Basket Case

First up thankyou to Rosie for kindly sponsoring me here
for Sport Relief and for the twitter mention too.If any other readers would like to add to the pot there's still time and it's maybe worth pointing out that Sport Relief money is used to help people who need it all over the world and not just in the UK.Some of the stories on last nights TV Sport Relief show were truly heart breaking.It's hard to feel sorry for myself about any poker bad luck when there are families of 8-10 people living in shacks no bigger than a garden shed and drinking water from the same river they use as a toilet.

Reading over the info I was sent about the zip slide tomorrow I was slightly worried to discover I'll be going up the mobile crane in a basket and not in a sealed lift! The other part that was supposed to be reassuring was where it said that if anyone gets stuck half way across they lower the rope from one side.That's fine if it's being done on dry land but not if I'm half way across one of Scotlands biggest rivers!

Quite a few family,friends and work colleagues are coming to watch,support me and according to one of them "to sabotage the rope".With friends like that....

After the zip slide Two Pies and I will be heading a few minutes up the road to Ibrox to join the rest of our fellow Rangers supporters in wearing our red and black scarfs with pride and letting our rivals know that they can "Stick your tainted title up your arse"!

No concrete news yet on Rangers being taken over although apparently bids have been submitted by several interested parties including a Chicago consortium called "Club 9".

It's not been a bad week considering I was back at work after enjoying being off last week.I took Step A for a Mc'ds on Wednesday night and paid her to clean my flat afterwards.I did try and keep the "with age comes responsibility" and "the world doesn't owe you a living" lectures to a minimum.These were prompted by her deciding an interview for a job based just outside Glasgow was no good because it would take her over an hour to get there each morning.

On the poker front I've fallen out with Party Poker and come close to a few big( for me!)cashes on Pokerstars since my last post.Party had emailed me previously with a marketing spiel that implied they were crediting my account with £25 as I hadn't played there for a few months.When I logged on to their site I found it required hands to be played to clear the bonus.That didn't tempt me.Last week I got an email from them telling me I was being charged an admin fee ( about $6) because I wasn't using the account.Well after paying a further $3 cashout fee ( and probably being ripped off with the exchange rate too)I've cashed out my $597 balance and won't ever return.Robbing b*stards!

I was working until 6pm last night and by the time I got home,had dinner and walked Nacho I was too late to register for all my favourite usual 16-18 tourneys on Stars.I did play a few though including late registering for a $16,$27k Gtd turbo MTT ( 2100 players) and a $15,180 player turbo.

Those were the two I ended up going deep in.The $15 ended when someone called my AK shove with 33 and I failed to hit but the $16.50 exit was a really sore one.We were five handed on the final table bubble with $267 for 10th,over $400 for 9th and a top prize of nearly $6k.On my right was a player called DirtyBrasil.He is a top pro and "back in the day" I used to love watching his training vids on Cardrunners.I'm pretty sure this is a standard call.He was running at 27 vpip/22pfr and as expected with his stack size and skills he was running over the table and raising with a wide range at this point.

Although I had just paid the blinds I had slipped into 10th place and although the pay jump would have been nice if I'd folded into at least 9th and the final table,I was playing to win and if my tens had held I would have been in with a decent shout.If you think it was a daft call please let me know in the comments because I've played less than 600 Mtt's in my entire life and I'm sure I'm still making plenty of mistakes.



Watching a TPE vid on the studying/working side of the game showed me I really need to work harder on that side of my game if I'm to improve.Just watching pro training vids isn't enough and I need to review more hands,download pokerstove again and mess about with chosen hands v opponents ranges to gain more knowledge.

Thanks for reading and if I don't end up at the bottom of the Clyde tomorrow I'll be back soon....