Signs of Life

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.