Showjumping league 2012

The 2012 league started off on the 11th march. I was aboard Ranger who is a horse I had only ridden a couple of times before. I certainly don't remember jumping him at all. He had already gone before me and he was sweating up before his first rider had his round. I I watched him with interest and saw him put in a stop at the planks. After he was finished his two rounds, I walked him around for a good 15 minutes before getting aboard. We had a couple of warm up jumps , just enough for me to get a feel of him jumping.
Time for our round then and we had gone clear from 1 to 8 with me being slightly unbalanced over the first part of the double but I made a quick recovery. I forgot we were supposed to jump 9 and 10 in the first round so I circled around and approached 9 but we had a run out at 10. I decided to jump both 9 and 10 again as I wanted to jump the line but this resulted in elimination as I had jumped fence 9 twice. The second round was uneventful and we managed to go clear. Overall I was very happy with my performance. Ranger is by no means easy over jumps jump performance and several times I had to use my leg to stop him running out. A good days work overall. This was one of those days where the performance was more important than the result

International women's day

Well today is international women's day. Well I am fed up of all this gender inequality. Nightclubs have ladies nights where ladies get in free, but don't have the equivalent for men. There's the woman only poker events wheelchair can not ban men from playing, as it is illegal to do so. So when is international men's day. Enough of this so called equality of the sexes. Rant over

timed tournaments on sky poker

You really have to give Sky Poker a lot of credit for listening to their players and being willing to try different things.  As I said before, I really like their bounty hunter tournaments as your head value increases with each bounty you take out.  Their latest innovation is timed tournaments.  They currently have multi-table tournaments (MTT,s) which will last for either 15 , 30, or 60 minutes.  After the timed period has ended, the payout you get is based on your chipstack. 
This is a great idea for those who can not commit for long periods of time.

Another referendum ( or 2 )

I see that our government are preparing tenders for our referenda which will potentially include one on this proposed European treaty.
There is a huge problem though and it is this: there is no point in voting in Irish referenda as if the government of the day do not like the publics decision they simply hold the referendum again. This was done for nice and again for Lisbon. Note that when the decision went the governments etway, there was no decider.
So unless there is legislation put in place to prevent a second referendum on the same or similar subject matter, within a minimum of 5 years, and I would prefer 10, there is no point in voting in these referenda. It's a forgone conclusion.

How to make household charge unenforcable

Do the following:
 set up a free  email address, eg robbingbastards@hotmail.com
Enter in bogus details:   eg First Name:  IHate
Lastname: ThisCharge

PPS Number:   Now pick a number and use the last letter of  your pps number.
Increase the last two digits until the pps number is accepted.
(even better if you can get a sitting gov members psps number)

 Enter in the address on each line:

Line 1:  BullShit House
Line 2: Robbing bastards
Line 3: Dail Eireann
Line 4: I am Broke

County:   Dublin 2. 

It won't find the address, so just say use the address entered.

 Do not enter a mobile number(you just have to check the box beside it).
If you do want to enter a mobile number, get your government TD's Mobile number.
Do not enter a Home Phone number (or put in the number of your local government TD, Dail eireann, Enda Kenny, etc)


Put in a security question
Put in an answer

put in the captcha words displayed
confirm your details and create your account


 There you go, One Bogus entry created.  Of course they may get you to validate the email address, which is why you set one up in the first place.


Quite easily Done.

The HouseholdCharge.ie Web site is very poor and it took me 5 minutes to figure this out.
So get bogus registering.       To be 100% safe, you should register through an internet cafe,and pay by cash. Do not use any credit cards/ debit cards etc.  Do not use any device which you have registered with any company.

Note:  I am only providing information on how to make a bogus regiustration.  All actions are undertaken at the sole responsibility of the individual.   However, there is nothing in this form to say that you certify the information is accurate.   Therefore it is the governments own responsibility. 

More Omaha

I played an omaha cash home game on pokerstars. I was happy with the majority of my play, although I am still not aggro enough. I started off quite nicely picking up small pots, and making lots of bluffs on paired boards.

I did have one bluff on a paired board which went horribly wrong when villain had flopped a house , and this undid a lot of the good work I had done earlier.  I  was nearly 3 buy-ins up at this stage, and I had received all the indications that I was beaten but still pushed in when villain was committed to calling a shove.  That was 1 buy-in I could have saved myself by just folding.   I had another couple of situations where I was ahead on the flop and villains draws came in on the river but these were against short stacks.

One of my biggest wins was fairly standard. I had a monster draw hand on the flop and I really wanted to get it in as quickly as possible.

