Just IMO....looooooooooool

My bankroll has hovered around the $1.1k mark since my last post.Up a bit on Party and down a bit on Stars.On Stars I even played some micro-stake cash games ( $12.50 buy-in 6 max) and I quite enjoyed the change from the push/fold nature of the sit and go games I usually play.I managed to build up my stack to a few buy-ins across two tables before losing a couple of set over set hands and one where I overplayed Aces against yet another set.I took my $7 profit and ran!

I wrote the above the other day before I hit the felt last night.I only played 11 games on Party, but managed a few wins and I'm now less than $20 from having the $440 I need at Party to play the $22's with 20 buy-ins.

I've also been playing a ton of Call of Duty as usual and have managed to get my sub-account KDR( kills to deaths ratio) up to 1.25 which I'm quite pleased with.Most of those kills are probably from well placed claymore mines to be fair!

I expect my KDR to dip after scoring some fine herbals last week.The good news is that I've stuck to my no smoking before a working day plan and as a result getting up in the morning hasn't been as tough as it used to be.I'm still on a back to work plan which at the moment means 5 hrs on a Mon,Wed and Fri.

Hmmm,I don't know why I read the Daily Mail and Guardian online as they both piss me off!From the "everything is going to give you cancer " crap in the Mail to the some of the pathetic feminist guff in the Guardian.Mind you, the recent "not enough lesbians on tv" piece* and their chief man hater announcing she was actually a Snoop Dog fan did attract some fine comments.

* If you're a male reader and you're nodding your head in agreement then sadly they mean the Judy from Cell Block H type of lesbian!

The Mail story about Jeremy Clarkson "outraging" Top Gear viewers ( he mentioned something about burkhas in last weeks show ) was pathetic because the article then went on to say that seven people had actually complained to the BBC.That's seven people from over six million viewers! No doubt the Mail were hoping most of their readers would be just as upset and offended ,giving them licence to run story after pathetic story on the subject much as they did with the Jonathon Ross/Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs story last year.

On a more serious note the hand wringing piece in the Guardian by Blake Morrison about child killer and child porn downloader John Venables which suggested Venables is simply a "confused young man who desperately needs help" really twisted my melon too.What he desperately needs is to be locked up for a very very long time.

I think I need a nicotine hit as other more minor things are coming into my head that also annoy me! With the football season approaching, pundits who talk about "the Gerrards,Lampards,Beckhams" etc piss me off.There is only one of each player ffs!

Of course if all of the above was written on a forum I'd have to add "imo" ( in my opinion) because despite the fact that I wrote and posted it, there may still be doubts about who exactly holds that particular opinion! Did that get a lol? ( laugh out loud) Ok,but it better not be a loooooooool as what the fuck does "laugh out out out out out out out out loud" mean?!

Ok,thanks for reading todays grumpy thoughts!

Back soon...

Roll with it

I only played a couple of games on Saturday night.I fired up a $22 and a couple of $11's on Party, but left the $11's as they were taking too long to fill up.I noticed a $33 about to start and joined it instead.I ended up going out 5th in the $22 and painfully bubbling the $33 after a bad beat.I went to bed feeling pissed off, although I was more pissed off at feeling pissed off than at the actual bad beat that knocked me out of the $33! When I used to regularly play 15-20 games per night I could go to bed up or down $250 and not care either way and yet here I was getting annoyed at dropping just $55.

In part I blame the cash-out curse.It's not that I believe that cashing out affects the poker sites number generator, but playing on a much smaller roll isn't much fun and my eagerness to get back to the $22's on a regular basis means that every small setback hurts more than when dropping 10 buy-ins wouldn't have put even a minor dent in my bankroll.Being somewhat rusty when it comes to mini-grinding ( I'd call real grinding playing at least 100 sng's per session)also left me feeling the swings more, although overall I feel that taking a wee break has refreshed my enthusiasm for the game.There are probably a few contradictions contained above, but nothing is ever usually black and white in poker.

Last night I stuck to the $11's at Party,4 tabling without the tv on or any other distractions and managed to take a few down.I could move money across from Stars to give me 20 buy-ins for the $22's but I'm only about $80 short of that target so I reckon I'll keep plugging away at the $11's for now.

Late on last night I played some 9 player $16's on Stars and booked a few wins to take my overall roll to just over the $1.1k mark.

Off work today as it's Glasgow Fair Monday.Nothing fair about it so far as all it's done is piss down with rain.Anyways thanks for reading.Back soon...

Roll over $1k....

Just back from lunch with Step A and she was delighted with her early birthday present of Play Station Network vouchers.( means she can buy the new COD map packs)
She's still in limbo over her move down South, but her Gran is taking her to the Careers Office next week and hopefully they can point her in the right direction.We had a laugh singing along to Eminem on the way home, although I had to be honest and say that I tried listening to her favourite band "Brokencyde" on youtube and they were awful!

I managed to resist the urge to play COD last night and had a decent night at the virtual felt instead.I started out with a mix of $11 and $22 sngs on Party and when the traffic died down there I moved to Stars where the Sngs always fill up rapidly.

The $16,18 player turbo's were where I learned to play Sit and Go's and I fired up a set of four,managed to take down two of them and boosted my overall Stars and Party roll to just over the $1k mark.Not very interesting really, but after all my run bad moaning over the last 6 months I thought it would make a change to post something positive about poker!

Today's exciting plan is to avoid the boring golf on tv and play plenty of COD and poker.Now that the World Cup is over I reckon I'll be playing in The Bloggerment and RTR games tomorrow night.

Back soon...

