Jon's Blog

Relocation

2006-02-24T16:15:00.000Z

I've discovered the wonders of myspace, so I'll likely be posting there from now on. Redirect your links to here peeps.

Uni fucks up again, pope still catholic

2006-02-15T13:48:00.000Z

Weakest Link YTD: + £30

Ha ha ha, they've leaked some of the property 2 results! Apparently none of these are final, but I'd be quite happy with 52 right now as that was the exam that was a cock.

Crashed out of the Warwick satellite last night in about 13th, shortstacked with six on the table, find A9 UTG and jam, running into Milan's AQ and IGNH. Rush over to the £2 D/C, quickly donk off the rebuy with J2, get a couple of luckboxy outs, have someone make an awful call of a reraise with ace high to double up to comfortable and come third for £12. Annoying, because I'd have killed either of the other two at headsup play. The buyin was a freeroll seeing how I took it all out of the quiz machine anyway.

The government has banned smoking in all pubs. This is a black day for all of us. The fucking nanny state is going too far and I'm way too irritated to make a rationale diatribe about how it's all bollocks. The country's going down the shithole quicker than ever.

the whole world loves it when you're in the news

2006-02-11T09:30:00.000Z

I don't normally comment on topics that have some religious bearing on them, mainly because a) such topics are so asinine and done to death they're not worth mentioning, and b) my hardline views on religion means that I couldn't give a shit about them, but this latest cartoon facade is worth mentioning, mainly because everyone's missing the point on all sides. Islam is missing the joke. Massively. Do you think that if some Saudi newspaper printed a cartoon depicting the Pope shagging a whore whilst sucking off a monkey, half of Ireland and the other two places that still take Christianity seriously would be screaming death to the east? No, they wouldn't. They'd probably write some angrily worded letters to the Times or bitch about the conflicts within their own religion (I could go on about the whole catholic/protestant situation and how pathetic it is, but it's too lame to bother). Islam's a few centuries younger than the other mainstream religions (I'd love to see from beyond the grave, in a few hundred years time, temples of Jedi Knights nuking effigys of Mel Brooks for that whole Spaceballs thing) and the Islamic world is, to some extent, a macrocosm of the whole world departed a few centuries prior to enlightenment. It's effectively the West during the Crusades, except that Islam has the nukes. If they'd been in existence back then, we'd all be dead right now and the only teachings that would be necessary would be welding for post-apocalyptic survival. So what to do? Wait for Islam to effectively grow up and get the joke. Except that we'll have had a few jihad versus stealth wars by then and all be dead. Of course, banning all organised religion is my preferred option but nobody will ever see the sense in that.

Well, after that sobering thought, some poker discussion to ponder. Namely the latest buzzword, the continuation bet. They've been going on for years but have, post-Harrington, been more in the spotlight. When to do them is the critical question. Let's assume a few constants here - you're in the early stages of a deepish stacked tournament (hence everyone's got chips to play with and there's room for fancy play) and have been on the same table as the opponent in question here. You make a standard raise with A-K off in middle position and are flat called by the cutoff, everyone else folding. The flop comes T-6-2 rainbow. Most people would argue that this is a standard place to make a continuation bet here, but let's consider some standard opponents here.

a) the rookie. The first rule of poker is not to bluff the idiots, and a continuation bet is in effect a bluff. Sure, he may have missed, but if he calls you're going to be behind and drawing to six outs. If he has nothing, he'll check. They're not going to bet as a bluff. This is a bet that is only going to lose money. Check and then decide again on the turn. If it looks safe, bet it.

b) the donk/fish. You've raised and a donk calls. You miss the flop, what to do? If you bet, the donk could easily raise as a bluff, or call with rubbish that's still ahead. Either way you'll have to slow down on the turn. Once they're in, they're in for the long haul. Check, and then take the free card or see if they bet, either fold and wait for a genuine hand to milk them, or raise them off it if you think they're the sort of donk that can lay down to a check-raise.

c) the experienced player. The problem here is that he knows what a continuation bet is and knows that it may be coming. Hence he could always raise you on pretty much any two cards, especially if you've been tricky and have slowplayed some hands, and not always value bet when possible. Harrington makes the point that you always have to vary your play, which is right, and devotes a largish chunk of the first volume to preflop hand selection in different situations, and whether to raise or fold. Most of the time he says to vary the play, even saying to smooth call aces early in unraised pots as much as 20% of the time. This choice isn't mentioned so much with relation to post flop play. If you're always making a continuation bet, the opponent will know that if you bet there's a fair chance that you've missed your hand, particularly on boards that don't appear to have hit your hand. The opposite is worse - if you don't bet, you're telling your opponent that it's likely that you've got a piece of it, purely because if you had missed, you'd make a continuation bet. A check will arouse suspicion and they'll take a free card, either to some draw, to avoid a potential check raise or to simply cut losses. The point is that here, you must pick and choose when you bet in a situation that screams out continuation bet. You must also make sure that you value bet. In this situation, the only real hand that you'd want to slowplay is trip tens - lead out with an overpair or a J-T or better. If you get raised, reraise the smaller trips and overpairs, and make a judgment call with top pair decent kicker.

The point is that a lot of the time a continuation bet won't work, either because the player won't appreciate what you're doing, or will recognise and employ a defence against a continuation bet. The trick is not to continuation bet as often and value bet more. The typical weak=strong and vice versa simply doesn't work. If you're making a bet, the opponent has to believe that you'll have some part of it often enough that he doesn't want to get tricky and try to take the pot away. Continuation bets don't work unless you value bet your hands.

Of course, we now come to an interesting almost metagame situation, whereby your opponent recognises what you're doing, and you know that. The possibilities are endless now. If your opponent hasn't a clue what a check or a bet means, you can not only continuation bet, but also slowplay. You can even fake the slowplay with a checkraise bluff if you can make this kind of play believable with a real hand as well.

The more people know about a given strategy, the less effective it becomes. You can see this in real life - just watch how different tactics in football go out of fashion. Watch how when one of the lesser teams collapse the year following a good season - it happened to Ipswich after they qualified for the UEFA Cup and then got relegated, more recently look at how Everton became exposed at the back end of last year and early on this season. I was recently discussing a strategy I was employing late in a two table sit and go, where there were three of us on roughly the same stacks (with M's of around 7) and one with twice that amount, and he wanted to know why I was continually going all in with A-x. It's simple enough - the stacks are short, the table is short, I need to double up, aces rise in value. But now he knows that I'll make moves with less than optimum cards in situations where I'm looking short. A mistake to let him know this? Not really. I'll just adapt and either wait until I have a shorter stack still and must make the move, or make the same move with a better hand and can realistically double up or stack him. Another situation - I've got A-Q in late position and raise and get one earlier limper calling me. The flop comes irrelevantly but with two of a suit and I'm checked to and I bet. I know this guy plays more or less ABC poker and if he had a real good hand, he'd have raised preflop, or would have bet out on the flop if he hit. The problem now comes that he calls. The turn is another irrelevancy and I'm checked to again. Now I'm fairly certain that I can force him off with a jam (I have him covered easily), but I know if I get called I will be behind. As it turns out he bets the river and I muck, him hitting a straight whilst also having a flush draw. I was ahead on the turn, and he tells me he'd have folded the turn if I pushed. I now know some things - he will call on a draw, but won't bet them. I also know that he will seemingly fold to pressure and will generally value bet his hands. So if he checks to me again I'll put in a bigger bet and force him out on the flop. Until I see him slowplay, that'll work fine. If he then tries to slowplay and I notice it, I'll have to think again. Two things to take away - always adapt to new information, and in non-trivial situations the obvious course of action isn't always the best one.

Exams, Super Bowl, links

2006-02-01T17:01:00.000Z

Jam on the Steelers to win. This one looks like it might be high scoring and it may come down to possession which Pittsburgh ought to take, what with a decent running game. Have Parker eat up the yards early and then release the Bus. I'll be watching in bar one but with the expansion of the cupboard (and apparent removal of the projector) it might be cozy.

Exams were OK - equity was a bitch but that was to be expected, criminal seemed fine but it'll rest on how I did on the theft questions - yes, there were two questions that were rather similar so I did them both, commercial went better than expected, although I got a bit confused on the last question on nemo dat, which was an arse.

I'll quickly link to a few good internet radio stations - KEXP out of Seattle is a cracking little station (who just played my request, which is nice), and you can't beat Happy Hardcore Radio or Hardcore Radio for some proper tunes.

Poker's been alright - took down the first live 2-table of the year but have donked those winnings back, mostly in two hands in a cash game last night, 10-10 vs. A-K (all the money going in when behind) and K-Q vs. Q-9, a TP2ndK against top two special (again, all the money going in when behind). I did make some nice plays and bluffs but the +/- doesn't show that. Arsecrisps.

2006 sucks

2006-01-08T16:57:00.000Z

Poker's been pretty mundane. Down just a little bit, mainly due to large amounts of bubbling or near bubbling. There's huge value in the new selection of low limit multi table SNG's at O8, both PL and NL on Stars. It's an aquarium out there. I've just been hit by the variance monkey.

HOH2 is a cracking book, well worth the money. I've yet to digest all of it though.

A quick plug to ebaumsworldsucks.com right here.

New Hattrick season starts today. It looks like I'll go out in round 2 of the cup but you never know.

Not much else to say.

Random collection of musings...

2005-12-13T14:24:00.000Z

Weakest Link YTD : +£27

That's been quiet because I've been flirting between 20 and 25 up for ages now, before I jackpot the machine for eight quid earlier. And with a pub crawl tonight, that's more than welcome.

Got to love Harry Redknapp's man management skills. According to today's Times, "[Redknapp] spent several minutes telling one of his overseas players [things] before realising he spoke no English." Jesus christ. Just shout the guy's name and if he says "que?" you might get the picture.

Something I was meaning to mention a long time ago - while handing in some criminal non-assessed, I noticed a sign on the door of the faculty board room - "Ed Bram will add 50p to the cost of each book". Now I guess that was from the start of term book sale. Now there's me thinking that they were doing that kind of thing for the good of the students. Nope, quick cash. I can't believe that they'd try to pass it off as hiring expenses either. If we tried to add rake at poker we'd be breaking the law.

Now with the closure of PC Cluster 1 in the library for no good reason, and the fact that nowhere apart from Mappin Street is open on a Sunday barring the library (and only because it's extended hours), computer space is a bit cramped. Hence I couldn't believe the cheek of two Rio Ferdinand lookalikes flanking my computer, downing tools at about 4 but leaving their bags and stuff and leaving themselves logged in, and coming back after the football! And what was worse that nobody waiting could be arsed to kick them off, even after I'd told them they'd been gone for over two hours! And then to have the cheek to come back and go on MSN and play solitaire... fuckwits. I hope they get face cancer.

Hattrick is going great. Just sold off the last of my crappy old trainees for a nice sum, and unless Blandford get a surprise win against a surely MOTSing steady's away (who need the win to secure the title, as they're a point ahead of mutinyclan who have got a brand new team to play), I can sneak third with what should be a guaranteed win. Nice. Solid coach will be in play when the £150K for the sale of John Felton clears. Getting a point away to Blandford with a murderous TS on a PIC while losing midfield by three levels is sweet.

yadda yadda yadda yadda what was that?

2005-12-09T16:15:00.000Z

Considering the sparcity of updates recently, two postings in one day is somewhat of a shock. In any case, I find the irony of a couple of daft as fuck bints nattering on about every subject in the world during property 2 (not helped by David Townend's mic not working, bless his cotton socks), and then sadly missing the "no lecture next Friday" comment because of general noise level. What a pity, I do hope they turn up next week for no lecture, for great justice. The standards to get onto this course are now a frightening AAA (frightening because the department can teach OK but couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery), but there must be an implied term "and be as thick as pig shit". The number of people who can't work out how to turn off a mobile phone, or that if you want a conversation there's plenty of other places where you can speak without whispering and pissing off half the people in the lecture is frightening. Worse thing is that any students in any form of "power", and I use the word loosely, are just as bad. If our so called representatives can't distill at least six serious points of concern about the course down into a question in an SSLC meeting, what hope do they have about trivial matters like the amount of junk that's on the Law UG forum (see previous postings). The scary thing is that half of these people will end up getting well paid jobs. Crazy.

Space Cadets

2005-12-09T13:48:00.000Z

I watched this yesterday. It seems like an interesting enough concept, were it not for the fact that all of the people seem as dense as two short planks. Probably too stupid - there's a rumour that I've heard from a few places that everybody is in on it, not just the two "actors" of the twelve and the rest of the supporting crew, and that the whole thing is a hoax on the public. Seems plausible enough - Endemol produce enough shite that it really wouldn't surprise me. I'll just take it at entertainment value alone with suspicion, at least it's better than fucking Little Britain which it clashed with yesterday.

It's also amusing that the speed of James "Rhyming Slang" Blunt backlash right now. I doubt anyone will be able to walk around with a copy of his album in February without being lynched, and rightly so :-)

Free ipod idiots

2005-12-02T15:50:00.000Z

Christ, you'd think at a uni of the calibre of Sheffield there wouldn't be too many people lacking the intelligence to realise that these "free ipod" deals are all either illegal, scams, flood your inbox with junk mail, infect your computer with spyware, or all of the above. But there are, sadly, and they seem to be migrating from the for sale forum to the law UG forum (which is frequently like a for sale forum anyway). Sweet jesus. Idiots.

Random idiocy, Porsche

2005-11-25T10:18:00.000Z

Businesses can be so daft at times. Ignoring the fact that Tiscali are useless twats, why the hell would:

a) Betfair bother to send me out a cheque for my entire account, that, after my "lay 0-0, United-Villarreal, stunts gone horribly wrong" last bet amounted to 31 pence, when it'll cost them that much to post it, and

b) Crookesmoor library not give me change for a tenner in two fives (which I needed to buy a book privately), but would sell me a pencil for 10p which I paid for with a tenner, doing them out of lots of coinage as well? Madness.

Anyway, the future of poker has arrived, and it's Porsche. Limit, obviously, six max. Pineapple (same as hold'em, except your dealt three cards and discard one after the flop but before the flop betting round), omaha (high), razz, 7 stud (high), chicago (7 stud high but the pot is split between the high hand and the highest spade in the hole - GREAT for fishing), hold'em and omaha eight or better. Orbit of each. However, there's a twist...

Obviously the best Porsche is a 911. So, if on third street in a stud game you have A-A-9, or if that's the flop on a flop game, there's craziness. All bets are off, and in stud the holder of the porsche wins a big bet off everyone, in hold'em whoever has closest to montana banana wins a big bet off everyone, and in omaha the best badugi hand does the same.

Now to get some bastards to play it...

All slowly coming together...

2005-10-23T14:01:00.000+01:00

Long time without a post, so just a few words. The internet still isn't sorted at our gaff, causing no ends of problems, especially at the weekends. Seminar times have been announced for myself, commercial being a particular arse seeing how it's right in the middle of the single hour gap I had between 11-4 on a Monday, meaning that if the seminar is on, it's a five hour straight spell with no break whatsoever. What an arse. It could be worse, we could still have had criminal scheduled for 9am on Mondays. Which was moved, after we turned up for the first one and the tutor didn't.

Rockstar's new round is moving along nicely - I've got a full complement of bands now, none of them are complete muppets, and there's a few that could be competitive for a while yet. It's taking a bit of time learning which are the good studios and promos again (which you forget after everyone gets signed), but it won't be long until I've got the cash to set up Nodding Dog again.

Hattrick is going great. Since the last update we suffered an awful loss at home to Chelski, an 88th minute winner doing us in, but since then we've had two great wins, away to the Mighty O's and a cracking 1-0 win at home to steady's superstars while pressing and PICing a 4-5-1. Should be another easy win today, playing against a semi-bot team, before a tricky home and away against the league leaders which I'll take a point from. The stadium is being expanded to 14500, and we'll hopefully have the new coach in at the end of the season.

Not played a great deal of poker (see the internet troubles) but IRL has been cracking. Two cashes in the 4-table £3 freezeouts up here, before crashing out in the tenner freeze last Sunday to a horrendous three out river beat. I can't wait to start playing on the internet again.

Weakest Link, rockstar

2005-09-30T13:55:00.000+01:00

I've been tracking my weakest link play, to see whether I am (as I think) winning, or it's just a leak. This month I'm up 19 quid on 56 games, so the ROI is about 68%. It was at 100%, but this week's been bad and I'm barely breaking even. Random fluctuations of dumb luck I guess.

Rockstar's been reset - not had a chance to fully look into the changes, but it seems like gigging has been made more important, which should add more balance to the game. It's now probably worth owning a solo label as well, seeing how there's two vocalist categories now.

Not much else - a week into the new term, and it's pretty dull stuff early on. Not much being learned, except that there's naturally tons of expensive stuff to buy/print. I'm now 99% certain that if I go on to do an LPC, it won't be at Sheffield, such are the standards at this place.

