I Wish I Had A Car Again Now

If only I had a car, I would have to buy the number plate "A2 YBA" for a mere £199. Or if you prefer Omaha, "J333 YBA". That would be so cool. Or choose your own !

Bad Boys Running Wild

Nice to see Tony G win the WPT Twats Of Poker special. Although the Americans have considerable depth in this field, the rest of the world can produce individual twats who are right up there with the best.

Thank You Whoever You Are

Some unknown person has my gratitude for cheering me up after my near-bubble exit in the E5K added on Betfair. I think I mentioned before that on www.twodimes.net, a simple hand vs. hand equity calculator, they present you with a poker "quote" every time you perform a calculation. Tonight when I typed in my critical hand to see how unlucky I was [1], I looked down expecting to see "all-in bitches" or a similar contribution to the field of American poker philosophy when instead I was delighted to read this :

"Please screen these quotes, most of the crap people submit here don't classify as poker quotes at all, they just express how badly those persons misunderstand the game of poker or how proud they are that they understand elementary concepts such as "counting outs" or "pot odds", no one cares jerks"

Hats off to whoever sent that in.

[1] I wasn't, very. Or even at all when the money went in.

Two Blogs Good, Three Blogs Better

As that great philosopher Butthead once said "Err ... if I was like, making out with two chicks, huh huh, I would be thinking about making out with three chicks. That would be cool, huh huh".

And so what could be better than two blogs - three blogs of course. As of now all football content will be available in my new Despite His White Boots blog. Those with an appreciation of the noble game may bookmark it, while those who do not care a fig for football nature alone is beattiful will can just look on here in the hope that I explain why Phil Hellmuth is a cunt again. Happy days.

Alright Then, Don't Use Reverse Psychology

The Get It Quietly T-shirt Range goes from strength to strength. I have personally bought five of these now and they are awesome. But I say to you, don't buy them. Because then when I'm in Vegas I'll be wearing them and I'll be the coolest by a million miles and you'll all say "Damn. I wish I had one of them". I can say without fear of hyperbole that these T-shirts are man's greatest cultural achievement in the history of the world ever including the future by a factor of at least 100. Probably 120.

Get It Quietly. Now featuring new "Never In Doubt", "Different Gravy" and "You Can't Eat Value" designs. Designs available on different items by request. But don't buy them.

What Do I Know ?

I have been keeping an eye on events at Deauville, mostly while at work. Don't think that this implies a particular interest in the tournament circuit ; among other means of avoiding work this week I was googling "Come Back Mrs Noah", with about the same level of attention. More if anything. Sadly the good guys and girls have all bitten the dust once again.

Ram is the chip leader and while I do bitch about a lot of tournament players (more privately than publicly now I am a little wiser), Ram is one of the few tournament players who has my full respect. The way he plays, he could still bust out 5th, but IMO that's a strength rather than a weakness. He goes all out to win. Isabelle Mercier has finally done something in a major tournament at about the 50th attempt ; expect a serious amount of fawning as to how great she is. One thing the Unabomber said that rings very true, guys go nuts over women who play poker even though they wouldn't look at them twice in a nightclub. Isabelle "No Mercy" Mercier in the flesh (what there is of it) looks about 12 years old. I don't mean to bitch at her ; it's the way guys react to her. And I know I was probably applying some fawnage to Jennifer Tilly a couple of months ago, but she's different gravy !

Anyway the real point of this post is that while I was playing at the Sportsman last week I had two characters sat next to me who were, in my opinion, playing awfully. Overcalling allin pre-flop with A7 etc. etc. in that "it's ok to play badly during the rebuy period" style. Not that this stopped them telling everyone else how to play. But in between all this they were saying things like "so what hotel are you in at Deauville ? I might go to Vienna it's only two thousand Euros". I was somewhat perplexed. Needless to say one of them made it very deep in the Deauville event and it sounded like he was quite unlucky to be eliminated on the last two tables. Which goes to show that either I know very little about assessing players, or I know all too much about how high the luck factor is in big tournaments. 5/6 each of two I reckon.

Better To Remain Silent

I did mention last time that I prefer to write as and when I feel like it, and interestingly enough (perhaps even ironically, er no) I came across a piece here talking about the same thing. I do like Anxiety Culture, you should check it out. IMO this is spot on. Professional journalists generally have to come up with something even when there's nothing to say. Naturally that's going to affect the quality of the work they do.

Wouldn't it be great on the TV news if they did about five minutes and then said "Well, frankly that's it. We did have a story about a budgie being sent a voting card [1] but we figured if that was the best we could do then why bother. Now here's a cartoon". Or in the papers, on page 8 it could say "Well there isn't really any more news. Here's twenty pages of Keira Knightley in a bikini". Hang on, that is what most of them do, come to think of it. But no. Quantity prevails over quality and people have to write a load of shite about stuff that no one cares about. And to make people read it, they have to pretend that it is important. Worst of all, the best way to make it seem important is to frighten people. Bird flu will kill millions. Every time you board a plane it's half full of shoe bombers. Immigrant bisexual muslim gypsies are going to steal your children and make them prostitutes.

In the world of blogs, of course, we don't need no stinkeen deadlines. If we ain't got nothing to say, we don't have to say it. Of course the problem with many blogs is that people can't stop themselves, but that's down to the individual. Better to remain silent and be thought to waste your own time and everyone else's than to pad it out to 800 words and remove all doubt.

[1] Although I have a twist that would make this story doable. You go to the Council and ask for a copy of the form that the people sent in. Then you confront them with it and say "Look you twats, you wrote your fucking budgie down on the form. What did you think would happen ? Now stop wasting our time".

Staying In Is The New Going Out

Last night I made my way to the Sportsman for their £100 rebuy. Nice casino, two-course comped meal (Chicken Dhansak not bad), everything was great until the poker started. Again, that's nothing to do with the cardroom or the dealers or the organisation, just that when I had to sit there and play 25 hands an hour instead of 200 it frustrated the hell out of me.

In theory it was a good line up. After about an hour I thought to myself "if I had to back one of these players, which one would it be ?". It was a real poser. They all had various technical weaknesses. I know I sound like Professor Science pontificating about everybody but they did. Bet size didn't seem to mean anything to most of them. Call 200, call 1500 what's the difference. But I was so bored I judged that it was unwise to rebuy. I hovered around 2000 for about 3 hours before biting the dust. The half hour on a short stack was absolute torture. Online I'll double up or bust out in 5 minutes or less, and be playing 3 more games at the same time anyway. Last night I had to sit there, make an instant decision every two minutes, and enjoy the gentle bonhomie of the likes of Andrew Georgiou and Frank Pini. Marvellous.

Maybe it's because I've been playing so little for a while, but is there anywhere you hear people talk more shite than at the poker table ? It was driving me mad. I won't bother repeating any of it. Just go out and play you'll hear it all again. Next time I'm just going to play cash. If I'm bored I can decamp to the bar instead.

Meanwhile today I swerved Barnet v Shrewsbury which turned out to be an inspired decision as the game was delayed for an hour and a half due to a power failure. It's not warm at Underhill in February I can tell you. Fortunately the Bees eventually won 1-0. Rangers on the other hand played 5 loan players in a 2-0 defeat at Leeds. That's just beyond me. Stuck in mid-table with nothing to play for, what's the point of playing 5 loan players ? What are you going to learn from that ? Unless you really have any intention of bringing them in permanently, which seems unlikely in the cases of 3 or 4 of the players involved. Oh well, could be worse I suppose.