Jaw Dropping Stuff....

Incredible,spectacular and one of the greatest sights I've ever witnessed in my lifetime.I was absolutely spellbound from around 9pm onwards and don't mind admitting there were nearly tears in my eyes as I watched it unfold.Yes,I finally managed to get some hands to hold up on Stars and finished 6th in a $27,$20 Gtd Tourney for a much needed $800 bankroll boost.As ever when it's not a win I do wonder what might have been if the hand below had held, but I'm not going to dwell on that.

Although I had that decent cash last night I felt my play wasn't consistent enough.One minute I was feeling in the zone and on top of my game ( see hand below) and at other times I donked off stacks with stupid calls and silly moves.( see below if you like but I'm not posting examples!) I did watch the Olympic Opening ceremony as I played and perhaps the key to last nights profit was changing my Stars avatar to the Union Flag for the duration of the games....

I thought Danny Boyle did a great job and I loved the music from the Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd being included.Some other great music too and generally keeping it to short bursts of songs for the "No attention span generation" worked well too.The only aspect that annoyed me was that they did the team introductions in French first followed by English.There's probably some reason for that but I did think it was a bit merd!

Back soon....

50 Shades of Glasgow....

I thought I knew all about poker variance and how it works.I've played through long breakeven stretches of SNG's before and dealt with sick swings back in my cash game days, but it's taken me a while to realise just how brutal and sickening the MTT variety can be.I've been holding off on posting in hope that a decent score would mean I could avoid another dull boring post about how badly I'm running and how I can never seem to win key hands when deep but that's not happened.

Stars now has an option to click a button that opens a hand replayer which makes it easy to embed hands in blogs and other social media.I had a look at some of the hands pro's have posted using the feature and most are bad beat exit hands.Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.I will try and capture a few of the more interesting hands I'm involved in using boomplayer.com but I'll keep the bad beats to an absolute minimum.

After 6 1/2 yrs of using strict bankroll management this year has been quite liberating and soul crushing at the same time.I've made final tables,deep runs and even redeposited to stay in the games I'm really enjoying playing.( well up until my exit hand) I'd say I'm quite laidback and easy going most of the time but I'm also very competitive and it's been hard admitting to myself that my take a shot strategy hasn't worked out for me.

What's made things is a little easier is realising ( through reading threads on 2+2 etc)just how much of a chance I was taking playing so many $44 and $55 Mtt's with such a small bankroll.Doing so while still very much learning Mtt's and trying out different moves to see what works and what doesn't, as well as learning to adjust my ranges was probably never going to end well.

However soft ( and they are still full of fish) low stakes Mtt's are, simply winning the number of pots required to make a final table or take one down requires an awful lot of good luck/run good.Last night I came 15th in an $8,$8k Gtd Mtt after shoving A10 and being knocked out by the chip leader's A5 hitting a 5 on the flop.After telling nobody in particular to "fuck right fucking off" I thought back over the tourney and realised I'd been lucky to even get that far.Almost all of my big hands had actually held up,I'd won a few flips and I even recall getting it in with A10 on a K Q 10 flop v KQ and hitting another 10 on the turn to win the pot.Of course at the time when KK holds v A4 for example, it doesn't feel lucky at all, but winning in many similar situations over the course of a tourney to make a deep run is beating the odds.
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My roll is only a couple of hundered $$ and although I've cut out the $55's ( should probably be cutting out the $5's nevermind $55's on my roll now!) I still took a shot at a couple of $27's and a $44 last night after making a few small cashes in earlier Mtt's.I also went back to playing a few 18 player turbo's and it was nice to go back to a game I know so well and where the right moves come far more naturally to me.( due having played thousands of them)

Anyway that's the poker update.Not much else going on really.My date went ok a few weeks ago and we talked about going out again but she said was called into work at the last minute ( she's a care worker) last week and this week when we were due to go out on Wed she texted me on Tues about 10pm to say "wnt make 2mrw sorry x" to which I sent a short reply and don't expect to hear from her again.

I will be catching up with a girl I went to school with soon.I've only seen her a few times over the years and we mainly just swap cards and texts around this time of year because our birthdays are close together.She's split from her partner and is moving to a new job soon down in Liverpool so we're planning on having a few drinks before she goes.

I've been trying not to reflect on the fact that I hit my late 30's soon ( on August 5th before my 40th on the 6th) but it's hard not to do some looking back/forward with such a big milestone coming up.Not really came to any earth shattering conclusions.Sure I could make more effort to find a woman and have more of a social life and yes I do sometimes feel like I should be doing more in general and that time is just passing me by but to be honest I've felt that way about time being wasted even when I was in a committed relationship.

Getting up early,going to work 5 days,counting down the Mondays until my next week or two off.Yeah it's all a bit Renton from Trainspotting and his "Choose Life" speech but it's just the way I feel.Of course I realise most people with kids are too busy to have time to think along similar lines and that plenty of people waste their time watching shit tv etc or spouting self important crap on the internet.On the subject of the latter I've nearly given in and signed up for Twitter ( Mum and Sis are on it now too)but I still refuse to bore the world to death 140 characters at a time.Yes I'll stick to doing the job properly using this space and far more characters...

