Chop

So anyway yes,...I won a poker tournament this evening. Actually it was a chop, but I would have won as the poker Gods had been on my side all evening. I gracefully accepted a chop as my opponent had to rush home to wrap his wife's Valentines presents.

I myself had to rush home too as I needed to change into my new Onesie which arrived today and enjoy a hot whisky based coffee beverage before it was too late.

Tomorrow I plan to bank these monies and begin another double bag of sand challenge. I may also buy a nice jumper.

Now then

I've heard tell of a Pigeons game this evening. I suspect I may have to play. If I have to play in my pyjamas so be it. I had planned to watch the NFL championship games - which is obviously code for having a six hour snooze - but I really feel I've got to go outside.

If I breath the air of my home for too long it can cause problems far worse than hypoxia. And I don't wear my war face soon I may never wear it again.

Obviously as far as the NFL goes, the Baltimore Ravens will win as will the NY Giants. So lump on a Patriots/49ers double.

I'm not watching Arsenal. I felt a disturbance in the force so I suspect they're losing and I don't need to see it. I'm going to watch Zulu instead to get me in the mood for poker.

WSOP Mein Event

Nice enough chap

Squarehead Pius Heinz has won the WSOP main event and with it the $8.5m first prize (which is approximately €13 by the time the exchange rate and Pius' bank has gotten hold of it thanks to Greece) and there are a few things we need to discuss about this victory so let's get to it shall we. Let's not spare the horses.

Now, he seems a pleasant enough chap. But I have to say I am always unnerved, as I think we all are, when individual Germans are successful in sport as it gives the Teutonic collective sinister ideas.

Especially when the final push, as it were, involves defeating an eastern European nation as was the case here when Pius eventually rolled over Martin Staszko from the Czech Republic echoing Hitler's Panzar tank division's inexorable occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938.

OK technically poker isn't a sport and has a tiny audience in Germany compared to football, Ze X-Factor and Strictly Come Schuhplatter, but it's popular enough to ignite that fire of desire to world domination that is inherent in all of the Bosch.

I can only hope that the fact that we're all doomed and on the brink of financial collapse will mean news of Pius' wictory vill go unnoticed as the Germen press, unlike our own, have not been refrained from reporting the coming of a depression that made the one in the 1930's look like a party made up of a physical manifestation of people's spam email - which is essentially what Las Vegas is really.

As for the poker itself, it might be that I'm just a cranky old man, but given how much money these people are playing for and given how taxing on the mind the game can be at that level, I wonder if ESPN, the WSOP people and Harrahs have really thought the way they stage the final table through properly.

For the purposes of TV they have turned it into a massive game show. People in the crowd shouting and cheering, pouring beer over each other they're not supposed to have and composing appalling chants which are neither clever or funny - no surprise these were coming from the Germans and 'mercans.

I'm wondering in fact if the players don't deserve a bit more respect from the organisers than that? I know TV has its demands and really the first thing that is sacrificed when they get involved in sports is the purity of the sport, but I think their modus operandi, their mantra, that loud is good, big is better, is wrong.

You don't need people screaming utterly banal bullshit to create an atmosphere. Tension creates an atmosphere. Total silence can be deafening. Poker creates these things all by itself. Have these people not seen any horror movies?

What I'm saying is, I reckon their approach to broadcasting this specific poker final table with it's near $10m first prize should have been more classy tuxedo wearing deathly silent chess and less something that involves Graham Norton on a Saturday night.

Poker needs thought, it needs concentration, it needs conversation between the players, it needs evil stare downs. This event needs more respect. The game itself can create it's own atmosphere. You don't need to try and artificially create one with twats in silly t-shirts who are only there anyway because they hope their guy will buy them something afterwards.

This is what happens when you give something valuable to children, they ruin it. It's a rule everyone knows just like the one about not running with scissors, although to be fair I'm fine with children running with scissors. I'm fine with them drinking bleach too, but anyway I digress.

