’ve done pretty well in the transfer market thus far in the transfer window so far so I can’t grumble.

Liverpool might be being bought by some Chinese blokes, according to the BBC. I’m sure the Scousers will be delighted to see the back of Hicks and Gillett, although I’m always suspicious about buyers from the Far East where the background and identities of people aren’t always clear and you wonder if they will have the best interests of the club at heart. I guess it can’t get much worse than how things are currently.

I went to see Inception the other day. It was good, although my feeble mind was somewhat confused at times. It’s worth a watch if you get the time.

Good luck at the tables.

Scared Money

2010-07-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

I have had a mixed month so far, with some more disastrous attempts at 100nl and a brutal day where I played 3,000 hands and dropped $700. Overall I have played a satisfying 9.5k hands and am down around $400, which isn’t an utter disaster. I’m kind of annoyed as some of my losses are undoubtedly tilt related, but I played a lot better in my last session.

I’m glad to have finally removed the last of my money from Chili. Withdrawls taking two weeks is at best incompetent and at worst shady, and I feel a lot better for having that portion of my roll on Hills.

Note to IPoker $100nl regs: you are, almost without exception, the biggest group of pussies I have ever seen in my entire life. The HU $100/£100/€100 tables nearly always have at least one person sitting at them, yet there are relatively few games going on. Try sitting a reg at three tables and you’ll get snap sat-out. The $20nl guys have more balls than you do, why not try playing someone that isn’t drooling on themselves, you might actually get to play some poker and even learn something. Wankers.

Elsewhere in poker, the November Nine are now all set. Matt Affleck must be absolutely sick about his bust out hand, but that’s tournament poker I guess. Elsewhere, PokerStars seems to have made proper refunds for the DoN collusion that was going on, but not actually fixed the collusion itself.

I had a shitty cold at the back end of last week. Although I have recovered, I am still absolutely knackered all the time and it is starting to piss me off. We spent last weekend looking at potential areas to live, which was relatively successful and we have a good idea, but I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got back.

West Ham completed the signings of Pablo Barrera and Frederic Piquionne. Both will definitely improve the squad, so I can’t grumble. The whole Loic Remy thing is becoming very boring, I’m pretty sure I’d be better off sleeping in until the season starts. Bar Man City, nobody is really doing much business so right now (Bolton have made a couple of decent acquisitions but I don’t see anyone down the bottom moving heaven and earth) I’m relatively optimistic for a finish of somewhere towards the top end of the bottom half of the league.

Good luck at the tables.

Strike Action

2010-07-12T08:06:00.001-07:00

I finished July a thoroughly satisfactory $1,400 up, which I am very pleased with. I thought I played well throughout. June has thus far seen me play 3,500 hands, and after some epic run good against a bad reg yesterday evening I am up $200. Volume would have been higher, but for… IPoker.

Basically, IPoker suffered an enormous software failure which saw their games largely out of commission for over 48 hours. The support from the various skins handled it in their usual fashion – badly. I got a text from a mate who works at one of the skins who said it was all IPoker’s fault after a back office software upgrade. There were a lot of very unhappy regulars on 2+2, I think I’d be exactly the same if I only had money on one site and played poker for a living.

Having built up a reasonable roll on my old IPoker skin and after some bad publicity for them (Chili Poker), I decided I’d do much better by shifting my roll to William Hill, where I secured a rakeback deal and started to do just that. Chili have been very slow allowing me to make withdrawls – the last one took the best part of two weeks. I spoke to a couple of guys on 2+2, one said he had problems also and it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a few issues. The way their support handled it didn’t encourage me either (taking ages to reply when they are normally very quick, failing to meet deadlines that they had imposed to pay my money, then refusing afterwards to set a new deadline). Whilst their bonuses are good, I’d urge anyone wanting to deposit on there to exercise a little caution – there is no reason why a cash out onto Neteller should take two weeks, and I’m not moving what they should consider to be large amounts of money off the network.

The World Cup concluded last night, I won’t go on too much about the game as you probably saw it. I lumped a load of money on Spain before the semis to leave me around even for the tournament. I’m not sure whether Webb lost his bottle or was under orders from FIFA, but he failed to send people off when the decisions were obvious, and the fucker normally can’t wait to get his red card out in the Premiership.

West Ham appear to have signed Pablo Barrera, the Mexican winger and self-styled “Mexican Cristiano Ronaldo”. The bloke looks quick, but if he does join and whether he settles remains to be seen. We also seem to be moving towards signing Loic Remy, but I can see us being beaten to the punch when a good side come in and offer him a deal. Roll on the football season.
My company got bought out last week, so we’re going through an integration process with our new owner. The new owner appears to be excellent and very switched on, however redundancies are inevitable and I think it’s 50/50 if I stay or not. Whilst the job market isn’t great right now there is some stuff out there in my field and the terms of the pay-offs being talked about don’t sound awful, so it might not be the worst thing in the world.

This weekend the wife and I are hiring a car to drive around various areas that we might want to go and live in. Taking on a massive mortgage in the current climate doesn’t exactly fill me with joy, but needs must and I’m starting to get pissed off with the noise, dirt and great unwashed of Hackney.

Good luck at the tables.

Closing gag: A bloke goes into Rothbury police station and says "I heard ya was looking for a Geordie nutter like. I'm here to hand meself in."

The copper looks up and says, "Fuck off Gazza."

Existential Angst

2010-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

I played a long and rather unpleasant session of HU on Friday at $100nl, stacking off the best part of $1k. I don’t think I played great but I unquestionably ran like absolute shit ($600 below AIEV). However, I’m now at 9k hands for the month, hoping to hit 10k with any luck and still up $1,200, which can’t be bad. Every time I move up I seem to run like shit and I also seem to get affected by losing money – which is ridiculous, I’m over-rolled for $100nl by around 100 times by most people’s definition, yet when I lose a stack, often in totally standard spots, I seem to get affected by it, when this rarely happens to me at £50nl or lower these days.

England got predictably dumped out of the World Cup by a tidy German side yesterday. Debate about the ball being over the line and replay technology aside, England were absolute shit from start to finish and a lot of senior players need to have a long, hard look at themselves. I didn’t agree with some of Capello’s decisions, however (like every other England manager) has basically a limited pool of quality talent to choose from. Somebody at the FA needs to start paying attention to Sir Trevor Brooking and somebody else needs to break the Premiership’s grip on power and also restructure the FA, because at present it’s archaic and a bit of a paper tiger.

As usual, instead of a considered response we’ll get a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, some requests to sack the manager and not a great deal else. I’m now looking forward to the rest of this without the usual nonsense being spouted by the press.

I have little else to say but am off on a stag to Newquay this weekend. Run good in the interim peeps.

The Great Cock and Goals Swindle

2010-06-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been away this weekend and played little poker. That said, when you can’t, it pays to have someone that can on your behalf, so I was delighted to return on Sunday evening to find that my horse had shipped a $3k score and duly transferred me half. By doing fuck all I’ve had my most profitable week in quite a while – thank you horse!

We were at a wedding this weekend down in Cornwall. Whilst I drank too much and felt like shit yesterday, we had a cracking time and it was great to catch up with some old faces. Whilst on the train on the way back, via the RTR forum Amatay pointed me in the direction of a massive scam that Neil “Blatch” Blatchley has been running. The 2+2 link, which contains a link to the original (enormous) thread on Blonde Poker, can be found here.

The whole thing is absolutely disgusting, but here is my two penneth:
1) I am astounded that up until earlier today, there were still a couple of people still supporting Blatchley. The evidence has been overwhelming for a while – you might have thought he was your mate, he was in fact a liar and a turd, and should be treated as such. Given that a few people have always regarded him is a cock, I find it even more surprising.
2) Well done to the guy that outed this. Obviously other people suspected, but it took someone to be pushy and get it into the open, despite being rounded on by everyone else on the forum.
3) People have every right to complain about losing money. However, those that have lost a substantial sum that means something to them need to have a look at themselves – you are punting money here, and you clearly haven’t done your best to look after your investment. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference, but I know if I am sticking money into something like this, I am doing it as a punt, and I’m certainly not doing it with a significant portion of my net worth.
4) The money is gone and you’ll never see it again. Get the police involved and hope that justice is done, because it is likely that this fucker is going to do a bunk to somewhere sunny and cheap as his life here is over. The world is a small place however, and I dare say he’ll get his at some point.

“Be careful out there” is I guess the moral to this story. That, and if something seems too good to be true, that’s probably because it is.

I’ll leave the obvious England World Cup stuff out, as I could write loads and everyone has their own opinion. The one thing I will say is that the fans are cunts for booing the team (I understand that they have paid their money, but booing your own isn’t what being a supporter is about) and Rooney is a cunt for having a pop back.

More importantly than anything else, what a great competition so far. Lots of surprises, the USA game on Friday was absolutely thrilling, and whilst I didn’t see it, well done to New Zealand for their draw against Italy and leaving themselves in with a chance of qualifying for the next stage going into the last game.

Good luck at the tables.

From The Back Of The Pack

2010-06-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

Poker has been good to me of late. I have chalked up 5.5k hands so far in June and am up $1,800. I had my first donkament session in months last night, making a couple of deep runs and cashing twice but not getting there in various flips to turn a min cash into a monster stack capable of dominating the tournament with.

However, all was not lost when I logged into MSN at work this morning to receive a message from my horse. He’s a top guy and a very good player at the stakes he plays and has had a terrible run of late. He was in $6,000 of make-up, which is a lot at the $20-$50 buy-in level, and was starting to question his game. Anyway, he informs me that he is at the final table of the $70k with the chip lead. He proceeded to ROFLstomp the field and ship a first prize of over $12k, clearing his make-up and delivering us both a nice profit. Obviously the money is nice but I’m also delighted for him, he’s a very cool guy and the make-up was stressing him out.

Elsewhere in poker:
1) It couldn't have happened to someone more deserving.
2) Russ Hamilton isn't a very nice man.
3) HSNL players get scammed. I’m still astounded that these guys are clicking on links sent to them from people that they don’t know, but whatever. Scary stuff though.

The World Cup is underway, with a lot of teams appearing to be fairly cautious in their early games. Rob Green’s error for England has obviously provided something of a talking point, to me it was just a freak error. England generally were pretty poor and Carragher’s lack of pace when he came on as sub was worrying. New Zealand’s late equaliser yesterday and North Korea’s performance against Brazil provided some good entertainment, I’m hoping some of the teams will open up a little in the second round of matches.

West Ham, following the signing of Thomas Hitzelsperger, have been linked with various players. The latest one is Juan Roman Riquelme – a wonderful footballer but I can’t think of anyone less suited to this league. Someone on one of the forums said “I saw him play for Boca in April, he did fuck all for the whole game until he got sent off in the 90th minute – he’ll fit right in.” As far as I can tell it is an elaborate plan to get more money out of Boca, but you never know. Everton seem to want a lot of money for Yakubu, and Julio Baptista from Roma is another name mentioned, as is Chris Samba from Blackburn (I think David Wheater would be a reasonable alternative and we do need a no-nonsense central defender).

As regular readers will know, I fucking hate Harry Redknapp. I also hate Terry Venables. So when I saw this advert, featuring the two cretins, I was astounded. Do the pair of them need the money that much that they need to give up whatever dignity that they have left in return for a few extra quid? I guess the answer is yes. A pair of shitcunts advertising a rag of a newspaper – they’re welcome to each other.

I’m away this weekend for the final wedding that I am going to be attending this year. I’m looking forward to it, he’s an old friend that I have known since I was five, but it’s down in Cornwall, which makes it a four and a half hour train ride, which has the potential to suck a lot of balls. Luckily we’re in first class (we booked the tickets months ago so they were very cheap) and we get to watch the second England game in the place that we are staying with a load of friends on the Friday.

Good luck at the tables.

Back In The Groove

2010-06-08T03:13:00.000-07:00

Normal service will be resumed, with less stuff about weddings and more stuff about poker, football and other items that should appeal more to you.

I have come absolutely flying out of the traps this month playing HU, running like a God and crushing all in my path. Even a poor spell on Saturday afternoon got rectified afterwards with a winning session to offset some of the losses. Thus far I am up $1,500 in 3,500 hands, the poker community will be welcome when I dump these back. For the majority of this period I feel that I have played very well (probably better than ever) and am looking to move my Ipoker roll over to William Hill in the next week (I don’t feel all too secure with it on Chili and my contact at Hills has put me on their rakeback programme), having sorted an issue with Neteller.

The World Cup starts in less than a week. I think England have close to zero chance of winning it, despite having got a fantastic draw, but a month of football is not to be sniffed at. I’m pleased Capello left Walcott out – I would personally have found room for Adam Johnson, but Capello has got most things right in his reign thus far. Besides, he doesn’t come across as the kind of man that gives a shit what the pea-brained hacks think.

West Ham signed Thomas “Der Hammer” Hitzelsperger on a free transfer after a brief and unsuccessful stint with Lazio. I haven’t seen him play since he was at Villa, but from what I can gather he retains his powerful left foot and also has something of a never say die attitude, which we could do with. He captained Stuttgart to the title not that long ago, so it can’t be all bad. We managed to sign him completely under the radar of the press, which also makes a change. We are supposedly interested in Chris Samba from Blackburn – we could do with a no-nonsense centre-half, so this one would get my thumbs-up, although I doubt he would come cheap.

The WSOP is in full swing, with Durrrr finishing second in one of the $1.5k NLHE events. Supposedly he had a ton of action booked on him winning with a lot of the high stakes players and winning would have made him very wealthy indeed. Hellmuth (who you can hear talking about his mad mixed game skillz here, as well as some less rare footage of him acting like a cunt) went deep in one of the $1.5k events and made the money in the stud 8 donkament. Men The Cheater won a bracelet in one of the $10k stud events, and Wicked Chops has posted some excellent pictures of sluts on the rail.

GL at the tables, I hope you can all run like I have during the first week of June.

P.S. The boy Wonderflop is also doing well and playing some really good poker. Hopefully the cunt will update his blog soon to, so he can tell you about it himself.

Back!

2010-06-03T02:27:00.000-07:00

Before I start – this post will consist of content that is largely irrelevant to everyone. No change there then, I hear you cry. Overall I'll try and keep lame pictures to a minimum.

To my lasting surprise, I rather enjoyed the wedding day. I don’t like being the centre of attention, I don’t like formality and getting dressed up, and I don’t like having to be at certain places at certain times and getting told what to do by photographers, priests and fuck knows who else. Despite all this, it was actually a quality day. I surprised myself by suffering from no nerves at any time (apart from when I initially woke up) and managing to get a reasonable amount of booze down me after the first dance bit was over.