Hattrick awesomeness

2005-09-24T14:08:00.000+01:00

Just managed to find a page which says I've got the 7th toughest VI in England. Which is sick, seeing how there's 1024 of them. Won the first league game 2-1 playing basically a reserve team against the only new side in the division, it was a struggle despite dominating the midfield. The firsts lost 2-0 in the cup at home (almost a sell out) against a very strong V side while playing PIC 4-5-1 pressing. A near first team is playing tomorrow against Blandford, last season's league winners who lost their quali, Chancahuana's still out injured and I lost Piriyakuntorn in midweek, but he was injured/training come the training update and will be fit for the friendly so no lost training there. Bremond popped, as did Herbom who's effectively a backup defensive winger now, not because he can defend, more his PM is so rubbish. Clenin/Amet are playing on the wing although I may sell Amet if he pops PM.

Mega Man lost to Crono in a close one, who went and lost to Mario easily, so no guru win for me. Rockstar's now in silly season as the reset is next week, and I'm still looking for the right solid defender at the right price on Hattrick.

Not much happening in real life, needless to say. Worked all last week, should be good for about 250 quid or so. Lectures et al start Monday, with no 9 starts, thank god.

For fuck's sake...

2005-09-15T12:21:00.000+01:00

Yet another hidden student cost comes our way:

Once you begin your new modules you will find that we have moved to a web-based system for the storage and distribution of all teaching documents. All book lists, lecture outlines, and so on are now available to you on our web-site, through WebCT, 24 hrs a day. Paper copies will no longer be circulated.

Oh that's just wonderful. No paper copies will be circulated? Jesus christ. If those bloody people and planet hippies have anything to do about it I've got a good mind to bill them for extra printer credits. You can't use an electronic copy of a lecture outline in the Octagon, can you? Needless to say they'll all need to be printed anyway, as you can't easily scribble down notes on an electronic copy.

Back in rainy Sheffield now, at the top of a bloody great hill. What else is going on in the world? Well, we've regained the Ashes. Get in. I think the best part is not so much the winning, but the great spirit in which the whole series was played (Ponting's Trent Bridge pouting aside), which is something messrs. Rooney et al would do well to learn from. The Aussies played a huge part in the series, even if they were effectively being carried by one man, with ball and bat.

GameFAQs contest is coming to a conclusion. My predicted final is looking more and more likely by the day, and if Squall had have held on against pesky Vincent I'd probably be on the leaderboard or in a tie for a leaderboard place, with a great chance to win. In any case, if Mega Man can pull off a final upset (which is looking unlikely as Mario is looking unstoppable right now), I'll probably end up top 10, as well as winning the guru contest. Project Rockstar is nearing a reset, which is just as well as it's become boring as fuck. Hattrick's in a new season, the expansion to seven divisions means that there was unexpected cup action for Killer Gorillas, and an easy first round win will be followed by a crushing defeat. Still, it's good for a few quid. First choice keeper got injured in the cup though and is out for a while, I've brought in a better backup and will sell the original backup once my #1 is fit again. I've upgraded my coach recently, and am still training PM with a useful off-season stamina boost. Fifth is the goal, sixth will do. Anything less is both unacceptable and unlikely. Luckily I've got an easy match against a new team first up in the league, followed by an unwinnable match or two. I can work the TS in low-risk games while my keeper recovers.

That's about it for now.

Ashes, CL, boring bad beat story

2005-08-27T00:22:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-08-17T01:33:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-08-06T20:25:00.000+01:00

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.

How to misplay jack-ten 101

2005-07-26T20:47:00.000+01:00

An interesting little hand that occurred in a SNG that I've just played... they've been quite frustrating of recent in that I've played well enough but have hit ridiculous bad luck in and around the bubble of recent (four outers, three outers, someone who was clearly stealing deciding to call my huge reraise with A-8 and hitting the river, losing key coinflips, that kind of thing). Anyway, I can't think how this guy could have played the J-T any worse:

PokerStars Game #2192233121: Tournament #10532043, Hold'em No Limit - Level II (15/30) - 2005/07/26 - 14:39:31 (ET)
Table '10532043 1' Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: Player A (1285 in chips)
Seat 2: Player B (3460 in chips)
Seat 3: Player C (1025 in chips)
Seat 4: Player D (1085 in chips)
Seat 5: Player E (2080 in chips)
Seat 6: Me (sb) (1640 in chips)
Seat 8: Player F (bb) (620 in chips)
Seat 9: Idiot (2750 in chips)
Me (sb): posts small blind 15
Player F (bb): posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Me (sb) [Qc As]
Idiot: calls 30
Player A: folds
Player B: folds
Player C: folds
Player D: folds
Player E: calls 30
Me (sb): calls 15 - was tempted to raise and probably should have, but I'd be out of position for the rest of the hand, particularly to Idiot who's big stacked and limped UTG, so I opted for a discreet call.
Player F (bb): checks
*** FLOP *** [Td Ah Tc]
Me (sb): bets 90 - I bet 3/4 of the pot, with the intention of folding to any raise that isn't the minimum, and slowing down if called
Player F (bb): folds
Idiot: calls 90 - When you see his hand, you'll question why the hell he didn't raise
Player E: folds
*** TURN *** [Td Ah Tc] [Ac]
Me (sb): bets 150 - Down to two handed, and jackpot. If he's got the ace it's a chop-up, otherwise I've got him trapped
Idiot: calls 150
*** RIVER *** [Td Ah Tc Ac] [Ad] - hello, runner-runner quads. Now he must surely have a ten or some other irrelevant pocket pair. I'll just make a smallish bet to try to get a call
Me (sb): bets 210
Idiot: calls 210
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Me (sb): shows [Qc As] (four of a kind, Aces)
Idiot: mucks hand
Me (sb) collected 1020 from pot
Player D said, "vnh"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1020 | Rake 0
Board [Td Ah Tc Ac Ad]
Seat 1: Player A folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: Player B folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Player C folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Player D folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Player E (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 6: Me (sb) (small blind) showed [Qc As] and won (1020) with four of a kind, Aces
Seat 8: Player F (bb) (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 9: Idiot mucked [Jd Th] - yes, I can't beat the board but I'll call a river bet anyway. Cheers.

Needless to say it all went horribly wrong just before the final table, when as the billy low stack of around 3K, hit jacks to go to 4K busting someone, then hovering around with all-in steals (blinds 100/200 a25), before hitting genuine cards with 10-10, doing the same thing before someone wakes up behind me with A-K and hits. I've just got him covered but I only have one and a bit big blinds so I get A-J next hand and some nob makes a straight with 8-5 or some junk. Bollocks.

I got that job that I interviewed for, no surprises there. Heard nothing from the other place so I can assume I didn't get that one as it starts on Monday. Have been playing with bittorrent a bit, nice toy really. DLed the Super Metroid soundtrack and recalled what a bloody great game that is (my comments on it are available near the start of the Feb 05 archive). That's about it for the time being.

Crap week really...

2005-07-15T21:31:00.000+01:00

Here's what's been happening at my end:

- Got exam results, passed the year. Torts cut it fine (42), but the others were safe 2:2's. This year doesn't count towards the degree so that's not too bad, might make some placement hunting a bit awkward but that's not a huge problem.

- Adecco called me in to properly register with them on Wednesday, claiming they had work available, but it was exactly the same as what I'd already rejected, so that's a wasted journey for me.

- Was in Sheffield yesterday. Had an interview for some work around freshers' week... well I say an interview, it was more like four people being told what the job was about and given a ten minute error checking test that wouldn't tax a four year old. So seeing how they're employing primarily on that, it should be OK. Also applied for some work at the library from the start of August, which will be ideal if I can get it. While in Sheffield I picked up the house keys... house is still there which is good, had a couple of pints with those who were about.

- Won the quiz at the Farmers on Monday at an absolute canter, a clear four points ahead of everyone else.

- On Big Brother, they come up with one idea this week that is relatively interesting, only to fuck up the final delivery by letting them know half the story, and leaving them to stew for half an hour before unloading the other half of the "bombshell". Much better would have been to say "the nth person to be evicted is... none of the above, the rest were up, the public have picked x and y, choose between them" before putting them on a phone-a-friend style clock. No leaving them to have a screaming fit for ages.

Summer's boring...

2005-07-09T02:31:00.000+01:00

Some updates:

- Should have my exam results any time now. According to last year, Monday is par, so we'll have to see. Given the shit post service round here, I'll wait a week or so.

- I've switched to playing $1 5 table SNG's on Stars about 75% of the time now, with the rest still being micro PLO8. Mainly because I've hit a streak of form and am ripping them up. Over the past week or so I've had three 2nd's, two 3rd's and a fifth (disappointed that I couldn't convert more of those to wins considering I claim to be able to play very short handed... blew one with a 30:1 chip lead heads up and lost a race in another with 98% of the chips in preflop), and have run the bankroll up to around $70 from a nadir of $10 last month. I hope this is Harrington kicking in and not just a really lucky streak. It probably is, the standard is very poor, but at the same time it's still possible to bully with a big stack.

- The Lions tests have been disappointing. Mainly because Woodward doesn't have a clue with respect to the backs. Wilkinson isn't a 12. Thomas isn't a 13. Williams is too small to play 11. It should have been Peel, S Jones, Lewsey, Henson, O'Driscoll, Robinson, Thomas in the first test.

- Radiogrounds is really quite good.

- Job hunting is wank. Hopefully I'll nail this library job in Sheffield that'll be good for August onwards. Manpower called me in last Friday to register (and the Spoons on Petersgate stocked Tiger which was nice), but haven't found me anything yet. I've got an interview in Sheffield for some work during fresher's week this Thursday. Adecco offered me night shelf stacking at B&Q so I told them where to go (if I drove, I'd have considered it).

- That's about it. I've been mostly playing Madden, Prime 2 is lacking appeal, had about half an hour on it in Torvus the other day, but died one room from a save point, losing everything from first arriving there to the save after the super missiles.

Poker update

2005-06-28T19:11:00.000+01:00

I've not played too much on VC of recent really, NLHE tourneys bore me a bit at the moment. Instead I've mostly been playing the micro PLO8 at Stars. It's so soft it's unbelievable, more or less guaranteed winnings. Anyone and their monkey can shove all their money in at HE if they see a big pair, but people will play KTTT at Omaha/8 for raises at this level. That's unplayable at high only. It's a massive aquarium. It takes patience though, even though I am seeing a flop on about 50% of hands. Massively loose, but it's nothing compared to other people at the table. It's so passive that you can afford to limp with fairly junky stuff (KKxx, QQxx, A3xx etc) and hope to hit a good to perfect flop. Mainly because the pot odds are huge. You'll often get paid too - people will draw to and hit less than the nuts and pay you off (one guy berating me for my nut flush beating his queen high flush. What did he expect). They'll also stop around till the river, so it's possible to stay around for just hitting one way and make profit. A2xx is always playable here. It can be waiting for the nuts at times, but that's Omaha to an extent.

NLHE also isn't appealing as for some reason I played a free play tourney on Stars, and came about 80th/4000+. Why, I don't know. Someone dared me to or something.

When you think a sport has reached its ultimate nadir...

2005-06-21T23:30:00.000+01:00

The US Grand Prix happened. Jesus H Christ. Considering by all rights there should be precisely two people that are still interested in Formula One after the whole Ferrari internal race rigging scandal, the general lack of overtaking or any action after lap one and outside of the pit lane, Ferrari and Ecclestone (not Doctor Who, the other one) having way too much power and the lack of Murray Walker, we now have the farcical situation where one tyre manufacturer can't make tyres that are safe to race on or something (I don't give a shit about the specifics or how they allowed that to happen), and we've got six cars racing - namely Schumacher, Barrichello (very much the Val Venis of the F1 world, jobber to the stars), the Jordans who are about as fast as a broken 2CV, and the Minardis, who've got the same budget for their cars as Blue Peter have to make crap out of sticky back plastic and half the performance. Fantastic.

Here's a clue - give everyone the same cars, same tyres, same engines, same everything (you know, like how it works in most other forms of motor sport that are actually interesting), make the tracks so that overtaking is possible, and then sod qualifying and have those leading the championship start from the back of the grid. It really is that simple. Do it, or everyone will fuck off to watch the rumoured new rival tour, MotoGP, even bloody speedway. That only lasts a minute, roughly the same amount of action you have in your average grand prix. And people were actually outraged that this tour de farce wasn't going to return to Silverstone!

And I didn't mention Australia-Bangladesh once. Oh how we laughed.

I'm not dead

2005-06-17T16:51:00.000+01:00

Long time no update... basically I haven't been arsed to recover the password to this on the other computer. Back at home now, and it's pretty much the same shithole as it was when I left, except the nearest offy has now closed, which is an arse.

Saw System Of A Down on Tuesday. They kicked ass. Shame about the support (80's Matchbox B-Line Disaster) who were pretty poor. The main show was quality - almost two hours of straight up non stop rock. Excellent. Had a few drinks beforehand - strangely (U2 gig possibly?) most of the pubs in Manchester were heaving, in fact one Spoons wasn't even letting any new punters in. At half four. Ridiculous. Still, found a nice pub on Mosley Street that was fairly quiet and very cheap (£1.70/Guinness, £1.20/Carling or Beck's). It's just a pity that the transport here really is of a third world standard. Integrated transport does not mean diving onto a tram, then running and diving onto a train, then running and diving onto a bus, and paying £1.70 for a journey which I can (and have) walked before. It (bus pricing) truly is extortionate around the Manchester area.

So, one year at Sheffield is out of the way. Let's analyse, shall we?

Sheffield positives:

- has Fuzz Club
- has a cool lift in the Arts Tower
- hall bars are competitively priced, and bar one is usually cheap
- er...
- that's it

Sheffield negatives:

- hills
- no one centralised computing facility
- no one centralised library
- never had a lecture in a lecture theatre
- never had a seminar that wasn't massively overpopulated or only had about five people in
- only had one essay to do and the rest was all exams
- seen essay questions for answering in exams suck
- have seen my tutor once, and only contacted him on one other occasion
- has three club nights which all sound the same and are probably all equally shit
- no self catered halls, leaving flats as an option which are crap for socialising
- uni LAN is sketchy
- all sports are elitist, overpriced and inaccessible

In other words, the university and course sucks large amounts.

The carpet too is moving under you

2005-06-09T01:10:00.000+01:00

Yay, exams are all over. ILLS 2 is out of the way. Naturally, the exam was exactly the same as the previous two years, only the wording was slightly different which threw me a bit on question 5 but I managed. Part A went well, the other two not so great but probably enough for a decent mark. Afterwards, went to Walkabout for a couple of Tooheys and then to Earnshaw for some deserved Guinness.

Now just an unusually busy day to clear up lots of crap before I head off home, mixed in with drinking and slacking. Excellent...

Never give up

2005-06-06T16:36:00.000+01:00

I didn't find time to play with the code to the blog over the weekend, so I'll either do it on Thursday or wait until the weekend.

Anyway, there's a saying in poker, "a chip and a chair", meaning that's all you need to win. It's perfectly true, no matter how bad a situation in a tournament can be, never quit it.

Point in question. $2 STT. Blinds at 30/60, and I'm down to T1190. I decide to make a play at the pot on the button with 6-3o when the only caller is the cutoff (who was bitching about his A-Q being outdrawn by J-T on the previous hand, so he could easily be steaming - he's down to less than me as a result). I raise to 180, blinds fold and cutoff calls. I've also got a note on the cutoff that he seems a bit fishy. Flop comes Q-9-2 and I push for 1010. He calls his last 890 with Q-5 (making his complaining about calling raises with junk rather hypocritical), and IGNH. 120 left, I fold in the next hand and the blinds go to 50/100. Game over? Nope.

A couple of hands later I get 7-7 and push. Three callers, I hit a set (cracking A-A in the process), up to 480. Muck next hand, I'm the big blind with K-4. Three callers, but I wait to push. Flop is K-J-3, I push 380 into a 400 pot and nobody takes me on. 780 now. I then find rockets in the small blind. Only the cutoff called, I made it 3xBB and the cutoff calls again. I push my last 480 and he folds. Up to 1180.

I fold the next hand and then find kings. I limp in EP and then there's a raise and reraise before it comes back to me. I call all-in and see A-K and 10-10. Kings hold up and I'm at 3640 and comfortable again. Two hands later I double through the original tilting fish in an A-Q vs. J-J race, up to 6380, a third of the chips in play. I knock him out two hands later when I have kings (again), making it 500 to go preflop (blinds now 100/200), he flat calls, and then on a K-9-5 flop with two hearts, he removes any need for me to slowplay or milk as he pushes with Qh3h. My set holds up, and all of a sudden I have over 10K in chips.

I go on to finish second, getting as high as 13,690 at one point but cocking up the three handed and heads-up. Limping with 3-8 in the small blind and then pushing on a T-5-2 board but walking into rockets knocked me down to 11K, I fail to knockout a shortstack with A-9 against A-8 when he spikes his 8, then I lose to the same guy three hands into the heads-up, as he refused to fold his nut-straight when a third diamond hit on the turn [Qs 3d Td Ad], his K-J of spades holding up against my mighty 8-4 off (one was a diamond, I had outs). The moral of the story is - don't push with junk and get called.

I could get used to these $2 tourneys

2005-06-04T03:33:00.000+01:00

Just won another one for about $120. Get in.