Poker has been hijacked by children and they have ruined it. They have turned a beautifully atmospheric, nuanced, complex, analytical game and turned it into a weird subculture, with it's own language, uniform and identifiers.

Unless you're a pasty, sunken-eyed, hooded, computron boffin who hasn't been outside for more than twenty minutes this year, can't drive a car or work an oven but can grind twenty tables at once online for eighteen hours a day, the game is dead to you.

I blame the sandal wearing hummus eaters who insist children should be respected and treated as equals. Bearded sexually dysfunctional liberals who think discipline is oppression and would rather let a delinquent stab them to death and steal their wallet than call the police.

I hark back to the days of David Copperfield, the Empire and fighting wars against tribal armies armed only with bits of wood. An age where children were shoved up chimneys and made to feel lucky about it.

If an urchin had found the temerity to four bet shove his elder light in those days he should be lucky if he escaped with his life. Now he gets $8.5m for it. It's enough to make you weep.

The Canterbury tales

I've just now had a small wager on the final table of the WSOP main event this weekend. It is of course time an English man was successful in this post-Moneymaker era main event and I have therefore invested some of the Queens sovereigns at 12/1 on young Kent native Sam Holden.

I believe young Eoghan O'Dea is chip leader and favourite and in truth we here on the blog don't mind if he wins. We would in fact feel sorry for him in fact if he were to succeed as his $8m prize money will be worth approximately €8 by the time the exchange rate is finished with it thanks to the Germans and Greeks.

What we really would like to avoid is of course a native of the US of States colony to win. Especially I'm afraid to say, young Phil Collins. He appears to be a nice enough chap in himself, but if his cheering section insist again in singing those lines from "In the air tonight" every time he drags in a pot I shall probably wish him to bust out first in a horribly unfortunate circumstance.

"To be sure to be sure are you just after raising me

bloinds loike are ya sir": Eoghan O'Dea yesterday.

The Fox

An easier way of losing money, yesterday.

Now then. I finally squirreled away enough energy via vitamin B and cake to head over to the storied Windrush Valley Pokering Club to lose a sizable chunk of my failed yet decent attempt this past weekend at the Bag of Sand challenge.

It was exactly the same as I left it about a year ago. I think some of the players haven't been home in fact. There were a few new guys all called Richard, which made things easier.

Ultimately unsuccessful from a making money point of view where I was able to lose £120 in the re-buy period of the £20 re-buy tournament and a swift £100 - I think in two hands - in the PLO cash game, but it was actually a very enjoyable night.

There's very few places on Gah's clean Earth I could lose £220 and feel like I had a good time. Certainly not the Glitter Gulch. But our poker club serves as a panacea for all the feelings of insecurity and patheticness that creep into my head and for the over-protectiveness I am sometimes subjected too...which is of course appreciated but sometimes a wee bit stifling.

I'm still hung up about sporting nasal cannula in public but this of course matters not in the WVPC. There is no discrimination at our poker club. There is not prejudice on grounds of race, gender, age or physical spasticity.

This is no sympathy of condescension. There are only gamblers. And everyone can be a c**t regardless of personal circumstances if the cards fall in their favour. This is a very healthy environment to invest ones time if not ones money. I think I'll go back.

* * *

In other news, Mexico play Brazil tonight at the Estadio Corona. I know it's Brazil, but Mexico at home even if it's not played at the Azteca is usually a good bet and at 21/10 I might just have to have a few shillings on this.

The new Brazil team looks pretty average to me. They just played last Friday too managing to just beat Costa Rica 1-0. And while they're not playing in Mexico city I can't see them feeling too comfortable in Torreón. It should be a pretty partisan noisy crowd and as friendlies go it should be quite competitive.

Mexico at odds against in Mexico with a full squad with Chepo in charge - who is yet to lose - in my opinion is worth a small investment. Vamos Mexico! That's what I always say.

Fantasy WSOP

My in-mob fantasy WSOP competition team will be as follows:

Phil Galfond (C)
Liv Boeree
Chris Moneymaker
Yevgeny Timoshenko
J.C. Tran
Andrew Robl.