PokerStars Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.10 BB (4 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($19.32)
SB ($16.63)
Hero (BB) ($6)
UTG ($12.51)

Preflop: Hero is BB with , , , 
UTG bets $0.20, Button calls $0.20, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.85, 1 fold, Button calls $0.65

Flop: ($1.95) , ,  (2 players)
Hero bets $1.86, Button raises to $7.44, Hero calls $3.29 (All-In)

Turn: ($12.25)  (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($12.25)  (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $12.25 | Rake: $0.60

Results:
Button had K, 6, 8, K (one pair, Kings).
Hero had Q, 9, 10, 10 (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: Hero won $11.65

Omaha lol

After a bit of success at nl cash I decided that I would play some micro stakes Omaha. I have been losing money at this game so before I started I looked for some strategy articles online. After reading an article, I started playing and started getting the money in where previously I would have folded. Fortunately for me, my draws mostly came in and when I was ahead I usually stayed ahead. Of course scooping a 5 way all in at the start really helps too. The table broke quite early mainly to other players going bust, so I fired up another table and continued to make money. I think I left the second table 6 buy-ins up and the first table with 4 or more buy ins. So basically I made 10 buy ins within a couple of hours at most. If I can learn to crush these games at the mini-micros I can then start moving up through the levels but I do know that the variance in Omaha is huge.

Bounty hunter tournaments

Tonight I decided to see if I could satellite into a bounty hunter tournament on sky poker. With 1 in 5 qualifying , I made it quite comfortably. In fact I was the biggest stack when the satellite ended. Well onto the main event which would normally have been an £11 buy in. The really attractive thing about sky bounties is that each time you knock a player out, your head value increases, which encourages other people to gamble if they see you have a high head value and they have a chance of knocking you out. Most sites just give you the same bounty value for each player you knock out. Sky adds 1/4 to your head value and gives you the rest. So just as an example the bounty's tonight started at £5 per head. It was a £10 +. £1 fee tournament. After I knocked the first player out , my head value increased to £6.25 and I was awarded £3.75 in prize money. I eventually exited shoving aj and being called by k9 off which just had me covered. This was a call made purely based on my head value which was over £9 so understandable in the context of the bounty hunter tournament. I made £13.25 for a buy in of £2.40 so a small profit was made but it all adds up.

A mixed couple of days

I had a mixed couple of days on sky poker playing 2p - 4p cash.  One bad decision cost me a buy-in.  Essentially there was a min raise to 8p and I popped it up to 20c.  I think I was re-reraised at which point I could fold, call and see a flop or get it all in. The villain was new at the table but had bought in the full amount.  I decided to Jam and got called by AA.   I think I really should have folded here.   Its really these 1 or 2 bad decisions costing me a buy-in which undo all my previous good work.

 I had another situation where I was dealt QQ and re-reraised preflop and the flop came down 678.  villain bet into me and I jammed and villain showed 9s10s.   sigh.  I think this is fairly standard. I  don't really think theres any other way of playing the hand apart of jamming pre-flop, which I think is bad. Maybe at a higher level, you can fold QQ here, but at this level I thinkI played it correctly.

Well, I managed to wipe out these losses and make a little bit more money, mainly by taking advantage of some terrible play by my opponents. In one instance, my reraise was met by a shove all-in which I was always going to call , considering it was 1/3 of the pot for me to call , and I was met by K3s.   I was ahead and my hand held.
Hopefully a few more players like the one above will come along, and not get lucky. 

Sky Poker Cash

Over the last couple of days I have been playing a bit of micro-cash on SkyPoker. Okay it's only 2c-4c but I managed to more than treble my buy-in in one session and in another session I nearly doubled it.  Rather pleasing to me is I did not have a single loss of £1 or more but I had a few wins which were greater than a £1.  One person who was a bit put out that somebody called his all-in with middle pair.  I wasn't even watching so I cannot comment on the hand, and the hand history on sky is just so yeuch.  Anyway this guy started berating other people on the table and said he was only there because he had been given a come back to sky offer and was going back to 888.   Now this is pretty typical, but what is not typical, was , he said, I was the solid player at the table, and to be fair I had been playing fairly solidly.   Maybe the tide is turning at last, and I will be able to beat microstakes.   I'm going to continue on this 2p-4p level for a while.   Another thing I did was change tables pretty quickly, when I had an inkling that the other players were better than me.   And finally, I was patient. Much more than usual, but when I got the money in I was usually ahead.

iPhone app for blogger

This is a test publication from blogger iPhone app

Ok, well its IPO time again, and I am playing on Saturday (Day 1B).
I've managed to play this event, every year, since its inception and there really is a great atmosphere. The only thing that lets it down is the standard of some of the bar food served up by the regency.