From four of my friends (all men), their responses to my speech were:
“That brought a tear to my eye.”
“I almost cried, but that was probably due to me drinking until 4 a.m. yesterday.”
“I almost cried during your speech, but then I remembered what a cunt you are.”
“Your speech was a bit gay.”

Still, everyone managed to have a good time, one of my friends never actually saw the inside of his hotel room, another fell into a stream that runs along the side of the hotel and then had a drink induced panic attack in the small hours back in his room, and had to wake his missus up to help him get it together. Someone also did the caterpillar on the dance floor, although she can’t recall doing so.

The honeymoon was a blast. The flight was four hours late taking off and took two hours longer than expected due to volcanic ash, but I was relatively unbothered by this as we got there, and that’s all that counts given the circumstances.

We arrived in San Francisco, which is a fucking amazing city. Great food, great people, lots of interesting stuff to do. We largely did touristy stuff – went to the Museum of Modern Art, went on a (fascinating) tour of Alcatraz, rode bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge, rode the cable cars, went to the Castro and saw Harvey Milk's shop, and went to the Top of the Mark cocktail bar, which was superb. It’s a wonderful city; I’d recommend it to anyone. We also went to Millenium Restaurant, a vegetarian place to please the wife. The food was genuinely superb, it could almost make me vegetarian, and apart from that I’d need to eat a juicy steak fairly regularly as well.

After that we drove to Lake Tahoe. The drive down there wasn’t much fun, as an inexperienced driver (i.e. I’ve pretty much never driven a car unaccompanied by an instructor) the torrential downpour that accompanied us on the windy climb up there wasn’t exactly welcome. Having got through that, the South Lake Tahoe area is slightly cheesy, but the surroundings are incredible. We went on a boat trip across the lake and took a walk up somewhere called Eagle Falls. We had both forgotten that it was at 6,000 feet, and couldn’t work out why we were both shit-faced after two beers and a glass of wine each. Alcohol and altitude are a fun combination.

From there we took the long drive to Monterey. This section of the trip saw us go down Highway One to Pismo (the drive was fantastic) and onto Santa Barbara. The time in Tahoe and San Francisco had largely been sunshine, but this part saw a lot of cloud, which put a bit of a dampener on things. Monterey is a pleasant enough place, with a sensational aquarium being the main plus point. Pismo was somewhere I could easily have given a miss, but Santa Barbara had plenty going for it. The town itself has a nice, easy pace of life to it and provided a nice break after being constantly on the move. We also managed to catch a pretty cool BMX exhibition in the street with some chap called Joey Cordova – I’ve got no idea if he’s any good or not, but I was impressed.

From there we drove onto Palm Springs, which is an odd sort of place in the desert. It is basically a load of luxury hotels that do a lot of golf and spa treatments. I spent the majority of the time sitting on my fat ass by the pool, drinking and reading books. It was bliss. The Palm Springs town centre is a bit too much neon and tat shops, but the resort we stayed in was lovely.

The final leg of the trip was to Vegas. We took a route that wasn’t on the interstate, west from Twentyninepalms past the Joshua Tree National Park, along the historic Route 66 and through the Mojave National Preserve. This was, by a long way, the most fun and interesting journey of the whole trip – there was little traffic on the road and lots of interesting stuff to see.
The speed limit on most of it was 55 mph, but obviously with nobody around you can take the piss and drive at 80 mph. At one point we got stuck behind some bikers, who were doing exactly the speed limit. I wondered what they were playing at; as if I had a big fucking Harley I would be thrashing the life out of it. We pulled in behind them at some silicate deposits which are a bit of a tourist spot, and then I understood why – they were Germans, who are of course keen on sticking to the rules.

Vegas was, well, Vegas. I played a couple of hours of poker at a $1/$2 table – which featured a lot of limping in and calling of raises, the occasional tarp with aces (why the fuck you wouldn’t raise AA pre-flop in a game where nobody ever folds is beyond me), nobody ever folding to a pre-flop three bet and one check in the dark. Everyone was terrible but I still managed to lose $60 to a table of cunts that must have been schooled by Hellmuth, luckily Lucy made the money back playing roulette.

We took the helicopter tour into the Grand Canyon (I’ve done it before) – it was fucking windy and pretty scary with the chopper being buffeted about, I was shitting it so much I couldn’t bring myself to photograph the Hoover Dam. Not even the Top Gun Anthem being played over the headphones could ease my fears. It was fine once you got used to it, although the pilot’s choice of haircut didn’t inspire much confidence (see photo). If he can’t get that right how can he be guaranteed to get it right flying a helicopter? We did a bit of shopping, a bit of sunbathing and also went to see Jersey Boys, a musical about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. I’m not normally into this sort of thing, but it was fucking superb. They also upgraded us from the cheap seats to about a dozen rows from the front, right in the middle, which was a result. I thoroughly enjoyed it, so if you bird is trying to get you to go and see such pish, I’d go for this one (it also runs in London, New York and other places) instead of something else based on Abba or some other shite. The Bellagio was awesome - the staff were great and they upgraded us to a quality room.

Overall, it was fucking sensational, although the driving was a bit of a chore at times. Being back at work isn’t much fun.

In my absence in the poker world has seen the following developments:
1) Chinese colluders have taken $750k out of the DON SNGs on Stars.
2) The WSOP is underway, with Michael Mizrachi emerging from bankruptcy to win the $50k showpiece event.
3) Mark Seif doesn't know who Isaac Haxton is and gets owned.
4) More UB shenanigans.

West Ham have announced Avram Grant as manager. Guillermo Franco has been released L along with Mido and Ilan. I’m pleased to see Luis Boa-Morte has been offered a new contract, he isn’t without his failings but we could have done with him last season. It also looks like Benitez is out at Liverpool; I wonder what the owners are planning as financially things don’t look great.

That’s it for now; if you’re still awake then you have probably been snorting amphetamines. Good luck at the tables!

P.S. Keep an eye on Haley's excellent blog (linked on the right) on the right for more stuff on UB. Wicked Chops claimed they were going to name additional names this week as well.

Signing Off

2010-05-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

I managed to just about squeeze in 10k hands of HU during April, finishing up c. $600, plus around half of that again in rakeback. With the wedding preparations in full swing, Lucy was out all day on Saturday and Sunday, so instead of helping with wedding preparations, I decided to make up for some of the poker I’ll miss when we’re on the honeymoon and managed to squeeze in 5k hands and $500 of profit over the bank holiday weekend. I feel like I have taken a reasonably big step forward with my game in recent weeks – I have come out on top playing a lot of regs and feel that I understand the game a whole lot better than I did before, and have fixed some big leaks (as opposed to just knowing that I had big leaks). Some of the jsnipes/bosoxx34 videos have been pretty useful for this. I dare say I’ll be back to setting money on fire fairly soon, however.

I was reading 2+2 the other day, and found a this. “A lot of poker players go through that degenerate phase in their life, all they want to do and think about is poker, and often you are happy doing that. However, once you've been in this game for a bit you realise that all this spills over to other factors in your life.” This is very true, and hopefully it is a phase that I am over, as the game can tend to be all-consuming.

The end of the football season is crawling into view. West Ham lost at Fulham, with the lads having amassed an enormous tally of 35 points they clearly feel they have earned their break this summer. In response, The Spunk Brothers have announced that everyone bar Parker is effectively for sale at the right price – which is probably fair enough, but might not do much for squad morale.With Liverpool losing to Chelsea, the title looks to be going to Stamford Bridge. This is clearly sickening, but nothing can be done. I’m looking forward to the City vs. Tottenham game on Wednesday, which has the potential to be awesome.

The election is this Thursday. We can all be glad, as the politicians can end their week of harassing normal people and go back to their ivory towers afterwards. The list of parties is fairly unappealing, but I’m fucked if I’m voting for Diane Abbott, Nu-Lab thundercunt and world-class hypocrite.

My wedding is this Saturday, and we’re off on the honeymoon on Monday. I’m looking forward to it, but with a reasonable amount of apprehension. I’m looking forward to getting the first dance out of the way and getting on the sauce, but don’t tell that to the missus. We depart for the honeymoon on Monday, which should be fucking awesome and I’m really excited about, but all this volcano nonsense (which shut airports in Ireland earlier today) needs to be nipped firmly in the bud before we’re due to fly.

The blog won’t be updated for the best part of four weeks, so run good whilst I’m away.

Superman wears Scott Parker pyjamas

2010-04-26T03:50:00.000-07:00

Once again I played very little poker this weekend – when I did play I was pretty happy with my game, although I finished down a reasonable amount after a couple of tough breaks.

West Ham somehow sealed their place in the top flight next, despite a pretty weak performance at home to Wigan. We went 1-0 down after four minutes via an own goal following a Wigan corner, Rob Green tipped a screamer from 25 yards onto the bar, we scored twice to go 2-1 up, we then conceded another goal to a Wigan corner to make it 2-2 and the Scott Parker smashed a dipping effort in from outside the box to secure our safety. All this said, the atmosphere was cracking and I got to see a win and five goals, so I shouldn’t grumble.

I’m pretty sure we will be the worst side to not get relegated since the Premiership began and the season has been pretty grim. I can only imagine that Zola and Clarke will be on their way this summer – I think there are a few reasonable candidates around to replace them, I’d be quite happy with one of the guys from the lower divisions (Paul Lambert, Sean O’Driscoll, Roberto Di Matteo) although it appears that Gold and Sullivan have their eyes on someone slightly higher profile. The exit door is unlocked and pretty much anyone is welcome to use it - I’d probably cry if Parker went, although he deserves to play for a better side.

Roberto Martinez was on Goals on Sunday the next morning. He handled himself very well; I hope he goes a long way in the game. I hope he moves soon as otherwise some of Dave Whelan’s cuntishness might rub off on him. He has some decent players in that side, although their defence needs looking at - the two wingers looked particularly dangerous.

Commiserations to Hull and Burnley. Burnley look well placed to have a shot at going back up next year, having not over-extended themselves. The same can’t be said for Hull, a club I have a lot of time for, who look to be in trouble financially, with a lot of mediocre players on big contracts.

Up at the top, the battle for the Big Cup places remains wide open. The Man City vs. Spurs game a week on Wednesday is going to be massive, I can see Redknapp twitching himself into a fit with the stress. I can only see Chelsea winning their remaining games now, I’d like to see Liverpool steal the points instead of car stereos against them and the Mancs winning the league, but it looks unlikely.

Wedding preparations are almost at an end, thank fuck. I have to write my speech, which I aim to do at work this week. I’m aiming to keep it fairly snappy as I’m keen to get the first dance over so I can get a few beers down me.

I used to read a lot of books. Now that I ride my bike to work pretty much every day, I rarely do so. I took the chance this weekend to start reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. This is the third book I have read by this author, along with Liar's Poker and Moneyball. If you have any interest in the financial markets, or even just on how the current clusterfuck happened, I highly recommend either Liar’s Poker or The Big Short. If you like sport, then I’d go for Moneyball – I’m no baseball fan, but it is a fine book. I’m aiming to get through some serious reading on the honeymoon and catch up on some of what I have missed out on over the last year.

I will try and get one more post in prior to the wedding, after that you’ll have to go elsewhere for a month to find badly written and opinionated bullshit. The Sun website is a decent start.
Good luck at the tables.

Road Trip

2010-04-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

FU Iceland, that’s all I can say. Not content with ruining my football club, your shitty volcano then tried to ruin my stag. The proposed group of 25 people to Amsterdam ended up being just 7, due to the cancellation of all flights. However, Jim and Kieran caught the train from Munich and Zurich respectively, and my best man did the business by booking us on a ferry from Dover to Calais and driving us to Amsterdam. We got up at 4 a.m. on the Friday, were smoking spliffs just outside over Dover by 5:30 a.m. and arrived in Amsterdam by lunchtime.

I’m actually glad we did it – it was actually a reasonably civilised weekend, with a lot of drinking, eating and pot smoking, and limited efforts to destroy me as most of the wilder elements of the group were left at home and I wasn’t forced to walk around in a gimp costume or similar. One afternoon we spent stationed in a bar in the red light district, betting on how long the next punter would take to bang one of the hookers in the doorway over the road. One fella managed a brisk and efficient nine minutes – good work Sir, no point in foreplay when you’re paying for it. There was also a fat hooker in the next doorway, who was eating a family-sized packet of crisps in the window. Surprisingly, she didn’t do much trade.

Back in Blighty I’ve run pretty hot at the poker, which is nice. I’m up about $700 for the month after 7k hands. There’s a lot to be said for remaining calm and patient and not being tilty. My buddy Wonderflop is also back on the horse and playing again, let’s hope the lazy cunt keeps it up.

West Ham did what they always do and rolled over at Anfield for Liverpool. We play Wigan at home this weekend – it is a huge game and could, with other results going our way, possibly see us stay up if we win. We will need to put in a better showing than on Monday night however.

The wedding is now two weeks away (eek). Her indoors is nervous about everything, particularly the flight situation, which seems to have eased in recent days. I am nervous about my first bit of driving in the US being half a mile through San Francisco and then straight onto one of the busiest sections of freeway in the country.

Good luck at the tables.

Fun Times

2010-04-12T04:01:00.001-07:00

With her indoors departing for her hen weekend on Friday, the weekend consisted largely of poker, football and some glorious sunshine. I played tournaments on Friday and didn’t manage a single cash, plus some HU on Friday and Saturday, when I ran hot to put me up a reasonable amount for the month after 4.6k hands. In other poker news, Faraz Jaka is a sick man.

It was also a huge weekend of sport – I had a series of football bets, that worked out well, and Black Apalachi came second in the Grand National, so I pretty much washed my face there. Phil Mickelson won The Masters and Tiger Woods managed to avoid fucking anyone during the four days in Augusta, if golf is your thing.

West Ham beat Sunderland 1-0 at home, a victory that we just about deserved. Despite some nervy defending, Rob Green only had one save to make. Mike “beach ball” Jones somehow failed to send off Craig Gordon, despite his best efforts, and Steve Bruce made a tit of himself by complaining about the referee, who (perfectly reasonably and in accordance with the laws of the game) delayed the restart whilst our players celebrated a goal that was ruled out in injury time. Lee Cattermole was excellent for them – I think he’s a thug but was probably the best player on the park on Saturday, along with Malbranque, who Bruce charitably substituted, despite being their major threat. I like Sunderland as a club and their fans, but I find Bruce a nauseating turd, and hope they get rid of him – he doesn’t conduct himself in a manner that the club deserves.

Elsewhere, Hull lost 4-1 at home to Burnely, leaving West Ham four points clear of the drop zone and with a far superior goal difference. The FA Cup saw Villa lose to Chelsea after a crude challenge from John Terry and some shocking refereeing from Webb. Story of the weekend was Portsmouth’s win against Spurs in extra time. Alan Wiley was (again) terrible – but credit must go to Portsmouth, who were absolutely superb and defended resiliently. I couldn’t give a shit about Spurs, but the whole event was made sweeter by the look on Redknapp’s face at the end. All that money spent by him and there will be no Cup final or Big Cup for ‘Arry. What a shame.