Wild cards:
Daniel Alaei and Scott Seiver.

Token strumpet: Liv Boeree. And why not?

Nonsense of the highest order

Last night I dreamt I'd parked my car under a tree for the shade but when I got back it was wrapped almost entombed in the trees' branches that had snaked themselves around my car. It was like I'd left it there for decades and all manner of flora had grown around it.

What on earth does this mean? Which of my inner psychological issues is my mind addressing with this symbolism? Or is it to be taken at face value? Am I warning myself of the dangers of leaving my car unattended in close proximity to a tree for many decades?

This and more will addressed in a meeting with myself this afternoon. But top of the agenda will of course be our new Pigeons'* game strategy. It feels like many many weeks since the last Pigeons' game. I'm quite the sure the Government is stealing time from us while we dream. It's why I always leave one eye open when I sleep.

The new strategy will mostly be built on a foundation of not playing every single hand. Also..we will we utilise a strategy I've been reading up on recently which is not offer up an enormous raise when it is quite clear even to those passing the table to go to the lavatories that my goose is cooked.

Coupled with outrageous luck and no one else turning up, it's a strategy with no flaws. And why not? With my prize of many monies I will invest in some comfortable airy new lounge wear and some fizzy coke bottles.


*Grammar question: It's the Three Pigeons Pub, and the game is located at this pub so could be said to belong to the pub so should it be "Pigeons's game," "Pigeons Game" or "Pigeons' game?"
I'm sure it's the latter. Silly language.

DTD Grand-Prix tournament report

Oxygen atoms sharing electrons yesterday

So now then with just a few hours to go before I get to either meet God or meet a fiery sort of earth quakey death, I better leave my experiences at DTD on Thursday to posterity should poker not exist in the new life.

If you're in a hurry, it was a bit shit. If you're not I'll elaborate.

I hadn't played anything resembling proper poker for some time, six months at least. Who knows what the young whipper snappers had done to the game in that time?

Imagine being a parent and leaving your teenage progeny at home for six months while you go on holiday. The sort of state your house would be in when you returned was how I imaged the poker landscape to have changed. A whole new lexicon of silly poker terms, all manner of ridiculous bet sizing and appalling headwear.

In fact it was OK. I had been blessed initially with a very soft table to ease myself back into the game and was up to 15k from a 10k starting stack within about five minutes. Some proper players then joined the table and it toughened up a bit, but I had found my sea legs by then and was doing OK.

It was a nice table too, very pleasant chatty and cordial. All the reasons why I started playing the game in the first place. Unfortunately our table then broke and I joined another one populated by the kind of petty wankers who make me not want to play the game.

My chips started bleeding away as a guy sat two to my right was playing every hand and this prevented me from really opening any pots with the usual junk I like to mess about with and I had no hands to speak of for many many levels to play back at him.

By the time this table broke I was down to about 7-8K having found no answers to the conundrums set by 'playing every hand' guy and my enthusiasm for the event had long since departed.

At my new table, I was immediately charged with the Big Blind. It's an age old excuse and a silly one, but after a raise and a re-raise, I decided the pocket tens in my possession were good enough for an all-in manoeuvre as it was the best hand I'd seen for hours.

Initial raiser guy folded, re-raiser guy called with Jacks and I slumped off for a flat and unpalatable bacon sammich. Good game me.

As a sub-plot to this I had of course meant this to be an occasion to begin getting used to wearing O2 in public. I failed. I couldn't manage it and consequently I was unable to play cash with some pissed blokes who appeared to need their money taking off them as I was knackered.

Speaking of O2, to further my feeling of inadequacy from not having any answers to the various poker questions posed of me, Alan then completely randomly without any warning bombarded me with pissed physics questions I couldn't answer either and which made my face hurt.

He'd already asked me on the journey up to Nottingham why O2 was called O2 and not just O, on which I drew a blank. And now at 1am he was asking me to explain what the universe was expanding into and whether a Casio wrist watch sent into space would, according to theory of relativity, be a few minutes slower when it returned. How we didn't crash is a miracle.