Oh, b3ta are geniuses

2005-06-03T23:31:00.000+01:00

Genii? Who cares. Anyway, this looks like an experiment to try. Nothing but Guinness for a week. It sounds like a challenge. I'm still a student, it's the kind of silly thing students do. Here's the link: The Guinness Diet

Possible site alterations

2005-06-02T21:49:00.000+01:00

I'm going to be playing with the coding of this blog to add some links in to stuff that I like. If for some reason you come here and the site looks like crap, I've probably cocked up this trivial exercise. I'll probably do this over the weekend.

By the way, if you want your site/blog added, just post a comment.

Sephiroth wins. What a surprise.

2005-06-02T18:56:00.000+01:00

If you don't give a shit about the GameFAQs contest, ignore this post. For you, I'll likely be watching the cricket tomorrow, doing the whole revising + test match = fun thing again.

Contest announced. Initial thought = Sephiroth wins. Easily. Fire in nominations.

Bracket announced. Ridley in as a 2, excellent. No Wario or Donkey Kong, disappointing. Sephiroth still wins, but there's a clear lack of difficult matches to decide in later rounds, as Bowser, Ganondorf and Liquid Snake have been kept apart and will all fall to Seph at different stages.

Predictions? Let's see. Top half is incredibly easy to predict. First division is easy enough. Bowser wins. Only question is who he beats in the last 8 out of Ocelot and Wily, and who he beats in round 2, out of Sigma and Andross. Andross winning would be cool, but MM > SF there, so Sigma it is. Ocelot seems to have a lot more support than Wily as well, so Ocelot wins that one. Done.

Next. Sephiroth walks the division. Liquid Snake walks to Seph then jobs. Lavos will beat Mother Brain, both are useless characters but CT > Metroid there. That just leaves Vergil vs. Ghaleon. I initially put Ghaleon but then switched, as cult RPG figures are fodder.

Now then. Kefka as a 1 seed. Hmm. Something's up here. Kefka has shown no strength ever. EVER. Still, Kefka's path to the last eight is easy. Wesker or Luca? Thought about Luca for a bit on account of having appeared before, but switched to Wesker. Then we have Albedo-Bison and Ridley-Diablo. Bison wins his match, but is a complete wild card. He could be anywhere from just sneaking through and getting pounded in round 2, to winning the division. Ridley-Diablo. Hmm. Halo-Starcraft anyone? Now this match will make or break a bracket. Either of these could win the division, and this will be the hardest match they face before Ganondorf. Still, I pick Ridley. Blatant Metroid fanboyism. It can go either way, but I'm going with who I've been rallying for for a year to get in one of these things. And when I pick Ridley, I pick Ridley to the final four.

Ganondorf wins the last division easily, but the rest is awkward. Ansem-CATS? I'd love CATS to win, and put CATS in initially. But Kingdom Hearts isn't fodder, and I was on the rightside of Sora-Hayabusa in 2004 and let people know about it. Then we have Robotnik/Sin and Kuja/Master Hand. This will bust brackets as well. Kuja over Master Hand is easy enough. It's a glove. Robotnik ought to beat Sin. It'll be close, but Robotnik has a lot more games than MH. So why put Kuja over Robotnik? Seeding I guess. Kuja's a 2, Sin a 6. That should equal more support. In a close thing, it could be enough.

Final is clearly Sephiroth over Ganondorf. Now let the flaming begin...

Bowser starts out looking solid. Nothing unexpected there. Pyramid Head is useless. Nothing unexpected there. Sigma starts out OK, but then keeps dropping percentage, and dropping... it goes below 53% before a late recovery. Not unexpected at all, this closeness. Then Ocelot does the same thing against Nemesis. What the hell? This wasn't on the cards, a showing of some weakness. If Wily puts up decent numbers, we could have problems here. Wily does somewhat better, but against a weaker character in all likelihood. Constantly in the 60's, not quite managing a doubling. 4/4 so far, but Ocelot>Wily is looking shaky, and the board knows it.

Sephiroth beats Ramirez as expected, comfortably in the 80's. Ghaleon gets an awful picture and Vergil runs with it, pressing for a doubling at one point before settling for a mid 60's performance. Lavos then only managed 55% on Mother Brain. This was good news for the Ridley camp, a decent showing from the other Metroid contender. Unless of course Lavos is weak. Some people opine MB>Ridley. What nonsense. Then in a performance somewhat reminiscent of Tanner's "efforts", Liquid Snake pounds Officer Tenpenny, threatening 80% for long periods. 8/8 so far.

Kefka beats Mithos as expected, but fails to get a doubling. Those with Kefka winning the division are somewhat worried. Wesker does the business against Luca, but in unconvincing fashion, failing to make 60% and making the Wesker>Kefka claims look weak. I'm on the leaderboard after this one, and stay on it as Bison doubles Albedo, being over 70% for large chunks of the match and threatening to win another should Ridley/Diablo show hints of weakness. I'm not at a computer for that one. I make a call to find out the score roughly 11 hours in - Ridley 43%, oh fuck. There goes the bracket. Diablo has help from diabloii.net but it really doesn't make a difference as he wins by a clear 10,000+. Ridley lead, according to best estimates, for two minutes. That's seven points gone straight off the bat. Bison-Diablo could be close.

Ganondorf dispatches Giygas with minimal trouble, just failing to stay above 85% at the end. Then CATS naturally gets the board lead. And holds it. Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours. The board is ON FIRE. CATS just leads at the 5000 vote mark. Ansem ties it up but can't gain any command of the match, as they go toe to toe until about 5 hours in when the kiddies wake up and give Ansem the win, by less than 6000 votes. All "ceiling" theories about CATS are out the window - given the right match, CATS can win. I want Gordon Freeman/CATS in the summer. Robotnik then wins by less than 2000 - the match was never really in doubt, although Sin chopped around 700 off the maximum lead. Then we have a huge bracket buster. This killed all but one of the remaining zero brackets and a lot of the perfects. Kuja got a lead of 400. It didn't last. Master Hand pulled it back, and then ran with it. The lead went from hundreds, to thousands, to multiple thousands in an awesome day vote display. Hundreds of people are disgusted, there's loads of fads, and Kuja becomes a joke. This costs me three points, and puts my maximum at 70, which I actually get.

Round 2 begins, and Bowser isn't taking any chances with Sigma, crushing him with a 78% tripling performance. 80% was never really threatened. That isn't looking good for Wily. And so it transpired - another hyped match became a damp squib as Ocelot lead from start to finish, finishing comfortably in the mid 50's with a near 6000 vote victory. Vergil holds Seph under 80%, but still gets tripled. Liquid Snake then completely chokes against Lavos, only managing 55%, and throwing the strength of the whole LS/Chief/Frog group into doubt.

Kefka then does the unthinkable and shows genuine strength, pummelling Wesker and gaining 70% of the vote. Turns out Nemesis may be stronger than Wesker. Bison-Diablo looks like it might be close, as the Street Fighter gets a decent start and gets a three figure lead. This lasts for about four hours until Diablo takes over and wins, falling just shy of a 5000 margin of victory. Renewed hope for Kefka then, in what looks like being the last match where the result is in doubt. Ganondorf stays at around 75% all day on Ansem, but fails to triple up in the end. Robotnik/Hand was a huge disappointment, Robotnik looking like doubling early on, but falling back to just under 60% by the end.

There were a few people who thought Ocelot might have had a chance - not really. Bowser starts nicely, increases percentage throughout the day and nearly doubles Ocelot. Nice going. And in a vulgar display of power, Sephiroth triples Liquid Snake, causing people to declare any stats for this null and void, has others making crazy adjustments to try to justify this, yadda yadda yadda, whatever. Liquid couldn't even hold Seph for a minute, despite the board's notorious anti-FF7 sentiments.

Kefka starts out well against Diablo. The lead is up to over 250 at one point, but then Kefka's famously bad day vote kicks in and Diablo takes over. The match is level within five hours, Diablo leads by 1000 after about eight and is 3000 away and safe by halfway. Diablo ended up with over 54%, more than against Bison, and I start to throw out occasional Diablo>Ganondorf jibes to generate controversy. This match also killed all remaining perfect brackets. So much for predictability... then Ganondorf triples Robotnik and makes Kuja look like a bigger joke than before.

Final four time... Bowser-Sephiroth was tight for a little while, in fact they were dead level after 1000 votes (see the earlier post for the board reaction to that one), but the match is inevitably won after around six hours. In a moral victory, Bowser kept Seph under 60%, something Mario couldn't do. Everyone wants to throw the stats out of the window by this stage. Ganondorf is up by 1000 against Diablo within an hour, and there's no attempt at a comeback at all, with a 26,000+ vote victory and a near tripling. More or less what was expected given Kefka's known performance.

And to today's final. Ganondorf holds for a little bit longer than Bowser but the end result is the same. We're at roughly halfway now and Seph is stalling at around 57%. A 105,000 vote turnout would make my tiebreaker look great, but I'm not breaking any ties on -10. Ganondorf should be able to finish ahead of Bowser, but it could be close. It's a shame we couldn't have had them in the same half, with Liquid Snake in one of their divisions as well, for some more interesting late round matches.

I hope that this contest was set up so that Seph got an auto-win and could then be retired with Link and Cloud to make for a hugely interesting summer contest... we'll see.

An open letter to John Motson

2005-05-31T23:03:00.000+01:00

The current England all-time scoring charts after the Colombia game:

Combover 49
Crisp Muncher 48
Saintand 44
Miguel 32

Now that Owen's passed the glut of players in the high-20's and low 30's, maybe Motson will shut the fuck up for a while about where he stands in relation to the greats. Unless, of course, we draw Saudi Arabia in the World Cup, and if that happens even Peter fucking Crouch could get himself in the top 10.

Actually, looking at the line-up for today, we've got three players that'll start in Germany (Beckham, Owen, A Cole), one that will because Sven won't play the proper formation (J Cole), three squad players (Jenas, P Neville, James), and four players who've got no fucking chance of being anywhere near the squad (Crouch, Carrick, Knight, Johnson). We know EXACTLY what all these players can do, so why the hell are we playing a pointless friendly and not experimenting? Everybody's injured will be the excuse. That's what happens when you schedule friendlies at this time. It's especially true at centre back. When you have to start with Glen Johnson and Zat Knight... that means no Ferdinand, Campbell, Terry, Carragher, Upson, King, Brown, and those are just the sensible ones... you're better off bringing people up from the U21 side.

When I describe Wes Brown as a sensible option in front of a starting CB pair for England, that's saying something.

ARLO'D

2005-05-31T19:26:00.000+01:00

We'll just ignore the fact that my call of T2200 to win T5400 is getting odds of, ooh, call it 5/2, and he's less than a 2/1 favourite, some people just can't stand being arloed:

[May 31 18:24:10] : Hand Start.
[May 31 18:24:10] : Seat 5 : Mr.Member has $3,800
[May 31 18:24:10] : Seat 6 : jaytee2 has $14,200
[May 31 18:24:10] : Mr.Member is the dealer.
[May 31 18:24:10] : Mr.Member posted small blind.
[May 31 18:24:10] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 31 18:24:10] : Game [22] started with 2 players.
[May 31 18:24:10] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 31 18:24:11] : Seat 6 : jaytee2 has 4s 6d
[May 31 18:24:15] : Mr.Member called 800 and raised 2,200 and is All-in
[May 31 18:24:15] : jaytee2 called 2,200
[May 31 18:24:16] : Showdown!
[May 31 18:24:16] : Seat 6 : jaytee2 has 4s 6d
[May 31 18:24:18] : Stakes: 800/1,600 Current level: 10 Next level in: 1 min.
[May 31 18:24:18] : Seat 5 : Mr.Member has Kh 9s
[May 31 18:24:18] : Seat 6 : jaytee2 has 4s 6d
[May 31 18:24:27] : Board cards [7s As 6h Tc 5s]
[May 31 18:24:27] : Seat 5 : Mr.Member has Kh 9s
[May 31 18:24:27] : Mr.Member has High Card : Ace
[May 31 18:24:27] : Seat 6 : jaytee2 has 4s 6d
[May 31 18:24:27] : jaytee2 has Pair: 6s
[May 31 18:24:27] : jaytee2 wins 7,600 with Pair: 6s
[May 31 18:24:33] : jaytee2 : gg
[May 31 18:24:34] : Mr.Member : horseshit play
[May 31 18:24:37] : jaytee2 : arlo!

The best 32 seconds in Board 8 history

2005-05-31T14:59:00.000+01:00

A humourous passage on the Spring Contest board on GameFAQs this morning:

From: Heroic Mario | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:21 AM | Message Detail
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

Hot damn!

---
“I am the Queen of Blades, and my stare alone would reduce you to ashes. You and your ilk cease to amuse me. Prepare yourself for oblivion’s embrace.” Kerrigan

From: jonthomson | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:22 AM | Message Detail
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

XD
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Jon Thomson - 34/44, today: Ganondorf, tomorrow: Sephiroth
Nominate Ridley for Summer Contest 2005

From: Lucid Faia | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:23 AM | Message Detail
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

Niiice.

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"LucidFaia" Score: 47, Rank: 23 (T1), Pick: Sephiroth
My Video Game World Records: http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&p=35289

From: AmazingKirby | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:25 AM | Message Detail
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

Nice even sample.
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Hi,I'm partystar. ^_^
Or maybe I'm Leonhart. That's for you to decide.

From: Mister Mario | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:27 AM | Message Detail
Tournament Semifinal: Bowser vs. Sephiroth
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

BEST 1000 VOTES EVER.
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"The PS3 isn't designed to lean towards games. It's not a computer for children."- Ken Kutaragi
From: yoblazer33 | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:31 AM | Message Detail
500 apiece after 1000 votes. Awesome.
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Board 8: Where people treat each other right.

From: HaRRicH | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:31 AM | Message Detail
Bowser 50% 500
Sephiroth 50% 500
TOTAL VOTES 1000

Ha! Take that, Sephiroth!!!
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Serious Reminder: Vote for Dr. Robotnik
"What awaits each person in Heaven is eternal peace, divine rest, and $10,000." --Cartman

From: arkenaga | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:51 AM | Message Detail
Damn. They were tied at the 1000 mark. This is AWESOME.
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Don't chain your affection. Awaken primal feeling. Don't benumb emotion. Sing out primal scream. Let loose every feeling from joy to grief.

From: jonthomson | Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:53 AM | Message Detail
C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER
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Jon Thomson - 34/44, today: Ganondorf, tomorrow: Sephiroth
Nominate Ridley for Summer Contest 2005

Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

2005-05-31T13:50:00.000+01:00

Tort was tough. It was a bastard to revise for, and it showed in the exam. The seen essay wasn't great again (I despise those with every ounce of my body - they only give us those because they CAN'T BE ARSED to give us a proper assessed essay because that'd equate to another 400+ lot of things to mark). Unseen non-negligence was OK, forgot a key case, but the question was very shallow and I could only write a page and a bit on it. Negligence was alright - it was VERY similar to the unassessed essay we did, and I got a lot of stuff down.

It could have been a lot worse. Just ILLS 2 left now and I have no idea of the sorts of things they might ask, or how best to revise it.

Oh, and I've seen a couple of pictures of myself from the WaSOP - playing with chips and looking very lackadasical. That must have been first hand or after a bad beat, as I look shortstacked. There's a couple of quality ones of Rich and Milan there as well. They've only got the Friday up, so nothing from the team or main event yet.

Finally - the French "non". That's nice to see.