With the election being recently announced, I have been having a think about who I would vote for, and, more importantly, what I want from a political party. So, what I want from a political party:
1) Economy - the current government has seen a massive increase in the number of civil servants. Police, doctors, the army – fine, these are people who do things and earn their keep. However, the public sector is full of rampant inefficiency. This needs to be clamped down on and costs cut.
2) Economy - an aggressive approach to tackling the enormous debt that the country has taken on. This follows on from the point above, about cost cutting – I have no objection to an increase in tax/NI for higher earners at present, but only to pay back debt – not to piss away through inefficiencies. To follow on from this, I’d like to see NI scrapped and rolled into tax (since this is effectively what it is) and serious consideration given to a flat rate tax system at some point (with a reasonably generous threshold below which people pay no income tax).
3) Economy - an attempt to restructure our economy so that we actually start to make stuff and not really entirely on imports for everything.
4) Education – University education needs to be slimmed down. Those that should be going (i.e. the brightest) should be encouraged to do so. It isn’t for everyone and we now have a ton of degree qualified people, to the point where degrees are becoming meaningless. There should be more vocational training for those aged 16-21. Also, someone needs to sort the business out with the Scottish getting tuition fees paid for where the English don’t – WTF?
5) Environment - someone needs to have a good look at the whole global warming business. I would incentivise the new building of nuclear power stations in this country, which will reduce our reliance on imported gas and coal, and also cut carbon emissions (whether they turn out to be harmful or not).
6) Anti-social behaviour etc. – it is clear to me that we have created for ourselves a large underclass in this country. I would like to see this underclass encouraged to find work (there are plenty of low paid jobs out there, people seem to think they’re above doing them) and benefits cut off if they aren’t deemed to be trying hard enough. They should also be offered training in certain areas to equip them with skills to make finding work easier. The family unit (the traditional way of looking after people in this country up until recently) should be encouraged and incentivised – people have children in this country without any thought as to who exactly is going to look after the child and pay for its upbringing, and the poor fuckers don’t stand a chance. 7) Immigration – we need to revise our policy on who is let in and what the criteria is. I would suggest only those that demonstrate a good grasp of the English language would be a reasonable start. Those seeking asylum should be capped at a certain number to ensure the UK doesn’t take more than its fair share. I have no problem with people coming here to work – people that were born here could learn a thing or two from most of them.
8) Pensions – again, something needs to be looked at here. A lot of people have paid taxes and NI all their lives, to find that there now isn’t enough to go around. Those who have paid for it and those that need and deserve it should be placed at the front of the queue.
9) Crime – knife etc. crime, violent crime and crimes against the person should be treated more seriously. The guy that got killed in Matalan in Hackney was killed by a group of people including someone on bail for a murder charge. How the fuck do you get bail for murder? A lot of the issues with crime come back to the society we have created for ourselves and poor upbringing for children, and will take years to wash through.
10) Overall, what do I want – a very different country from the way this one has gone. Socially fair, aspirational, libertarian, independent, innovative, entrepreneurial, pragmatically and efficiently run, much more power to sit more locally, and where the right behaviours (working, saving, taking responsibility for your blood relatives - young and old) are conspicuously endorsed and supported - while irresponsible, selfish behaviour isn't.

Apologies for this, I just felt I had to get it off my chest. I can’t find a party that offers me close to much of that, but the Liberal Democrats seem to have taken a better stab at convincing me that they might be able to offer some improvements than anyone else. I think I’m turning into a Daily Mail reader though, is this what happens when you get old?

I’m off on my stag to Amsterdam on Thursday, so I could well end up dead and not posting again.

If any of you cunts are still awake after reading the Hooperian manifesto, good luck at the tables.

A Pleasant Surprise

2010-04-06T03:56:00.001-07:00

I had a relatively pleasant evening of donkamenting on Friday, bubbling the FT of the Party $109 and coming 7th in the FTP $109, plus a couple of other small scores. Once again I was happy with my play and spoke for a while with some of the PXF guys, who are a good bunch and made me miss the place in some ways. Her indoors is on her hen do this weekend so I should be able to tilt off a significant number of buy-ins on Friday and Saturday night.

Elsewhere it looks like the US just turned up the heat on Full Tilt’s owners, with a court case coming their way soon. For hysteria and badly informed nonsense with the occasional well-informed post, see here.

I spent the remainder of the Easter weekend doing wedding related shit in Battle. To be honest I’ve had enough of it now, even though I’ve probably done about 20% of the work involved and just want to have the day and (more importantly) go on the honeymoon. I hate being centre of attention so the day itself doesn’t excite me that much, particularly when you add to this the fact that it will make me about twenty grand poorer.

West Ham battled back from a goal down twice to salvage a 2-2 draw at Everton. A booking to Scott Parker means he misses the next two games, which is a huge blow. However the nature of the performance (despite a missed penalty and two goals conceded through poor defending) left me a good deal more optimistic than after the defeats against Wolves and Stoke. We play Sunderland at home on Saturday in a game that is massive for us, especially with Hull taking on Burnley at the same time. Carlton Cole looked a good deal more like his old self than he has for a while, which bodes well.

A severely depleted Arsenal side take on a slightly depleted Barcelona side in the second leg of their Big Cup game tonight, with Manchester United doing the same with Bayern on Wednesday. I couldn’t really give a fuck about the Mancs, but I sincerely hope Arsenal are on the receiving end of a heavy defeat, followed by a severe dose of the shits caused by some eleven day old gambas a la plancha that they get served in their post-match meal on Las Ramblas, the cunts.

It’s good to see comments from Joka and Asterix on my last post, confirming my blog readership holding firm at an impressive two. I may post pictures of naked sloots in order to recruit further readers, even if they are of a significantly lower calibre.

Good luck at the tables.

Catching Up

2010-03-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

I played some tournament poker on Friday for the first time in forever. I was pretty happy with my game in general and made the final table of the Full Tilt $20r, busting 7th after going card dead and shoving shit blind on blind. I was at the same table as Mash, a Polish guy that I knew from PXF. I ended up getting on Skype with him and a bunch of people from PXF, some of which I remember, some of which I don’t. I had a really good time – they are a fun bunch of guys and it kind of made me miss the PXF community a bit. I am hoping to play some more tournaments on Good Friday, so I hope to speak to them again soon.

We had quite a long discussion about a couple of guys they knew that persistently whined about running bad, despite turning in some fairly sick results in recent months.

Cliff notes for those complaining:
- You probably aren’t running that bad.
- Even if you are, everyone else also experiences periods of running bad, they just complain about it less than you.
- Nobody likes hearing about it all the time as it is really fucking boring, if I wanted to spend time with people that complain a lot I would seek the company of a woman, who are at least easier on the eye. I do consider occasional venting acceptable, however.
- To quote Todd Terry, one of my favourite 2+2ers: “A good example of how running well can warp your perspective is James Akenhead. I was catching up on the WSOPE broadcasts (which were some of the best televised tournament poker in the last five years) yesterday and saw James say, "I never suck out." How about the first hand of the final table of the $2K event at the Bellagio in June 2008 where you 3bet from the BT with 95o and then called my cold 4bet shove with KK from the blinds and won the hand?”

After a staggering fightback I am almost at even playing HU cash this month and have managed my target 10,000 hands for the month. I have a lesson with Aero on Wednesday, which seemed to do the trick last week.

West Ham have made a pretty good fist of ensuring they will get relegated. The last game of the season is the day after my wedding, so I’m going to have to miss it, but on the evidence of the Wolves and Stoke fixtures, we will be down by then anyway so it won’t matter. I’m too pissed off to go into what I think about Zola, the players, the Chairman etc. here right now, all that I will say is that some people that are earning big salaries need to take a long hard look at themselves and think about applying themselves properly for the remainder of the season.

Far be it from me to poke fun at a serious issue, but doesn’t the correspondent that wrote this article have to be working under a pseudonym?

Match Fixing

2010-03-22T03:36:00.001-07:00

Following on from last week’s surprisingly upbeat entry, I promptly stacked of 6 BI at $100nl the following night to a pretty bad player that had a nasty habit of continually making the nuts and sucking out on the odd occasion that he got it in behind. I went through some of the hands with my coach – I thought a lot of the hands were “standard”, but I (unsurprisingly) made a good few mistakes too. I have clawed back some of the losses but might struggle to make 10k hands this month.

Elsewhere on the poker scene, its another week, another high profile MA/collusion scandal. The behaviour (and lying after being caught) from these people makes me puke, as does Full Tilt’s apparent inability/unwillingness to do anything about it.

West Ham lost 2-0 to Arsenal, despite playing against ten men for 45 minutes. We missed a penalty at 1-0 and hit the post, but didn’t do enough to win it. I passed up on a ticket as the result was an inevitability. I was pissed off with a couple of our players for diving (I’m looking at you Robert Kovac and Valon Behrami), although Aaron Ramsey must be happy that him breaking his leg wasn’t a complete waste since his manager’s comments afterwards appear to have allowed his players to claim free-kicks at will.

The weekend’s big game saw Manchester United beat Liverpool 2-1. The penalty was somewhat controversial as to me it looked outside the box, but I thought he was lucky to stay on the pitch for the challenge. Still, I had a few quid on the Mancs to win, so I shan’t complain, and it erased some of my losses from Cheltenham during the week.

Oh, and match fixing is alive and well in Italy.

With both Burnley and Hull losing on Saturday, West Ham somehow retain their position. We have a massive game against an improved Wolves side tomorrow, where nothing but a win will do. I can only see us getting a point at best, but Parker will be back. I was reasonably encouraged by Daprela’s performance at left back on Saturday, Herita Ilunga should take note.

I went to see Crazy Heart at the cinema yesterday. I quite enjoyed it, I really like Jeff Bridges, but I came away thinking that it was basically The Wrestler but about music. It is worth a watch though.

Good luck at the tables.

Priorities

2010-03-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

Despite having played very few hands of late, I have managed to reduce almost all of the substantial losses I have had this month. This has proved a much needed boost to both morale and my bankroll. I have some coaching lined up for tomorrow night, so hopefully this will prove useful.

Some people are genuinely dedicated to poker. This came from the HU forum on 2+2 and is a cut and paste of some table chat:

retrovirus777: brb

retrovirus777: wife may be in labor no bs hang on

me: what?

me: really?

retrovirus777: &&%% man i got to take her to the hospital u gonna be on for awhile?

me: wow who cares just go

retrovirus777: ill be playin on my laptop

me: lol at the hospital?

retrovirus777: alright

retrovirus777: gg

retrovirus777: yea

retrovirus777: ill be waitin

me: gg, good luck at the hospital

retrovirus777: she could be in labor awhile lol

retrovirus777: thx c ya

This was almost as amusing as Urubu flipping for his entire roll on more than one occasion.

West Ham lost heavily at Chelsea on Saturday, despite a fine goal from Scott Parker. We were in the game for 65 minutes but I guess their quality/mega-gazillions told in the end. We travel to The Emirates on Saturday (Arsenal were pretty terrible on Saturday against Hull but may have Fabregas and Gallas back so I expect another thumping. As each game passes the points target to stay up seems to drop with Hull and Burnley failing to pick up points.

David Beckham pinged his Achilles at the weekend and looks set to miss the World Cup. It doesn’t really bother me, I wouldn’t have taken him anyway, but if it means I have to watch Foetus Walcott this Summer then I’ll be disappointed.

Good luck at the tables.

Thin Ice

2010-03-08T03:27:00.000-08:00

Once again, I have continued to give some money back to the IPoker HU community this month, although I played quite a few hands yesterday and finished up, despite running into a lot of sets (or so it felt). I really need to try and get over the sense of entitlement to pots that Tommy Angelo talks about – it weighs on my mind and can’t be good for my game or for me generally.

I am looking to switch IPoker skin at the moment. There is a long thread on 2+2 at the moment about some allegedly shady goings on at Chili, and with my friend able to sort something out at William Hills (where I will feel that my money is way more secure), it seems silly not to change providing I can secure a decent rakeback deal.

Elsewhere on the poker scene, the high stakes games have been running and it appears that Isildur can’t kick his PLO addiction and is (again) heading for busto. Much more interestingly, some people thought they were entitled to the whole EPT Berlin prize pool, and they took hand grenades with them to make sure. Beats flipping it off with AK against a pair heads-up, I guess.
West Ham produced a real stinker of a performance at home to Bolton. I could go on all day about how bad we were, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. Supposed club captain, who fancies an extension to his £65k a week contract, needs to take a long hard look of himself after bottling marking Kevin Davies, passed him over to the inexperienced James Tomkins, who proceeded to get it handed to him. Davies, as always against us, was excellent, as was the Korean in midfield.

We conceded the first goal when Diamanti bottled out on a challenge and we went downhill from there – nobody looked up for the game on our side, which is incredible given the importance of the match to both sides. We hit the bar in injury time but deserved nothing from the game and a 2-1 defeat flattered us. The only plus point for the day was sitting near comedian, fat bloke and West Ham fan Phil Jupitus on the tube – and that is hardly a plus point.

Chelsea and Arsenal away are next for us, I can only hope Chelsea persist with Hilario in goal, and clone him and play him in all the outfield positions too. Both Hull and Burnley were handily beaten this weekend – I still think we’ll stay up, as I have said before, because everyone else is terrible. I can’t see the manager being here beyond the end of the season and it sounds like the owners are going to hack the squad up to reduce the wage bill – and if that is what is required, so be it. Perhaps football might return to some sort of sanity soon enough.

Good luck at the tables.

Cock

2010-03-02T05:24:00.001-08:00

Last month was pretty terrible on the HU front, I finished down over $1k. In 800 hands yesterday I managed to stack off $330, despite playing alright overall. I’m on a bit of a downer about my game right now and am probably a little tilty, which I need to snap out of.

Her indoors is possibly out on Thursday so might play some donkaments to break up the routine. My horse is in a fair bit of make-up right now, he has gone close a few times without managing to get over the line for a big score. Hopefully he’ll run better, not for me (actually, fuck it, for me) but because he tends to take being in make up quite badly (and when you are staked you are in make up all the time unless you have just delivered a score) and he’s a good guy that deserves a break.

The Mancs won the Carling Cup this weekend. I’m not sure how Vidic managed to avoid a red card for an identical challenge to the one that the Chelsea right back went off for on Saturday. Despite hating all of the lame hype about Bridge and Terry, the second half was an absolute belter and his thrown the title race wide open. However, this was all topped buy Craig Bellamy’s post match interview, when he might as well have just called John Terry a cock. I was a big fan of Bellamy when he played for us – clearly the bloke has an attitude but he always gave 100% when he was on the pitch, not to mention being a very good player.