I don't fucking know

What I did learn however, was that I need a certain measure of alcohol to be competitive at the poker tables and to make stuff up when people ask me things I don't know. Not blind drunk, not BANZAI! drunk, just nicely 'don't give a monkey's' drunk. Somewhere between three and four pints of German beer.

If the Rapture people have miscalculated again and the world in fact does not come to an end tomorrow, I may venture over to the Londons with Alan again next weekend to the Fox pokering establishment for whatever's going on there, but only if I've got time in the intervening days to learn everything so I can at least answer Alan's questions if I fail again to answer the pokering ones.

And now for something completely different

Well now, what with the abundance of c**t of the week contenders that needed recording we haven't had time to discuss anything else on the blog these past three days so let's put that right now shall we.

Wednesday was annual review at the big house. This of course is a day we don't look forward. It is quite possible with extensive naps and a pig headed refusal to stare facts in the face to ignore the deteriorating nature of CF on a day to day basis.

However, the annual appointment presents one with irrefutable evidence that the previous 12 months have not been kind. In real terms I am old now. Officially. They don't even really give me the results of my various tests anymore, they just sort of tilt their heads to one side, smile, and ask me if I'd like a biscuit. Change the subject much?

In practical terms the upshot of today was a recommendation that I always carry O2 around with me which will of course require a bit of an adjustment as I'm reluctant to walk about with tubing coming out of my face. The Borg might be OK with it, but I'm a little more self-conscious.

I know society has moved on from Victorian circus freak shows, but for a while at least this is how I will feel about wearing O2 nasal specs about town. In my head I envision people stopping and pointing at me and little children crying and hiding behind their parents and policeman asking me whether "sir might be more comfortable only coming out at night."

I hear a burly cockney type addressing a fascinated crowd of onlookers inside a circus tent, "BEHOLD...tube face man" as he pulls back a red velvet curtain to reveal me sat in my lounge wear eating a sammich and watching Smallville to gasps and cries of BY CHRIST IT'S NOT HUMAN. A lady screaming, another fainting. Someone vomiting and urchins running screaming from the tent.

I'm kind of hoping the reality is less exaggerated.

What of course we have to avoid now is becoming a recluse. If we stay in because venturing out is too taxing physically and too uncomfortable our condition will only deteriorate further thus requiring more oxygen and more lounge wear. A viscous circle if you will.

I clearly have to man up and cease being such a whining nancy boy. With this in mind I will tomorrow venture forth to Nottingham for the DTD Grand-Prix 3 to seek my fortune. This for non-poker playing readers is a seven day £50 freeze-out poker tournament which is hoped will break the European record for the most runners in a single event.


I believe they're aiming for 1,600 runners. Five day 1's and day 2 and the final day over the weekend. By my calculations I should have thousands of pounds in £50 notes in my possession by about 2am Monday morning.

With my newly acquired riches I plan to hire a nurse to take good care of me. Preferably one who plays the harp and is liberal enough to wear the house uniform in the winter, which to be fair makes the Rio cocktail waitress outfit in Vegas look like a Burkha.

An artists impression of the uniform of the house yesterday

I almost very nearly convinced myself today to play the APAT Newcastle event next weekend. By my way of thinking this was only one of three events I can realistically play this season and I have some suspicions in the back of my head where I keep thoughts that only escape when I'm pissed, that this will be the last APAT season so maybe only one of three more chances to play an APAT event ever ever.

In the end geography won out. Not always my strong subject at school where I thought continents were just old men who had control of their bowels and bladder, I now know enough to figure out just how far away Newcastle is. Also given it's Easter the M1 will no doubt have over 40 million cars parked on it bumper to bumper so I'd have to leave tomorrow really to get there in time for the start of play.

I'm going to stay at home instead and eat easter eggs in a pair of grey jogging bottoms and not wash my hair that whole week. It's better this way.

Wednesday poker hand of the week

This beauty of a hand comes from the Norton's wine bar £20 freeze-out which Alan and I experienced for the first time last night. The starting stack is 6,500. If you bust out in the first two levels you can buy back in.