How to try to send someone on tilt and fail

2005-05-29T20:33:00.000+01:00

Here's a fun cheapo heads-up I just played on VC - comments in bold italics, and I'll tidy it up later. First, here's a quick look at the hammer in STT action:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y106/jonthomson/hammer.jpg

Here we go:

[May 29 19:21:52] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:21:52] : Seat 1 : holfy has $2,000
[May 29 19:21:52] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,000
[May 29 19:21:52] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:21:52] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:21:52] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:21:52] : Game [1] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:21:52] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:21:52] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 5d 2c
[May 29 19:21:54] : holfy called 20
[May 29 19:21:55] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:21:56] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:21:56] : Board cards [3h Tc Ac]
[May 29 19:21:57] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:22:05] : holfy : i will destroy you
Ah, one of the 50c heads-up sharks I've heard so much about.
[May 29 19:22:08] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:22:08] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:22:08] : Board cards [3h Tc Ac Qs]
[May 29 19:22:10] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:22:12] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:22:12] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:22:12] : Board cards [3h Tc Ac Qs 4c]
[May 29 19:22:15] : jaytee2 bet 80
[May 29 19:22:17] : holfy folded.
Maybe he is good, he picked off my rivered straight perfectly
[May 29 19:22:18] : jaytee2 wins 80 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:22:21] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:22:21] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:22:21] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,960
[May 29 19:22:21] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,040
[May 29 19:22:21] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:22:21] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:22:21] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:22:21] : Game [2] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:22:21] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:22:21] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has As Ac
Kerching!
[May 29 19:22:23] : jaytee2 called 20
[May 29 19:22:38] : holfy has 10 seconds to respond.
[May 29 19:22:41] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:22:42] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:22:42] : Board cards [7d 3h Ah]
[May 29 19:22:50] : holfy : be afraid
Yes, my top set is in great danger
[May 29 19:22:52] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:22:55] : jaytee2 bet 40
[May 29 19:22:58] : holfy called 40
[May 29 19:22:59] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:22:59] : Board cards [7d 3h Ah Qc]
[May 29 19:23:01] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:23:03] : jaytee2 bet 80
[May 29 19:23:10] : holfy called 80
[May 29 19:23:11] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:23:11] : Board cards [7d 3h Ah Qc 6c]
[May 29 19:23:14] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:23:17] : jaytee2 bet 300
[May 29 19:23:25] : holfy called 300
[May 29 19:23:26] : Showdown!
[May 29 19:23:26] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has As Ac
[May 29 19:23:28] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has As Ac
[May 29 19:23:28] : jaytee2 has 3 of a Kind: Aces
[May 29 19:23:28] : jaytee2 wins 920 with 3 of a Kind: Aces
[May 29 19:23:33] : jaytee2 : ok then
Somewhat disappointed I didn't get repopped
[May 29 19:23:37] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:23:37] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:23:37] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,500
[May 29 19:23:37] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,500
[May 29 19:23:37] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:23:37] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:23:37] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:23:37] : Game [3] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:23:37] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:23:37] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Qh 4s
[May 29 19:23:42] : holfy : the big i am
[May 29 19:23:45] : holfy called 20
[May 29 19:23:46] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:23:47] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:23:47] : Board cards [7c Jc 4c]
[May 29 19:23:49] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:23:51] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:23:51] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:23:51] : Board cards [7c Jc 4c 6s]
[May 29 19:23:53] : jaytee2 bet 40
[May 29 19:23:58] : holfy folded.
[May 29 19:23:58] : jaytee2 wins 80 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:24:01] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:24:01] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:24:01] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,460
[May 29 19:24:01] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,540
[May 29 19:24:01] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:24:01] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:24:01] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:24:01] : Game [4] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:24:01] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:24:01] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 7d Th
[May 29 19:24:04] : jaytee2 called 20 and raised 60
[May 29 19:24:07] : holfy called 60
[May 29 19:24:07] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:24:07] : Board cards [6c 3s 9d]
[May 29 19:24:12] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:24:14] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:24:15] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:24:15] : Board cards [6c 3s 9d Qc]
[May 29 19:24:18] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:24:19] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:24:20] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:24:20] : Board cards [6c 3s 9d Qc Ks]
[May 29 19:24:23] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:24:26] : jaytee2 bet 200
[May 29 19:24:27] : holfy folded.
Yes, we can all make river bluffs
[May 29 19:24:28] : jaytee2 wins 200 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:24:31] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:24:31] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:24:31] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,360
[May 29 19:24:31] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,640
[May 29 19:24:31] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:24:31] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:24:31] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:24:31] : Game [5] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:24:31] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:24:31] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 4d 5c
[May 29 19:24:41] : holfy called 20 and raised 100
[May 29 19:24:43] : jaytee2 folded.
Got to make him think that I'm not a maniac
[May 29 19:24:45] : holfy wins 80 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:24:48] : Hand is over.
[May 29 19:24:48] : Level up. New stakes : 30/60

[May 29 19:24:52] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:24:52] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,400
[May 29 19:24:52] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,600
[May 29 19:24:52] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:24:52] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:24:52] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:24:52] : Game [6] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:24:52] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:24:52] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 6c Jd
[May 29 19:24:54] : jaytee2 called 30
[May 29 19:24:56] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:24:56] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:24:56] : Board cards [2s 4h Ad]
[May 29 19:24:59] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:25:02] : jaytee2 bet 80
[May 29 19:25:04] : holfy called 80
[May 29 19:25:04] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:25:04] : Board cards [2s 4h Ad 9c]
[May 29 19:25:07] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:25:09] : jaytee2 bet 300
[May 29 19:25:15] : holfy called 300
[May 29 19:25:15] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:25:15] : Board cards [2s 4h Ad 9c 6s]
[May 29 19:25:18] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:25:19] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:25:19] : Showdown!
[May 29 19:25:19] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 6c Jd
[May 29 19:25:21] : Seat 1 : holfy has 3s 9s
Caught a bit on the end to show down. If I miss, I push. Shame he caught something better on the turn
[May 29 19:25:21] : holfy has Pair: 9s
[May 29 19:25:22] : holfy wins 880 with Pair: 9s
[May 29 19:25:29] : holfy : ahhhhhhhhh ha
No, my J6o didn't hold up, boo hoo
[May 29 19:25:31] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:25:31] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:25:31] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,840
[May 29 19:25:31] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,160
[May 29 19:25:31] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:25:31] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:25:31] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:25:31] : Game [7] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:25:31] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:25:31] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Ah Qh
[May 29 19:25:34] : holfy called 30
[May 29 19:25:37] : jaytee2 raised 120
[May 29 19:25:40] : holfy called 120
[May 29 19:25:40] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:25:40] : Board cards [Ad 4s 3s]
[May 29 19:25:43] : jaytee2 bet 240
[May 29 19:25:45] : holfy folded.
[May 29 19:25:46] : jaytee2 wins 360 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:25:49] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:25:49] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:25:49] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,660
[May 29 19:25:49] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,340
[May 29 19:25:49] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:25:49] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:25:49] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:25:49] : Game [8] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:25:49] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:25:49] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 2c As
[May 29 19:25:51] : jaytee2 called 30
[May 29 19:25:53] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:25:53] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:25:53] : Board cards [3h 5s Ts]
[May 29 19:25:57] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:25:58] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:25:59] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:25:59] : Board cards [3h 5s Ts 6h]
[May 29 19:26:02] : holfy bet 60
[May 29 19:26:03] : jaytee2 folded.
[May 29 19:26:06] : holfy wins 120 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:26:08] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:26:08] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:26:08] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,720
[May 29 19:26:08] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,280
[May 29 19:26:08] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:26:08] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:26:08] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:26:08] : Game [9] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:26:08] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:26:08] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 6c 3s
[May 29 19:26:13] : holfy called 30 and raised 120
[May 29 19:26:14] : jaytee2 folded.
[May 29 19:26:16] : holfy wins 120 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:26:19] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:26:19] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:26:19] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,780
[May 29 19:26:19] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,220
[May 29 19:26:19] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:26:19] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:26:19] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:26:19] : Game [10] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:26:19] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:26:19] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 3h 6s
[May 29 19:26:20] : jaytee2 folded.
[May 29 19:26:23] : holfy wins 60 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:26:25] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:26:25] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:26:25] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,810
[May 29 19:26:25] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,190
[May 29 19:26:25] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:26:25] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:26:25] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:26:25] : Game [11] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:26:25] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:26:25] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 3c 8c
[May 29 19:26:29] : holfy called 30 and raised 240
[May 29 19:26:31] : jaytee2 folded.
[May 29 19:26:32] : Seat 1 : holfy has 6h 9c
[May 29 19:26:32] : holfy wins 120 as the last player standing with [6h 9c]
You haven't seen what I've been getting
[May 29 19:26:37] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:26:37] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:26:37] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,870
[May 29 19:26:37] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,130
[May 29 19:26:37] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:26:37] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:26:37] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:26:37] : Game [12] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:26:37] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:26:37] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Jh Js
[May 29 19:26:40] : jaytee2 : beats 8-3
[May 29 19:26:41] : jaytee2 called 30
[May 29 19:26:44] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:26:45] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:26:45] : Board cards [Kc Kd 2h]
[May 29 19:26:47] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:26:49] : jaytee2 bet 120
[May 29 19:26:52] : holfy folded.
Thought I might get some action if he thinks I'm tilting
[May 29 19:26:52] : jaytee2 wins 120 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:26:55] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:26:55] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:26:55] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,810
[May 29 19:26:55] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,190
[May 29 19:26:55] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:26:55] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:26:55] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:26:55] : Game [13] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:26:55] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:26:55] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 8c Kc
[May 29 19:26:58] : holfy folded.
[May 29 19:26:58] : jaytee2 wins 60 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:27:01] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:27:01] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:27:01] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,780
[May 29 19:27:01] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,220
[May 29 19:27:01] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:27:01] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:27:01] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:27:01] : Game [14] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:27:01] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:27:01] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 2s Jc
[May 29 19:27:05] : jaytee2 called 30 and raised 90
[May 29 19:27:08] : holfy called 90 and raised 1,630 and is All-in
Ah, he's got the all-in in his arsenal. It's a cheapie anyway
[May 29 19:27:09] : jaytee2 folded.
[May 29 19:27:11] : holfy wins 300 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:27:14] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:27:14] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:27:14] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,930
[May 29 19:27:14] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,070
[May 29 19:27:14] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:27:14] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:27:14] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:27:14] : Game [15] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:27:14] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:27:14] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Tc 8c
[May 29 19:27:17] : holfy called 30
[May 29 19:27:18] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:27:19] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:27:19] : Board cards [9h 6s Qd]
[May 29 19:27:20] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:27:25] : holfy bet 100
[May 29 19:27:26] : jaytee2 called 100
[May 29 19:27:26] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:27:26] : Board cards [9h 6s Qd 8h]
[May 29 19:27:28] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:27:30] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:27:31] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:27:31] : Board cards [9h 6s Qd 8h Ks]
[May 29 19:27:32] : jaytee2 checked.
[May 29 19:27:36] : holfy bet 480
[May 29 19:27:37] : jaytee2 folded.
Missed my double belly-buster, don't want to call that much with an 8
[May 29 19:27:39] : Seat 1 : holfy has Js 5h
I don't care, there's a lot out there that beats me
[May 29 19:27:39] : holfy wins 320 as the last player standing with High Card : King
[May 29 19:27:44] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:27:44] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:27:44] : Seat 1 : holfy has $2,090
[May 29 19:27:44] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $1,910
[May 29 19:27:44] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:27:44] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:27:44] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:27:44] : Game [16] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:27:44] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:27:44] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 4h 3d
[May 29 19:27:46] : holfy : scared
Wow, you have the chip lead
[May 29 19:27:46] : jaytee2 called 30
[May 29 19:27:51] : holfy raised 120
[May 29 19:27:55] : jaytee2 folded.
Let's make him think I'm scared then push with montana banana or the hammer for value (comedy)
[May 29 19:27:57] : holfy wins 120 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:27:59] : Hand is over.
[May 29 19:27:59] : Level up. New stakes : 50/100

[May 29 19:28:03] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:28:03] : Seat 1 : holfy has $2,150
[May 29 19:28:03] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $1,850
[May 29 19:28:03] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:28:03] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:28:03] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:28:04] : Game [17] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:28:04] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:28:04] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Qh As
[May 29 19:28:06] : holfy called 50
[May 29 19:28:09] : jaytee2 raised 200
[May 29 19:28:15] : Stakes: 50/100 Current level: 3 Next level in: 3 min.
[May 29 19:28:22] : holfy called 200
[May 29 19:28:22] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:28:22] : Board cards [2d 5s 4d]
[May 29 19:28:25] : jaytee2 bet 1,550 and is All-in
[May 29 19:28:38] : holfy folded.
Can't stand the heat... what does he think I have?
[May 29 19:28:38] : jaytee2 wins 600 as the last player standing
[May 29 19:28:41] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:28:41] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:28:41] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,850
[May 29 19:28:41] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,150
[May 29 19:28:41] : jaytee2 is the dealer.
[May 29 19:28:41] : jaytee2 posted small blind.
[May 29 19:28:41] : holfy posted big blind.
[May 29 19:28:41] : Game [18] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:28:41] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:28:41] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 8d Ks
[May 29 19:28:42] : jaytee2 called 50
[May 29 19:28:45] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:28:45] : Dealing flop.
[May 29 19:28:45] : Board cards [Ts 9h Qs]
[May 29 19:28:51] : holfy bet 100
[May 29 19:28:53] : jaytee2 called 100
[May 29 19:28:54] : Dealing turn.
[May 29 19:28:54] : Board cards [Ts 9h Qs Qd]
[May 29 19:28:58] : holfy bet 100
[May 29 19:29:00] : jaytee2 called 100
[May 29 19:29:01] : Dealing river.
[May 29 19:29:01] : Board cards [Ts 9h Qs Qd Kh]
[May 29 19:29:03] : holfy checked.
[May 29 19:29:05] : jaytee2 checked.
Didn't want to bluff, these types could play a J/Q quite cute
[May 29 19:29:05] : Showdown!
[May 29 19:29:05] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 8d Ks
[May 29 19:29:07] : Seat 1 : holfy has 6h 9d
Nope, get paid
[May 29 19:29:07] : holfy has Two Pair: Queens and 9s
[May 29 19:29:07] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has 8d Ks
[May 29 19:29:07] : jaytee2 has Two Pair: Kings and Queens
[May 29 19:29:07] : jaytee2 wins 600 with Two Pair: Kings and Queens
[May 29 19:29:16] : Hand is over.

[May 29 19:29:16] : Hand Start.
[May 29 19:29:16] : Seat 1 : holfy has $1,550
[May 29 19:29:16] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has $2,450
[May 29 19:29:16] : holfy is the dealer.
[May 29 19:29:16] : holfy posted small blind.
[May 29 19:29:16] : jaytee2 posted big blind.
[May 29 19:29:16] : Game [19] started with 2 players.
[May 29 19:29:16] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[May 29 19:29:16] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Ks Kc
[May 29 19:29:21] : holfy called 50 and raised 400
Oh dear, you're pot committed now...
[May 29 19:29:23] : jaytee2 called 400 and raised 1,950 and is All-in
[May 29 19:29:27] : holfy called 1,050 and is All-in
[May 29 19:29:28] : Showdown!
[May 29 19:29:28] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Ks Kc
[May 29 19:29:30] : Seat 1 : holfy has 5d 6h
It's 6-4 you push with, FOUR. Amateurs.
[May 29 19:29:30] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Ks Kc
[May 29 19:29:39] : Board cards [5s 2d 3h Tc Jd]
[May 29 19:29:39] : Seat 2 : jaytee2 has Ks Kc
[May 29 19:29:39] : jaytee2 has Pair: Kings
[May 29 19:29:39] : Seat 1 : holfy has 5d 6h
[May 29 19:29:39] : holfy has Pair: 5s
[May 29 19:29:39] : jaytee2 wins 3,100 with Pair: Kings
[May 29 19:29:41] : jaytee2 : oops
Sorry, couldn't get it quietly - chat log in HH ends there, he replies prick.

Ring ding

2005-05-29T19:06:00.000+01:00

Considering that I've still not heard anyone using the ringtone (and if I did their phone is going off a bridge/under a bus), who the fuck not only bought the Crazy Frog single, but bought enough of them to send it to number 1? With between twice and four times as many (depending on how unreliable your source is) sales as Coldplay?

Could have been worse - the Frog and Coldplay could have held off release by a week and that chipmunk record by Akon would have been back to number 1.

Shame that, the chart was looking quite good apart from those. Coldplay, Oasis, Gorillaz and the Audio Bullys all in the top 10 is a good sign. Not forgetting Tony Christie as well. The rest of the chart isn't too bad as well. Of course, you can get in the top 40 with about six sales nowadays. That's how Brian McFadden got back in.

Now I know why I don't have a television

2005-05-27T22:55:00.000+01:00

Hmm. Big Brother's back, for a sixth series apparently. After the first one they've all blurred into one, I'm sure they were only up to five.

Anyway, Maxwell will win. This time I'm not even bothering to watch the first night to gauge my pick from (a la Gos and Marco from years gone by). Once you filter out all the exhibitionist twats and clear no hopers (Derek? Did he wander into the wrong audition?) there's not much left, if anything. Given the blurb on the website, he seems like a big enough idiot but not so ridiculously overt to win. Having said that, he was "paid to get drunk" for two years. Nice.

Let's just run through the bios. 70's dancer, hairdresser, Derek (it would be the funniest thing ever if he won), someone who lists their "very busty and curvaceous figure" as a key asset, belly dancer, token black woman, a psychic, Maxwell (well, a drunk), a former "Most Handsome Man in Italy" finalist, a bisexual bint with a tit job who'll podium dance naked for tickets (must try that if I ever come across Juice tickets), someone who believes "her unique selling point is her body", someone they appear to have listed twice, and another token black woman who seems to be an escapee from children's television. As I say, spot the odd one out.

Hmm, quickly looking at Betfair after I wrote that, Maxwell's the favourite at sevens, there's someone called "Science" - if that's a real name that's scary, if it's a gimmick, well, it's a gimmick.

I've written that much on reality TV that I'm not even watching? I scare myself at times...

