If you can’t be good…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Godspeed.

Boomswitch

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?

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

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.