I think this was the first level. As we're new to this game we have no information on any players. However, it's a £20 freeze-out in a Wine bar in Witney so some of the players are doing well just to pick their cards up without an opposable thumb. One guy hasn't learnt yet how to use a chair.

For the purposes of anonymity the player in seat 3 will be called 'Seat 3,' the player in seat 4 will called 'Seat 4' and the player on the button will be called 'Button.' Snappy names. I'm not entirely sure how the action unfolded as I went a bit dizzy, but I think it went something like this;

We're ten handed:

Seat 3 (utg) limps, Seat 4 raises (I think) to 200. Folded round to Button who calls, blinds fold, Seat 3 calls.

Pot is 675.

Flop: Qd - Kd - 9d. I believe everyone checked.

Turn: Jd. Seat 3 checks, Seat 4 bets out 500. Button calls. Seat 3 check-raises to 2000.

We have seen Seat 4's cards, he has the Ace-four of diamonds and therefore had flopped the second nuts, losing only to a straight flush...what does Seat 3 have and what does Seat 4 now do?

Dog tired

So anyway yes, at the big house this morning it was determined that my attempting a two day pokering event in my current condition would be tricky. It was agreed the lack of opportunities to take power naps was the biggest stumbling block.

Also of course, the clocks go forward on Saturday which means losing an hour of lovely sleep once we do finally make it home. And given that making day 2 would probably mean a 3am finish anyway, losing this extra will probably mean arriving home at 6am in a state of delirium almost certainly with dribble down my chin and front.

I would then sleep through day 2 anyway, so instead I'm staying in and will watch season 7 and 8 of Smallville stopping only to enjoy some nice soup I bought today. I may venture out to the Abingdons on Sunday for their game as they only last for four hours I can easily stay awake that long if I jab forks into my side.

It's better this way.

Bending over backwards

Yesterday was not a good day on many fronts and levels. The Gods have been in touch this morning to apologise for the festival tips they gave me, explaining they were actually meant for my namesake from somewhere in Lincolnshire who they wanted to make suffer. Admin error they said, but to make up for it they've told me to lump on Twentyfourcarat in the bumber at about 20s.

Over the course of the evening I managed to plummet my oxygen sats to a new low of 59%. I'm not sure of the long term consequences of doing that to myself, but I don't intend to find out.

Reaching a level of breathlessness where multi-tasking becomes impossible is not how I wish to spend my evenings. By multi-tasking I'm talking about my bodily functions. I can breath, but I can no longer guarantee I'll be able to control my bladder, or be able to listen to you if you're talking to me, and I definitely won't be able to respond.

In real terms, we will now have to accept that I can't function efficiently for longer than four hours without the comforting flow of lovely o2 wafting up my nostrils. Without O2 I am no more sentient than someone who works for the Post Office.

I of course knew that this day would come. CF when you break it down is just a life time of bending over backwards, making one concession after another to the condition to maintain some semblance of quality of life until you become a mindless gibbering vegetable anyway and wonder what the point of it all was.

Only joking of course. But I will have to get over my self-consciousness about using O2 in the publics if I'm to go to Coventry next week to bask in the glory of becoming the Amateur poker champion of the galaxy. I shall thrash this dilemma out with myself these next few days and get back to you.

* * *

Speaking of bending over backwards..In other news.. a £50 freeze-out broke out in the pub last night, but I was unfortunately too knackered to participate. I was also unable to tolerate how cockney they were. They made Danny Dyer look like Henry Higgins from Pygmalion. Three of them actually were wearing cor blimey trousers.

They were so cockney that when they walked they were leant so far backwards the back of their heads were scrapping on the floor. I had no idea what they were saying, but they were saying it so loud I felt positively queasy. It was an appalling assault on the Queen's English.

Apparently they played a lot and thought it was going to be easy money. In fact they had just strolled voluntarily into the poker equivalent of the Battle of Balaclava. Not since that fateful charge by the light brigade into heavy Russian artillery has an opposition been so fatally underestimated. There's a seat in the Pigeons game for any of them if they're still here on Sunday.