New PokerStars SNG levels

2005-05-27T00:36:00.000+01:00

Much to my delight, PokerStars has introduced $1 sit and go tournaments. The $5 tourneys are a bit risky given my limited bankroll, and the cash is a bit pointless - limit bores me and NL seems ridiculous playing $0.01/0.02 - the nickel-dime game needs to be bought in for at least $5 and I don't want to play with just four buy-ins. Only thing is that the $1 games are 45 runner affairs. I think I'll have an edge in these, especially at 10 minute levels. They've still got that big 100/200/25 to 200/400/25 jump though. One's going to kick off in a minute, let's see how it goes :-)

edit - first hand, three people all in on Q-J-8 rainbow flop. A-Q vs. 8-8 vs. K-4! Even the K-4's backdoor flush was drawing dead to the A-Q, of the same suit. These could be fun. 20% juice is a bit much though...

edit - 11th/45. Damn that lasted a long time, wasn't quite as wild as expected. Got short but built myself up to about 4K before forcing someone all in with 10-9s when they had 4BB left, only for them to call in an instant with J-10s... then this happened - note my value call all-in [warning - bad beat follows]:

PokerStars Game #1773720446: Tournament #8326011, Hold'em No Limit - Level VIII (200/400) - 2005/05/26 - 20:59:19 (ET)
Table '8326011 5' Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: flyrooster (8835 in chips)
Seat 2: jaytee2 (2331 in chips)
Seat 3: gordocheese (6726 in chips)
Seat 6: strght---->> (7407 in chips)
Seat 7: Rick Card Z (6528 in chips)
Seat 8: Jared_Dye (2386 in chips)
flyrooster: posts the ante 25
jaytee2: posts the ante 25
gordocheese: posts the ante 25
strght---->>: posts the ante 25
Rick Card Z: posts the ante 25
Jared_Dye: posts the ante 25
flyrooster: posts small blind 200
jaytee2: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jaytee2 [2h Ad]
gordocheese: calls 400
strght---->>: folds
Rick Card Z: folds
Jared_Dye: folds
flyrooster: folds
jaytee2: checks
*** FLOP *** [2c 7s 2d]
jaytee2: checks
flyrooster said, "jared - youre like an STD"
gordocheese: bets 2000
jaytee2: calls 1906 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [2c 7s 2d] [9c]
*** RIVER *** [2c 7s 2d 9c] [Tc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jaytee2: shows [2h Ad] (three of a kind, Deuces)
gordocheese: shows [4c 3c] (a flush, Ten high)
gordocheese collected 4962 from pot
jaytee2 [observer] said, "JOPKE"

OMFG! OMFG! OMFG!

2005-05-25T23:36:00.000+01:00

That is the best game of football I have seen in my life. I have nothing more to say. I am speechless. I am all over the place. I am drunk. Jesus christ. Incredible.

Who does he think he is, Jenson Button?

2005-05-25T11:03:00.000+01:00

Following on from the story of the dibble who got clocked doing 159 on the M54 towards Telford (why someone would want to go towards Telford at speed, I don't know, and how the hell does a Vectra go at 159 anyway?) and got away with it, we have this just in from BBC News:

Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand has been banned from driving for 28 days after he was caught overtaking a police car at 105mph... [and] was also fined £1,500 by magistrates in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Now I'm not sure what the maximum fine is for speeding, and I don't really care, and I really hate it when magistrates take into account personal circumstances, especially for the poor, but surely we can make an exception for shit centre halves and fine him a weeks' wages? At, ooh, 70K a week, that could pay for three more bobbies, who could conveniently be enlisted into Glazer's crack protection team, should he ever decide to set foot in the country.

Of course, if he wants to avoid United fans, he ought to fly into Manchester. Heathrow's too risky - too close to Kent, Torquay and all the other hotbeds of United support.

Cheap shot, yes...

Kraftwerk

2005-05-23T23:33:00.000+01:00

Exam period feels like the Tour de France. Sure, I'm over Mont Ventoux, but I've still got the Alpe d'Huez and the Col du Tourmalet to come.

Cycling analogies aside, property wasn't too bad. The seen essay question went fairly badly but the problem questions were OK. I'm putting myself on about 52, which I'd have taken at the outset.

And I don't think I've mentioned Reyes' red card yet. Justice.

Greg Raymer freeroll

2005-05-22T23:31:00.000+01:00

Will be brief here... 160-odd/760 with no cards whatsoever. I had:

A-K once, which I played very badly but it didn't cost me much (only flat called preflop for some unknown reason instead of repopping all-in)

A-Q once, which I bet out preflop, got called, my continuation bet on a nothing flop got raised and I had to muck

A-J three times, in bad situations and they were all folded preflop - the last two may have been a little tight perhaps but I'm happy with that. The first had been raised twice before it came to me, the second was a suspicious minraise by a shortstack in early position for 20% of their stack - he gets repopped, calls with K-J but has walked into K-K which holds up, the third was the very next hand at the start of the next level which was minraised again by a shortstack in early position, exact same situation, only it's uncalled this time.

K-Q twice (one in the first level that got repopped by Freemo and got mucked, one got called in a few places and I won on the turn when an ace came, after continuation betting the flop and turn)

2-2 once (yes, that's the best and only pair I had).

I had the A-K in level 5 (75/150) - I'm on about 3210 and it costs me 450 but am still comfortable. The only hands I have after that were the second two A-J's.

I showed down 4 hands (and won 10 uncontested, thank god). One was an early nut flush which started me off nicely. The next was a 6-8 in the big blind on a 4-6-Q flop, checked, turn another Q, I know I'm leading now, bet and call by SB, river is a blank and my 6 beats his 4. One was a checked down flop-turn-river with me in the big blind which I lost. The last was my final hand, where someone takes out three players with a flopped flush. The introduction of the antes hurt me a lot, and when the big step from 100/200 to 200/400 came I suddenly find myself with less than 3BB and K-T looks like a monster. Which it isn't.

#Raps In Ukrainian#

2005-05-21T23:24:00.000+01:00

Hmm. There's something about the combination of shit music, comedy satellite delays, neighbouring country homosexuality and Wogan's xenophobia that makes Eurovision must-see viewing. I can't put my finger on it.

Random Moldavian drumming grandmothers, probably.

Quiz question

2005-05-20T19:44:00.000+01:00

Which university bookshop doesn't have any copies of statute books required for Monday's exam? Yep, Blackwell's are crap.

Although why I should need to spend fifteen quid on a book I'm going to use for precisely three hours (six if it'll double up for Property II), I have no idea. The university could very easily photocopy the relevant parts. Ah, they say, that would be very expensive! Yes, but so is the 1150 or whatever that I've paid them in fees. Fifteen love.

Good job Waterstone's had a copy. I used my HMV voucher there as well so it cost me nowt. Better than nowt if they let me return it. Although that means I didn't get to get either the British Sea Power CD or the (distinctly average) System of a Down CD. Arsecrisps.

WaSOP roundup

2005-05-19T23:02:00.000+01:00

Delayed, I know. I thought I'd get round to it now.

Kick off Friday, 10am. Outside Milan's, where instead of a nice little 1.4 he's bagged a Rover 75. I guess the hire place has got to use them as much as possible before they go ping. Needless to say Rich is still in bed. One trip up to Hunters Bar later and we're under way. Stop at a services a bit after 11, get some overpriced Burger King and find a bookies. Not good. Shove a quid on trap 3 in the 11.26 at Wimbledon, jopke. Fails horribly. A bad omen? I guess so.

Get down there about 40 minutes before the 1pm fiver NLHE rebuy. FInd Dave, they're still setting up and not registering yet. Nip up to the (newly modified) Graduate for a round of Grolsch (as the decent beer needs a barrel change). Finish that and we're under way.

Table looks fairly harmless. There's Dhruv (2nd in UKSPC) and a load of Warwick guys, some guy from (I think) Manchester doing a combination of a Matusow and Arama impression, and an empty seat (later taken up by Brice). First hand, 9-6s in the small blind. Limps in about three places, I complete and the BB checks. Flop is 8-7-5 kerching. I lead out for about 150 (blinds 25/50), Dhruv pushes and someone else calls. I call (duh), Dhruv has 10-9 and the other guy has garbage, triple up first hand. I drop down to about 2700 when I get Q-10. It's unraised and the flop comes K-J-9. A fish bets, Dhruv goes all in (I have him covered), I push and the fish calls. Dhruv has K-10 for top pair and a straight draw, fish has Q-9 for bottom pair and the other gutshot draw. So they have a combined 4 outs, 8K chips here I come...

Turn = Q
River = 9
Fish = runner runner boat. Fuck.

Knocks me down to about 1K3, flop a straight with 6-4 but don't get called, end up after a top up with about 2K2. Build it up to about 4K with steals and uncalled all-ins before I take on this guy who's moved to our table who's raising all the time with A-4, reraising all in and he calls with 9-9. Bye bye. Still, it's only cost me a tenner and I'd make that move again.

Nip out for a bit to examine the newly formed pool and snooker room... jesus. It's a mess. Grab my cue (which I've missed since Derby and no bugger did my retip request) for a quick game of pool... put it back in the cupboard which is an error as I don't see anyone else from snooker all weekend and the cue is still there. Grab some airfare then nip back down. Malcolm Harwood's only there, and I'm a bit of a PLO fish so I decline the tenner second chance. Play a couple of comedy quid STT's before hanging around waiting for an affordable cash game (I'm not playing the 25 min .50/1 blind game if they have an average stack of eighty quid). One doesn't arise and I also decline the limit HORSE game that gets set up.

Right now I'm also running low on options for places to stay. Pretty much everyone is unavailable or not answering. I go to the Graduate with every intention of sleeping in L3 before Milan calls and says that his room in the Holiday Inn is a twin. Kerching, that'll do. Only it's not the Holiday Inn that was pointed out when we were going in. Which I walked about three miles to. Anyways, Milan drives to pick me up (with some comedy dual carriageway slip road reversing manoeuvres) and we're done for the night.

Day 2 and we've got the heads up game. We've enlisted Sanjay and some guy from Heriot Watt whose name I forget. I win my first one, going behind early but regaining the lead then playing aggressively, eventually winning as K-5 is no match for my K-Q. Team wins 3-2. Round 2 is painful. I'm in complete control when I move in over the top of my guy with 4-4. He stares me down for EVER. Asks me if I have pockets. Ponders for some more. Finally decides that risking the match on at the very best a coinflip with 3-3 is a good idea. He hits quads. Next hand I'm outchipped but pick up Q-Q. Limp-reraise is called. Flop is 9-6-5. All the money goes in and he shows 8-7. Ouch. We lose 3-2. Third game I push with K-K and a board of 7-6-6-9, he has K-6. We lose 3-2. Finally 6-4 outdraws on 10-4 on a 7-5-4 flop to give me the lead and I win a kicker battle with us both holding an ace to finish. But we lose 3-2 and are out. Annoying. The main Sheffield team didn't do much better, and (wisely, in retrospect) deciding to give the HORSE a miss, we head to Varsity for some nice food, before going to Milan's hotel for a bit of STT action. It was all going well, I'd cashed in it, Amir had won and Stevenage had failed, then my A-10 was outdrawn by Pete's A-4 and that was that. I go to their hotel (somewhere in Nuneaton, of all places - made somewhat funny by driving for a large part of the A46 without headlights) and abuse their floor.

I give the main event on the Sunday a miss - Adam lands fourth for about 400 quid, a few people missed about two or three tables out. Ben turned up for the comedy large cash game. Watched the Norwich game in the airport which was somewhat humourous. West Brom survived - how, I don't know, and after trying and failing to get Varsity food again (damn mixed hockey tournament), watching the final table and thinking that going for two Carlings in five minutes was a good idea, we head back. All in all, a pricey weekend :-)

Woo hoo, yeah baby, Bill Fillmaff, yeah!

2005-05-17T19:26:00.000+01:00

Will talk of the Warwick weekend later, but I've just cleared the gambling losses of the weekend and more in one hit by winning a $2 MTT on VC for $87. 145 runners, best tourney victory to date.

Arsenal 7 (Seven) Everton 0

2005-05-11T23:47:00.000+01:00

Compared to Liverpool's tight as a gnat's muff European defence, I bet the continent's strikeforces are licking their lips. Even Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and DaMarcus Beasley. Hell, if Flamini can score, I'd be worried about David Moyes' heart condition.

And Henry didn't even score. Jesus.

Elections, morons, jopke

2005-05-10T18:13:00.000+01:00

I'm not posting on a weekly basis, honest...

Bill Fillmaff is a comedy genius. Random fluctuations of dumb luck. Classic. www.billfillmaff.com if you're wondering. Jopke jopke jopke.

Well, we've had one of those election things, and not a lot has changed really. Labour's majority has been halved and a bit, that's about it. Hats off to the Blaenau Gwent people for standing up to discriminatory policies from Labour, and I suppose Galloway's election is a bit of a coup. Some guy in Northern Ireland went whose name I forget. Won a Nobel peace prize, apparently. Funny that, when was the last time there was peace there?

Pretty much done with lectures now. Have two hours of torts on Friday but there's really not much to cover there and I'll probably be en route to Coventry at the time in order to play the 5 pound NLHE event (1pm start, no way I can get from Sheffield to Warwick in two hours without a chopper). Looking forward to the team event if we can find two more people to join the dream team of me, Rich and Milan... that match could be over very quickly. Horse will be fun as well... I need to learn razz quickly and the only material I have is, ironically, Hellmuth's :-)

As for being done with lectures, how many fucking imbeciles are there on my course? Ignoring the fact that you can barely hear the lecturer due to random talking and giggling (if you want a chat, there's a bar like two minutes away), I swear that not only did someone have their phone ring (silence is easy, motherfucker), but they started a conversation as well. Jesus. I'd be able to tell properly but there's so much fucking background noise it's untrue. If you want to do something other than listen to the lecturer quietly, fuck off. It's that simple. Then we can downscale to an actual lecture theatre.

Steel Press printed my political bias rant. Nice. And they referred to it in their editorial. Nick Clegg (former MEP, no less) got in in any case. Wasn't quite as marginal a constituency as I thought, on rechecking the 2001 result. Was only a 2% swing in any case.

Two seminars to go then we're done barring exams. Property in less than two weeks, revision starts here :-(

[edit (11/5) - to continue with the fucking imbeciles point, I'm pretty sure that they didn't spend lots of cash on computers in the Crookesmoor library for people to be playing Spider Solitaire. Good job there was a computer free for a change at the time, otherwise I'd predict a riot]

Someone buy me a Beckham Madrid shirt. I'm not bitter

2005-05-03T00:44:00.000+01:00

First post while being 23. Woot. Congrats to Shaun Murphy on becoming world champion, well deserved.

Birthday celebrations were good. Saturday was one of those drink anything that moves days and sleep until 6pm the day after jobs... nice. Having five in the Cobden before coming back for the "party" was a sign of things to come...

Today was cool as well. Get down to Bar One for some drinks, watching snooker and playing pool, whilst looking for a pen, then off to Walkabout to have some nice drinks (and getting a pen en route, resulting in some poor Su Doku attempts). Back to Bar One when it had stopped raining, and then catching MJ Hibbett in the Interval, spoiled by poor acoustics somewhat. Back to Earnshaw to catch the end of Murphy's Welsh-killing job. Quality.

Course is OK at the moment. Got some property back, about par so I'll take that. Exams are drawing close and some hours will have to be put in. Boo.

A few random comments

2005-04-26T23:26:00.000+01:00

- I'm now poksoc's secretary. Game was quite fun as I wanted to be off quickly to watch Arsenal-Spurs and hurl abuse at Reyes - won about the first 10 hands, indiscriminately raising with junk (only decent hand I got in that spell was 6-4), then got knocked down to 600 when I lost a race with A-J vs. John's 8-8. Lost the rest soon after when my preflop raise with 8-6 was called, flop comes A-K-10 all diamonds, my all-in was called by John again with 7d-7 and IGNH. Initial tactic only worked because Milan was on another table and the table was generally tight. And five handed, as well.

- Signed for the house today. It's costing me less than Woodvale is at the moment for an extra three months, but bills have to be paid for there. It's in a nice enough place with some good pubs nearby.

- This week's Steel Press is the most pro-Lib Dem thing I've read outside of their party literature. I wonder if they'll print my tirade complaining about it. Hell, if they printed my diatribe about their crossword they ought to print a serious complaint...

- The Crucible is a really nice venue to watch snooker in. Got nowhere else to compare it to (may have to try to get to York next year) but it's decent. Funniest moments were "baulk colour sweepstakes" and one of the steward's radios going off.

- Apparently March was Dora The Explorer month on Nick Jr. Damn, I missed it.

- Why people are speculating about who gets the fourth CL spot next year if Liverpool win the thing is pointless, as Liverpool will get a kicking by Chelsea. In any case, they'll give it to Liverpool as, unless you're Man United off on a jolly to Brazil or wherever, you defend a trophy. Incidentally, if Liverpool did win it, would they then get a bye to the group stage and reduce Arsenal to the qualifying stage? I really don't see why we don't get an extra place anyway, that's the way it always worked. Imagine if a country with only one qualifier won it, and that team somehow didn't win their domestic. Do you pick the champions of the country (who, unlike Chelsea, Liverpool and PSV, actually befit the term Champions League) or the holders of the CL?

Sheffield students stupid?

2005-04-19T17:50:00.000+01:00

Long time no post...

Anyways, I happened to be in our student shop the other day and noticed that several of the beer stacks had pieces of paper by them, clearly indicating there's an offer on. Hmm, let's investigate:

Fosters' 99p/can, 4 for 3.96

Hmm, that's not cheap... wait, that's not even an offer? Why the hell are they telling us the price of a four pack if it's exactly the same as the price of four single cans? It's the same on all of them.

