Thursday, December 27, 2007

Jailbreak Success


Click thru to the Flickr page to see notes on each new app.

On my second attempt at getting everything installed and running to my liking I got the results I was looking for. The key it seems is to not touch anything other than manual re-order on the Customize app or else it fucks the whole springboard up. Best bet is to make a backup of the N45AP.plist before you start re-ordering, I guess I had better add that to my note on the process.

Now I have a proper multifunctional pmp. It has made me think that if this process can be repeated for the iPhone then it would be worth having. Some of these apps would be very cool to have if they worked over the edge network on an unlimited data account. VNC and mobile scrobbler I am looking at you here.

Jailbreaking

So, after more than a few temporary brickings I think its about time I documented my process for getting my iPod Touch to bend to my iron will.

  1. Get hold of the 1.1.1 firmware from the apple download
  2. Downgrade firmware using iTunes.
    1. Plug in the iPod
    2. Go to the sync screen in iTunes, alt (option) click on check for updates.
    3. browse to the downloaded firmware
    4. wait some time
  3. Jailbreak it. Using mobile safari go to http://jailbreakme.com, scroll to the bottom and install the AppSnap.
  4. Prepare it for a 1.1.2 update. In the newly aquired installer - Tweaks->OktoPrep
  5. Grab the touchfree 1.1.2 jailbreak suite
  6. open iTunes and update to 1.1.2
  7. Time passes...
  8. Close iTunes, leave the iPod connected
  9. Run the jailbreak.jar from the touchfree suite. Check the install ssh box and set a new root password.
With that all done now add in the Maps.app and the Mail.app.
  1. In the installer add "repo.us.to" to the sources.
  2. Install the mapsPrep and mailPrep packages from the iPhone 1.1.2 directory, restart springboard by clicking home button.
  3. Install the maps an mail packages.
Right now all I have to do is get the customize app working without it totally fucking up all the work so far. What I need is a way to easily back up an image of the working setup that I can restore to.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Techno Techno Techno Techno

Another Christmas another stinking cold, so far so rubbish. Except that this Christmas I got some very nice new toys that are keeping me busy and getting me back on the internerd.

Sadly my much loved IBM thinkpad has developed some kind of terminal disk problem that means it cannot be moved or else the disk just stops being recognised by the system. Thumping/pressing firmly on an area to the right of the trackpad makes it work for a while but its not a solution. I may well be able to get it fixed by IBM but would be without a computer for several weeks and for me that's several weeks too long.

At work I have been using an iMac for various bits and pieces and have completely fallen for Mac OS X. It truly is a wonderful operating system. I have fallen for it so much that when I saw that the apple online store had a 6 months interest free offer on macbooks I persuaded Jola that we needed a new macbook each for Christmas.

So far I am very pleased with it and after putting in 4G of Ram at little cost (thank you crucial) there is nothing that I have done with it yet that makes it think too hard or too long.

It is the bundled software that has really blown me away though. The video and DVD editing tools are very cool and easy to use, iPhoto - whilst not a Picassa killer for me yet - is super easy to use and much fun was had making a calendar with my nieces as part of their Christmas present. It was so easy to use that first time through with the added distractions of an attention span limited 7 and 5 year old we got a good looking calendar put together in no time complete with relations and pets birthdays all marked out.

Garage band is a revelation, it has more built in functionality than software and hardware setups that I had spent literally thousands of pounds building 8-10 years ago. It may even be enough to make me get back into writing electronically produced music again.

And yet there is more. After hearing me waffle on about it's interface of beauty Jola got me an iPod touch for Christmas. It really is a thing of beauty, the interface and every bit of its workings are a pleasure to use, so far no annoying bits on it. Whilst it is a lovely devie as is I am looking forward to dedicating some time over the holidays to research how to jailbreak it and see what I can make it do that it wasnt supposed to do out of the box.

Friday, November 30, 2007



Tuesday, November 27, 2007



Thursday, October 25, 2007



Sunday, October 21, 2007

This is your Brian on drugs

Feeling a little bored of the endless stream of FPS games out for Xbox I decided to have a look at the XBLA offerings. New additions this week included Speedball 2 - Brutal Deluxe (SB2) and Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4). I was a massive fan of SB2 back in the days of Amiga but was not expecting to be as blown away as I am by E4.