"I'm from Laaaardan, ooooooo wants to play pokaaaaah?"

Now then ...now now then. Now.

Yesterday's attempt to take down the Pigeons game was an exercise in futility and you know how much I hate exercises. Various ominous omens had presented themselves to me throughout the day, the most significant of which occurred on my way to the pub.

I got trapped in a car wash! Trapped like a rat squeak squeak squeak. I had significant bird poo on my car as it's that time of year when a murmuration of Starlings dumps a daily payload of some twenty tonnes of acidic shit on my street.

So,.. it's a standard car wash kind of deal. You type in your code, you drive into the thing, turn the engine off and sing along to Roxette while the huge rolls move up and down the car scratching your paint work to shit.

Only this time they didn't. They stopped half way up my windscreen and then the whole mechanism just stopped. Now bearing in mind a big shutter comes down at the front, the only way out at this point was to reverse out.

Had I been a woman I could have still been there now as to reverse out one also has to negotiate a tight 100˚ corner and slip into a parking bay, a manouever which is impossible to execute without mans brains. Frightening!

So anyway, I'm obviously very very traumatised by this as I'm very claustrophobic and I could have died. I also must have looked like a right cock.

So my mind was not focused on the game. Coupled with how shagged I feel at the moment, I'm quite proud of myself once the game started I was able to accomplish more than just wetting myself. Fun times.


Too much fun for one weekend in fact as it's the big house for me tomorrow. They won't be happy with me. It's a good job they don't have any beds available on their ward or any nurses or anything as they may have insisted I stay a while. Phew!

I'm OK with this however. While I treat myself at home I have a couple of weeks now to tweak my strategy some more and analyse the data I collected yesterday. I was bluffed for example by Stevie v.01 and it was of course imperative we figure out as soon as possible whether he just out played me or whether I was distracted by the loud clicking noise in my head and the warm sensation that was spreading in my groin.

To be fair, I've since run that hand through the computer and with a 2% margin for error it seems I played the hand no better than Policeman Paul's Alsatian. With this in mind I have agreed with myself that last night's Pigeons game and the car wash incident did not in fact happen. Further more, Arsenal did not draw with Leyton Orient either.

Brrrrrrrrr and FORGET!

Friday round up

A protester in Egypt who is not Cesc Fabregas
despite what David Moyes would have you believe.

What's happening to the world? It's all gone cwazy. The Middle East is imploding, America is freezing and depending on who you listen to, Queensland in Australia is either sinking because of man made global warming or being punished by the Lord for decriminalising homosexuality in the 1990s.

On that last one in fact, according to my calculations it's 7% more likely to be God's punishment than AGW, but that's a discussion for another day. Here in the Englands it's very very windy and I'm just now hearing that the Subway place has run out of Chipotle Southwest sauce just as I've discovered a taste for it. What the hell is going on man?

Everything was OK in the world up to about 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falklands. I was 7 years old. My school work was good, I was popular, I was also probably the best player of 'Junior Angler' in the world.

Then after April when the Argies invaded everything seemed to go wrong not just in my life but with the whole world.

There was the unfortunate business with Sarah Colley and my subsequent exiling to the naughty table.

This in turn meant I lost touch with friends, I lost my sparkle and with it my interest in Junior Angler. I went off the rails quite frankly and I was never really the same. And as if I was some sort of physical embodiment of everything, the world also began to break apart.

Despite the defeat of the filthy Argies I don't think the UK was ever the same and because the UK set the tone for the World, the entire globe suffered. It's all the fault of Sarah Colley. Everything we're witnessing now can be regressed back to my time in Primary School and Sarah Colley telling tales. Bitch.

* * *

I've just been putting together the final touches to my new Pigeons game strategy. As I've mentioned on twitter it's an avian based strategy this week quite apt for the location. This week I'll be looking to better utilise the Canary raise and the Cuckoo squeeze in conjunction with paying attention and looking at my cards.