I'm guessing they assume we can't multiply by four or something. Jesus.

Best of the web

2005-04-08T19:42:00.000+01:00

It's bloody snowing again. It's April. The weather can fuck off. Anyways, the chances are that if you're reading this, you've either clicked the wrong link somewhere or you've got some similar interest to me or something. So here's 10 websites I couldn't do without which you might want to check out:

Newgrounds - The best collection of Flash on the web, with over five years of good stuff to look through. Decent BBS as well, and developing audio section.

GameFAQs - An absolute godsend if you play video games. Tips on pretty much every game in existence, and a huge selection of forums.

Project Rockstar - referred to in my previous post, this is a pretty neat online music management simulation, probably the best online game I've played.

Internet Movie Database - this thing is probably the most in depth single topic site there is. If you want to know anything about films, it should be your first stop.

Wikipedia - it's so easy to waste hours here. An online encyclopedia, edited by normal users. It's so easy just to click from one thing to another, the way the web was designed to work.

Fark - should be a first port of call for all things news. Collates serious, funny and sheer stupid articles from around the world. Handy as a live bookmark in Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox - if you're not using this already, start now.

Slashdot - similar to Fark but more technology based.

Urban 75 - I don't visit this as often as I used to, but it's a good read.

b3ta - best known for their weekly newsletter, an ideal place for Photoshoppers and all things random.

Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars

2005-04-08T12:22:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to point out that I have the number 1 album on Project Rockstar. Woo hoo.

Somerfield = crap, forthcoming election

2005-04-06T23:36:00.000+01:00

Having been accused of writing about nothing but poker, and having been the result of well thought out, intellectual comments like "You are gay", I thought I'd alter the tone of this blog slightly and bitch about things other than poker. Although I will add that I grabbed another $7.50 for 16th in last Monday's freeroll...

Somerfield, not being one of the bigger supermarkets, is always overpriced. But what I don't understand is that their special offers fall into two categories. One is the normal offers, the other are "saver card deals". I never understood the latter for several reasons:

1) It's completely free to get a saver card, and it's just adding to their costs to produce them (and those new keyfob barcode things that you can use as well, which, incidentally, Tesco have sent to me, despite only registering for their online shopping and browsing).

2) The idea of getting people to sign up for one is so that they'll stupidly give out real addresses on the forms so they can send you junk mail and random coupons that might persuade you to buy stuff from them. But when was the last time anyone ever took up an offer that they received through junk mail?

3) Even if you don't have a saver card, it doesn't matter because every single till has one anyway which they swipe through so you get the offers anyway.

So why don't they just do away with this loyalty card bullshit and make all their goods cheaper?

Blair's called an election. Whoopee-do. Millions couldn't care. Because:

- The vast majority of people live in safe seats for one of the big two parties so their vote doesn't count
- The vast majority of people who live in a marginal constituency couldn't give a fuck anyway as all the main parties are just as bad as each other

Who am I likely to vote for? The last time, I voted in Macclesfield (rated, IIRC, the fifth safest Tory seat in the country at the time) and voted Lib Dem for some unknown reason - a mental aberration, I'd guess. This time, I may vote in Sheffield, but will have to do the research as to whether there's any chance (probably not) of Labour being ousted and whether UKIP are standing. They're my first choice of party and will vote in Sheffield if they're standing there. If not, I'll get a postal and vote in Macc if they're standing there. The only reason I vote for them is that they are primarily a single issue party and said issue is the one I find the most important. If I can't vote UKIP, I don't know. I'm hugely against party politics anyway, but I'll never vote Labour (as they've quite frankly done a shit job with respect to the issues I find important) and won't be voting Lib Dem either, as they'll sell our country to Brussels before Kennedy can get to the bar for a celebratory drink. Tories? Seem the best option. I like their immigration policies, views on travellers, seem to talk the most sense.

If you want people to care about politics, abolish the party system. Force candidates to stand on what they believe, not what their party tells them to do. People would be elected more on local issues, and what their local people want. You'd also get rid of the farcical system whereby Labour with its' big majority can pass whatever the hell it likes, even when the Lords repeatedly tell them to fuck off (see the hunting furore). With no party line to toe, MP's would vote on what they believe (and likely what their constituents believe due to the reformed electoral system) and we'd have government policy more accurately reflecting what the public want.

Of course, nobody in power would ever allow that to happen as that would be career suicide. I only hope that some day there's hundreds of Wyre Forest style people standing on local issues, enough to win a large number of seats to make the leading party's influence minimal unless they actually have to listen to and be influenced by normal people. The one thing that would be an absolute disaster is a hung Parliament, then Kennedy's europhiles might actually have a say in things.

Multitabling and other poker things

2005-04-02T17:38:00.000+01:00

Will quickly detail this heads up SNG I just played - outchipped more than 3 to 1, then won one with the Hammer (7-2) all-in, making a straight at the same time his 10-8 makes two pair, then got all the money in again with K-K, the other guy putting all his money in on a K turn drawing dead, then killing him off with the filthy McBastard (K-6s). Only trouble was that I didn't get the Arlo in anywhere.

Have started multitabling the small NL tables on Stars, due to killing my bankroll with $5 SNG's and bad play at the next level up of cash game - have got my bankroll back above the VC level at least. It really helps playing two tables at once - you get more hands (duh) so it helps with patience - it's easier to muck junk if you're getting twice as many hands. The decent hands come along more often. Results have been good as well. Don't think I'll go back to one tabling until I step up, although I may as well get the roll high enough to two table that level.

I believe today's results resulted in Stockport getting relegated. Like the Pope really, not if but when. Old Division 4, here we come.

Was reading the Times yesterday and there was a proposal to restructure the Premiership along the lines of the NFL, whereby 32 teams compete in two 16-team conferences, each with four divisions and everything. One thing it didn't mention, namely how to get promoted/relegated from this cartel. Answers on a postcard please.

CD want list, funny poker hand

2005-04-01T12:38:00.000+01:00

Will detail the poker hand first. VC heads-up, get dealt J-2 off the button. Get called, raise to 100, get called. Flop J-4-2. Bet, call. Turn Q. Bet, call. River J. Bet, he raises all in, I call, he shows J-4 for a bigger boat...

Some CD's I want: the new ones from Queens Of The Stone Age, Daft Punk, Doves (may actually have this one off Ourtunes) and British Sea Power. Also want the singles from Hard Fi and Subfocus.

Nothing else to say... was another album I want but I forget for now, may edit later if I remember :-)

Am I alright?

2005-03-31T16:31:00.000+01:00

Is it wrong that I'm starting to find Scott Mills' show funny?

England = crap, but job done I guess. Hopefully United have found their new goalkeeper. Keeping one of Madrid's strikeforce and their midfield dynamo to one goal is a lot better than Carroll or Howard would have managed. Two if Gerrard chooses Real instead of Chelsea.

Having said that, if they face Wisla Krakow they're fucked :-)

VC Student Poker - cashed!

2005-03-28T23:54:00.000+01:00

A bit disappointing to have only come 21st - outdrew A-10 with J-8 but the other guy rivered a straight... anyways got a nice start, had A-K first hand and won a pot to move me up to about 2300, which was nice. It enabled me to limp a few times with small pairs, mostly missed but eventually hit middle set with 6-6. I lead out and get called. I manage to get all my money in with a checkraise on the turn and the other guy has bottom set. Double up to about 4K5. This does me well for a while, the table's aggressive and I stay out of the way until Il_Padrino comes to my table. I find A-Qs in second position and he minraised UTG. I decide to call and see what the flop brings. Q-Q-2 two suits get in. He shoves before I can bet and I call, he has A-K for the flush draw, turn is an A making that irrelevant, up to 8K. Don't have too many cards, fluctuate for a while. Get moved to Wlleiotl's table and he's got a huge stack (but busts near the bubble). Bust someone from Warwick with K-K against A-9, and get up to about 10K. This is good enough to approach the bubble, then have Alex Scott move to the table. Immediately loses a couple of key pots, gets short, then uses a strange strategy of all-in's and controversial calls to move up and down a lot. Have to fold the arlo near the bubble when there's fierce action before it comes to me. Have to fold it again after making the money as I get the suited variety UTG. Key hand comes when Alex minraises then a shortstack moves in for about the same again. For some reason I find a reason to muck A-K (still a couple of people to act behind me who have me covered)... sees A-J against J-8 oops. 8 comes and the 20-20 hindsight says good pass... that's the last of the good cards I get, down to 8K with 600/1200 blinds and I'm the short stack of the tournament, folded round to me in the SB and get called with the hand first described. Arse, but it's another $5 for nothing and it's doubled the free money VC gave me :-)

How the tiers of the Premiership work and other sporting crap

2005-03-20T23:36:00.000Z

Off the bat, congrats to Wales for winning the grand slam. With that out of the way, lets move on to the farce that was Liverpool - Everton.

I'm not going to discuss the referee any further, apart from to say he was a homer (booking Everton players for the slightest touch, ignoring a clear elbow to the face of Carsley, making a token gesture after Baros tried to break Alan "God" Stubbs' leg in an ex-fantasy league player trying to come back to haunt me gesture). Everton were clearly the better team - Liverpool got two lucky goals, due to that retarded "tap the ball two yards to the side so that the wall can be half the distance away when they shoot" free kick routine actually working due to Gerrard's shot sneaking under three separate defenders, and Martyn being caught in two minds for Morientes' speculative effort leaving Luis Garcia to score the easiest goal he'll ever score (although he did try to put it over, only Ljungberg could miss from there).

The whole point of this is that Liverpool are now in with an outside chance of overtaking their city rivals for the last Champions League spot, and coupled with their Reserve Team Cup final appearance and CL quarter final (achieved by a last minute winner against Olymipakos, who Newcastle coincidentally put seven past, and meeting a pisspoor Leverkusen), and ergo their fans will still think they're a "big club". Clue - you ceased to be a big club some time in the early 90's when you stopped being a genuine contender for the title. There's only three big clubs - United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Chelsea only being there as a result of being the latest team to be bankrolled to success (cf. Blackburn, Newcastle for a while, Leeds being the biggest case of self-implosion, at least Blackburn bounced back from relegation). Nobody else is coming within a sniff of a title. The best a non-big club is to hope to get 4th and qualify for the gravy train of the Champions League (we'll leave the aberration of a fourth place finisher making the "Champions" League for another post) a few times and join the big boys.

Liverpool are not a big club. Neither are Newcastle, Aston Villa (to me, they were last any good in the early 80's when they won the European Cup. As did Nottingham Forest, who look destined to either go into the old Third Division, or just escape), Man City, Spurs (who are surely the worst offenders for believing they're a big club - White Hart Lane's a shithole, live with it) or anyone else outside the top 3. They're on precisely the same level as Bolton, Charlton, Middlesbrough etc. who've fought their way up to become regular Premiership contenders, i.e. fighting for UEFA Cup places.

There are precisely three tiers - United, Arsenal, Chelsea, then those who aren't likely to get relegated, then those who can fuck it up (the borderline for the bottom two tiers is miniscule - cf. Southampton). Every team in that bottom tier can join every other team in the pyramid as far as I'm concerned - Birmingham are just as likely to qualify for Europe as Norwich, Wigan or Accrington Stanley. The likes of Liverpool need to stop living on past glories and get a fucking team together.

By the way, isn't it nice to see two grands prix without the name Schumacher featuring on the top of the rostrum? I wouldn't know, as they've buggered off to the third world for the first two and I'm not watching the thrill of pit stops at three in the morning. Even if I had a telly I wouldn't.

UK universities pool - not great

2005-03-19T12:49:00.000Z

Played the UK universities pool singles competition yesterday down at Derby, as Sheffield's sole representative (not due to being in a different class to everyone else at uni, mainly because nobody else could be arsed). After a torts cancellation (need not have got up for 9 then... arse) I can make it down to Derby nice and early. Yes, got as far as Derby nice and early, took a while to find McLusky's (which is a nice enough venue, despite extortionate drinks prices as is the par for these places - luckily they had 2 for 1 on bottles), after walking through Derby city centre from the rail to bus station... I say city centre, there's a few shops and that's it. If they need a new nuclear weapon calibration site, I suggest there. Grab a bus in the direction of Spondon - driver doesn't know where the place is, although the bus should go straight past it. Eventually I see Spondon Snooker Club, figure that's a good place to try. Is the right place, thankfully, and I'm there for my match a good 5 hours early or so (taking into account they're naturally running late). Register, grab a coke (1 pound/half...) and find the Warwick boys for a chinwag. Dibben's doing some of his project, Charles is busy losing in the first round, and the rest of the B team are about, as is Richie Vegas. A few quid shoved in the quiz machines later, and I eventually kick off my prelim match for the right to get into the last 128. Playing Abdur from Cambridge, lose 3-1. Take the first with a little good fortune, lose the second after jawing a difficult black after a bad positional shot on the last colour, outplayed in the third and then lose the fourth after being caught in two minds whether to play a pot or safety and get neither, leaving him enough room to cut in a black which I thought I'd cover anyway. The guy then beats last year's England B captain (I think, Matt O'Keeffe from Durham anyway) 3-0 before losing to UK number 6 (outright, not students) Neil Raybone. I wasn't going far even if I won then... Raybone eventually gets through to Mark Jones (who dumped out seed Ricky Taylor earlier) and wins 3-2 in a good match.

Incidentally, during my match some guy from Middlesex starts effing and jeffing good and proper, clearly because he doesn't know world rules. If we're talking poker, it's a Hellmuth 20 minute job. Had to take a tactical time out to let the guy calm down.

Shove some more money in the quizzie, down some cheap beers and watch the Warwick kids. Only one who has any luck is "shit the bed" Dibben, who reaches the quarters in the junior section despite good efforts from all. Unfortunately, I nearly fucked over his chances good and proper. After Vegas is the last to complete, Craig gives me a lift back to Derby station (at which I had to wait 90 mins for the last Sheffield train, then get a surprisingly cheap cab back). I grab my cue and bag, check I've not missed the last train and signal them off (I could have gone back to Leam with them). At least I think that's my cue... shit that's Dibben's cue. Give them a bell, don't know what to do. Can they turn back? No, they're at Leicester by now. Luckily some guys from Birmingham were about as they missed their last train, and leave it with them. While John's cue is (hopefully) safely in his possession, mine's in Craig's car and will likely be on Ebay within days.

All in all, a bit of a pisser of a day, but it was a laugh. Didn't help my bank balance though :-)

Administrative errors kick ass

2005-03-14T18:10:00.000Z

Heh, because some people cocked things up, a lot of the ILLS marks were incorrect. So instead of the previously reported 58, I actually got 68. Get in.

Have seen the UK uni pool draw. Got a prelim against some guy who's doing OK in Cambridge's league, followed by some guy from Durham who beat Rich from Warwick at 9-ball in the team final of that event. First Warwick player I could conceivably play is Jonesy in the last 16. I wish :-)

England rugby - an objective analysis

2005-03-13T17:36:00.000Z

I was amused to read the back page of the Times yesterday where Sir Clive Woodward (for it is he) says that England need to stop whining about injuries and bad refereeing decisions to start winning again. There's just one small problem with that - we don't need to have both of those fixed in order to win again, just one will do. A non-bent ref would have seen us home against Ireland (who choked against a poor French team who weren't playing well but still repeatedly crossed the Irish line, something they couldn't do against us), someone who can kick (a certain Newcastle fly half springs to mind) and we beat France, and probably Wales as well. Then the grand slam is as good as ours.

We're not as bad as things look (although it's difficult to come up with good comments when we've got a fourth place playoff with Scotland next week), but we're definitely a team in transition. Look at the team against Italy yesterday and who the survivors from the World Cup are - Steve "Liability" Thompson, Ben "Teflon" Kay and Josh "Fairy" Lewsey. We're missing both of our props through injury, Johnno's gone but we've got Danny the Thug to play 4, the dream team back row has seen Richard Hill (by far the most important player we have) out long term and two retirements. Dawson's past it, Wilko's always injured. Cohen's been usurped by Cuets, Mike "God" Tindall's been off the pitch more than on it and Greenwood's nowhere. Even Robinson was injured.

A full strength England team is easily the best in the northern hemisphere at present, and if we use comparisons via Wales, still competitive against anyone. We've just not seen that team once since Sydney.

By the way, it's a shame Ireland lost yesterday. They normally leave their choking until the last game. Now Wales will have the sole opportunity to fluff their lines on the biggest stage.

Results - good!

2005-03-11T11:45:00.000Z

58 on ILLS, 55 on public (?) and 52 on contract. All 2:2's, not great but I'll take them seeing how they don't count for anything in the long run.

Long time no post...