I backed Arsenal to win the league a couple of weeks back at 8/1, and that price is now into 3/1, which I am tempted to close out. Their win was marred by a horrible injury to Aaron Ramsey. I have seen the challenge and, whilst I think he went in hard, I think it was on the borderline of reckless, however the comments of Wenger were (unsurprisingly) over the top, which is remarkable given that the assault by Gallas against Bolton a couple of weeks before was something he was happy to gloss over. And let us not forget that it was Wenger that fielded a team including the two angels that were Keown and Vieira, plus numerous others in that side that knew how to put themselves about (including elbows Bergkamp).

West Ham play Bolton on Saturday. This is a big game for us – a win would give us a significant lift and probably leave us needing only two more wins and a couple of draws to guarantee safety, unless the bottom group of sides collectively pull their socks up over the remainder of the season, which looks unlikely. HMRC have understandably dragged Portsmouth back to the courts this week, but as time ticks by it appears more likely that they will survive the season.

In other news, a horrible dragon threatens Fantasyland.

Good luck at the tables.

Atrocity Exhibition

2010-02-25T03:12:00.000-08:00

Poker still kind of sucks of late, I’m down nearly $1k for the month now (AIEV is less than half of that, not that it really matters). I’m not that unhappy with my play, I think I have probably improved in certain respects but probably need to be a little more aggressive at certain times against certain opponents, particularly on the turn. Still, nearly 14,000 hands played and enough rake back to cover a good part of my losses.

Hand of the week can be seen here, where my bluff turns out to be a value raise but I get stacked anyway when he tarps me with the OESD following the employment of the out of position flotation device in a four bet pot. I don’t love my play here but I thought the dynamic dictated it was a reasonable play.

I felt I played some of my best tournament poker for months on Monday. I went reasonably deep in one of the FTP $26 tourneys and then went absolutely ape shit when some cunt made the worst call of all time deep in the $162 on Party. He raises A3s UTG, I shove TT with 15bb from the big blind, he calls so quickly I was sure I was beat and he rivers a straight. I was fucking seething at the time, as you can imagine.

West Ham took a standard 3-0 beating at Man Utd on Tuesday, which was to be expected. If you want to read people masturbating over the Manc performance, it won’t be here, I suggest looking at the website of any of this country’s tabloid newspapers. We play Bolton at home next, who aren’t in good form, in another must win game.

Portsmouth appear to be aiming for administration, which looks like it will prevent HMRC getting their money and also allow them to fulfil their fixtures. Should this be the case, three wins and the odd point here or there looks like it will be enough to stay up, so fingers crossed.

Wedding preparations continue in earnest. We’re starting to get various things ticked off and invites went out the other day. It is still a royal pain in the arse, plus there are all sorts of additional costs (they aren’t so much additional, more that I didn’t think of them). Wedding rings, for example (the fact that I didn’t really think of them shows how little thought I give to almost everything).

The sale process of my employer is now underway. I still don’t know what my future is, although I’d still anticipate that I am likely to get the tin tack. The stag plan is coming together, we have a crew of about 25 people for the fact finding trip to Holland. Some of the lads have booked a business class flight on the way out as they reckon they can drink enough booze in the lounge before to make it cost effective.

Good luck at the tables.

Scrub That

2010-02-22T04:11:00.000-08:00

I’m back on the canvas.

I dropped about 12 BI on Saturday, luckily these were at $50NL (in order to find some action I switched down to the $50nl tables instead of the GBP 50nl, which was a saving in itself). I constantly ran into people in God mode, which was a bit out of order as I normally insist on running like this myself. Hold’em Manager have finally got their currency fix sorted, so I am able to track my spewing more accurately.

Her indoors is away tonight so to stem my HU losses I will probably donate to the tournament community instead. I expect this to be an expensive and unrewarding experience if my recent tournament history is anything to go by.

West Ham beat a terrible Hull side 3-0 on Saturday. We were 1-0 up inside the first three minutes and, one great save from Green just before half time aside, the result never looked in doubt. With all the other relegation strugglers losing the league table looks a whole lot prettier at the moment. All this could change if Portsmouth go bust, but even without them things look a lot rosier than they did six weeks ago. With a trip to Old Trafford (and then shorter journeys to The Cameldome and Stamford Bridge) making up three of our next four games I don’t anticipate much from these but we look a lot more organised and more of a threat in attack.

I have been looking at our remaining games and we have home games remaining against Bolton, Sunderland, Wigan, Wolves and Stoke. I’d like to think we can win three of the five and pick up three to six points elsewhere, which should comfortably keep us up. I wish I’d never put this in print, but I can’t help myself. Besides, if we can’t pick up sufficient points there, we deserve to go down.

One of the bad things about the new owners is that I don’t seem to be able to open the newspaper without reading a quote from either Sullivan or Gold. I find it all rather tiresome and whilst they are clearly using the press to push their case for certain things (e.g. not letting Portsmouth go bust, moving to Stratford), I just wish they would shut the fuck up for five minutes.

I saw quite a bit of the televised football on Sunday. Bolton and Wigan were both shocking. Burnley looked a tidy football side but seem to like pressing the self-destruct button when the ball gets within 30 yards of their own goal. I’m not sure who I think will the eventual additional two to go down with Portsmouth. I suspect that it will be Hull and maybe Wolves, although Wolves do have plenty of fight about them and typically sides like Burnley that defend badly rarely stay up. I hope it’ll be Sunderland, mainly because I hate Steve Bruce, but I don’t think they are quite shit enough, unfortunately.

Having digested all of these games, I can conclude that the “best league in the world” is, in fact, shit. Blackburn and Stoke are going to stay up with ease this year, and they’re both fucking dreadful. I reacted with laughter at the suggestion about a play-off for the final Big Cup place. I think it is a retarded suggestion for reasons too numerous to mention, but it is par for the course from the big-wigs at the Premier League.

Good luck at the tables.

Off The Canvas

2010-02-18T02:22:00.000-08:00

I have launched a mini-fight back at HU this month and am now only down 5-6BI at GBP 50nl. I played a quite fun session against a guy last night - despite not running too well, I finished up 2BI over 400 hands. The guy is fairly fearless and getting action with regs isn't easy at these levels, so I'm keen to play him again as he provides a challenging game, whilst I still feel I have an edge.

The villain in question 3 bets a ton and monkeys around a lot both pre and post flop. Hand of the night went down something like this (I don't have the hand history here). WARNING: thinly disguised brag in progress.

GBP 50NL, I have GBP 100, villain covers, and am dealt AKo in the big blind.

Villain opens to £1.50, Hero raises to £5, villain calls.

Flop: 355 rainbow.

Hero bets £6, villain calls.

Turn: 7, completing the rainbow.

Hero bets £12.50, villain shoves.

I thought for ages about this, and I've tried to get away from hero calls, but what exactly does he have here. I haven't been three betting him that much, so my range, in his eyes, consists mainly of overs and pairs. By raising here he should fold out overcards and, possibly, some smaller overpairs (this is unlikely). If he has a 5 (he has folded to around 50% of 3 bets thus far but we are deeper here) it is likely to be something like 35, 45, 56, 57, 58 and maybe something like A5. With 35/45/56/57 he has the board locked up and shouldn't want to raise me off what are likely to be overcards (he has already seen me two barrel and fold in a 3 bet pot). He should also be unlikely to raise stuff like 67 as he only gets it in against better hands and folds out worse. He is extremely spewy and prone to bluffing, so I think he is quite likely to have bare overs here and I click the call button. He turns over Q9o, the river bricks, I ship the pot and my willy grows a little.

Well done to Wonderflop who has got back on the horse and started running a little better at the 6 max. About fucking time, as he runs like a landmine victim normally. He needs to update his blog though.

Up the stakes, Isildur1 has returned and generated some action at the nosebleeds. I never ceased to be impressed by the amount of money these guys win and lose daily, I don't know how they sleep at night.

Arsene Wenger made a prize cock of himself again last night when Arsenal lost to Porto in the Big Cup. Some good refereeing saw Wenger object (as he does when things don't go his way), you can read his comments elsewhere if you are interested, all that I would say is that the bloke doesn't understand the rules of the game judging by the bleating that came out of his mouth about the quick free-kick, I might nip down to the Cameldome to school him. They also appear to have found the heir apparent to Manuel Almunia in Luis Fabianski, which bodes well as I like it when other teams have a keeper that can't catch or even think coherently.

Otherwise I have been watching The Tower Block of Commons on TV. Basically, they send a bunch of MPs out to live in council estates and see how they get on. It has been quite interesting, with Lib Dem rent boy shagger Mark Oaten and Tory Tim Loughton coming across really well. Nadine Dorries is a bit of an embarrassment and must have had some Conservatives cringing.

The other thing that amazed me was seeing Oaten go out shopping with the family that he lived with - they have a budget of around £160, and with Oaten's help spend around £100. They then spend the rest on fags. Oaten is basically outraged by this, and the woman then starts harping on about MP's expenses. What she fails to realise is that she is living on benefits and is claiming how hard it is - Oaten's expenses are mutually exclusive and do not impact how much money she has. What should be of concern to her is to do what is best for her family with the money that she is being given - my definition of what is best would not include doing 37.5% of the shopping budget on fags. I'm becoming a right cunt as I get older, I should get a column in The Daily Mail if I keep churning out stuff like this.

Good luck at the tables.

Marriage Guidance

2010-02-15T03:11:00.000-08:00

Poker can suck my hairy balls this month, 9k hands has me down £600 ish. I haven’t played well or run well, so no time for complaining, I just want to get back to playing better, which I guess requires more hard work (not one of my strong points).

Off the felt West Ham grabbed a vital 2-0 win at home to Birmingham. A beautiful Diamanti free-kick and a neat Cole header after Faubert got around the back of the defence wrapped up the points – we were solid enough, but Birmingham (minus Benitez up front) didn’t offer all too much. We’re at home to Hull on Saturday – this is a huge game for us, another win would be an absolutely massive result.

I didn’t see much of the FA Cup this weekend, but the Palace vs. Villa game was an absolute belter. I’m torn between liking and hating Neil Warnock, as he talks a lot of absolute bollocks, but is in a lot of ways a real football man.

The Premier League have come up with a crackpot idea to try and make the league more exciting. Instead of awarding the fourth Big Cup slot to the team that comes fourth in the league, they are now going to play-off for it (4th-7th place). Sounds retarded to me, they’d be better simply awarding it to the FA Cup winner IMO. I’m not sure exactly when they’re going to play off when there is an international competition in the Summer, and with managers already bitching about fixture congestion, I wouldn’t have thought more fixtures was the answer.

I saw “A Single Man” this weekend. It is a superb film, I highly recommend it. There is some decent stuff on at the moment, I wanted to see “A Prophet” but never got my arse in gear and missed it. I have also been watching Nathan Barley, which is fucking awesome, and I have a particular affection for given the number of Hoxton twats I see on a daily basis.

I went with Lucy to a “marriage course” yesterday. It is compulsory to do so before you get married in a Catholic church. I wasn’t particularly up for it – I’m no fan of religion in any form, but the whole thing was reasonably useful.

I have to get the wedding invites out this week, which should be fun as tasks like this tend to raise both of our stress levels.

It is a day late, but with Valentine’s Day being yesterday and with anyone wanting to woo a lady, I’ve hear that the following never fails – thank me later. So good luck at the tables and with the ladies.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I've got a knife
So get in the van.

The Virtual Treadmill

2010-02-09T04:22:00.001-08:00

With work having ground to a virtual stand-still, I have been devoting my energies to other areas (no change there then). On Saturday and Monday I logged about 4k hands of HU. In total for February I am just over 7k, which means I should meet my monthly target with something to spare, unless Carpal Tunnel sets in. I probably haven’t played my best poker and haven’t run all too well and am down around £200 for the month. I’m not displeased with this, my last two months have been awesome and I couldn’t continue on such a massive heater.

After played such a heavy volume on Saturday and Monday, I came to really understand that poker is indeed a hard way to make an easy living. When I see the real grinders, playing 100,000 or more hands per month – I have no idea how they do this and play anything approaching their A-game a reasonable percentage of the time. I consider myself to be reasonably well suited to going through sustained hours of heavy mental workload and probably not too bad on the tilt front, but the sheer exhaustion caused by logging a lot of hands must get to them after a while. That said, I guess if you can play sessions in 90 minute blocks and divert your mind between sessions then it may be doable, particularly if you are playing enough tables.

West Ham lost 2-1 at Burnley at the weekend. Some shit defending cost us both goals and despite hitting the post and the bar we didn’t manage to snatch a point after spending the majority of the first half under the kosh. McCarthy went off injured after having an effort cleared off the line, however Mido looked sharp (and slim) enough (I have a sneaky feeling he might stay longer than this season and do alright for us) and substitute Ilan scored on his debut. We have a huge game at home to Birmingham tomorrow which we really, really have to win after other results went against us this weekend.

Otherwise I watched Antoine Corbin’s Joy Division documentary/film. I thoroughly enjoyed it, they managed to deal with Ian’s death without laying on the grief too thick. It is sad to see such an amazingly talented individual die at such a young age. There was a quote from Peter Hook in there, saying how Ian’s illness/unhappiness was a real elephant in the room that they never talked about. When he wrote “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, Cook said they didn’t hear the lyrics and think “Wow, he must be unhappy, with all the stuff with Debbie and Annik. We thought, wa-hey, Ian’s done it again and written another belter”. If you’re in any way a fan, I recommend watching it.

Good luck at the tables.

Window Shopping

2010-02-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

On the back of an epic January for me I started February as I mean to go on in the cash games, by winning a flip for a full stack on my first hand. Her indoors is out tonight so I aim to play a fairly long session.

I had a lesson with Aero last night. We spoke on a topic that I had been meaning to talk about for a while – playing out of position. I think that this was probably the most valuable lesson that I have had in a while and, hopefully, should save me a fortune. I won’t go into the details but he basically said “a lot of players do x, y and z” – which basically described how I play out of position. He then ran through alternatives and why my current strategy basically wasn’t all that good. Overall I think that this lesson on its own will probably save me a fortune.

On the football front, the transfer window has closed and Sky will have to find something else to clutter SSN with. West Ham signed Benni McCarthy plus Mido and some Brazilian bloke (both until the end of the season). I would have liked to see us bring a full-back in but otherwise I am not unhappy, hopefully this should give us enough fire-power to keep us up.

The game against Blackburn was a dreadful 0-0 draw. We were crap and Blackburn had no ideas beyond hoofing it in the general direction of Christopher Samba’s head. The beautiful game, I don’t think. The Croat centre forward that Blackburn had looked decent though.
In other news, John Terry has been a naughty boy after going roaring up Wayne Bridge’s ex and then trying to keep it out of the press. He is a disgusting scrote and should be stripped of the England captaincy, I hope Capello doesn’t bottle it.

