Trainspotters denied Orgasm...

I didn't make it to the Alea for the tourney on Saturday and watched football and played Call of Duty instead.On Sunday I played a few Sng's and after having KK busted by Tens,A10s busted by J2 ( Jack on river) and shoving AK on the bubble and running into Aces, I went back to shooting 12yr olds on Modern Warfare.In terms of profit and volume this year I've achieved very little in either category.Perhaps cashing out back in May to pay for life stuff was a mistake and the beats are hurting more because I'm eager to build my roll quickly.I did watch some of the WCOOP tables last night and maybe I'll finally play some more Mtt's.Oh and I finally caught up with the rest of the planet and watched The Inbetweeners on catch up tv.It was brilliant and I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the new series.

Todays post was really just an excuse to post this vid of trainspotters who travelled hundreds of miles just to see some old steam train come through the station...

Ice Ice Baby

My obsession with playing online poker shows no sign of returning.I've played about 20 Sng's in total since my last post and my Party roll has now shrunk to $229.I feel that I'm still running really badly and if I'm not going to make money at the felt then there's no point in playing.The annual big bills like Council Tax,car insurance,season ticket etc for this year have all been paid for with poker winnings and are not due again until well into next year.

Although extra cash is always useful, my hunger to grind my way through downswings isn't what it was.In truth I've felt this way since my car accident last November and although I do still enjoy poker ,perhaps that hunger will never return.Maybe as big bill time approaches I'll feel more inclined to grit my teeth and play on through the standard bad beats and swings.

With Rangers not playing until Sunday I'm going to head to the Alea casino tomorrow afternoon and play in the £22 turbo tourney.The blinds go up rapidly and it is a bit of a luckfest, but it's good fun and push/fold suits me after spending the last few years playing sit n go's.

I'm still enjoying a smoke when I'm off work the next day, but I've gone a step further and I've started having some completely smoke free days ( still using nicotine gum) .Maybe one day I'll quit altogether.

Not much else going on.I do have a date arranged for next week, although once again I felt older than Dudley when the lady in question sent me a text asking if I wanted to go and see the latest Ryhs Ifans film as I had no clue who he was! The film is "Mr Nice" and I'm on firmer ground there having read the Howard Marks book the film is about.

Of course I may have the brain of an old codger, but thankfully I still have my youthful good looks, or at least that's what I thought when I ordered a a Bacardi and coke last night at the pub.I'm not a regular there and when the landlady paused and looked right at me I thought I was about to get asked for ID....and tried not to look too upset when she simply asked if I wanted ice.Baaaaaa!

Jump Around

Thanks to Rosie ,Weegem and Mr Origami for the advice re google reader.Funnily enough when I logged into it using my general google details I found I must have tried it at some point as I was subscribed to Rosie's old blog.I'm still not sure I can use it to read full blog posts at work without having to click through ( and risk trouble for looking at "gambling" sites) but I'll have another look nearer the Bloglines cut off date.

I'm only playing poker a few times a week these days.It's a far cry from the days when I'd come home from work and play for 3-4 hours per night.I've managed to bag a couple more wins at the $11 turbos on Party since my last post and hopefully I can motivate myself to put in some volume over the weekend and my roll can continue to go in the right direction.( taking into account the unavoidable swings) Of course the extra income I used to make from playing 300-400 sngs per month was useful, but I earn a decent wage and don't have huge outgoings so I can easily afford to enjoy myself playing video games instead of stressing over 25 buy-in downswings etc.

I've also realised that the truth is I find sng's boring up until the blinds hit level 5.Assuming I don't get sucked out on early, I find waiting at least 20 minutes to get to the bit where the money is made ( around the bubble) to be fairly tedious and perhaps the last few years of mindless net surfing have further reduced my patience and ability to sit through those first levels.I don't fancy Super turbo's ( 2-3 min blinds instead of 5 mins) as one of the main benefits of normal turbo's is the edge gained over the donks willing to stack off lightly before the blinds get very high.

That boredom with the game also means I'm almost always watching tv or surfing the net as I play and that probably isn't doing my game much good.Using a HUD means I have a good idea of the other players tendencies, but paying full attention would obviously be more profitable.Despite the majority of low stakes sngs players being fairly awful,the luck factor means sng's will always be about repeatedly pushing small edges and paying attention to every detail can only help.Maybe switching off the tv and playing at least six tables instead of just 3-4 would force me to focus more.

Away from the poker I was pleased that Rangers managed to get a 0-0 draw away to Manchester United in the Champions League.I did have to laugh at some of the negative press we received for a superb defensive display.If Mourinho does it with his teams he's a tactical genuis, but when Rangers "park the bus in front of goal" it's "anti-football".Hopefully we can playing more of an attacking style at home and rack up enough points to get at least 3rd place in the group.

On Wednesday night I took Step A out for a Mc'ds and tried ( and probably failed) to impart some wise words of wisdom.She did give me a bit of a shock when I asked her what she was doing later and she replied she would be looking for a "jump in".Being from the "Rita,Sue and Bob too" generation I thought a getting a "jump" meant shagging and I was relieved ( well somewhat) to discover she meant hanging about the local shops and asking someone to "jump in" and buy cigarettes!

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

Oh and for Dudley...

Follow Follow

I'm still recovering from Nacho's wild birthday ( can't believe he's 6!) celebrations yesterday, but I thought I'd fire up a wee post.

