It's my fucking blog, alright?

So I will moan about running bad as much as I want.

I've had an utterly hideous six months, which is pretty much why I haven't posted. I really hate to post bad beat whines, but frankly I need the catharsis right now.

I've 'enjoyed' a marginally profitable May so far, but it's still been a shitstorm of such proportions that I can only shake my head when I ponder where my ROI would be right now if I wasn't getting absolutely arse-fucked on the bubble three-quarters of the times I get that far. NOT bubbling has always been a strength of mine, but there ain't much you can do when three-hand sequences of rivers with proabilities in the 500-1 sort of range are cropping up with the regularity of fucking nail salons.

My speciality continues to be the spectacular feat of losing the one hand that will give me a monster stack, invariably either on the bubble or in the minimum-cash position. I just got crippled in just this manner when my Ace-Ten lost to a re-raised Queen-Ten; a Queen-Ten re-raised by the type of goober who had failed to notice that (surprisingly, given my style these days) I hadn't shown down a single hand worse than Ace-Jack in the entire tournament, all of which was spent at the same table as him. Or her. Or it.

Bubbling with AA versus a dreadful caller with 77, despite flopping an Ace, was another peach just yesterday.

Quite simply, I believe I am playing better than I ever have - yet those huge ROI days of last year have never seemed further away. I fucking OWNED the tourney I just mini-cashed in, and it all crashes down when my dominating hand gets runner-runner-one-card-flushed. Hold 'Em is the stupidest fucking form of poker ever invented.

Thanks for reading!

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.