Thursday, April 07, 2005

Shameless money-grabber

The target-o-meter shows 4 hours and (both less and more importantly) $105.

Chelsea did win, 4-2 with Bayern’s second goal coming from a shocking penalty decision in the last minute. So my money was pretty safe throughout the second half, and in a very rare occurrence I won more sports betting than pokering yesterday.

Some jumbled thoughts:

1. Amy Calistri, just about the only thing worth reading on the awful pokerpages.com, hints that Barry Shulman is trying to make a big cut from the proposed Andy Beal/Corporation game, just for printing the ‘open letters’ between the two parties. Par for the course for Shulman. A classless letter to potential advertisers in Cardplayer Europe plus the debut of Mrs Shulman as lead feature writer don’t reflect brilliantly, in my opinion, on a magazine whose contents I find increasingly uninteresting.

2. People arriving early for appointments are, in my opinion, equally as bad as those arriving late. If I am expecting and preparing for your visit to my offices at 1pm, why should I suddenly have to meet you half an hour early?

3. I’m having a big argument with my best mate, which is getting me down.

4. I should get home tonight to find a new DVD has arrived in the mail. Kind of a specialist thing. I’m looking forward to it.

And that is all today from the desk of 89TJ.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Chelsea will win

I started working on my little target last night, quite successfully. I got in three hours, either side of an evening at the pub. I won $94 too, which was a decent start.

Got quite lucky in one pot, calling a pretty large turn bet because I had an uncounterfeitable low draw and a slim chance of high. As it happened the other dude was going high, which was my worst-case scenario, but I hit my slim high draw to scoop.

I’m sticking twenty dollars (damn poker got me thinking in dollars all the time) on Chelsea beating Bayern Munich tonight. Earlier I thought it was a strong bet and I should be lumping a serious amount on, but now I am not so sure. I do think Chelsea will win comfortably – Bayern looked less than stellar in beating Arsenal – but 7/10 is not a great price in a Champions’ League quarter final.

I place very few sports bets these days; the margins feel so small and the judgements so uncertain in comparison with poker decisions.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Oblivious

Just an aside; in my two weeks on Party (predominantly American) I have already seen more bitching and name-calling than I saw in the previous three months on my usual site (predominantly European).

My own play has continued to be good – but not frequent enough – over the weekend. However, being either distracted or drunk has had an effect in a couple of larger pots.

First I failed to realise I had a straight flush in one hand, so when the river paired the board I did not make as much money as I should have.

Secondly, pretty drunk, the river gave me trips (I thought) but put a flush on board. It was checked to me by three players with one left behind me, and I drunkenly went all-in thinking that maybe nobody had the flush, they might have all been going low, and/or I might even get a small flush to fold. Well, the button called instantly with a king high flush and the others folded. Damn!

But what’s this - the chips are coming my way!? Oh, the turn had given me two pair, so my trips on the river actually made me the nut full house. A nice outcome, but I could do without playing drunk enough to miss such subtleties… I suspect that if someone up front had bet I would have folded.