2005-03-09T14:59:00.000Z

Have just about got over this cold I've had for the past week or so... apart from that what's been happening? Not much, just plodding along until the Easter break. Won my table on Monday to go top of the league, a proper demolition job in about 45 minutes, raising like a madman (and drawing out on people three times to knock them out... only time I was ahead, the guy called off his stack because "he knew I was bluffing"... with a full house) but not winning quickly enough to play the VC freeroll. Did the Earnshaw quiz on Sunday - shit music selection (Eamon and Frankee back to back... Matinee five times... shuffle button broken) and 18/50 due to an impossible 20 mark music round. Winners got 40+ apparently. Cheats. Did the Cobden quiz yesterday while watching the Chelsea game (get in!), made 16/31 before the cavalry arrived from the curry house with one question to go to pull up to 21. Win was 27 though.

And I've installed Pine on my computer now - no more using the really shit webmail portal to check my emails. Also discovered that Sheffield do, in fact, have a NNTP server, with a surprising number of alt.binaries.erotica groups... filthy IT techie types :-)

Up, up, up, down, up

2005-03-01T12:11:00.000Z

No posts for a while - have been pouting for a bit over England's continued pisspoor performances and Kaplan's blatant disregard for the rules, tempered only by a Rooney brace and Solano goal to consolidate my fantasy league lead. Still, yesterday was a bit of a rollercoaster - quickly up a fiver on the quiz machines, then my day was kind of thrown out a bit by a very (read - 40 minutes) early end to the afternoon property double header (cheers Pete!). This left me with far too much time on my hands, meaning that I got down to the Cat rather early for the UKSPC qualifier shootout. Some quick chips and laughing at Rich's Su Doku inadequacies later (the bastards have put up the prices of the burgers again... 5.75 is a bit too pricey) and we kick off. I'm on the same table as Kev, Dan, Charlotte and some other woman who I don't recognise (apparently only played twice in her life - no disrespect but it showed). Got a little shortstacked but we were down to three due to Dan's dubious stack management. Win a checked down pot off Kev with kings (ace on the flop, another on the turn - I think we both thought we had a third) and he folds to a couple of all-ins as well to put me on a precisely average stack. Kev then knocks Charlie out and has a precise 2:1 chip advantage heads up. This doesn't last long - we get all-in preflop, his A-6 suited against my Q-10 suited (both the same suit, funnily enough). A rivered queen reverses the stacks and I get J-9 in the SB. Limp, check, flop is J-J-9. Check, check, turn is a queen, Kev stacks, I beat him to the pot, his Q-6 doesn't improve. Final table!

This wasn't as good. Leda busts out early and another player drops out, leaving four left - effectively three for two tickets as John was ineligible. After playing one pot with Q-Q in the first level and folding on the turn to a scary board (after a 2x the pot bet which would set me all-in), I nick the blinds with A-3 (all-in uncalled), and with about 1000 and 100-200 blinds, I pick up A-10 UTG and move in, called quickly by A-K and I get no help. Bubbled, fuck.

Still, I picked up a cookbook for it, and my mood is slightly improved by the fact that Real Groovy's replacement Back Of The Y DVD has arrived! The first one went AWOL, but I'll give them credit for sending out a replacement and it coming quickly. Excellent.

Played one turbo heads-up today and get A-A first hand in the BB. SB goes all-in before I can act! His 9-8 stood no chance, quickest win ever :-)

Champions' League and various crap

2005-02-24T00:11:00.000Z

Good to see that English teams (with the bizarre exception of Liverpool) have decided to self-destruct once the cushy give-us-your-money group stages have finished. Arsenal - Munich was a real men against boys job, Man U looked completely impotent in front of goal in a really dull match, my disgust of which was tempered somewhat by Carroll's howler relieving the boredom, coughing up for Crespo to slot away, and Chelsea - well, I don't know how Chelsea did, because no bloody pub would show it. Man U - Milan's a fine match selection on normal days, but not when Barca - Chelsea is available. This is somewhat more annoying by the fact that Earnshaw was advertising that Halifax was showing the game, which they weren't. And I doubt anyone will be showing the Chelsea game next time, despite the fact there's a lot more running left in that game (anyone who thinks that Man U will score more than once in Italy is very much mistaken). The only saving grace is that Werder Bremen were worse than all the English efforts put together. The group stage ought to filter out the sorts of teams that can lose 3-0 at home to Lyon. Or ship three to a Morientes and Cisse-less Liverpool. The German league must just be that bad.

And all radio can stop playing that boring as hell Athlete single any time they like. It was average the first time I heard it, now it's just dull. Coupled with U2 making the worst number 1 since Babycakes, it's clear that the music industry implodes when there's not been any Coldplay material for a while. Just finish the album guys.

Believe in the power of the arlo!

2005-02-20T15:47:00.000Z

Just had the royal arlo, got paid nicely:

PokerStars Game #1243648793: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2005/02/20 - 10:44:11 (ET)
Table 'Hind' Seat #8 is the button
Seat 2: Acydfreak ($2.01 in chips)
Seat 3: momudpuppy ($4.17 in chips)
Seat 4: dannem7 ($9.96 in chips)
Seat 6: jaytee2 ($1.94 in chips)
Seat 7: Cmanche Slim ($1.79 in chips)
Seat 8: wishmaster2 ($3.34 in chips)
Acydfreak: posts small blind $0.01
momudpuppy: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jaytee2 [6s 4s]
dannem7: calls $0.02
jaytee2: calls $0.02
Cmanche Slim: calls $0.02
wishmaster2: calls $0.02
Acydfreak: raises $0.02 to $0.04
momudpuppy: folds
dannem7: calls $0.02
jaytee2: calls $0.02
Cmanche Slim: calls $0.02
wishmaster2: calls $0.02
*** FLOP *** [3s 7s Js]
Acydfreak: checks
dannem7: checks
jaytee2: bets $0.20
Cmanche Slim: folds
wishmaster2: calls $0.20
Acydfreak: folds
dannem7: folds
*** TURN *** [3s 7s Js] [5s]
jaytee2: bets $0.30
wishmaster2: raises $0.30 to $0.60
jaytee2: raises $1.10 to $1.70 and is all-in
wishmaster2: calls $1.10
*** RIVER *** [3s 7s Js 5s] [3h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jaytee2: shows [6s 4s] (a straight flush, Three to Seven)
wishmaster2: mucks hand
jaytee2 collected $3.82 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $4.02 | Rake $0.20
Board [3s 7s Js 5s 3h]
Seat 2: Acydfreak (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: momudpuppy (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: dannem7 folded on the Flop
Seat 6: jaytee2 showed [6s 4s] and won ($3.82) with a straight flush, Three to Seven
Seat 7: Cmanche Slim folded on the Flop
Seat 8: wishmaster2 (button) mucked [As 8c]

Elections silly season started - six people care

2005-02-18T16:06:00.000Z

9am torts lecture today was made briefly amusing by someone who's running for one of the sabb positions. This is all I remember of it, apart from that it was blatantly being read off a piece of paper, so memorable were her policies that she needs to write them down to recall:

"Hello, blah blah blah, Women's Officer (normally I'd turn off here, but unlike the discrimination hellhole that is Warwick, men are allowed to vote), blah blah blah, free condoms, blah blah blah" - throws out sweets.

This is the flaw with student politics - apart from the fact that I couldn't hear her name, every candidate runs on the exact same ticket. The temptation to go to hustings and just ask "what policies do you have that are different from your opponents?" is huge. But I really doubt I'd care, seeing how whoever has the biggest social circle wins anyway (cf. the rugby union reign of terror at Warwick). I don't know any of the candidates (well, I might do, but there's less than two weeks until a vote and I've seen none of the following:

- dozens of coloured A4 posters around the union with some witty pun attached to their name
- prior to today, anyone openly going round advertising they're running with some ridiculous publicity stunt/gimmick
- a list of candidates from whatever Sheffield's equivalent of Elections Group is, in the Steel Press or anywhere)

I'm sure they're all decent people - all of the ex-sabbs I knew from Warwick were alright folk, as were those I knew that didn't get in. It's just that I couldn't give a shit who wins.

edit (19/2) - I've just had a look at the pdf for the candidates that's shown up on the union website. Luckily, good old RON's available for election.

Poker and stuff

2005-02-16T19:02:00.000Z

Not said much recently... not much going on apart from England being crap really, and having broke through the 1000 point barrier in the fantasy football (Henry, Rooney and Defoe having a VERY good weekend). Lost pub quiz yesterday with 27/31... team with 30 clearly had a Mr. G. Oogle working for them. May have to lay off the poker for a little bit... heads up in a friendly at the Cat on Monday, run into A-K, Q-Q and K-K in the space of about five hands and call them all in each time. First one lost me the chip lead, second one I cracked with 3-5 on an A-2-4 flop (kekekekeke) and then lost the third and the match. Just had A-A in a Stars ring game, raise to 4xBB, get one caller. Flop is K-Q-9 two clubs, bet out, get raised by the same amount, shove and get called. I fear the straight or K-Q, but I was ahead. Turn is a blank, river is Ac giving me a set. Shame he turned over J-5 of clubs :-)

edit - made back that A-A bad beat cash with A-J on a flop of J-J-4... other guy's 7-4 was no good, funnily enough, but then lost it back again later when K-Q lost to 9-4 on a K-9-4 board. I knew he didn't have A-K :-)

Steel Press still crap, other musings

2005-02-11T17:07:00.000Z

I had to laugh at some things in the Steel Press today. Firstly, their description of Sheffield's hockey 1's winning 15-0 against Huddersfield "convincing" - I'd love to know of those unconvincing games where you score every five minutes.

Then we've got 3am wannabe and talentless hack Wailo Li exposing the Devonshire Cat as a nice place to drink - "arguably Sheffield's best kept secret" - ahem. One can only hope that the average student is put off by the high prices and doesn't realise that you get what you pay for. The reason it's nice is that it's not full of the dicks that frequent Cavendish and Varsity.

Then we've got Wilkinson claiming "I don't think that these [Juice] tickets are sold on to non-members [of sports clubs]" in response to complaints that the Christmas Juice sold out rather quickly. Let's do some simple maths here. "The guy who was first in the queue [Rugby Union's social sec] bought 160 tickets". When was the last time that anyone saw any sports social attract even 60 members? I wonder where those other 100 tickets go to? Rugby members' mates by any chance?

And as to whoever was making the complaint in the first place, why are you surprised? And why would you want to go to an event which I can best describe as Top B with all the Decadance/Score cognoscenti - ie. shit music with pissed dickheads? Each to their own I guess, but I cannot believe that you couldn't get a ticket. Just stump up the cash to one of the cheaper (sic) sports clubs and buy through them. Not exactly rocket science.

And "hi, I'm Josh from Ed Bram" is getting a bit boring. Clue - if we wanted to hear whatever your society was doing, we'd have paid your extortionate (where does that 18 quid a year go to anyway? Especially seeing how it's not difficult to get Eversheds, Clifford Chance et al to sponsor events) membership fees and got emails. Except that the bloody law department forwards your spam to us anyway. The irony is, today they were trying rather desperately to sell tickets to the Law Ball. Anyone who's been to Warwick and knows of the corresponding event there knows how much of a joke that is.

End rant :-)

Comments on England-Holland

2005-02-10T13:37:00.000Z

Well, as far as 0-0's go, this wasn't bad, but a "not bad" 0-0 is still bloody boring. Though I've got to question Eriksson's team selection policy here.

1) Why start Rooney on the left? Just because Ferguson's playing Shrek out of position, doesn't mean you have to as well. It'd be better to have started Downing there and then have two natural wingers feeding balls into, er, the one striker you're playing up front. If you want to play Rooney so badly, drop Beckham and play a midfield four of Downing, Gerrard, Lampard and SWP.

2) Jamie Carragher and Wes Brown at centre back? OK, he was desperate, but having to go all the way to Wes Brown? He can't even get into United's team. Hell, he can't even get into my fantasy team. Experiment. Slot Gary Neville into centre back and play Glen Johnson at right back. Or play a three of Neville, Carragher and someone else (even jack of all trades Hargreaves would do here) with Cole at left wingback and SWP at right wingback. This would also allow you to play Beckham as part of a midfield three where he plays best. He's not a winger.

3) I'm all for trying people out in meaningless matches, but Andy Johnson's got to feel a bit hard done by. Why leave Owen as the sole striker (where Johnson's mostly been playing and scoring all year) and play AJ wide right? He's not a winger, and was pretty ineffective. I don't understand the need to bring on Jenas and Dyer with ten to go either. What's the point? If you want to bring on a midfielder, try someone new or someone who we don't know what they can do (Jenas especially, jury's still out on Dyer). I don't know who else was on the bench, but this would have been ideal for someone like Joe Cole. Or Danny Murphy :-)

4) We were missing Paul Scholes last night. We always seem to be lacking someone who can link between the midfield and the strikers when he doesn't play. Lampard would have been the obvious pick to fill that gap, but he was anonymous last night. Beckham kept trying to play wide and if one of Beckham and Gerrard went forward, the other had to stop (I really don't know exactly when Gerrard reinvented himself from a defensive midfielder to an attacking midfielder either).

Anyway, I'd have played it Green - Johnson, Neville, Carragher, Cole - Wright-Phillips, Lampard, Gerrard, Downing - Owen, Rooney. Sub Rooney for Johnson at half time and make other changes as needs be.

The overwhelming sense I had last night was that nobody staked a claim for anything. Apart from Shaun Wright, who'll naturally be dropped when Eriksson reverts to playing a four in midfield and he tries someone else on the left.

Various crap

2005-02-08T22:04:00.000Z

Just a few thoughts seeing how I haven't posted for a few days:

- Good to see Radio 1 playing good music for a change. Only because it's coming up to the (25th) Brits, then it'll be the usual crap. You'd think with all the good feedback they get from the likes of this and their 10 hour takeovers they'd change their playlist. Still, not often you hear Tears for Fears and the Sex Pistols in the same 24 hour period.

- What was McNabb doing throwing a touchdown to make the Eagles beat the spread with less than two minutes left?

- Bar One at 3am is full of drunks.

Great Moments In Video Games #1 - Super Metroid (an occasional series)

2005-02-03T18:53:00.000Z

Super Metroid is the best game ever. Released back in, ooh, '93 or '94, it's massively superior to anything prior to it or since. Here's why:

The gameplay is perfect. Anyone with half a brain knows that gameplay is the only thing that matters in a game. Graphics, sound, story (god, I hate it when people say story is important. It might be. In a book...) aren't important. The controls are simple and effective, yet there's a great number of different actions you can make Samus do at the same time. You've got jump, fire, run and switch weapons. Using these, and various items you can pick up, you've got freedom of the entirety of Zebes.

So what the hell is the game about? Set as a sequel to Metroid (from the NES) and Metroid 2 (for the Game Boy - yes, the old one), you're sent to Zebes to recover a Metroid that's gone missing. Shaln't bother you with plot details, but it involves a lot more than just flying down and getting it. You're going to have to explore some massive levels, featuring at times Contra-style shooting action, Mario-esque jumps and Zelda-style item collection. Can't progress past a certain area? Chances are you're going to need to find something that will make it passable.

The game features some of the best levels and bosses that you'll see. The design is excellent, and it looks superb, with some of the best graphics you'll see on the SNES and a brilliant soundtrack (many tracks of which were remade for Metroid Prime on the 'Cube) which adds to the atmosphere of the game. They just suit each area perfectly.

The game isn't massively difficult, it's got a nice difficulty curve to it, but it's not so easy that it makes the game less than what it could have been (cf. Super Mario World). The only thing it lacks is a two-player mode, but Metroid's never been about multiplayer. There's plenty of replay value too. Complete the game, then try to beat your time and collect every item. Then try a speed run (it's possible to complete the game with every item collected in under an hour). Then see how far you can get without defeating any bosses. There's many possibilities. Play the thing now.

Quiz machines - an objective analysis

2005-02-01T13:40:00.000Z

There's many different types of quiz machines that exist, of which only one is really worth playing. Here's a list of what's useless and why:

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? - complete crap. Need nine questions in a row correct to get your quid back normally, and if you mess up the fastest finger first, it just needs one awkward question to make it useless. Only redeeming feature is if you get up to 32,000 you're guaranteed the win at that point.

Hangman - barely better. You've got a bit of choice with the questions and some try agains, but it's usually a bit of luck as to whether you can get a phrase that pays early.

Matrix - sometimes OK, but it's difficult to get more than a quid out of it in any one game.

Trivial Pursuit - in some cases worse than Millionaire in that it takes time to build your pot up, and then you've got to land on a cheese and then answer five or so correctly to cash.

Blockbusters - possibly my game of choice on a shitbox, although you've got to be quick. Suffers in that even a successful gold run only usually gets you two quid.

Lord Of The Rings - was fun the first time I played it when it kept giving me money, apart from that it's a bit nob.

Cluedo - it'll let you get the first two rooms easy, but it usually then takes forever to give you the third, get your quid back room. Even then, it won't usually be in one of the secret passage rooms that you're dying to hit.

Pub Quiz - OK, just a bit bland. Pays alright most of the time.

Bullseye - if you're on a machine with a dodgy touchscreen you're knackered, otherwise it can be a laugh.

Monopoly - normally decent value for money.

The Royle Family - I've only ever seen this twice and forget how it's played to be frank.

All the above should be avoided in order to play THE WEAKEST LINK. This is the best for the following reasons:

- There's no try again feature - if you get a question wrong, you just start another chain. And if you really don't know, you can always bank your points.