Lets quickly skip over how disappointing SB2 is. It's looks and feels like a direct port of the Amiga version which given the way that titles of that era can be polished and updated for XBLA that is unforgivable. No amount of nostalgia will get me to spend £5 on this clunky, black bordered let down.

Now, onto the good stuff. The remarkably named Every Extend Extra Extreme is a cross between a bullet hell shooter and a rhythm game. Having only seen screenshots for it I was ready to not like it well in advance due to my utter disregard for bullet hell games however Sunday afternoon boredom led me to play it none the less.

The simplest explanation of the game is: blow yourself up at the right time to the beat of the music to make really cool chain reactions for points and power ups. So far so dull right? wrong! This game has sucked the afternoon dry of time before I even noticed. 4 hours later and I am still hooked. Not bad for £5 XBLA game.

The key to the game is to blow yourself up right on the beat, repeatedly and pick up the right balance of power ups to get your score multiplier up. Getting this right leads to scores in the trillions.

Back in the days when my weekends were put aside for regular and heroic substance abuse we used to put the playstation on with some tunes and that demo that came with the console, you know the one, it had the disembodied heads and dolphins flying through space. If this had been available at the time it would have been all we played on a Saturday morning and it would probably have come back out for Sunday's pick-me-up session (usually a pill while watching Wildlife on Two followed by Star Trek Voyager).

This game makes me want to be on drugs. Kids today never had it so good.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Tired, but smiling

Had a long deserved fantastic session at cash last night. After what seems like forever suffering the runner,runner bad beats and idiot calls to instant service 2 outer rivers I cleaned up.

Things didn't start too good in the tournament, a dearth of cards and positions (I made what I could of stealing where possible but it simply wasn't enough to keep me alive) followed by losing 2 races to go out. Went down to play cash with a resolution not to be tilty, not to be over loose and to not just play my cards. Was doing OK up and down sitting at around £70 and just moved off the self dealt to a dealer table when the self dealt decided to go to "a round of each". Each in this case being Hold-em then Omaha.

Hold-em bores the hell out of me in long cash sessions (but its mostly all that is available at non e nose bleed levels) so I was straight back over there. Added to that is the fact that most of the players really don't get Omaha, I thought it was going to be a high value game. I wasn't wrong.

We had the perfect table, players who claimed to be hold-em players - one claimed 15 years of experience - who declared Omaha as "a girls game", "total bollocks", "a fish game". It didn't stop them doing their absolute bollocks at it though, and lets be clear, they sucked at hold-em too.

So many good pots that they got into with shit like top pair, one card flushes, a straight on a paired and flushed board. One hand that unfortunately didn't get all the value it deserved saw the nut flush go up against flopped quads and the nut full house, four handed! It's a real pity that the guy who would have ended up with the nut full house got out of it on the turn because it was me that flopped quads :D

Ah happy days and £250 to the good on the game.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Halo 3



So three days after "Halo Day" has it changed the world of video games as we know it? No, but that's not to say it isn't special all the same.

In case you missed it - and I have to say, even if you are not a gamer I don't know how you could not have been exposed to at least some of the hype on this game, it even made the BBC evening news (albeit with footage of a different game) - Halo 3, the final (yeah right) game in the Halo series was launched.

I wasn't going to get it as I am not that big a Halo fan. I enjoyed the single player campaign of both its predecessors - it is actually one of my favourite FPS now I come to think of it - but the Xbox Live experience has never really made me want to go online and play. Mind you the same could be said about any FPS. However since I have found a whole load of easy going 30 something UK gamers to play online with I thought I could give it a go. That and the fact that when I looked to see who was playing what on Wednesday every single person on my friends list was playing Halo 3, even my brother in law who is not a FPS fan at all.

The campaign is so far pretty damn good. The game looks amazing, the enemy grunts are as stupidly funny as ever and the enemy AI (something I loved about the first one) is great with them taking cover and generally making your task difficult. The big set pieces are great - taking down the Scarab tanks for instance - and the difficulty is just right (for me anyway).