Good luck to Leeds tomorrow in the FA Cup, hopefully they will dump Spurs out and let Redknapp focus on filling his tax return in properly as it has clearly been an issue in the past. Also, good luck to all at the tables.

January Wrap-Up

2010-01-29T03:52:00.000-08:00

With the month nearly at an end, results have been awesome - nearly 14,000 hands played (more than I have done before) and profit of $2.6k, with rakeback to come. Weeeeeeeee! I'm pretty pleased with this - I have definitely run well and played some people that I am surprised haven't electrocuted themselves by dribbling too much on their PC whilst playing, but I have played well enough and kept tilt to a minimum. My Ipoker account balance is now $7k, which rules given that it was under $2k at the start of December.

I am finding MTTs somewhat frustrating and haven't hit a decent score in a while. I probably don't play enough to justify playing them, so I will be focusing my efforts on HU cash for the time being. I'm thinking of taking a shot at $100nl, which isn't much of a shot as £50nl is effectively $80nl at current rates. That said, I am kind of happy with my progress at present.

West Ham picked up a 1-1 draw at Portsmouth, despite a blatant elbow in the build up to Portsmouth's equaliser, I am not unhappy with the result. We look to be signing Benni McCarthy (after the Blackburn game on Saturday) and with Cole back and Nouble showing some promise (although he does look like he's free styling at times) the forward cupboard looks marginally less bare than it was. We still need a right-back of some description, I'd rather not do Spurs a favour and take Hutton off their hands as I think there is better value to be had elsewhere.

Scott Duxbury was handed his P45 at West Ham today. Good riddance, having presided over a couple of major fuck ups, the cunt should think himself lucky that he hung on as well as he did. I'll be glad not to read his spin in the papers any more. Speaking of P45s, mine is delayed due to my company's sale having been stalled, probably due to Barrack Obama's words the other day. I am quite happy with things as they are, so this doesn't bother me one bit.

More interesting than all of the above (and a reward for anyone that got this far without stopping to either sleep or read something more interesting) are the two following poker bits of gossip.
1) Man on the run. This can't be good for the poker economy, as my experience of French poker players is that they are so bad that they make the Italians look good in comparison.
2) Ho ho ho. A friend of mine was briefly coached by Jason. He was, by all accounts, an absolute wanker that deserves all he gets. He also looks like a transvestite. One thing that has pleased me is that he appears to have taken all the money that he has scammed and dumped it back to the poker economy, so it should be filtering down to most readers of this blog at some point soon.

Good luck at the tables.

Into The Light

2010-01-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

There is little to report on the poker front, although I am off work tomorrow and Friday and should get both some tournament and HU cash time in then. I’m up to 9,000 hands of cash played for the month now, so I should comfortable exceed the 10,000 hand monthly target that I have set myself.

After many months of doom and gloom, West Ham (well at least half of it) has been sold. The new owner (pictured above in the fetching Ron Burgundyesque jacket) is porn merchant David Sullivan. Sullivan, Gold and Brady made a pretty good job of sorting out Birmingham City, and whilst I don’t agree with the proposed move to the Olympic Stadium, I am not unhappy with the buy-out, particularly given the staggering amount of debt that the club is in.

By all accounts the new boys will waste no time in booting current CEO/spin merchant Scott Duxbury and Director of Football Gianluca Nani out. They had a good record of backing their managers at Birmingham, hopefully that will continue here as I am overall not too unhappy at the Zola/Clarke team.

Here, Sullivan can be seen handling (reasonably well) some questioning from Chris Morris. It is worth watching, mainly because Morris is superb.

Work has slowed to a crawl and basically we’re all sitting around here waiting to be made redundant. With the wedding coming up I am basically using the time to sort out a ton of administrative stuff, go to the gym and try and lose some weight and generally take it easy, as opportunities to do so are few and far between.

We finished booking the honeymoon the other day. We have a pretty cool trip lined up, starting in San Francisco, driving to Lake Tahoe, then back past San Francisco and down the coast for a few hundred miles, stopping along the way. From there we roll onto Palm Springs, before finishing up with three days in Las Vegas (how romantic). It is a pretty cool trip and I am really looking forward to it, and obviously it is better than being at work.

Good luck at the tables.

The Beginning of the End

2010-01-15T03:33:00.000-08:00

Not for me and pokerz, for me and the current employer. My company, which is part-owned by RBS, has been subject to an auction process over the last few weeks. It looks like we’re fairly close to finding a buyer, and at a guess I’ll be out of a job. This isn’t the disaster that it sounds – this is unlikely to happen overnight (as if I am laid off it will be constructive dismissal).

Basically, should they decide to give me the boot (I’m not sure they’ll require an advanced 2+2 surfer at the new place), they need to invoke a one or three month “consultation period” where they basically tell you that you are going to get the heave-ho. In this time I basically would do not a lot, probably making a token effort to come into the office (which is basically what I am doing now). I am on three months notice, so they would be likely to pay me that off. They would also be bound to pay me my bonus for 2010 (which is due in March 2011) and my 2009 bonus (which is due in March 2010) plus a redundancy payment. Overall, I’d be absolutely chuffed if they gave me the boot, I’d do well out of it financially and get to spend some (more) time doing fuck all. The missus wouldn’t be best pleased, but there you go. Furthermore, blog readers can look forward to updates on what is happening on the Jeremy Kyle show, which I’m sure they will find fascinating.

I played some donkaments last night with little to report bar a 9th place on Party where I busted at the final table with a questionable play. HU cash is continuing to go fine, I’m at over 7,500 hands for the month now and still ticking over a nice profit.

West Ham go to Aston Villa on Sunday. Villa are a decent outfit, their Carling Cup game against Blackburn last night was excellent. The Liverpool vs. Reading game was absolutely sensational on Wednesday too – despite the devaluing of the competition in recent years (thanks Arsene), I still enjoy it as much as ever and the two big upsets in the third round this year will have done wonders for interest in it.

West Ham still hasn’t been sold. Supposedly the dildo salesman and his mate are in pole position as they are the only ones with some money, the Intermarket lot are talking a good game but haven’t actually shown anyone that they have the money to buy it, Tony Fernandes it twatting about it relentlessly and an Italian fraudster that owns Calgiari is also interested. It is hardly the agony of choice, but given that I don’t have a choice anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

Redknapp was charged with cheating the public revenue yesterday. It is a shame they haven’t got him with anything more substantial/serious, but hopefully they can interrogate him in a dignified fashion that also extracts a confession for anything else he might have forgotten to tell them.

Sustainable, IMO

2010-01-11T03:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a while, as I really don’t want to jinx the current good run that I am on. I played some donkaments on Friday, I cashed in three without going super deep, but felt that I played well enough. I also had the pleasure of being sat with Joka briefly in the Stars $109 freezeout. Obviously I courtesy three bet him at one point (for a change I actually had a hand) but because he is good at poker he folded and I cursed him under my breath and add him to my ever-growing slowroll list.

However, following on from a very good month at HU last month, I’ve absolutely flown out of the traps in January, and am currently up c. $1,800 over 6,000 hands, which is 39bb/100. Sustainable, IMO. I’ve got some good volume in, with over half my monthly 10,000 hand target accomplished inside 10 days.

I’ve been taking on a couple of the regs, and played over 3,000 hands against one guy who I am currently up 20 buy ins on at GBP 50NL. I have run well against the guy, but he is simply too aggressive a lot of the time and I am fairly confident I have the beating of him. We played an epic 1,800 hand session on four tables over two hours last week, which I really enjoyed. I’m not sure if he’ll play me again, I kind of get the feeling he will. I have also played another reg who was terrible, but beat me fairly soundly a few months back (if he is terrible, what does that make me?), that I have outplayed fairly comfortably over c. 1k hands since. I think I’m playing a whole lot better than I was three months ago and am a shit load less tilty, which is saving me a fortune. I’ll probably stack of 20 buy-ins over the next week or so, so watch this space.

It has taken a while, but I think I am getting the hang of cash game poker. Up until recently I had basically had a real problem with folding once I had put money in a pot (in the words of Bond18, “folding is a sin and he is a pious man”) – of late I have been able to click the fold button when it appears right and simply move on to the next hand. I got way too attached to strong pre-flop hands and was unable to re-evaluate street by street (or if I did re-evaluate, I’d ignore the results of the re-evaluation and call anyway). I’d also be simply too eager to get money in with hands on the flop when often calling may be the better play, instead of simply shutting out all of my opponent’s bluffs.

I’m still bad, but I’d like to think I’m finally making some progress. It has taken 100,000 hands, eight months, a reasonable amount of coaching and a lot of frustration, but hopefully I am now at least a winner at the stakes that I play.

Most of the football was snowed off this weekend. I wasn’t sorry, it was baltic outside and we could do with the extra time to get Cole and Parker fit.

It is still snowy here, and since the poker snowmen picture was so well received, I thought I would include this one of two snowmen having sex. Don't pretend you don't think it is funny, it clearly is.

Good luck at the tables.

It's Cold Outside

2010-01-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

Three days back at work has confirmed to me that I really don’t like it that much. It is chucking snow down here and England are 101/1 chasing a monster 466 in Cape Town and West Ham got dumped out of the FA Cup by L’Arse. Happy Fucking New Year.

Poker has started well, I’m nicely ahead playing heads-up after finishing up around $1,700 last month, with rakeback to come. Her indoors is out on Friday and a couple of other nights during the month, which should enable me to stack off a considerable amount in tournaments too – so the MTT community, you are welcome for me juicing the prize pool for you.

New Years Eve was a sterile affair, I stayed in and went to bed early, it was fucking tremendous – I didn’t get tucked up for a single overpriced drink that I had to wait 20 minutes for. We were at a wedding on the 2nd of January, which was a good do. Stag do preparations continue in earnest, I’m still scared.

West Ham’s ownership status remains up in the air, with Gold & Sullivan/Intermarket/Tony Fernandes/Some Americans all in the frame. Knowing the Icelanders they will probably hang on to the club and ship out a couple of players instead. I won’t recount the defeats to Spurs and Arsenal here, although I was somewhat heartened by our performance against the Goons.

I’ll keep this update brief as (for once) I don’t have much to say – except, Wayne, if you’re reading, YOU SHOULD NOT BE AND SHOULD BE PLAYING A SESSION INSTEAD. Give us a cuddle, you cunt. ;)

Good luck at the tables.

Chistmas - A Time For Giving

2009-12-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

Well it is on Ipoker. On the advice of a friend who works for a company that has an Ipoker skin, the £/€ tables are ridiculously soft, despite the fact that you get bum-raped for rake - so I took a stab at them. In just under 10,000 hands, nearly all at £50nl, due to some decent play, massive lucksacking and the generousity of some of my opponents, I am up approximately $2,000 in December. I'm fairly happy about this as I was really starting to question just how shit I was - so many thanks to Tommy Angelo for making me less of a tiltbox and Aero for making me less bad at heads-up poker.

I haven't run well in donkaments, although my horse has done the biz by clearing $4.5k of make-up and delivering a solid profit after a nice score. I also won a silly Full Tilt PLHE tournament earlier today for $1.1k which covered some over my other losses during the holiday period.

I doubt I'll play much more bar a little heads-up before 2010 begins. I have some administrative shit to do and the New Year begins with a hangover, followed by a wedding on the 2nd of January and then West Ham vs. Arsenal in the FA Cup on the 3rd, where we will have a spotty 17 year old up front and endure almost certain defeat to the French cheats. After that we'll sell most of our best players and prepare ourselves for a game with Leeds in the Championship, which should please Asterix.

I haven't got much else to add - although if you have a little time I recommend the recent posts in "Clarkatroid is not folding" - link on the right. His last post of 2009 in particular was superb and well worth a read.

I was sat thinkig about this time last year - when I went to bed on New Year's Eve my Dad was scheduled to have a massive operation to remove cancer from his neck. He was crapping himself as they were going to have to basically cut out two of the vertebrae in his neck to remove it. It turned out the cancer had gone too far for that so he spent the early part of 2009 receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy. He has responded well and whilst he still has cancer, he looks a shite sight better than he could and the doctors are really pleased. I hope I look that good when I get to his age. The whole episode has put life into perspective and I have received a lot of support from many people, including readers of this blog - once again, thanks for all of this, it has meant a lot to me.

I hope all of you had a good Christmas. Best wishes for the New Year, may you spike 2 outers where you receive them and may a flaming grease bus run over anyone that berates you in the chat box. Good luck at the tables and I'll see you in 2010.

Rolled

2009-12-14T03:06:00.001-08:00

Yes, I got rolled. I had some problems signing in to my online banking on Friday. I thought nothing of it and tried again on Saturday, to encounter more problems. I phoned NatWest, who were fucking unhelpful and told me to call again the next day. After 20 minutes of bullshit from NatWest, I finally got through to their online fraud team. It turns out that some cunt had robbed £5k from my account on Friday. The guy put all the necessary blocks on my account and told me to call at 8:30 sharp on Monday to discuss recovering the money, which I did. By 9:15 they had told me I would have the money back in my account in two hours.

All of this is pretty scary. I’m not the most technologically savvy of individuals, but I’m better than many in this respect. It also happened when I was at work – I nearly always log in when I am at work for security reasons – so I need to have a word with the IT guys here. The NatWest online fraud team were first class to be fair – everyone else that I dealt with fell somewhere in between useless and unhelpful and did everything that they could have. It’s a jungle out there kids – be careful.

Pokerwise HU has gone well – I have logged 8 consecutive profitable sessions, putting me (excluding rakeback) back at even for the month. Donkaments last week were a disaster, and I cashed in precisely none of the ten or so that I played. My last day at work this year is Tuesday, so I am hoping to increase the pokerage from Wednesday onwards.

West Ham also got rolled up at Birmingham. By all accounts it was a pretty bad performance, despite Dyer hitting the post for us late on. We go to Bolton on Wednesday with me expecting to leave with the usual Kevin Davies-inflicted defeat and heading back to the Boleyn to play Chelsea on Sunday in shreds.

My Christmas shopping is now largely done, thank fuck. All I need to do now is wrap the stuff, which I am not looking forward to.

Good luck at the tables, I’ll probably try and prepare some standard end of year review entry.

Vomit Inducing

2009-12-07T03:41:00.001-08:00

I’ve played a modest amount of HU over the last week or so. After playing half-pissed and dropping $130 to a mixture of coolers and my own bad play (and a lesson which hopefully I have learnt so I won’t play when half-cut again), I’ve recovered all of it and then some at the Ipoker £/€ tables, which are an awesome source of value, even if you do get ass-raped on the rake. The software has improved so that it now looks like it was made in around 1997 and I am reliably informed that they should be getting resizable tables in the next release, scheduled for January next year. You have to hand it to Ipoker, they make the Cereus network look cutting-edge in comparison.

