I got to the final table of their weekly new player freeroll on Wednesday and fluked fourth spot - there really is no other way of describing it. Having sat in the guaranteed $10 spots for most of the evening I managed to be a penny pinching, cheese grating tight arse and stole fourth when the player in front of me (who had something in the region of twice my chip stack) went all in and lost.
Bingo. Or not ;-)
More to follow.
Here's one for you: according to reports coming from Barcelona this morning,Thierry Henry is off to North Eastern Spain, which now seems to be confirmed. The Arse are 1000-1 to be relegated on William Hill and talking of Arses*, I'm pretty sure this is about to happen too...
Merde. Je departerai aussi.
Oh joy. I've just realised that it's possible that I might be able to buy a Thierry Henry replica Barcelona jersey on holiday. Fantasy Football indeed.
* Third 'arse' of the day. I must be in a good mood.
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.
Football is as good as over. There are a couple of European Nations Cup qualifiers in the next ten days but that's it for a few weeks. Next season has already begun: I’ve already renewed my season ticket. Not surprisingly, it cost more than last season but I'm not going to moan about it.
Anyway, here are some round ball loose ends.
The last places in the Premier League, Championship and League Two were decided over the Bank Holiday weekend. Derby, Blackpool and Br*stol R*vers went up and Madame Zaza decided to place a bet on the Gas to win. It came in. I’m still not sure about how I feel about that but it does mean that I have some extra cash to make bad decisions with next season ;-)
What a dilemma. If they lose, I'm happy. If they win, I get a tenner.
Nottingham Forestweren’t among the play off finalists though, having been memorably destroyed over two legs by Yeovil in the semis. I’m still slightly incredulous that Forest blew such a big lead (five points in December), but I do remember talking about their frailty at work.Oddly enough, looking back to April 7th, the play off teams are in the wrong order but the top six was pretty much how it finished. Oh the benefit of hindsight.
I said ‘promotion before the last game of the season must be our aim’ but it didn’t quite work out that way; well it almost did. The three game sequence (Swansea, Forest and Yeovil) that I tagged as being vital to the overall outcome of the season ended in a win and two draws, but looking back to the rather ridiculous set of results at Christmas, it now seems pretty obvious that all those draws probably cost us a shot at the championship. Ah well.
I supported AC Milan against Liverpool in the Champions League final - to the extent of buying a Milan jersey - and that came out right. This morning I’ve been reading about how their fans are the worst in Europe, but I’m not getting into that debate.
Footage from ESPN Deportes (check out the ticker...) ‘Middlesbrough won’t win the FA Cup’ – they didn’t. Chelsea did in a rubbish final.
JPT final: was in Cardiff that weekend for Anna and Andy's wedding, woken up by Gasheads singing their stupid bloody song about Irene (great) and went downstairs to be confronted with loads of Donnie Rovers fans. Andy had been out for a walk and had run into some blokes he’d been to school with.
Unresolved: despite saying that I never wanted to be stuck at Southampton station again, we play them next season. Also pretty weird that we hadn’t played Coventry City for donkey’s years then we have them at home and away next season in the league for the first time in something like 27 years.
Annoying: all the James Brown videos I posted after his death at Christmas are no longer on YouTube. Here's one that still is!
But finally for this season: I've published slide shows for other successful teams in this blog, so it only seems appropriate that ours is here. Very difficult not to get emotional about it; next posts will be dealing with 2007/2008 might bring, as well as a very bizarre fantasy baseball situation (I'm top!?!) and an introduction to the world of Playmaker Football.
Merde. Je departerai aussi.
