Keep Believing...

The Play Station Network is still down ( no Black Ops online Multi-player for me) so I hit the poker tables on Saturday and Sunday,six tabling the $16's on Stars and playing more of the $22's on Party.After another awful run of luck on Sat night at Stars I was wondering how I could possibly write yet another blog post about how badly I've been running recently.Even belief in my own game has been harder to come by as I start to think there will never be an end to the seemingly constant beating being dished out to me on the felt.Farce9 asked recently in the comments about poker blogging tips and one of the hardest to stick to is the no bad beats rule.

We all suffer them and nobody cares about anyone else's bad luck.It's that simple.It becomes tempting to post them because when you harp on about running badly all the time adding the repeated nasty hand histories seems to sooth the poker ego and shout "Look I'm telling the truth,I really am just unlucky at the moment".It's easy to bleat on about the huge swings that are possible over small sample sizes ( even 1000 sngs is considered relatively small ) but it's harder dealing with them.

Thankfully for my bruised poker ego I managed to run a bit better last night and reduced my recent Stars losses to only a few buy-ins.I say "thankfully" but good short-term results over one night are just as meaningless as the same kind of bad run.Perhaps they're not completely meaningless though as it's very hard to just remain focused on volume and resist feeling bad after a losing session or feeling good after winning money.

I did read at the weekend that the greatest snooker player of all time,seven time World Champion,Stephen Hendry,is questioning his own self-belief after crashing out of the World Championships so perhaps there is hope for the rest of us!

Away from the poker I was at Ibrox on Sunday for the final Old Firm game of the season which finished 0-0 despite Rangers being by far the better side for the vast majority of the game.We're now a point ahead of them but they have a game in hand and we have only four games left to play so retaining our title is now out of our own hands.I'm not optimistic but I felt the same way back in '05 when the helicopter ( carrying the league trophy on the final day of the season) famously changed direction so it's not impossible.

I don't write much about the bitter rivalry between Rangers and Celtic fans but it was brought home to me again a few weeks ago when I was taken into an office at work and warned that someone had complained that I had been spending too much time looking a Rangers fans web forum.I get on well with my workmates and this was a total shock to me until I realised I'd obviously got under the skin of one particularly bitter Celtic fan who sits behind me.My boss couldn't officially confirm who it was but said enough without saying anything for me to be 100% certain.

I work too hard to spend much time surfing the net but I stopped looking at the Gers forum to cover my backside after my managers first chat with me and it's just as well because the same guy made the same accusation again last week.I was furious and pointed out his blatant lies and the sectarian reasons behind them.I haven't confronted the tosser because I think I'd end up losing the plot and I'm not throwing a good job away for anyone.Grrrrrrrr!

Thanks for reading.Back soon...