I went to Bloglines to catch up on my daily reading at the weekend and discovered they are closing on Oct 1st.Looks like I'll need to join the 21st century and start "following" the blogs I read or trying out the google reader thing.Does anyone know if they work in a simlilar way to bloglines?

Anyway I have actually won a small amount of money since my last post.Two Pies was over on Sat night and after watching the brilliant US Open semi-final I fired up some tables and after a few fruitless games I finally managed to cash in a couple of $11's and win a $22 I had entered by mistake.Considering I rarely play on Stars I really should cash out my money there,put it into Party and get back to the $22's again as I find it hard to motivate myself to play $11 games.Although I only have $272 on Party now and could afford to play the $22's and reload if I busted,the thought of having to make a deposit makes me uncomfortable, despite being a winning player for over 5 years.Playing very little this year and running even more badly than usual has meant I've not made anywhere near my usual $5k -ish annual profits.Over 33 days logged of online Call of Duty play has to take some blame too!

I'll possibly hit the tables later on tonight although I also plan on watching the US Open final.Tomorrow I'm going over to my sisters to take my wee nephew out in his pram for a walk round her village.I just hope the rain clears up a bit.Driving home tonight in wet,cold conditions past the spot where I nearly killed myself was a bit freaky.I don't think I'll ever forget the loud crunch of metal as my car slammed into the lamp post that night.The weird thing is that I'm not exactly sure which lamp post it was.

I'll also be watching the Rangers game tomorrow night in the Champions League and hopefully we can avoid a drubbing.Sad to have to say that as Rangers ( and our rivals) are far bigger clubs than most in England ( with far larger fan bases than all but a few) but ( zzzzz,heard it all before) the lack of tv revenue means we're stuck in a crappy league with too little money coming in to compete effectively with English teams.I think I've still got a video somewhere of our games against Leeds United in '92 when we beat them home and away.I don't even have a video recorder to play it back on these days!

On Wednesday I'm taking Step A for a Mcd's.She's hoping to start a work placement soon and apparently her hair isn't blue anymore so that has to be good news!

Ok,time to go and decide if the microwave chillie or Domino's pizza is going to win tonights dinner coinflip.Back soon...

Back in the Day

Finally picked up my new Samsung 17" laptop last Friday after work and spent most of the evening getting it set up.To test the Pokertracker Hud I fired up a couple of micro heads up games but the players were so bad the Hud barely had time to kick in before the games were over.Despite hardly playing a hand of poker over the previous week I really haven't had much desire to start grinding sng's again.I did two wee sets of four games last night though and after six cashless games I was quite relieved to win the last two for a small profit.My roll is currently just under the $1k mark, and as I'm still playing far more Modern Warfare 2 than poker, I can't see it increasing by much anytime soon.

I've not been jogging again, but after 6 months off sitting on my backside on the sick, I have at least been either taking the dog for long walks or heading for an hour of stoating around the town on my lunch hour.I'm so unfit that even walking the dog round the local pitches for an hour resulted in a tight hamstring!

I have stuck to the no weed before work rule which I'm quite pleased about, although my current batch of herbs weren't cured properly before I got them and tend to give me more of a headache than a high.Perhaps I'll use all the annual leave I've accrued for a trip to the Dam after all.

At work I'm still on alternate full days and waiting to find out if they'll allow me to to a 4 day week for 6 months without having to change my contract.After such a long break, working 9-5 certainly seems like a long day!

My favourite tv show at the moment is the "Home Movie Show Uncut" on the BBC.Now I have to be honest and say when I saw on at 1am it wasn't showing quite the kind of amateur home movies I was expecting, but what it does show is footage of peoples home made films from as early as the 1930's.( many in colour) They showed a great clip the other night from the 30's where a wee old woman was complaining about all the cars on the road and saying that life just wasn't the same as it used to be 30 years ago.( Dudley was born in 1905 and says the same)

I've also been watching a few Floattheturn training vids and some Modern Warfare 2 vids on youtube.The MW2 vids make me feel old sometimes as the kids making them refer to life "back in the day" and then go on to talk about things that happened in March/April this year. Back in the day is about 1989 for me!

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

Critical Errors

I didn't hit the tables for long last Friday night. I was three tabling when a message popped up telling me windows had encountered a critical error and would be closing in one minute.As the hinges have been just about hanging off my laptop for a while now and it's also riddled with the "security centre" virus ( caught from watching football on an Iraqi website) I've bitten the bullet and ordered a new one.It will also now only connect to the net via a dongle and even then it's liable to shutdown at any time.This has meant I've only played a few cash table hands as I don't want to risk the damn thing randomly shutting down during a set of sit and go games.

I suppose it's typical of my luck that after months of not playing much at all,I've recently been stepping things up and getting back to putting in some decent hobby volume.( for me decent volume would be getting back to the days of playing 300-400 sngs per mth) In the past I would probably have thought that with being on a mini downswing at Party recently, a break would have been welcome, but the new volume driven me realises that the only way to beat variance and make $$ is to play more.( at least on the nights I'm not trying to improve on my 1.30 Modern Warfare k/d!)

Hmmm thought I was being smart avoiding the tv licence guy at the door earlier and I missed the delivery of my new laptop.Grrrr!

Back soon...