Canaries as we know were once used in the mining industry to test dangerous mines for noxious fumes. They'd send them down the shafts and if when they pulled them out they were still alive, they'd know it was safe to send humans.

A canary raise works in much the same way and is a part of the feeler bet family of bets, but can also be used pre-flop out of position while holding junk. If not met with resistance we can then assume it's safe to send in a proper wager on later streets.


We'll also be seeking to deploy the Cuckoo raise, which is essentially a slow played hand or a squeeze bet but with a funnier name. A tactic I haven't used often enough. Cuckoos as we know don't build their own nests they just take nests built by other birds.

In a poker context we essentially let other players bet for us and when they have built the pot to a sufficiently large level, we swoop in and steal it.

I see no reason why I shouldn't win, but in case we don't I've prepared a back up strategy based around traditional biscuits.

* * *

The inaugural 'Puto de la semana' award on the side bar has been fiercely contested. Richard Hammond, Sally Bercow and Bill O'Reilly are all equally deserving, but I have decided to award it to David Moyes.

Mostly because his moment of whoredness has lasted all week. Indeed it's continuing as we speak with his whiny Fabregas complaints. Keep going you ginger whore and you might win it next week too.

Crazy

So as I suspected, anteing up for the DTD Grand Prix yesterday was a pointless investment. In real terms I found soon after my arrival that while I was there, I wasn't really there. I think you know what I'm trying to say.

The reasons for this I think were threefold; firstly I have come to find the behaviour of many many amateur poker players simply too absurd to take these events seriously.

Secondly, and more importantly, I've gone at the game. In my defense this is not because I've softened into a craven nancy boy incapable of voluntarily putting chips into a pot without holding the nuts, it's simply that I become knackered after a level or two and can't summon the requisite levels of adrenaline to remain competitive.

It's a young man's game you see and with my 90th* birthday approaching I have found over the past few months that I prefer not to be awake for longer than four or five hours at a time. These deepstack tournaments are too long and I found yesterday, especially after the guy I traveled with had busted out, that I simply didn't want to be there.

Thirdly and finally, the Pigeons game has destroyed my ability to read a hand properly and apply any sense of perspective and practical analysis to a 'proper' poker tournament. I've submitted a paper to the British Journal of Crazy recently where I present my research into a sort of poker equivalent of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought about by exposure to too much crazy at the Pigeons.

They say that when a soldier has been exposed to the conditions of war it becomes almost impossible for him to readjust to normal life when they return home. Daily life can seem to have little sense or purpose and too mundane as to not be worth major effort.



The evanescence of any motivation to do anything can then have a profound effect on the person's ability to accomplish anything. I hypothesise in my paper the conditions of the Pigeon's game can have a similar traumatising effect when one returns to 'normal' poker.

Sadly, the only cure for Post Pigeons Stress Disorder is electric shock treatment to sever ones short term memory. Elsewise one can treat the condition by retiring from proper poker, watching more Bowls on telly and sleeping more.

* * *

In other news, at least later on today my Heinz 57 wager on this afternoon's Premier League footballing fixtures will provide me with enough monies to buy an awesome new bed which I really need as my water bed is sometimes hard to climb out of in a hurry.

And on Sunday the Chicago Bears will overwhelm the Green Bay Packers allowing me to pay for accompanying awesome bedding hand woven by naked Egyptian virgins who will personally deliver it and sing me to my rest each night and before my daytime power naps.


*I have calculated that there are 2.44 'CF' years to a healthy year.

Kick a man when he's down

Chicharro Sanchez earlier today

As we speak Mob member Alan is in Spain competing in the APAT Southern European Championships of the World poker thingy. In fact I'm just now hearing in my ear piece he's completed the "competing part" of the mission having lost his chips to a lady called Chicharro Sanchez and is now probably playing Black Jack.

Amusing "Chicharro" is a Spanish fish. I believe it's a Mackerel. Evidently he just couldn't get her to lay her hand down. If only he'd have had Chicharro and chips for lunch he might have picked on some one else.