Her indoors is due to be out all night tomorrow so I should be able to get in some donkaments for the first time in a while. Hopefully I can run like MI Turtle and win 70% of the tournaments that I enter.

A really weak Man Utd side thrashed West Ham on Saturday (they ended up with one recognised defender in the back four). They didn’t get out of first gear and won at a canter. I have serious concerns over some of the manager’s decisions (albeit that he is doing a job with half the tools and is probably the best man for it) – we keep chopping and changing our back four, surely somebody should have an idea what exactly our best back four is? We also left a clearly injured forward on the pitch for five minutes and the end of the first half, which caused us to concede the first goal – it was absolutely schoolboy and people around me were going mental before the goal went in about Zola not taking action and getting a sub on. I’m not sure what is going to happen but if we stay up it will be based on everyone around us being shit, and not us being good. Rob Green spent most of the second half throwing up on the pitch before being subbed off, I’m not sure if him being sick was a response to illness or the performance of the side as a defensive unit.

On the plus side, Spurs went 2-0 up against Everton, threw away a two goal lead and then missed a last minute penalty. I’m sure Redknapp was twitching like a good ‘un on the touchline when Little Arnold smacked that penalty straight at Howard. I was laughing so hard that I nearly shat myself and it made me forget a little about the defeat the previous day. The other highlight of the weekend was this incident – I’ve always thought Pulis was something of a twat and deserving of a slap.

We’ve had some good news at work which should hopefully help me out financially with the wedding coming up. Nothing is confirmed yet but this should all be ironed out over the next couple of weeks.

Good luck at the tables.

On The Rebound

2009-12-01T08:12:00.001-08:00

Like the filthy whore that I am, I found myself utterly unable to resist the lure of rakeback at Ipoker and returned to playing HU there ($50NL). This has gone surprisingly well, due to various things – mainly (1) the terrible standard of play (2) me having improved considerably and (3) me being about 3% of the tiltbox that I was previously thanks to Tommy Angelo. A reg that I simply could not beat previously (not due to running bad, simply because I couldn’t exploit how he was playing) sat with me at two tables – despite not playing many huge pots or flipping at all, I beat him out of two buy-ins – not that this is much of a guide to how well I have been playing, but I felt totally in control of the match for the majority of the time.

I’m hoping that the last two week or so of me playing in a more considered and less tilty fashion and being less results-oriented will continue. I was off work yesterday, recovering from a nasty stomach upset and managed 1700 hands for a $200 profit, which was good for morale.

There has been little else going on – West Ham beat Burnley 5-3 on Saturday. After an hour of devastating attacking football putting us 5-0 ahead, our failings were exposed (i.e. not having a right back) and we looked really shaking at the end. The pluses (Parker, Franco, our attacking football) were largely overshadowed by the negatives (defending, letting a team that we had crushed back into the game, Cole sustaining a nasty knee injury that will leave him out for at least a month).

The FA Cup provided a nice home tie against Arsenal. Sadly I am at a wedding that day so hopefully Sky will move the fixture to the Sunday, thereby inconveniencing everyone else except me. Leeds (Boooooo! Hissssssssss! etc.) will play Manchester United as long as they get past Kettering, which will be the usual warm friendly affair, I’m sure Asterix will be watching the game in Austria in a sedate fashion and not launching beer glasses at the TV whilst shouting “cunt” every time the camera pans to The Imperial Lord Ferg. We have those cunts at home next week (The Mancs, not Leeds, we’ll be playing them in the Championship next season though), although I hold out little hope for a result.

I fucking love FA Cup third round day, it is still my favourite day of the football calendar. This is amazing given how often my own side departs the competition at this stage. I remember as a young boy when we got knocked out by Torquay and John Lyall’s excuse was “it was a warm night for January” which was an absolute pearler, even that cunt Redknapp would struggle to top that one.

I’ll update later on plans for the stag, although I can’t imagine why you lot are so interested in me spending a weekend with a chin-mounted dildo super-glued to my face whilst being heavily intoxicated.

Good luck at the tables.

It’s Oh So Quiet

2009-11-24T04:45:00.000-08:00

As you can probably judge from the increased number of blog entries, work is pretty quiet at the moment. With the company being up for sale, a lack of clear price trend in the markets and Christmas approaching, there appears to be something of a “what we have, we hold mentality” going on.

I played some tournaments on Friday. I made the last two tables of the $50 1r 1a on Full Tilt and cashed in the $80k guaranteed on Stars (I was amongst the chip leaders for a while and had 9,000 chips after two hands when people threw chips at me like they were on fire) but failed to win crucial 60/40s. I managed to play most of the evening in a fairly zen state and even managed to type “nh gg” when busting in the 80k when someone shoved J7hh into my AJ and flopped a flush.

I then played some really good HU for a while on Sunday, played for far too long, got tilty and went from $300 profit to a $100 loss fairly quickly and hated myself for it. That said I switched back to Ipoker *spit* on Monday night and played a reasonably long $50NL session without getting tilty at any point.

Outside of work I’ve returned to the gym and an working on being less of a fat cunt. Wonderflop is doing the same thing but has some lame routine involving salads and fruit juice, which sounds a lot like hard work to me. Hopefully he’ll be back on two pizzas for lunch fairly soon to make me feel a lot better about myself.

On a more serious note, I was pleased to see Wayne’s coach confirm that he’d been running like total shit. We regularly go through his sessions and the poor bastard did seem to keep getting violated by either getting massively coolered or sucked out on in every big pot – stuff like this can really knock your confidence so it is reassuring to have a guy that knows (and virtually every source possible confirms that his coach should know).

West Ham contrived to throw a two goal lead away at Hull on Saturday and eventually drew 3-3. Clattenburg awarded a penalty that wasn’t even close to being one and Bullard scored a doubled deflected free kick. We really need to tighten up at the back and concede less from set pieces, but we did look somewhat unlucky. Upson and possibly Behrami are rumoured to be off in January (Upson hasn’t looked all too interested in the last few games) – we can’t continue to sell good players, not replace them and simply hope that everyone around us continues to be shit. Da Costa has been a pleasant surprise at centre-back so far though, so I hope his form continues.

We play Burnley at home next Saturday. I’m looking forward to it – there are four of us going, including a mate of mine who is (I think) Head of Online Gaming at William Hill. He normally has some good poker related gossip, so I’m looking forward to catching up as he lives in Gibraltar and I don’t see him too often. On Sunday I am going for lunch with my parents and Lucy’s parents, which hopefully won’t be too painful.

I spoke to a couple of people at a social gathering on Saturday and sorted out my best man for my wedding. We also agreed on a possible joint stag do in Amsterdam, where I am likely to be hugely violated by my “friends” so two months may not be enough to recover for the wedding.

Good luck at the tables.

GG Shaun Fucking Deeb, We (Alright, I) Hardly Knew You

2009-11-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

Trawling TwoPlusTwo yesterday afternoon I was surprised to come across this post from Shaun Deeb. Before I go any further, I should make it clear – I don’t know Shaun and anything that I have picked up here is largely from stuff written on the forums.
When I first read his post I felt slightly sad (which is retarded given that I don’t know the guy) – Shaun is clearly one of the best, if not the best, tournament grinders out there. There was some stuff written by Seabeast a while ago where people were chuntering on about variance he mentioned Shaun and said that to him that it is no surprise that those that work the hardest and treat the game with the most respect seem to have the best results. I guess Shaun’s retirement (at a guess it will be a break and not a retirement, but what do I know?) shows just how playing a heavy schedule day in, day out can take its toll.

I read some stuff from Sheets a while ago where he mentioned that whilst Shaun had his run-ins with people, he gave advice very freely to people he didn’t know. He was always helpful around MTT strategy on TwoPlusTwo and helped out on threads from five dollar players – which I guess underlines his point. HIV mentioned that Deeb had probably taught the MTT community at TwoPlusTwo more than anyone else – I’d tend to agree. He wrote a pretty epic guide to playing the 180s, which was a total gift to low stakes players.

A while back I was watching the EPT Monte Carlo main event final table. They brought Shaun in to commentate. Shaun’s grammar is something of a standing joke around the forums so I was interested to see how he came across. He spoke really well and clearly, and along with that, gave probably the most insightful poker commentary I’ve ever heard which let me know exactly how little I know about the game and dispelled any ideas that people may have about him being some sort of variance monkey.

With the Deeb cock-sucking over, we should get down to the serious subject matter – Deeb related humour. Hopefully you will enjoy the following:

1) Shaun’s live record isn’t up to scratch relative to his online record. Here TwoPlusTwo speculates on what Shaun might be thinking just before he busts out of a live event.

2) Shaun and Derek8 have had something of a rivalry going for the Stars TLB and have a mutual dislike of each other, so it was nice to see Derek8 putting personal differences to one side to congratulate his opponent with a nice private message.

3) Shaun’s grammar on the forums has provided a lot of entertainment, spawning the gimmick account “Deeb Spell Check”and Bond 18’s comment following Shaun’s input on his excellent Things It Took Me A While To Learn series (this is excellent reading for any tournament player and would recommend you bookmark it if you are one). “Thanks for your input Shaun. It only took me 78 hours and two seizures to turn it into understandable English.”

So, whatever Shaun chooses to do in future – I wish him all the best and hope he finds happiness. On the plus side, every MTT player’s expected ROI just jumped up a notch with him not being around any longer.

I Rack Disciprine

2009-11-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

Or in English (and to non-South Park viewers), “I lack discipline”. I played a pretty interesting 50NL session with Bart (one of Aero’s other students) which we both recorded to give to Aero. He’s going to use this to make a video where both of our cards can be seen, which should be pretty cool. I finished down around a buy-in to Bart, which wasn’t bad – I felt that he was a marginally better player than me and being down a buy-in was probably fairly reflective. I don’t think we managed to get all in at any point, so basically it was a four hundred hand epic nit-off.

After that I was pretty tired and played some $100NL. I felt myself getting kind of tilty and should have quit but, like an asshat, kept playing and made one blatant tilt call that cost me a full stack. I finished down $200 for the night, hopefully I will learn my lesson, and hopefully I will get to the Tommy Angelo video on quitting sooner rather than later before it costs me too much more money.

I’m considering moving back to Chili next month to benefit from the rakeback there. Hopefully I won’t get such a no-lube violation from their RNG this time. I’m not sure as yet, I like the liquidity of the player pool at Stars but the rakeback is a fairly hefty incentive.

I should be able to get a solid donkament session in on Friday night. Hopefully I can continue my epic run good from the last few sessions I have played and push on through for a top three place in something.

The action at the nosebleeds continues. DogIsHead wrote a pretty awesome blog post which gives some pretty good insight. I don’t necessarily buy into some of the USA vs. Europe stuff but the bits on Isildur’s game are fairly insightful and well worth a read.

The highlight thus far for me hasn’t been the sheer amount of cash changing hands but Ziigmund’s charming request for Isildur to loan him half a million dollars. I’m not sure if he got the money, but his novel approach below is an interesting alternative to putting a suit on and going and asking your bank manger for $500,000 so you can go and degen it up.

"Ziigmund: hey u f ag

Isildur1: what u say

Ziigmund: can u lend me 500

Ziigmund: back in 2 hours

Isildur1: ??"

The World Cup play-offs concluded last night. Thierry Henry proved that you can take the boy out of Arsenal but you can’t take Arsenal out of the boy with his handball that lead to the winning goal. I don’t buy all of the nice guy stuff that Match Of The Day and the rest portray, I still remember seeing a young Henry waving the imaginary card at Upton Park when one of our players dared to foul one of his team mates. I’m no Ireland fan but I’d rather them in the finals than France – they would have taken a load of support and are clearly a weaker team than France.

West Ham are away at Hull this weekend. I really wanted to go but we have a big do with a load of friends lined up in the afternoon. It is a relegation six-pointer, I’m hoping we catch a few breaks and defend a bit tighter than we have. On the plus side, Carlton Goal has recovered from injury and will be fit, whilst Phil Brown’s sun tan will continue to glow from the opposition bench. I’ve said it before – he has too much tan and too much jewellery for a bloke and reminds me of a bit of a Northern Alan Pardew. I wonder if Phil will follow in Alan’s footsteps and go roaring up various… I’d better end here to avoid legal action.

Good luck at the tables.

Value Range

2009-11-16T02:50:00.000-08:00

Stuff has been fairly uneventful (for me, at least) on the poker side. I’ve played more heads-up, with some considerable improvements to me not being an epic tiltbox (more on this later). Due to her indoors being around a lot, I haven’t played any donkaments at all. FTOPS and stuff are going on right now, and congrats to Max (HotKarlMC) for his second place in the PLO event.

Well done also to Joe Cade for winning the little heard of WSOP main event. This was all the more significant for me backing him at 14/1 – thanks for the seventy-odd quid Joe, your mega gazillions that you picked up are insignificant in comparison.

As you are I’m sure aware, the action in the high-stakes cash games on Full Tilt has been frenzied this week, with Swedish newcomer Isildur1 tearing it up and beating Durrrr out of what looks to be in excess of $5m. This can be read about over on 2+2 and at multiple other places. I won’t try and describe what’s going on – much like what’s in Cameron Diaz’s knickers, I’m really interested in what is in there and think about it a lot, but I have no first hand experience and therefore am probably unqualified to comment.

One guy on 2+2 had drawn up a list of big winners/losers at the high stakes games in the last couple of years. The extent to which the French-Canadian bloke that recently went into space has funded these games is pretty incredible. It is pretty impressive to see a new guy (or new account, whichever) come in and shake things up and I’m sure the level of railtardery has gone up a notch over there in the last week or so.

Back to the infinitely less interesting heads-up that I have been playing. I think my game has come on quite a bit, although I’m still unsure in a lot of spots. However, on the recommendation of Wonderflop, I have started watching the Tommy Angelo “Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment”. I’m only as far as episode three, but it really is pretty incredible. For anyone that tilts at all (and that’s probably most of us) – do yourself a favour, sign up for a month at Deuces Cracked and watch it. You’ll recoup your money in no time – it is that good.

Thanks also to Yorskshire Pud for his recent comments on this blog. Matt’s excellent work has been given the obligatory link over on the right and hopefully his write up will get some additional traffic through here. Obviously the write-up didn’t come without a bribery, so Matt – the hamper will be with you for Christmas. However, the economic climate is harsh, therefore the contents will be exclusively from Tesco’s value range. Thank me later. ;)

Elsewhere there has been little going on. In-ger-lund lost a friendly to Brazil and got fairly well outclassed. On the football – an apology to Alan Wiley, who refereed the West Ham vs. Everton game well last week. My thoughts on Wiley are well documented (if you haven’t read previous posts: I think he is a thundercunt) but he did his best to let a reasonably physical game flow and didn’t book players mindlessly, without ever letting things get out of hand.