Had to laugh at one of the more prudish women at my work reading that "50 Shades of Grey" book.A bit of an eye opener for someone who thought you joined the Mile High Club by taking a dump on a plane.Still I much prefer this quote from 50 Shades of Andy Gray,
"After the five hour romp, they shared a cigarette. "Was I any good?" she asked nervously. "You'd struggle on a cold night at The Britannia."

50 Shades of Glasgow on twitter is great too,although you may need a translator if you're not from Scotlands finest city.

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

Viva Espania!

Reports that Yahoo Answers are written by Sir Waffles are still unconfirmed....

Back from my break a bit later than I hoped after spilling tea on my keyboard and having to shell out £90 for a new one.Using the slider buttons on Stars I was still able to play poker and put in decent Mtt sessions most evenings while watching the action from Euro 2012.Although I made a few final tables, overall I lost money and it just seemed that every time I played a vital hand I would get royally screwed over by the deck.Losing coin flips is one thing but continually get by big hands busted by Ace rag and other 3 outers gets very frustrating.Hands like one of last nights crackers where I get it in with AK V AQ for the world,the flop comes KKJ,turn is a blank and of course the 10 falls on the river just seem to keep on coming.

I mean sure I'm still learning Mtt's and of course I'm making mistakes but my luck has been so awful I still believe I can make money without having to revert back to the push/fold world of sng/hyper sngs.

When footballers talk of playing "one game at a time" I want to kill them but somehow when the great Roger Federer said it after coming back from two sets down at Wimbledon it forced me to refocus my efforts to do the same at the felt and to try not to dwell on past bad beats when playing.

I also realised I may be overthinking things sometimes.Amatay posted a hand where he folded JJ after an UTG raise and a rereaise.Other Mtt pro's agreed it was a fold as an early position raise followed by a reraise generally means Jacks are toast.I was wondering how loose the UTG raiser was.If he was raising a lot preflop had the re-raiser had picked up on that and was therefore 3-betting light etc then maybe Jacks are still good.If the two players were known regs than maybe my thought process had some merit but in general I'm just talking myself into a bad call there and that's even if the HUD stats showed UTG was raising a lot and the re-raiser liked a 4-bet.

Yesterday after going to my wee nephews 2nd birthday party I went to Alea casino to play the £22 Turbo game.With 10k stacks and 15 min blinds it's a real crapshoot but I fancied a live game for a change.Not much to report.Lost a few thousand chips with AK when I missed the flop and eventually shoved QQ into AA with just under 6k left and blinds at 300/600.

Came home,ordered a Domino's pizza and registered for a load of Mtt's as I watched Andy Murray win in four sets at Wimbledon.With my roll on life support again I gave the $55's a miss although I couldn't resist the late night $44 Turo and $33 Sat Speedway tourneys.I wish I had because I crashed out of both quite quickly!

I did make a deep run in a couple of $27 KO $20k Gtd games but once again lost sickening hands at vital times.One hand at a time....One hand at a time!

I was still in an $8,$8k Gtd standard speed game with 1100 runners and managed to attract some chat box abuse for calling a cut off shove with QK and beating Mr Unhappy's QJ.Mr U had been stealing 65% of big blinds and I just felt I was well ahead of his shoving range."You've played like a nit the whole game and then you call with QK" he whined.I was down to a couple of tables by that point and although I rarely chat I replied "Sorry for adjusting my play,it shouldn't be allowed".He then hoped I had aids, I thanked him, wished him "much love" and off he went.

I had been card dead and nitty but my own Big Blind steal % was nearly 70% so I was making the most of my image to try and chip up where possible.Eventually I made the final table as one of the shorter stacks and got lucky after a few orbits when someone shoved their QQ into my Aces to double me up.After my live game exit in the same manner I did feel a bit sorry for the villain there and the thought that "maybe Queens are cursed today" crossed my mind.

Of course cards have no memory,it's one hand at a time and all that so I had no hesitation in 3-betting QQ after an open from an aggressive player when were down to six players.He had AQs ,hit his Ace on the flop and I took 4th place, $696 and a sharp exit for my efforts instead of taking the chiplead and a real chance to take it down.Ahh well that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Next weeks plan is to help Step A fill in her passport renewal ( I'm paying for it for her 18th),visit my folks on Thursday as usual and I'm heading down the M77 for a dinner date at Frankie and Bennys on Wed evening.I've only swapped a couple of messages and texts with the woman ( she looks like a hotter version of Tanya from Eastenders)so as ever I'll just see how goes and won't be too fussed if there's no spark at all.

It's paella for dinner tonight as I got Spain ( and Poland) in the Raise the River Euro 2012 sweep.I'll be hoping they play better than they did in their semi v Portugal and have enough about them to see off the pasta munchers in tonights final.I did think England would make the semi's at least but forgot how good they are at messing up penalty shootouts.Still, I have heard that Roy Hodgson watched Spain complete over 800 passes the other night and has a special plan for England to do the same.He's asked Rooney to apply for Mastermind...