Here he is post-busto having a consolation drink looking both pissed off and frightened wondering how the fuck he managed to stumble into the only gay bar in town.

Fuck my life: Alan wishing he was somewhere else yesterday.

So anyway..

I failed in my attempt to put a profit and loss account together for last year's wagering and pokering. I fancy I must have done OK as I have more stuff now than last year and I can still afford to visit the Subway people. Keeping records is silly anyway.

I will be keeping track of my Pigeon's game results this year however, I'm hoping it'll focus me and motivate me to untangle this Gordian knot of a poker experience. Not easy with the addition of two players recently who break every law of poker each week and make Stevie v.03 of old seem like quite a solid player.

"Records are silly anyway, Kylie Minogue makes records, I just want to win."-- A Premier League footballer whose name escapes me at this time.

Biscuits and stuff

So last night I was able to return home from the Abingdon pokering establishment's Christmas freeze-out cum re-buy, with a tin a of biscuits. You see everyone who plays gets a wee something just for playing. When you bust out you pick a raffle ticket out of a hat and receive your prize.

Three years in a row now my prize has been a tin of biscuits. I was hoping for the twin pack of After Eight mints, but I remain satisfied. What are the chances though!? Roughly fifty prizes and three times I pick out the biscuits. I've seen it all now.

* * *

Weather now and on my home last night my car temperature display read -14˚c. I'm quite sure this never used to happen when I was a child. If I recall correctly from my childhood -6˚c was
enough to have us pulling on our thermal under garments and shaking our heads at the crazyness of it all.

What I've noticed with my keen eye and extensive research into human nature though, is that there is definitely some sort of masochistic desire amongst us to see these temperatures plummet to new and intolerable depths. This is especially so amongst the news media.

The only other figures they report with such rabid enthusiasm are the death tolls of natural disasters. Female reporters display this eagerness with a palpable arousal.

I think I recall Kate Silverton reporting on the Haiti earth quake that up to 100,000 people may have died and having to pause to adjust her knickers as they were clinging to her sopping wet genitals.

I'm not sure exactly what causes this morbid fascination with large scale disasters, but I for one am bored of it. It's only been a few weeks since it started snowing and already I can understand why the Scandinavians are such odd people.

If this continues for much longer there's a significant chance of us succumbing to the elements it's ways we cannot imagine. The deeper we sink into this winter, the further east our nations character will reflect. First the Scandies, then the Poles and eastern Europeans. Then the RUSSIANS! When that happens, we'll wish we were Haitians.

We're doooomed.

Jacks

If you haven't played poker at the Three Pigeons this won't mean anything to you..if you have you might find this amusing.

While reading the updates from the Monte Carlo event at DTD on Blonde, which you can find here - I came across Paul Jackon's bust out hand.

It made me laugh. Not because he busted in the second level, just because he's a very experienced professional who's probably forgotten more about poker than most of the Pigeon's players combined will ever know, yet no Pigeons player would bust in this spot.

The hand in question played out like this:

- Paul Jackson calls a late position raise with J-8 in the big blind.

- Flop J-8-4 rainbow.

- He check called the flop intending to check raise the turn.

- On a blank turn, a rag, his opponent open shoved 25,000 into 5,000. (hmmmm I wonder what he could have and weather he's related to Joy?)

-Paul calls and his opponent shows him a pair of Jacks. (Well durrrr. Just surprised he didn't shove on the flop)

-Tighty's comment - "Tricky not to go bust here, right?" (Right, for all but eight or nine battle hardened players in the Cotswolds for whom it's an easy fold)

* * *

It's snowing heavily as we speak which probably means I'll be staying indoors for the next few weeks, possibly months. I always think of The Shining when it snows like this. My main concern is I only have one loaf of bread and I'm running low on ham.

There's a danger I might have to have something other than sammiches for lunch in the coming days. I can see myself attempting to brave the elements in order to visit the Co-ops for sammich making ingredients and getting stuck at the end of the road never to return. I fancy it's a risk worth taking.

Must buy peppered ham...urghh