Good luck at the tables.

For Sale

2009-11-03T07:43:00.001-08:00

Well, it has been an interesting week. I had a couple of deep runs on Friday night as my good run continues, coming 7th in the Stars $20 1r 1a for $1.2k (I went totally card dead at the last two tables and ended up busting shoving JQ into AK). I busted around 30th in the FTP $28k (the field was 1,500 runners), getting QQ in vs KK blind vs. blind. I also cashed in the $129 bounty on FTP. HU cash games have sucked, so I shan’t dwell on that.

My horse has also been running good, clearing all his make-up and paying out a substantial profit due to two scores on consecutive nights. Well done to him, he thoroughly deserves it after a pretty long rough run (he tends to play the larger fields so I guess its no surprise

Elsewhere West Ham were 2-0 up against Sunderland and in control, Sunderland pulled one back and then had a man sent off before half time. From this position we somehow managed to draw after getting a good going over in the second half. We’re at home to Villa and Everton tomorrow and on Sunday, and really need a minimum of four points although I can’t see us getting them.

Elsewhere my employer has been put up for sale by our 51% owner, RBS. It kind of leaves things up in the air for a multitude of reasons, however I can’t see either the business being sold or me being laid off in a hurry. I’m on a three month notice period minimum so whatever, even though it is going to be a total clusterfuck as far as the business is concerned unless things are handled well (which they won’t be, if past evidence is anything to go by).

Good luck at the tables.

Carlton Goal

2009-10-27T05:03:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-10-22T04:43:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-20T03:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T04:16:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-06T05:09:00.000-07:00

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.

"I don’t know who the **** Shaun Beeb is"

2009-09-21T03:21:00.000-07:00

After being anally violated by both my own bad play and the IPoker rng over the last six weeks, I ran absolutely nauseatingly good HU this weekend. I was up around $500 yesterday and $700 or so in total for the weekend, they must have read the instant message I sent to Wayne where I launched my toys out of the pram and said I was done playing on Chilli due to how bad I ran on there. Long may it continue. I have another lesson with Aero tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to.

Donkamenting last week started how it ended. Start:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=13217854&postcount=191

End: Deep in the 20r on FTP my internet connection goes missing in action. I find out I came 16th. GG me.

West Ham good rolled by Liverpool on Saturday. I thought we did ok but they had a world-class forward and it showed. Zavon Hines did well and caused their defenders all sorts of problems. I’m not convinced by the new Italian fella – he looks about as fit as I am but delivers a good dead ball. F London Underground/The FA, who decided to shut all the tube lines and play the game anyway, which meant I didn’t get to go and had to listen to Chris Waddle talk utter bollocks on ESPN, the thick Geordie cunt.

Otherwise the Mancs beat City in the derby in the sixth week of injury time. I was sickened to see Ferg sharing a joke with Alan Wiley (4th official) afterwards, particularly after Wiley disallowing our goal up at Wigan due to him deciding it was the end of the first half. Wiley – you are a disgusting piece of shit, wankers like you and Graham Poll explain why everyone hates referees, laughing it up with Ferguson like you are great mates when he thinks you are a turd and will only entertain you in conversation because your mate on the pitch can’t read a watch. You were probably beaten up at school and I hope the chef is a City fan and wanks into your Chinese the next time you order a take-away, you cunt. Howard Webb also failed to award the most blatant penalty to Spurs against Chelsea which cost them a chance to equalise. Still, there’s no sympathy where they are concerned, hopefully Redknapp twitched another five years off his miserable lifespan when that happened.

The WCOOP main event day 1 ended today. When I look through the thread for the event on 2+2, I realise just how gross donkaments are. I have no idea how these guys play these things for those stakes (backers, I guess). But when I see guys like this, it reminds me of what great value tournament poker can be:

16 pages, but great entertainment

Oh, and I’m 34 this week. How did I get this old?

Par For The Course

2009-09-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been lazy of late in terms of updating the blog. I’ve thought about doing so, then have decided against it as I have had little to say of any interest.

I’ve done no donkamenting to speak of recently, but have played 5.5k hands of HU. I am down, although my AIEV is modestly positive. I’ll play well for a long period, then do something retarded and titly and hand over a load of hard earned winnings. Being 7 BI below AIEV for the month hasn’t helped, although I feel a lot happier with my game than I have in a while.

Wayne (Wonderflop) continues to do a lot of lucksacking recently at $100NL, which is good news. In all seriousness it looks like hard work is paying off, hopefully the trend will continue.

Otherwise I have got quite frustrated with wedding planning. Everything that comes up seems to lead to me getting pissed off with her indoors, and at a guess she gets pissed off with me as well. She has proposed a half-hourly meeting each week to discuss wedding plans and ensure things get done, which is seriously fucking annoying as was kind of planning on breezing through the forthcoming months and not getting too involved.

West Ham lost 1-0 at Wigan this weekend, after having this goal ruled out for the end of the first half (when the ball strikes Cole’s head is when the ref blows up). We were otherwise pretty poor as far as I can gather, although the new Italian fella hit the post with a cracking effort.

http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/3408374/

Stuff like this happens all the time, but it is absolutely no surprise to me to see Wiley make an enormous fuck up when he can simply blow up as the free-kick is taken. Is he going to blow up if Rooney rounds the keeper at Old Trafford and is about to roll the ball into an empty net? Of course not. I’ve never forgiven the cunt for the spineless display of refereeing he produced when Arsenal came to our place a couple of years ago and he basically handed the whistle to Fabregas and Flamini and let them get on with it.

Otherwise I watched “This Is England” on DVD over the weekend. It’s a pretty awesome film and captures quite a lot from the era fairly well. The kid that plays the lead character is amazing. It turns out that he had never acted before and wanted a fiver just for turning up for the audition. Nice to see the scally is alive and well.

We also had a presentation from the new CEO at work the other day. It was fairly standard stuff, the company is doing ok although a lot of shit still needs sorting regarding our integration at with the bank before we can operate as a coherent unit and not miss out.

I have no plans this week. Due to social arrangements I might have to give the West Ham vs. Liverpool game a miss next Saturday. Thursday her indoors has said she might be out for the night which clearly means donkamenting.

Stop Press - A Win!

2009-09-04T03:44:00.000-07:00

Warning: upbeat post in progress. Look away now if you are expecting any of my usual whiny shit.

Her indoors was out on Wednesday so I decided to opt in for some donkamenting. After a recent slump I’ve decided to move down in limits and primarily stick to the below $100 buy ins, with the odd $163 thrown in.

Anyway, I shipped the $20r on Party for $2.8k, which was a welcome boost to morale. I came into the final table around 4/10, but with the Party structure this doesn’t really mean a lot. I then snap called a reshove with JJ when my opponent had KK, flopped quad jacks, and, in the words of Francis Begbie “after that, well, the game was mine.” Basically I had a pretty big chip lead at this point and proceeded to abuse the fuck out of people in the remaining shovefest as people are calling way too tight in these situations and simply trying to move up the pay ladder.
I also managed a creditable 17th in the $20 1r 1a on Stars. I was short and pretty card dead for the last 50 hands and busted shoving 55 over a limper’s KJ, who snap called. I played a little HU cash last night and have felt a lot more comfortable with my game of late.

It is international week on the football side this weekend, so I shall be hoping that the West Ham players involved come through unscathed. On deadline day we sold James Collins (for a pretty decent price) and addressed the striker shortage by signing, er, nobody, and coming out with some waffle about how a deal didn’t come off. I await the arrival of Mark Viduka, who is out of contract. Our accounts were (finally) released for the previous financial year and showed an enormous loss – congratulations to the Icelanders here, your reign was an utter fuck up.

Crap on your desk, dawg

2009-09-01T03:18:00.001-07:00

I played a bunch of tournaments this weekend, with limited success. I managed a couple of min-cashes on Friday and Saturday night. On Sunday I won a small (60 man) $40 buy in on Party for $888. Not a reason to pop out the champagne corks but better than a kick in the nuts. At the same time I was in this I was down to the last two tables of the Stars $33/$10k guaranteed. With 14 players left I got all in with KK for the chip lead – unfortunately my opponent had AA and I failed to improve. Clearly Stars can suck my hairy nutsack – I felt I played pretty well all weekend and I could have done without the standard Poker Stars ass-fucking that I get every time I log on there and am seriously tempted to go to the Isle of Man and lay a steaming turd on the CEO’s desk as a token of my appreciation.

Heads-Up has been bad. I pretty much suck and need to do some work on my game, big time.

West Ham drew away at Blackburn this weekend. Tuesday against Millwall was a lot more exciting – massively over-hyped by the press and hugely under-policed. The last few times we have played them there have been more police than fucking supporters and it has passed off without much trouble. This time the police were utterly unprepared and outnumbered.

I’m not condoning what happened, but am pissed off at the media coverage. The things that need addressing are:
1) The two sets of people hate each other – like many other clans and tribes do across the world. You’ll never change it – accept it.
2) If there was a riot at Notting Hill Carnival people would (rightly) look at the police. Nobody would dare suggest banning the Carnival, we’re just too PC. And there are lots of stabbings etc. every year at the Carnival (I pick this as an example as it happened this weekend and I know a copper that used to work on it) – the statistics simply get massaged so that certain incidents aren’t attributed to the Carnival, when they blatantly are.
3) Millwall were not blameless in all of this – unless I imagined them launching plastics seats from their end and also imagined the monkey noises made at Carlton Cole.
4) The pitch invasions were just that. Nothing more. There was a pitch invasion at the Palace vs Man City game, which wasn’t front page news.
5) The press described it as “the worst violence in 30 years”. It wasn’t even the worst in the last year. I could go on all day about the various lies reported by the press but I can’t be bothered.

Next week is International week so should be quiet. It is the transfer deadline day today – we have brought in an Italian mentalist with tattoos and wild hair (Brescia) and some reserve defender from Fiorentina, shipped out Savio and look to be moving James Collins on to Villa. We could do with another forward as well but I dare say we won’t be getting one.
Adios, bishes.

It's Worse Than That, He's Shit Jim

2009-08-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I don’t like Star Trek, despite the quote.

I haven’t played a bunch over the last week but I had my second lesson last night. Basically, I suck much harder than I thought. This isn’t a problem, I’d rather find this out now. The lesson was pretty cool, Aero explains things really well – he made a point about three betting which was so blatantly obvious that it seems retarded that I didn’t notice it before. Anyway, efforts must be redoubled and I basically need to work a lot harder.

I haven’t played many (virtually any, in fact) tournaments of late. I was reading through a sweat thread for a guy that is on an absurd heater who was deep in an Omaha tournament. As one guy commented in the thread:

There is no such thing as an awful Omaha high play....its either....

OMG I GOTS COOLERDZ!!!

or

OMG I MISSED MY OUTS!!!!

This is true IMO. ;)

West Ham were a bit unlucky to lose to Spurs on Sunday. We fucked up for both goals but matched them pretty well over the pitch and scored an absolute screamer to take the lead. Still, fuck them, Cole gave King and Bassong (who didn’t look all that) a pretty tough afternoon and given the resources we had available I was pretty happy with the performance. Clattenburg, without actually influencing the result, looked (like most referees) a man completely out of his depth and should probably be demoted forthwith.

A couple of really fucked-up things happened at the club this week. Jack Collison’s dad dying on the way to the Spurs game was pretty nasty, but the situation with Calum Davenport was really horrible. The Guardian has what appears to be a fairly factual version of events here, I’ll leave the moralising to the forums, which do this in a far more hysterical and entertaining fashion than I ever could.

Anyway, with the warm-up against Spurs over with, the more serious matter of the game against Millwall is this evening. We haven’t beaten them since the early 90’s and they are massive cunts, so we deserve a result. I can only imagine we’ll rest a few although I can only imagine that Cole will play as we can’t really go into this game with a couple of spotty kids up front.

Anyway, good luck at the tables.

A Jelly Doughnut?

2009-08-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

After weeks of messing about I’ve finally pulled the trigger and got a coach for HUNL. I’ve messed about long enough and looked at a few options and probably should have done it long ago, although I’m glad that I took the time selecting someone that I thought was right for me. I had my first lesson last night and would summarise as follows:
1) I have got the right person coaching me. He comes across as smart individual and a cool guy and an easy person to get along with and his methods are somewhat more subtle than those of Sgt Hartman, pictured above.
2) It went a lot better than I could have hoped - I learnt a lot, and also learnt that I’m quite bad.
3) He explains himself really well and has a clear thought process. His approach to the game is exactly what I need. He is also patient and managed to go throughout the whole session without saying “this is the most standard spot ever and you’ve managed to fuck it up, you don’t need coaching, you need a lobotomy”.
4) His coaching is more than just “you give me $100 and you get an hour of my time”. He has a genuine interest in his students doing well.

His name is Aero1441 (although his parents chose the somewhat more orthodox name of Erwin) and can be contact via 2+2, where he does a lot of excellent work on the forums. He’s a Dutch guy and everything went so well that I managed to avoid mentioning Ronald Koeman’s cynical shirt-tug on David Platt during our session. He also has the dubious honour of me linking up his blog to here, which may reduce his street cred by several notches.

He’s also going to ship me $500 for the positive review that I have just given, although this may be something of a waste as nobody ever reads this. Joke, obv.

Otherwise the poker hasn’t really gone well. I’m still running badly/playing worse, which is bad for me but good for the community. On the plus side, Wonderflop (Wayne) is doing pretty well having moved up to $100NL. I’m pleased for him as he has had a bit of a rough year in various ways and hopefully has sorted his game out and will be on the up and up from here.

I don’t really have a lot else going on. I might be going to buy a car this weekend. I’m not looking forward to it as I know nothing about cars, which is probably understandable given that I have never owned one. Given the situation with my parents I really need to have one now, so I’m going to have to bite the bullet and hand over the money. We’re also looking at buying the freehold for our block of flats, which is even more boring than buying a car, so I’ll stop there.

The Premiership kicked off last weekend. West Ham won 2-0 away at Wolves, which is a good way to start. Uncertainty continues regarding transfers but there is a strong rumour about us selling James Collins for £5m to Stoke. Whilst I like Collins for his attitude, he makes a lot of mistakes and the price being mentioned is too good to turn down, providing the money is spent on a forward.

We take on Spurs on Sunday, who beat Liverpool very impressively on the opening day, and then extend yet more East End hospitality to Millwall in the Carling Cup on Tuesday. Some poor bastard on one of the West Ham forums is livid as he has caught swine flu and misses both games, and has sworn revenge on the guy that sneezed on him on the tube.

