Ashes, CL, boring bad beat story

Probably my last post before I'm back in Sheffield. Cricket has been great again, we could not ask for a better evening session today, putting them five down for less than 100 on the board. They still need another 200 to avoid the follow on, but we can't allow ourselves to fuck it up like at OT, get two down early and attack the tail. The last thing we need is Gilchrist to get into his stride with Warne to come looking to launch it to cow corner every opportunity. We've got them by the bollocks and we can't let it go. One more wicket at OT and the Ashes would be pretty much won, but we've got to convert this chance and then go to the Oval, win the toss and bat for three days. Or have Surrey underwater for a week.

Champions League draw is out... a few interesting things, Liverpool look fucked, especially if they play anything like what they've been playing of recent, especially against CSKA Moscow, where they were all crap apart from Cisse who lucked out on two goals and set Garcia up with a chance that I'd have put away. They looked bloody awful up front, and I've got their striker in my fantasy team. May have to change that. Besides that, it looks like same old same old, no obvious shocks on the cards, the draw ought to sort the wheat from the chaff fairly well. And whoever was commentating on tonight's game ought to shut the fuck up - speak about the match, rather than constant Owen speculation or bitching about how unfair that yellow cards in an official European competition should allow you to be banned from an official European competition. Boo fucking hoo, if you don't want anyone banned, play the bloody youth team. The match was played on a car park, they won't know any different. As for the line "well they've already played six more European games than Chelsea", maybe they should have thought about that before finishing fifth and only getting into the CL after begging on hands and knees to UEFA.

I've not been playing too much poker of recent. I tried a couple of Stars' new $1.50 turbo (5 minute levels) two table things, will probably give them a miss, a bit crapshooty. Played a $350 freeroll on VC yesterday, and get rockets very near the bubble while chipped up, and get them all in against the chipleader, who has A-10. And wins. Pretty much any other hand and I cash, but I'm not going to turn down a shot with A-A to have three times the average while in the money. That would be silly.

michael vaughan's barmy army!

Oh yes. The cricket since my last post has been superb, capped of course by actually getting a ticket to the Sunday of the Old Trafford test. It's a real shame that we couldn't pick up that last wicket, but them's the beats. All set up for Trent Bridge anyway. After bleating on on a forum on why I haven't got a betfair account, at the cricket someone gave me a free £5 bet for, er, betfair. Don't know whether that kicks in after you deposit or not, but I may have to take the value. Could use an account on crypto anyway.

Not much happening pokerwise, I've not been playing it much. Grabbed a 2nd/45 shortly after cashing out (cheque has now arrived and is in the bank), but apart from a 7th where I really should have killed everyone (was up to 15K in chips two tables out but pissed them all away) it's been dry. About even overall since the cashout. I was tempted to play the $2 3pm (my time) MTT today on Stars but didn't like my form after an earlier SNG.

Other things? Current hattrick season is coming to an end, looking like I'll get 7th, which is crap but I've now got a non-terrible training system in place, next targets are to improve the coach again, get a solid or better defender for cover and hopefully be able to sell one of the PM trainees near the end of next season. Target will be cup qualification, or, if they introduce level 7, avoiding the drop. I won't be worried if they do introduce a 7 and do somehow get relegated as all the new teams at the lower level will be shit and I'll probably be able to go straight back up.

The GameFAQs character battle is going on. After today I'm on 25/29 - missed Magus/Knuckles like everyone else, Ness/CJ like most people, and also Vercetti/Kefka and Vincent/Kerrigan. The only one that's likely to fuck me over is that last one, I have Dante winning the next one, which isn't looking too likely but I can't rule it out yet, as I've got Squall to win that division. Vercetti and Ness are losing next round anyway and Squall should have too much for Knuckles to handle. Aside from that, I'm still confident. My round 2 looks solid enough, and barring Squall my elite 8 is pretty much cookie-cutter. If I hit that elite 8 perfect I will probably have enough to win it should Dante pull through, and if Vincent gets to Squall but loses I should be on the leaderboard. A -6 score with a Mega Man win will get you there.

And Newgrounds had Clock Day. Over one thousand flash files submitted, some of which were very, very good, many of which were OK and would have passed regardless of Clock Day generosity, many more of which would likely have been blammed but we'd allow on Clock Day, and hundreds which, quite frankly, were taking the piss, would get a score of less than 0.10 on a normal day but were scoring more than 3.00, because people were auto-protecting everything regardless of quality. Now I'm a fan of the clocks (by clocks, I mean the original clocks and not all the wannabe morons that have signed up to NG in the last year to 18 months and simply tagged clock onto their name, I mean Void-era stuff), but when people start abusing the portal to get one frame pieces of shit through for whatever reason, there's got to be a line drawn. If everything is scoring a three whether it's a seizure-inducing B or the next clock masterpiece, and there's hundreds of the things coming in every hour, how will you tell the good from the bad? You can't. I think I saw precisely two true clocks posting something yesterday (someone posted a list of "actual" clocks that posted stuff, but I didn't recognise half of them as clocks, and many of them were definitely johnny-cum-latelies). I didn't notice any last year. Clock Day has lost its meaning, and to be honest if it descends into the same kind of anarchy that there was yesterday I'd prefer them to simply turn off the portal for 24 hours. It's kind of irrelevant if there's no clocks left. Sad, but true.

vindication! vindication! one time!

Finally managed to win one of those 45-runner Stars SNG's, after god knows how many second places. The run was Fillmaff-esque, for certain. I had a bit of luck, definitely, with two pocket pairs vs. over-undercard to finish, and actually won a race. If I could win half of the coin flip situations I end up in I'd be a dangerous player. In any case, a 2nd-1st bit of form pushed me over $80 in the account so I've cashed out fifty of it, so now I'm playing with the house's money. I've got around twenty-five buyins at that level which is more than enough to cover even a ridiculous swing, although the competition is so soft and the structure is so nice (except that sharp jump when entering level 8 which I've bitched about in the past) that any time you're not playing them, you're literally losing money. They should be easy enough to multitable, but the last time I tried that I wanked away ten dollars rather quickly so I'll leave that.

Besides that, same old same old. Waiting for people to get back to me, nothing much happening. Watching cricket, actually looks like we might win a test, continuing the Madden dynasty, and NTL being shit so I can't access gamefaqs, and if I can it's not for more than two minutes.