The first year I was there, I opted to get a burger from the Bar Menu, rather than  the standard nosh which was being served up for the poker players.  It didn't cost that much extra, compared to the poker nosh, and it was absolutely lovely.  
The next year, I was really looking forward to the same burger again, and I was hugely disappointed with what was clearly a bought in microwaved burger. I'm not the greatest cook in the world, but I would struggle to produce something that bad at home.  I wasnt the only one who was of this opinion. Jesse May was absolutely starving and ordered two burgers, despite me warning him how bad they were.   He ended up eating one and a bit burgers.   
Needless  to say, the following year, I declined to eat at the regency, and instead took a short walk down to the spar shop and had a lovely breakfast roll, for half the price and twice the taste.  
This will be the 4th year that the IPO will be held in the regency, and I sincerely hope that the standard of catering has improved. 

It will be the first time I have played live poker since I had the operation on my arm.   i'm still having physiotherapy at the beacon clinic, and it is going extremely well, and it looks like I just have one session left.  I'm due to see the orthopaedic surgeon next week to follow up in progress as well.   Hopefully, come november, I can get back up on a horse.

poker player is stuck

Not, in a financial sense, and not in a traffic jam or in the mud.  More in a physical sense.  Way back in april, I tried jumping a horse I was not very familiar with in a jumping competition, but he refused the first fence, and ended up carting me around the arena at least 4 times, when I eventually asked for assistance, to help me.  I came back later during the day jumping lower fences and asked for assistance from one of my instructors. We refused the first fence again but after I was given some advise, we managed to jump clear.  I decided to quit after the one round as I wasn't feeling very confident. A couple of days later, I woke up with a stiff right arm.  Naturally, I assumed that this would get better in a week or so, but it didn't.  I spoke to an orthopaedic surgeon (who is in our riding club), and he told me to come in to his hospital clinic on the next thursday. He sent me for x-rays which confirmed that I had tendonitis in the rotator cuff muscles on my right hand side.  These are a small group of muscles which control virtually all of your shoulder movements.  I was given an injection into the muscle which was a combination of steroid and painkiller.

I then decided to try some acupuncture, which helped relieve the symptoms considerably, but after one session when I was lying on my back, I was in agony if I tried to move my right arm.  It had to be massaged a bit more and this eventually freed it.

The regular acupuncturist went on holiday, and the replacement tried a completely different technique, and I immediately had the same problem with my right arm. I had to request the needles be taken out straight away.
That evening day I decided to go to the healthcare clinic and they diagnosed that I had a condition called frozen shoulder.  (ie it was stuck). They put me in a shoulder harness, and gave me some medication and a letter for the orthopaedic surgeon.  At this stage I decided to give up my horseriding lessons for a while. 


I had to wait for him to come back from holiday, and he basically agreed with the diagnosis from the clinic, and he organised an MRI scan and  to put me in to hospital for a day to have a procedure known as MUA.  (Manipulation under Anaesthetic).

Its amazing, but you don't really know how much you use your shoulder muscles, until you don't have the use of them.  I being right handed, was virtually living as a one armed person.   I could still drive, but had to be careful turning, so I adjusted my normal route to work to eliminate as much turns as possible.  I had to take my jumpers off with just my left hand.

Well I had the procedure yesterday, and afterwards the surgeon told me that my shoulder was really stuck. 
Fortunately, the procedure went well, but now I have to do physiotherapy exercises at home, 3 times a day.
I also have to go in to the hospital tomorrow and see the physiotherapist (at 7.30 am). This will also be a regular occurrence, and I'll find out tomorrow for how often and how long the whole process would last.

The good thing now is that I have so much more freedom of movement.  However, this has been one of the reasons why I haven't been posting as much or playing as much poker.

Anyway its time for me to do my last exercises of the day now

next vip level gained

Just a short note to say that I managed to achieve the next vip level on boylepoker.  (ipoker network).
As far as the jackpot sit n go's go I ran into a bit of a cooler when I hit trip 7's on the flop and ran into someone else with trip 7's with ace kicker.  I think it was my bb as well.   Still,I have managed to turn €30 into nearly €100 with very little risk plus an extra €35 will be coming my way at the start of next month.

bonus achieved

Well, after putting some serious volume in, I have made the bonus. 
I am still short just over 200 points which I need to make before the end of the month for an additional $50 which is approximately €35

I played a lot of stud and a few jackpot sit n go's.  It was quite amusing when one player was complaining that this was the worst table he had been sat at, mainly due to the all-ins. Clearly, he did not understand the structure of the tournament.  I managed to win the last 2 jackpot tourneys I played as well.

