Probability Universe warp-drive

I righted the ship just a little in the sit and goes, with two 4ths and a 2nd in the last eight attempts, going out in those 4th places (and hence making a significant difference to my ROI) as a 71 and 72 percent favourite - just to ensure I didn't get any silly ideas about running good. The ROI is in the black for the month but it's pitiful and I'm not happy.

I took a little detour into 'double or nothing' turboes, with the aim of just adding to the bankroll in an easy, relatively stress- and swing-free manner. That was going swimmingly until I hit an absolutely astonishing run two days ago, going 2-12. This felt like I was bravely exploring the very limits of possibility/probability. It did include running TT into QQ, TT into KK, KK into AA three times (in fourteen tourneys, remember) and not winning even one of those confrontations despite hitting my set twice.

Saddling back up, I then went on a run of ten straight cashes, slingshotting across the probability universe like some kind of sci-fi warp-drive spaceship, all the way out to the opposite edge.

All very bizarre. Rounding off this 'double or nothing' saga, I just went out of one in a pre-flop all-in as a 93% favourite to win. I only mention this because I actually didn't know you could be a 93% favourite pre-flop in Hold 'Em. I thought the maximum was just shy of 90%.

Horrible, hideous Hondo

Unless you live somewhere near New York City - and probably even if you do - you are likely unaware of the existence of NY Post "football handicapper" Hondo. Lucky you.

I grit my teeth and purchase a copy of that tawdry newspaper every Friday during the NFL season because I enjoy seeing what picks the paper's dozen or so writers come up with. If I've had a bad week it's invariably comforting to see that these professional sports journalists know as much about picking NFL winners as a deaf, blindfolded seahorse who lives in the ocean and is not even aware of the existence of football and besides, he prefers baseball when push comes to shove.

But Hondo is a special case. He's more dislikeable than a chilli-sauce-covered cocktail stick that has somehow punctured your eyeball. He gives you no clue how he arrives at his picks (though it appears most likely to be via the medium of a sophisticated 'Wrong-O-Tron' machine), which at least saves him the embarrassment of exposing his pitiful reasoning. Instead, almost every hopeless pick is accompanied by a brief attempt at a humourous comment or joke about current events or public figures. These range from hinting that Barney Frank is a Packers fan ("Fudge-packer", heh heh, geddit???) to calling a young woman embroiled in a public affair a "dog" because her looks don't match Hondo's expectations of what a bitch should look like. No doubt Hondo himself is an immaculate physical specimen - drooling dimwit guys who spend all day watching sports invariably are, yeah?

If any of Mr H's comments were even a little bit imaginative or funny then the whole schtick could actually be quite enjoyable; the kind of defiant, semi-ironically-macho, sexist, 'two-fingers-to-the-intellectuals' bit of fun that Hondo probably erroneously imagines it actually is. For all my political sympathy with Keith Olbermann, I can see what a great target he is for satire - but the best that Hondo can do (sadly I forget the exact words but trust me, I'm not selling Hondo short) is call Olbermann a poopy-pants. Hello Oscar fucking Wilde.

So, the only thing that's remotely enjoyable about reading the shower of shit that this idiot spews out is the schadenfraude of seeing him turn in heavy losing weeks with the regularity of a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted metronome. This week he stands at a losstastic 2-9-1 with the Monday night game left to play.

Keep it up Hondo, you make my heart sing by proving that absolute fuckwits don't always prosper.

Sickness worsens (blogging bad beats LIVE)

18-seat tournament, round one. I call a tilty all-in from a short-stack with 500 chips, I have my starting stack of 1500. I have AT versus J3 offsuit. 65% favourite to move to a 2100 stack at opening blinds of 10/20.Flop gives me a ten. Turn and river make him a one card flush to his 3 of diamonds.

I get some chips back with AJs versus some rubbish from a reeally short-stack. Then I have JJ versus T8 on a 4583 board on the turn, get it all-in. 89% favourite versus five outs, to go 2600 chips at 15/30 blinds. River is one of the five outs.

Moments later, in my 27-seater tourney, I'm 63% favourite all-in on the turn with two pair. Win the hand and I go chip leader with 3600 chips at the 25/50 level. I lose the hand.

65%, 89%, 63%. I'm just asking to win one of them. Just to win one hand, as significant or overwhelming favourite, when significant chips are on the line.

It's official...

...I'm definitely running bad. It's only a small stretch, I'm still up for the month, but my ROI is getting eaten down to sub 30% for October thanks to a spectacular run of tourneys motoring toward the money then getting punked in a hand that would put me monster chip-leader, chip-leader, or among the top handful of stacks at the least.

The worst of these have been three-outers, where I'm 85% favourite or thereabouts, which is obviously monumentally frustrating and has happened three times in the past seven tournaments. Others have been the more standard 60% favourite type of thing, with some mind-boggling calls from my opponents factored into the irritation of these situations.

I have to keep on keeping on, obviously. This is the first remotely significant bad run I've had at these 18 and 27 seater sngs. Overall results are fantastic, overall ROI is crazy. I genuinely don't think this is a 'correction' of some kind. I've obviously taken bad beats throughout my very successful 'career' at these tourneys - the difference at present is that it keeps happening on pretty much the key hand of each game, the one that should pretty much see me sailing into the money if I win it. That really fucks me off. When it happens early, I can live with it quite easily; "At least I didn't spend long in that tourney, pull up another".

It's time to avoid a results focus and keep putting in my volume. The profits will come. End self-coaching session.