Not Afraid

Well it looks like Step A may not be moving to England after all as her Mums boyfriend doesn't want her there.The fact that her Mum ( an ex of mine)hasn't already dumped the prick and moved back up the road just makes me wonder how it's possible to be with someone for so long ( 7 1/2 yrs) without really knowing their true character.Anyway I'm looking forward to meeting the wee one for lunch tomorrow and to taking her to meet my new nephew.

There's not much else really going on at the moment.As per a previous post I've cut right back on my weed smoking.Everyone always knows someone who can drink anyone else under the table and I suppose when it came to weed I was that guy,getting through an oz per month and rarely not enjoying a smoke when I had the chance.Being off work sick for so long,smoking most nights and still feeling tired the next day even after 10 hours sleep made me realise there was no way I could carry on in the same way and expect to keep going to work without being zombie tired everyday.

Before my accident it had become a bit of a vicious circle of having a horrible day dealing with complaints at work,smoking to de-stress and to forget about my day and then struggling further the next day due being up too late and being foggy minded.I'm still cherry picking complaints from a sheet and not being allocated 5 per day so it will be more of a test of my resolve in the coming weeks, but in truth I've not missed it much and have felt much better for it too.Running out of weed and turning down a "bit for a joint" also told me I really don't need a puff to get through life.That's not to say I won't still be lighting up at weekend or enjoying trips to the Dam to get wrecked!

Not smoking has also helped my KD ( Kills/Deaths) ratio on Call of Duty which is always a bonus! I also won a couple of sngs on Party last night and with a bit of "run good" hopefully I can be back at the $22's soon.Barely playing a hand over the last few weeks has helped clear my mind of the constant negative feelings being on a downswing brought and hopefully I can motivate myself to stop playing as much COD and get back to making some decent hobby money at the tables!

Music wise my downstairs neighbour gave me a copy of Eminem's new album ( yeah us nearly 38yr olds still call 'em albums) and it's a definite return to form."Not Afraid" and "Space Bound" are my two favourite tracks from it.Strange really as I was never a fan of rap/hip hop, but "The Slim Shady LP" got me hooked and I loved "The Marshall Mathers LP" too.Anyway enjoy "Not Afraid"...

Best Russian Song Ever...

As I've only played about 15 sng's since my last post there's not a lot of poker to write about.It was good to see Nick over at Twitterpoker posting again and I suffer from the same problem of wanting to bank a winning session if I have a good start.It's so hard to get it into my head that even at a 10% ROI I'll be doing well to make $2.20 per game at the $22's and just over a Dollar per game at the $11's.Of course if I do start with a couple of wins, knowing I'm only making $1-$2 per game becomes all I can think about and I'm almost expecting to lose buy-ins to "make up" for those cashes.Retaining confidence and focusing on volume are the only answers I can come up with.

I have run like hell this year at the felt and I think part of the problem is that after reducing the volume I played after my accident last Nov,I lost some of my resistance to running badly and keeping up the volume required to play through it.After 5 successful years, a break even stretch over hundreds of games was bound to happen, but despite knowing how standard this is,I've just not had the motivation to keep plugging away.

Writing this reminds me that I've always felt the secret to winning poker is to always play your best game.( revelation of the year!) Taking beat after beat in sng's is standard , but push/folding better than your opponents and playing correctly on the bubble and beyond are the factors that separate the winners from the losers.

Away from the poker I'm up to 5 hours per day ( alternate days ) at the moment at work and I'm still giving serious thought to reducing my working week to 4 days as my back and side are still sore and I'm not exactly fond of my job.If only I could earn $2 for every Team Deathmatch played on Call of Duty!

Ok,I know nobody ever clicks youtube song links on blogs but this was first time I've seen this one and it's guaranteed to make you smile...

Proud Uncle!

On June 21st,exactly 5 years to the day after she had an op to remove a tumour, my sister and brother in law became parents to a healthy baby boy and I became an Uncle for the first time! Life throws up a lot of random crap at times, but the wee mans arrival is truly a little miracle for our family and I couldn't be happier about it!( unless Kelly Brook or Vicky Coren had personally delivered the news to me perhaps)

The not so good news is that Step A has decided to move down to England at the end of August to stay with her Mum.It's not really bad news as she's planning on going back to school to redo her 4th year and hopefully a fresh start is what she needs to get her back on track after a year of playing truant and falling in with the wrong crowd.I'm hoping to catch up with her this week to take her to visit my new nephew.

I need something to cheer me up because being back at work is really getting me down.I know I'm lucky to earn well over the national average wage, but they've removed all the "quick hits" from our complaints queue and that just leaves the really complex multi-faceted ones and with the one years salary package for voluntary redundancy still on offer,I've been very tempted to take it and just get the hell out.

On the poker front it was great to meet up with Dudley for the £22 turbo at the Alea casino last week.Sadly neither of us cashed.

My obsession for online poker has taken a backseat since my car accident last November.I didn't play much at all for a few months after it and running like crap hasn't helped my motivation to play much recently either.When it comes to the choice of having a blast with friends playing Modern Warfare 2 or being constantly outdrawn at the virtual felt, there's no contest.

I've also been enjoying the sport on tv this summer too, although some things never change, with Andy Murray crashing out of Wimbledon and a greatly over hyped England team losing to the Germans in the World Cup.After a sluggish start, the competition seems to have picked up and hopefully the two semi-finals will be cracking games to watch.

Not much else going on really ,although passing through the East End of Glasgow recently I noticed someone has stamped "End Israeli apartheid" on the most of the bins.All we need to do now is invite the Israeli Prime Minister to visit and that'll be the whole Middle East conflict resolved.I'm going to get my own stamp and write "End Acorn's bad run at the tables" and I'm looking forward to running hotter than the sun!

Playing very little poker means I'm not sure I'll be posting as frequently.Anyway, thanks for reading.