Well, again, it's been a while.
I need to get back to updating this blog more regularly.
Well, on the poker front, I am slowly rebuilding my bankroll on ipoker. I am playing a lot of fixed limit 7-card stud.  This is mainly because I have been trying to clear 2 bonuses and 7-card stud generates a lot of rake. The other reason is that a lot of players are very bad at it mainly staying in hands where there draws are extremely thin.  I tend to play quite tight, which I think is correct at the microstakes level.
I have successfully cleared 1 bonus and am on target to clear the other. There is an additional incentive, in that I can upgrade my vip level by just getting aroundt 100 extra vip points.I think if I reach this level I get an additional $25 or $50(not sure which)  into my account for each month I am at this level.

Joke of the week: parrot

A magician worked on a cruise ship.
The audience was different each week so the magician did the same tricks over and over again.
There was only one problem: The captain's parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the Magician did every trick.
Once he understood, he started shouting in the middle of the show, "Look, It’s not the same hat!" or, "Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table!" Or "Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?"
The magician was furious but couldn't do anything. It was, after all, the Captain's' parrot.
Then one stormy night on the Pacific, the ship unfortunately sank, drowning almost all who were on board.
The magician luckily found himself on a piece of wood floating in the middle of the sea, as fate would have it ... With the parrot.
They stared at each other with hatred, but did not utter a word.
This went on for a day... And then 2 days. And then 3 days. Finally on the 4th day, the parrot could not hold back any longer and said...

"OK, I give up. Where's the frickin' ship?"

long overdue update

Ok . Its  time for an update which is long overdue.   Full tilt has effectively closed down until they can get refinanced. Luckily I had no cash in there.  I did have some academy points  but thats really it.

I have decided to play less cash and have now attacked the $10 xtreme time double ups on ipoker.   I have a bonus to clear by next saturday, so I need to make around 100 points a day until then.  I have been running extremely well also.  I managed to come back to cash from 140 chips at blinds 30 60 when my shove with AA was called by AK.  K on flop and K on river.     Personally , I fold AK in that spot in a double up.
I have now played 10 $10 xtreme time double ups and cashed in 9 of them.  Obviously I'm happy with those results.   I really wish there was more volume of these.





 

Running Bad in CASH

Lets start with being honest with myself.  I have a few hundred leaks in my cash games, but at least I have been working on them.   I have been working my way through the full tilt academy challenges, and I can usually complete the challenge within 2 days.  Most of the time, the delay is waiting to get dealt a specific range of hands in a specific position and the action before you must happen in a certain way. 

My biggest leak seems to be calling big bets /shoves because they look like bluffs.  Sometimes they are semi-bluffs but more often they are decent sized pocket pairs.  If I could stop this leak I coulkd become a very profitable micro-stakes player.

My currrent challenge is value betting which is definitely something I need to work on.  However, I have almost wiped out my roll at this point.  Having flopped a flush draw and had a pair as well, I bet every street including  the river, only to be reraised all in and I felt committed to call.  Opponent had a slightly higher flush draw.   Now as far as I'm concerned, that is just one of those things which happens.  Reload and get on with it.  

Funnily enough I seem to have been encountering a new breed of player.   These guys call your raise out of position and then pretty much shove any flop.   If you don't have anything you can't call them. Any tips on how to deal withy them would be appreciated.


The net result here is  essentially that I am losing the hands when I don't go to showdown. My showdown line is at least positive.
So heres a hand where I decided to get it all in with nothing.  E




Full Tilt Poker $10.00 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 1341743

DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter



CO: $10.00

BTN: $10.40

Hero (SB): $11.67

BB: $13.40

UTG: $18.56

MP: $6.50



Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is SB with Q A

1 fold, MP raises to $0.35, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.35, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, BTN calls $1.15



Flop: ($3.45) 9 3 9 (2 players)

Hero bets $2.25, BTN calls $2.25



Turn: ($7.95) 5 (2 players)

Hero bets $7.92, BTN calls $6.65 all in



River: ($21.25) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)



Final Pot: $21.25




Villain was multi-tabling about 6 tables whereas I was single tabling here.
I was entering way two many pots, but ususally for a raise and was 3 betting a little light, eg button raises.

Joke of the Week: Wife discovers husband has a mistress

A husband and wife were having dinner at a very fine restaurant when an absolutely stunning young woman comes over to their table, gives the husband a big kiss, tells him she'll see him later, and walks away. His wife glares at him and says, "Who was that??!!"

"Oh" replies the husband, "that was my mistress." "That's it," says the wife, "I want a divorce."

"Ok," replies her husband, "but remember, if you get a divorce there will be no more shopping trips to Paris, no wintering in the Caribbean, no Lexus in the garage, and no more country club. But, the decision is yours."

Just then the wife notices a mutual friend entering the restaurant with a gorgeous woman. "Who is that woman with Jim?" she asks.

"That's his mistress," replies her husband. "Ours is much better looking." says the wife.