Wasps 1 Guests 0

2009-08-10T05:23:00.000-07:00

I’ll summarise poker first and then move on. I played around 10 donkaments on Friday. I felt I played pretty well for the most part and had a pretty big stack in the 20 1r 1a on Stars before managing to run AA into JJ on a T hi flop where the guy binked a J on the river and then AA into 66 where the guy turned a straight. Being the calm, rational individual that I am, I was absolutely fucking livid having managed to lose with KK vs. KJ on a J hi flop in the 109 on Stars where I had tripled up early and was going well and only just refrained from a standard TCarnage doomswitch email to Stars. J

Anyway, enough of the positives. The HU has been going terribly. I haven’t played well, managed to run KK into AA twice yesterday and am suffering from tilt of Hellmuthian proportions. I have been in touch with a guy that I want to coach me so hopefully can get something going with him fairly soon.

TBH I hate writing lame stuff like I have above. The game is a tough one and if I don’t like it I can go and take up something else. All I can do is:
1) Be less of a pussy and quit fucking moaning like it hasn’t happened to anyone else ever.
2) Try and improve and iron out the (many) errors in my game.

Otherwise I was at a wedding on Saturday. The reception was at the Groom’s family home, which was an absolutely massive gaff outside Cambridge with gardens to boot. It was a pretty cool day, the only downer being Cambridge having the largest wasp population in the country, and they were angry cunts as well, and managed to sting multiple people. There was some sort of dual Vicar/Priest thing going on in the church (she’s Catholic, he’s C of E), it was probably the best crossover collaboration thing I’ve since Run DMC and Aerosmith decided to make a record together.

Given the way that I am pissing through poker funds I have strongly considered making a withdrawal. The longer life goes on I’ve decided I need a car, having never owned one before, so I might as well use some poker money to buy it. It should be a cheap one as I haven’t driven for over 15 years so probably will be a complete liability behind the wheel. Watch out pedestrians.

The football season kicks off next week. Surprisingly, nobody seems prepared to either loan or give us for free a striker of any repute, so we’ll all have to wish really hard that the one we have doesn’t get injured. We lost 1-0 to Napoli in our last friendly, but supposedly didn’t play that badly. More importantly the Napoli fans did what Italian fans are best at – attacked anyone that didn’t look like was up for a fight and they had outnumbered by at least five to one. A 15 year old kid got stabbed as well, which all seems fairly par for the course after the charming reception we got in Palermo. Hooliganism, the English disease, for sure.

The Charity Shield was reasonably entertaining, although I was less than pleased at the performance of Ben “he’s Manchester United’s reserve, therefore England’s number one” Foster. The Mancs played some lovely football at times and Nani looked good until he popped his shoulder out (alright, he looked like a 1980s Bronx pimp, but he played well).

Retard Frog-Squirrel

2009-08-06T06:57:00.001-07:00

At the end of each day I quite often watch an episode or two of South Park. I enjoy the childish humour, particularly at the end of a long day. The other night I think I saw possibly my favourite sketch. It doesn’t really need much introduction, except that it features Mr (well, Miss) Garrison trying to explain the theory of evolution, despite her disagreement with it. The rest of the episode is notable for Cartman’s attempts to freeze himself until the release of the Nintendo Wii is too painful and Ms Garrison flinging poo at Richard Dawkins.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5027481876893938900

Otherwise, it looks like an American guy by the name of Clarke Hunt is interested in buying West Ham. Given that he is unlikely to reduce our transfer budget below its current level of zero, this can only be good news. Hunt is the nephew of a guy called Bunker Hunt, who made himself famous (and busto) by attempting to corner the silver market in the 1970s.

To be honest the whole situation is really fucking boring but I would like to get the thing resolved as the club’s ownership was clearly shoved into an asset management company with a view to being sold at some point, so sooner seems preferable to later. Some of the internet cunts that should know about these things seem to be hinting that there is some truth behind it. So with American owners I guess it is out with Bovril and the romance of the FA Cup and in with big pointy foam hands, foot-long hot dogs and cheerleaders.

HU has been an unmitigated disaster this month. In an attempt to stop the rot I think I am set on a coach that I found through 2+2. He’s a Dutch guy, I like his forum posts. There were a variety of choices, he appealed for a number of reasons – including that he seems like a likeable guy, he seems to have a sound theoretical approach (which I really want for myself and is key to being any good), he’s in my time zone and he (and his blog) indicates that he does the coaching for more than just money (he indicated he was available for help “out of hours” as well). After the weekend I’ll try and get a session or two booked up with him.

I’ve also being looking at some 6 max cash game hands for Wayne. I have enjoyed them as they tax the grey matter, although they provide an opportunity for public humiliation as Wayne’s new coach has largely disagreed with me on every hand thus far, which probably explains why I have always found cash games bad for the bankroll. More importantly, Wayne’s new coach (linky on the right) seems like the man for the job and hopefully he’ll have Wayne moving up in no time.

I’m at a wedding this weekend. Her indoors is going down on the Friday night, which means I will spend the evening sitting in darkened room playing donkaments.

Bobby Hundreds

2009-08-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

I managed to play around 25 donkaments this weekend. They largely ended up with the familiar not running or playing well routine (with which most donkamenters are familiar with, apart possibly from Breeth), but squeaked into three cashes which redeemed it from total disaster. I managed to finish 9th in the FTP $18k on Sunday morning – I wasn’t all too happy about my bust out hand but I was the shortest stack at the table and it can probably be justified.

I played pretty well during the tournament (including a sick 3 bet pre flop and then double barrel on the flop and turn), which was very weak in general and confirmed that there is still a lot of value in tournament poker. Dreday from PXF was on my left for a fairly long period, which kind of cramped by style. I 4 bet bluffed him at one point and we eventually got it in BVB with my QQ vs AK for a monster pot, where I held. The worst thing was that I felt like total shit throughout and promptly went and vomited right after I busted.

The HU hasn’t been going so well, but I’ll look to kick that off again soon and probably get some coaching. I tilted off an unholy amount of monies to a terrible French guy in the small hours of Saturday when tilted. Hopefully the rakeback I’m due should compensate somewhat.

This post on Andy Ward’s excellent blog put me straight after I was feeling somewhat down about the game this weekend. It also mentions Isabelle Mercier (no pictures though, to my lasting disappointment).

http://secretsoftheamateurs.blogspot.com/2009/07/unreasonable-expectations.html

Having ditched PXF last month, I signed up for a trial at PokerSavvy. The videos that I have watched there have been a breath of fresh air and piss all over most of PXF’s content.

Aside from poker and nausea this weekend, I saw “Man On Wire” on TV. For those that haven’t heard of it, it’s a documentary/film about a French tightrope walker that during the 1970s thought that putting a big wire between the two World Trade Centre towers and then walking across it would be a really good idea. The whole thing is absolutely awesome and the guy’s utter fearlessness and dedication to pursuing his art (which I guess is what it is) is amazing.

West Ham’s pre-season plods along. We got rolled by Spurs in China (we were lucky to get away with losing by a single goal and, more worryingly, they looked way fitter than we did) and then beat the stiffs of China’s best team a day or so later. We’re still horribly short up front and it looks like Upson will be sold to fund some firepower up front. I’ll be sad to see him go (he’s probably our best and most consistent player), but Danny Gabbidon (who was magnificent for us prior to his injury problems) may provide an adequate replacement. Dyer also put in a decent shift against the Chinese side, although he did flag towards the end. I can’t see us getting near the top half next year, but if we avoid relegation I’ll be well pleased.

It’s the last day of the third Ashes test today. A draw looks favourite but England do have an outside chance of a win if they can grab a couple of early wickets.

A quick hello to Amatay, who has been linked up over here à. He’s a West Ham fan and lives fairly close to where I was brought up, and therefore should be respected. The only reason I may change this opinion is if (i) he eats babies in his spare time or (ii) he is related to Harry Redknapp. Him taking a look here has probably increased my readership by 33%, making this one of the hippest and fastest growing sites on the internet that doesn’t feature naked ladies. Or something.

Bobby Robson popped his clogs the other day. I’ll sign off with some amusing Robby Bobson related stories and leave the mawkish stuff to The Daily Mail.

“Journalist to Shola Ameobi: Do you have a nickname at the club?
Ameobi: Not really, no.
J: So what do the lads call you?
SA: Shola.
J: And what about Sir Bobby? What does he call you?
SA: Carl Cort.”

“Bobby is at a book-signing in Newcastle. Little kid gets Sir Bobby to sign his book after queuing for ages. 'Have you signed a lot of books today, Sir Bobby?' 'Oh, hundreds, son. Absolutely hundreds'

Kid walks off with his signed book, and glances down at the inscription; 'Best Wishes, Bobby Hundreds.'”

“Gathering the England team at the airport before they went abroad for a friendly, Sir Bobby got into a bit of a flap when he realised Peter Reid wasn't in the departure lounge. After a frantic search yielded nothing, he asked one of the coaching staff, 'Where's Reidy got to? We can't leave without him!' 'Er, you didn't pick him, boss...'”

“And the time he got in a lift with Bryan Robson, turned to him and said: "Morning Bobby." "Err no boss, I'm Bryan YOU'RE Bobby."”

LOL Hachem

2009-07-24T03:05:00.000-07:00

Last things first – a few people that I know from teh pokerz have been fairly supportive with the situation with my Dad. The kind words and wishes I have had from people have actually been pretty amazing. Anyway, the news was fairly positive – the existing tumour has shrunk and the pain in his lower back is almost certainly a disc problem, for which he is receiving physiotherapy. All of this news is about as good as we could have hoped for.

Thus far this month I have played around 9k hands of 50NL HU. This has generated a profit of around $500 (excluding rakeback), relative to an EV adjusted amount of $1,100. It has been absolutely brutal (although hopefully I should come out around the same amount of profit as in June) and I am overall running 8 BI below expectation. This is fine, as the rewards that HU poker brings are matched with high volatility. My main aim for the month is to finish having played over 10k hands, which I should accomplish with all things remaining equal and hopefully I can top the 11k that I did during June.

I played one guy (Italian, obv) and lost 4 BI to him by being all in three times with dominating hands (A9 < J9 and AK < AQ twice). Then I managed to chop two pots vs the same guy (the second a 4 BI pot) with AQ = AT on an AQx board and 77 = A8 on a 678 board versus a complete maniac. I find that these insane opponents are often very good value (partly because they three bet with a lot of hands where you get better value from flatting), particularly after reading DogIsHead’s advice that they should be “cock-slapped repeatedly” into submission, as it is indeed more fun than nitting it up and extracting their money a different way.

With this rather lame whine over, I am fairly happy with how I am playing (I spew a lot less) and one reg typed in chat “there isn’t much value in this for either of us so it is probably best if I quit you” – I have been beaten quite badly by some of the regs before and I actually quite rated this guy’s game, so I’ll take this as a compliment. I’d like to have $4k on Chilli by the end of September and be in a position to move up to $100NL (I’ll probably also seek some coaching at this time).

West Ham’s pre-season has seen us fail to generate any notable results. The jungle drums seem to suggest that Ashton will be off to Stoke – this is a shame, as for a short while he looked the real deal with us, but we can’t afford to carry someone that is permanently injured, particularly on his wage packet and with his reputed issues regarding training. I’m just hoping the 17 year-old we signed from Chelsea for a few buttons isn’t his replacement, as starting with one semi-proven centre forward and a couple of spotty kids is a recipe for disaster and has certain similarities with our previous relegation season.

I’m off to see the Bruno film tonight. The juvenile humour should provide a good end to a dull week at work.

Saving the best until last – Joe Hachem isn’t usually one to keep quiet when there is an opportunity to open it and look stupid, so here he is, true to form – from the Associated Press. As one guy on 2+2 said, “Joe has got disrespect down to an art form, so I trust his opinion here.”

“BC-World Series of Poker-Day 10,0234 - Stacks rise as players drop at poker world series
Eds: APNewsNow. By OSKAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer, LAS VEGAS (AP)

The 2005 World Series of Poker champion sayshe's lost all respect for a new brand of extremely aggressive pokerplayers who seem to want to gamble all their chips on every hand in the main event.

Joe Hachem said after two hours of poker on Monday that the pacehasn't slowed down at the no-limit Texas Hold 'em tournamentbecause many players are willing to risk their tournament with mediocre hands. Play started with 185 players and 38 were eliminated in two hours, despite starting with many chips relative to minimum bets.

Hachem says the overaggressive style is disrespectful to thetournament, its history and the $8.55 million prize. Hachem is one of two former main event champions left in thetournament, along with last year's winner Peter Eastgate.”

Please Seek Medical Advice Before Final Tabling

2009-07-20T03:15:00.001-07:00

It is Monday morning and I’m really not all too keen on working, so I’ve decided on a blog update instead. I squeezed in some donkamenting on Friday night – I played really well to final table the $100NL on Party, after coming back from 3bb when my AK was no match for AQ and held the chip lead for quite a while. I busted fifth when the chip leader at the final table (with a massive 20bb) shoved 55 from the button, I made the mistake of snap calling with AA. He flopped one 5 and rivered the other, which was a fairly frustrating end given that I felt that I had played pretty well and that I have been due for a while.

The tourney was a reminder of how awful people are on Party. One guy (a long time winning player with an average buy in of well over $100) opened for 2.5bb and then folded to an 8bb shove. I don’t claim to be the greatest poker player in the world but I really thought we had moved on since 2005. Still, I guess it can only be a good thing that people are playing this badly and still winning.

The rest of the night was a bit of a wash out and the usual mixture of bad plays by me, suck-outs by my opponents (including losing to JJ with 22 on a 269 board and KK vs AJs on a K92r board), marginal spots and coolers. Which is a pretty standard night of donkamenting for me or anyone else, I guess.

In the subject of being due, one guy on PXF has won in the space of a week a 30r, 50r, 3r, WPT package and a couple of other things and claimed that he was “due” to win something else at some point soon, which made me piss myself laughing as he is clearly on an enormous heater and may well be “due” for some time.

I’ll leave out any discussion on the Main Event final table, but I’m delighted to see Joe Cade, Ivey and Akenhead there. My favourite poker related story of the week comes from the WPT final table at the Bellagio, where Justin “BoostedJ” Smith leapt up to celebrate winning an all in four-handed and suffered suspected anterior cruciate ligament damage and had to be helped back to the table and will spend the remainder with an ice pack on his knee. Poker, its more dangerous than I thought.

My Dad goes to hospital today for a final assessment on whether his cancer has spread or whether his lower back pain is a slipped disc. I’m anticipating his phone call but in some ways don’t want to receive it at all.

Good luck to England on the final day of the 2nd Ashes Test at Lords today. It promises to be a nail biter. New just in – Flintoff bowls Haddin, Convicts 314 for 6 chasing 522.