- No risk - if you get upto a payout point at the end of a round, it's yours. It's not like, say, Millionaire where you can lose your quid trying to double up to the guaranteed two. And it's normally not too hard to cash either - even if one of your two games starts paying at 15,000 points, the other one will normally pay 1/2 quid at 4/5,000 points, meaning a perfect first round doubles you up.

- Elimination of dodgy rounds - you've got five categories, and after each completed round you can get rid of a crap category. Bye bye nature :-)

- Most people don't realise that once you've got to your points required in a round mark, the machine will start giving you impossible questions. Hence they bank too early and don't get full value out of their game, resorting instead to frantic button-mashing.

- Ridiculously low payout points - far too frequently, Bar One's machine will give you a 1500-3000-4000 point requirement for 1-2-3 pound payouts, usually coupled with a 4-5K for 1-2 pound on the other game. Turned 1 quid into six earlier on that.

Couple this with the usual "playing it at the right time" tactics (i.e. after Top B at Warwick just before differentiation) and it's guaranteed money.

We are top of the league, say we are top of the league

2005-01-31T14:56:00.000Z

Rooney's double at the weekend finally sent Dinamo Red Star Something to the top of the jammyjarv league, despite the dodgy selection strategy of Norwich defenders, selling Robben two weeks before he got rid of his injury, no Chelsea defenders and no midfielders from Champions League clubs. Still, now I've got Petr Cech and sold Gary "Liability" Doherty. Only some nasty injuries can stop me now - second had better hurry up and sub out Gravesen, third has an inferior strike force (Defoe's better than that hogger Reyes and Dave knows it) and fourth's surely too far back. Ooh, the arrogance :-)

Here, fishy fishy fishy

2005-01-30T22:56:00.000Z

Not sure what that title's supposed to mean, except that the Earnshaw quiz is full of fish. Took third (tagged onto another table, who promptly moved to be with the rest of their mates - making 10, split into 2 fives, they took second by stealing all our answers) for 10 bottles of Bud, two of which I'm working through now, whilst also picking up a Kingdom ticket which I must offload (while we can drink two bottles each, they can't use two tickets each, can they?). The reason for the post is the worst question in the world, in the "Sheffield" round: which famous rock band comes from Sheffield. Def Leppard (the answer) comes to mind but we go with the more famous Pulp. Cue a later "we'll also accept Pulp". Then a later "We'll also accept Human League". Then a later "we'll also accept Gomez", despite the fact that Gomez are from Southport. Morons.

Various stuff

2005-01-30T19:17:00.000Z

Killing time at the moment as the advertised pool tournament in the union is off (due to exams, funnily enough - precisely why I went down as there'd be no competition), may nip down to Earnshaw in a bit. At least they've put the Coke back down to 1.25/pint now. Must comment on the Chelsea-Birmingham game - Steve Bruce must be absolutely disgusted with Upson for his challenge on Drogba which got him booked. Instead of the clearly intended elbow to the face, it just seemed to be a bit of a backhand to the throat. Glad to see the cheats didn't prosper, despite having an extra man when Huth limped off. And to be fair, if you let Robert Huth score against you, you deserve to lose.

Just in case the York wasn't clearly marketing itself as a student pub (as all Yellow card pubs do), there's a sign outside indicating that from 5.35 on weekdays they're showing Neighbours, the Simpsons and Hollyoaks on the big screen. Is that the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped there? All they need to do is say they'll show 24 and I'll be there...

Finished reading John Madden's "Hey, Wait a Minute (I wrote a book!)" today. Pretty good read, particularly if you're a Raider fan. The Metroid DVD arrived a bit ago, as did the Solar Jetman cart (just need the NES now) and everything else I've ordered off Ebay. Had a nice result on Stars earlier (actually got the bastard to connect for the first time in a couple of days) when I got let in free on the BB with 10-6 and flopped a boat, and when someone spiked a 5 on the river to make a smaller house I couldn't call fast enough. Getting back towards parity now.

Got a week off to do nothing now. Stars it is then :-)

Thornton vs. Shoe Lane Parking, bitches!

2005-01-28T18:55:00.000Z

Yep, to show I've learned something this term, I could remember the case that would have nullified their lame attempt at an exclusion clause - you might try to deny responsibility for loss to my bag in the cloakroom, but if you only tell me on the actual exam answer book, that's not going to work, is it? Shame that's contract and not public law, which went OK or badly depending on whether they interpreted my essay question as a work of genius or a rant.

Good to see that Bar One have now cancelled the 1.25 a pint on Coke deal, making it the same price as Carling. Helps with the post-Xmas retox I guess, no incentive to drink quasi-healthily. Either that or the bloody do-gooders at people and planet have got through to them, inferring that my drinking of Coke helps torture Colombians or something. Will have to raise that with el presidente at one of those thursday u-time things.

Old boys stuff and that

2005-01-24T13:01:00.000Z

Somewhat of a tiring weekend, that. Was a good laugh, and was good to see loads of people again. Cheers for coming to Bamer, Chris, los hermanos Baileyos, Rob "BJ in Cholo", Slinky, Marksman, Rib, Stokes, Luke, Phall, G-man, Hatt, Andy, Matt, Viper and anyone else I may have forgotten, and to all the new gits that came. We'll win it back next year :-)

Two down!

2005-01-20T15:45:00.000Z

Blimey, contract took it out of me. Didn't go too badly, the two problem questions went well but the (seen) essay question was a bit tough, probably lack of preparation and/or time. Can't argue with it really. Public's going to be tough but that's not for another week so there's time to revise for that. Now down to Cov for a weekend's drinking and snooker, excellent.

One down!

2005-01-18T10:47:00.000Z

Just got back from the first "exam" of the season, in that to call a one hour multiple choice test worth 20% of a module an exam would be akin to calling an Eastenders script a classic piece of literature, or some other crap metaphor. Anyway, there were a couple of absurdities with it - firstly, why the hell did we need 15 minutes reading time? Anyone with any sense will have interpreted that as 15 minutes "note down the answers on the question paper time to be transferred to answer sheet later" time. About half the paper was done by the time we could "start". Secondly there's the whole negative marking thing, whereby if you put down an answer and get it wrong you lose marks, meaning that instead of a 40% pass mark you actually need to get 56% of the questions correct to pass, assuming you answer all the questions (and because random guessing in this mark scheme is essentially a zero sum proposition, and there's no way that any of the questions should have been a random guess, meaning that even if you're 30% sure that something is right out of the four possible answers, mathematically it's correct to guess), and 78% to get a first. Which is a bit silly. Still, I think it went OK.

Must briefly mention a bad beat on Sunday night where I missed out on prizes in Earnshaw's hall quiz by a point, having talked myself out of two right answers. Even more of a bad beat considering that was a solo effort and some teams were the size of rugby squads. Well, must get back to contract revision now :-)

Edit: It's now snowing again.

Best video ever

2005-01-16T14:29:00.000Z

http://www.energyradio.fm/content/sillycats.asx

Nothing to add to that.

Pokerstars micro NLHE is full of fish

2005-01-16T13:07:00.000Z

Am playing and this cretin with a big stack is making lots of ridiculous all-in moves, and getting paid off with some of them. Needless to say, it didn't take long to get paid off - when he called the turn I figured at least a queen or jack... nope:

PokerStars Game #1085246321: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2005/01/16 - 08:03:06 (ET)
Table 'Celuta' Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: Qwade1 ($5 in chips)
Seat 2: hiroad400 ($0.98 in chips)
Seat 3: Golden_sun ($4.93 in chips)
Seat 4: jaytee2 ($1.94 in chips)
Seat 5: Wee_Nessie ($2.02 in chips)
Seat 6: jockstrap ($6.02 in chips)
Seat 7: Pluto77 ($1.65 in chips)
Seat 8: Brelle ($1.46 in chips)
Seat 9: sienna58 ($4.02 in chips)
sienna58: posts small blind $0.01
Qwade1: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jaytee2 [Td Tc]
hiroad400: folds
Golden_sun: folds
jaytee2: raises $0.06 to $0.08
Wee_Nessie: calls $0.08
jockstrap: calls $0.08
Pluto77: calls $0.08
Brelle: calls $0.08
sienna58: calls $0.07
Qwade1: calls $0.06
*** FLOP *** [Ts Qd 9d]
sienna58: checks
Qwade1: checks
jaytee2: bets $0.50
Wee_Nessie: folds
jockstrap: calls $0.50
Pluto77: folds
Brelle: calls $0.50
sienna58: folds
Qwade1: folds
*** TURN *** [Ts Qd 9d] [Qs]
jaytee2: bets $1.36 and is all-in
jockstrap: calls $1.36
Brelle: folds
*** RIVER *** [Ts Qd 9d Qs] [Ad]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jaytee2: shows [Td Tc] (a full house, Tens full of Queens)
jockstrap: mucks hand
jaytee2 collected $4.58 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $4.78 | Rake $0.20
Seat 4: jaytee2 showed [Td Tc] and won ($4.58) with a full house, Tens full of Queens
Seat 6: jockstrap mucked [Kh 2c]

Is nothing sacred?

2005-01-15T13:31:00.000Z

Let's just ignore the fact for one moment that I busted out 18th in another limit stud freeroll with 4,000+ runners, annoyingly close to the final table and getting bugger all for it. I'm taking offers for WSOP buyins... Instead I'll briefly comment on the biggest news story of the year so far, that being the Busted split. Normally I wouldn't mention such trivial matters unless I was mentioning VH1's 100 Least Important Moments in Music (it's only a matter of time), but it just so happens that on the day that they announced the split, Charlie's new craply titled band, Fightstar, happened to be playing at my old uni. True to form, the Warwickensians are rumoured to have lobbed pint "glasses" at them, Daphne and Celeste style (of course then we were actually trusted with proper glasses - now they'd have to resort to VK or other expendable bottled drinks to do the job properly), but the question remains as to why a "band" featuring a now ex-member of Busted were booked to play Crash, the uni's indie night. Spirit of Top B invades everything still. Bet the crossword in the Boar's still crap... thank god for Fuzz.

Play money asshats

2005-01-14T20:55:00.000Z

Just finished playing one of Pokerstars' play money Omaha/8 tourneys (10th/1600ish - have bottom set, river is an ace making a A24J10 board - didn't read him for the wheel but he did have the ace-high straight, no low for me...), just feel the need to comment on those guys who feel the need to use the chat to basically talk smack. Funniest thing was this guy who was moved to my table about 5 tables out with 400K in chips (about 1/6th of those in play), and continually badmouths all the players, thinking he's god etc. Needless to say those chips didn't last long and he busted out in 18th. I'm all for arrogance, but learn how to play the game before thinking you're the next Hellmuth or whatever.

The funny thing is as soon as he busts out he goes "at least it's one of those stupid play money tournaments" - I'd love to play him for real money any day of the week :-)

The aforementioned Survival of the Fattest 2 book arrived this morning, haven't had time to have more than a cursory glance at it yet, but it's something new to pick through in between revision. People are starting to come back to the flats now, uni starts again Monday. Must do some work now... after doing tea of course.

Managed to get first gold disc on Rockstar today. Second should follow tomorrow. Nice.

Bar One - back open, as mediocre as ever

2005-01-13T20:02:00.000Z

This post is completely ignoring the "pool 10p per game, 4-11 January (read: when nobody's there to read the advertising or abuse the offer) posters I saw today...

Yeah, Bar One's open again. It was open yesterday, but my plan to head there and revise (I find revising in largely empty bars is useful, mainly because it has comfy chairs which my flat and the [full] library doesn't) then failed... mainly due to my failure to get out of bed before 1... anyway I head in for just after 12 (later than anticipated due to shaving taking forever - note to self - if you wait over a month between shaves, it takes longer than usual) to watch the cricket. All is well, they have most of the usual offers on, One to Go's chips still taste crap. The annoying thing comes when I go to have a few practice racks of pool after they call stumps. After a couple of games some security jobsworth comes in and turns all the lights off in the pool room, barring those physically over the tables. Needless to say you could see fuck all. I clear the table (only had two/three balls left on the credit I had) and leave, happening to catch the same jobsworth while heading out. I point out to him:
"You can't see a damn thing in there".
"That's what they want".
"Who's they?"
"The management".
Well, the management's just cost themselves at least a fiver (cost of another pint for me plus four-five more games), and would have cost his wages had I had a group of people coming down to play some pool who would have been diverted to Rileys where you can walk two feet without risk of walking into something. How hard would it have been to ask the people playing in there if they mind if they turn off the main lights?

This is, of course, completely ignoring the fact that 3 of the 4 games I played were worthless due to not having the correct number of balls on the table (adjacent tables had 8 red and 6 yellow, and vice versa) and the first table I played was tilting like the Titanic when it sank. Needless to say I'll be revising in the Fox and Duck tomorrow.

Jackpot!

2005-01-12T16:07:00.000Z

Just won Survival of the Fattest 2 (the one I'm missing) for 1 penny off Ebay. Get in! Postage isn't included in that but it's the principle of the thing. He could make more pulping it...

Tilt!!!

2005-01-12T01:15:00.000Z

Argh, just busted out of a stud tourney on Pokerstars first hand after the second break. In fairness, I only had less than one big bet left and was forced to bring in anyway, so I don't care about that. What is annoying that late in the last level before the break I played like a huge fish, first betting on sixth street with an open two pair to try to take the pot down, and then to re-raise when I got raised, and call the river as well. Dunno what I was thinking as all four of the cards I needed to make the boat were out and there's no way the other guy would raise when behind... a couple of hands later I folded the river after hitting two pair when some guy with open tens suddenly bets - third party calls, I fold and they both show down just one pair. Tournament poker's a bastard, you can play OK for 150-odd hands (didn't play that brilliantly, but well enough not to be out of it - paid 40, went out 97th of 500-ish) but mess up once and you're toast.

Ah well, may as well wait for the Project Rockstar update now, it'll only take another hour or so. The new programme on Radio 1 replacing Peel was pretty good, a mix of all sorts of ridiculous hard house, techno and general bonkers stuff. Will annoy many but it sounded OK.

University library facilities - an objective analysis

2005-01-11T14:03:00.000Z

Seeing how I've got an exam in just a weeks' time, I thought I'd better go and do some revision. The library would seem a good place to do that, wouldn't it. It's still technically the holiday period, outside of term time, yet pretty much all of the study space in the library is full. Jesus. This would never happen at Warwick, albeit it's got a damn sight more space than Sheffield's (frankly tiny) main library. So, with all the bars closed, I'll have to go home to do some work. Arse.

I say Sheffield's main library, because we've got a separate law library (naturally, like anywhere you'd want to go, at the top of a big hill). Which is all quite nice and that, it's got a big computer room (compared to main campus, where I can't find a big computer room for love nor money, opting for floor 12 of the Arts Tower - if only to use the lift) and everything. Except, of course, it's not the main library, is it? Therefore, we'll open it for fewer hours than the main library, despite the fact that law students are one of the few groups that actually use libraries. Want to go in at the weekend? You're having a laugh. It'd be the sort of thing to raise with one of those SSLC things, if they actually gave a crap.

Still, we've got this new Learning Resources Centre (quote from several postgrads - "the undergraduate library" - quote from 2004 prospectus - "due to open in 2005" - quote from Sheffield website - "opening in September 2006") coming. No doubt that'll be like Warwick's new, on campus, not at the top of a hill maths department - actually opening after I graduate.

Targeted advertising

2005-01-10T13:24:00.000Z

Was just interrupted (at slightly after 1pm) by the morning post. Sounded clunky, so thought it might be one of my long awaited DVD's (nope). It's one of those AOL trial CD's, those that they make planets out of. Anyway, deciding it's not worth the effort to chuck it in the bin, it makes me wonder why they're sending it to our flat when:

a) we're all supposedly intelligent university students and hence wouldn't touch their crap service with a barge pole
b) our flat's all got broadband anyway

Still, it's not costing them much. Their "throw enough crap and some of it's bound to stick" approach has done them well so far.

On an unrelated point, as a review mod on Newgrounds you see a lot of abusive crap. But it also offers some insights on why Americans are so disliked throughout the world when people come out with the likes of this:

" Oh, and some guy compared this [the tsunami incident] to 9/11 earlier, and I just have one thing to say to you: the US matters, these guys don't! I've spent enough time studying these people to realize that they are not on the same level of importance we are."

Ah well.

Ooh, shiny new blog

2005-01-09T22:59:00.000Z

Thought I'd get one of these blog things, seeing how I never update my website (18 months and counting). Not much to say really, slightly on tilt after walking into pocket aces on PokerStars, lost three sit'n'goes today so will give it a break for the time being.

Edit: just thought of something to add. While having a long session surfing the web last night (was reading some of Andy Ward of pokersoft.co.uk's blog), I was up long enough to hear the Dreem Teem's soulful sessions show. It's on damn early in the morning (something like 3am - there's no-one in the flat and I'm not revising on the weekend) but it's the best thing on the station after the premature departures of Mark and Lard and John Peel in the past year. They've got that listen again feature so you can always have a listen at any time.