Summer's here...so it must be time for...

Poker and baseball, two of the activities I have something of an interest in.

To be honest with myself, the only reason that I've got back into them is because of a lack of anything happening on the football front. There are the usual daft transfer rumours fuelled back the inventiveness of journalists - on one level, Barcelona are supposed to be interested in Arsene Wenger and on another level, City are interested in Hibs and Northern Ireland striker Ivan Sproule.

Ivan Sproule, Ivan Sproule, Ivan, Ivan Sproule,
When gets the boule, he scores a goule...

Obviously I'll let you know if we buy The Sproulemeister, but this is not important now apart from the fact that sightings of Norn Iron replica shirts at The Gate might go up.

Fantasy baseball is going well...too well. I've been top of my Brits only league since St George's Day and currently have a 19 point lead. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but let's just say that spending far too much time and effort on scouting players is paying off. It's fun, it keeps me off the streets and out of the pub etc.

Poker is another matter though. I don't play that often (it's been a while since I played a live home game) but I like to mess about on line - I've been getting back into it recently, but only when I can afford the time.

That's actually a lesson I learned the semi hard way - I probably played cards a little too often at school when I should have been concentrating on my A-levels but hindsight is always a blessing isn't it? Looking back on several periods of my life I've always enjoyed playing cards. I'd love to be good at chess, but I don't have the application for it; draughts is fun but too much like snap...so poker it is then.

Here's what I've been up to recently. I've been blagging on freerolls as I'm too tight to part with real money (although I do play with real money when the mood takes me) and in keeping with my overall description of 'marginally profitable' I've done relatively well. For example, on Sunday I came fourth in a loyalty points freeroll at Pokerworld (admittedly not one of the bigger sites) and I had a funny but rather manic session on Monday where I played simultaneous tournaments at Pokerworld and bet365. So basically, I'm looking for low traffic sites that offer freerolls with small player bases right now. I will report back with any findings, but I finished just outside the scoring positions on Pokerworld (14th of 132) and got bored and went all in to finish off my bet365 session finishing 199th of 3587 players.

The reason why I got bored? I knew I wasn't going to be placed, it was getting late and it was my turn to make the tea.

That's pretty hardcore. Not.

Whether it's deciding on which hat to wear, raising trips on the turn or leaving the table for a comped tuna sandwich, poker is all about decisions.