Superman wears Scott Parker pyjamas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.