Online with friends however is a total blast. I have not had so much fun playing an online multi player game ever. Blasting around a level on the back of a warthog shooting everything that moves while your team mate driver laughs as he runs over the opposition is amazing. Team shooters are nearly always fun, but the vehicles in Halo 3 make it near gaming nirvana.

Then you add in the fantastic website at bungie.net with the game stats tracking and ability to download, share and replay an entire match from any angle!! Let me say that again. Any game played can be saved off to an online share where others can download it to their console and replay it from any angle or point of view of any player. That's pretty impressive. For the "pro" clans out there it will make practice and analysis of games pretty easy to do in an organised manner. For the rest of us its a cool feature to send clips of especially sweet kills to those who you fragged.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ready for the weekend


Here it is! It is truly magnificent. Pictures don't do it justice it has to be sat at to be truly appreciated. Jola is a bit, er, overawed by its size but I am sure she will get over that. Roll on Saturday.

Oh, and its not too late to help the cause...



Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Why its not a good idea for me to have kids

It seems like every last one of my friends is busy increasing the population of the world right now putting peer group pressure like nothing else on those of us with spouse but no offspring. Today I found this and it reminded me why its probably not a great idea for me to have a kid right now.


Friday, September 14, 2007

Grooming for the not so hirsute

The Bald and the Beautiful: stateside sensation Bald Guyz "head" care range launches

Be a Smooth Operator..

Baldness, it’s an unfortunate fact of life for most blokes with almost a third appreciably bald by the age of 30 and nearly all suffering from a degree of hair loss by the time they reach 60. There are currently over ten million baldies in the UK.

But with celebrity slapheads such as Andre Agassi, Billy Zane, Bruce Willis and Philip Green demonstrating that you can have a glittering career and have no problem attracting the ladies there’s never been a better time to go bare. And of-course, let’s not forget those men who choose to keep it trim – including Thierry Henry, Phil Vickery and Freddie Lundberg.

Most products aimed at bald men try to disguise the issue or encourge re-growth but new Stateside phenomenom Bald Guyz encourages men to boldly go bald. It’s a collection of “head” care products specifically designed for the follicaly challenged or those keeping their hair to a minimum. US star smoothies such as Kevin Youkilis, Boston Red Sox First Baseman and Chirs Shearn, YES-TV Network Sportscaster and from September it’s available in larger Boots stores nationwide.
via idiot toys

Saturday, September 08, 2007

The great birthday begathon

Its my birthday on 23rd September and I would like to treat myself to this rather nice poker table upon which to enjoy my birthday home game.

Trouble is that its a little bit pricey - £250 - and I really can't justify the money right now. So... in the spirit of "if you don't ask you don't get" I am asking for birthday donations towards the price. If I can get together enough donations to cover half the cost then I will treat myself, if not then I will find something else to treat myself to and send out lots of thank you letters to everyone who doesn't think that this is an absolute liberty.




Tuesday, September 04, 2007

So very, very vanilla

The intertubes are always there to make me feel centered, sane and well adjusted. Having through no fault of my own just been exposed to the particular fetish of some-random-internet-person I am left feeling so very very vanilla in my tastes.


Somebody has put a lot of time and effort into this picture, the scales on the brown dragon alone must have taken ages. It does leave me wondering just how one develops a fascination with the idea of dragons that fuck cars and to the extent that they are motivated to produce an entire series of pictures on the subject! I really must try harder at being a pervert.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

It's a funny old world

In Walthamstow for the £30 rebuy at the Equal Chance club. This is the craziest game of the month there and this time it was even worse due to a TV crew making a documentary on the club. This led to a "feature" table of the loosest fishiest players in the club doing their plums for the cameras. Hardly a compelling argument for the luck vs. skill debate.

I got out of the game early when I realised I was never going to get a stack and remain within my budget without some serious divine intervention. Instead I waited for Rod and killed time playing pot limit Omaha split eights or better online. Now Omaha hi/lo is perhaps one of the sickest poker games around, a true game of odds and calculations and thus home to some degenerate gamblers but nothing compared to what I was about to witness.

A large gentleman of middle eastern origin had one of the club staff deposit £1000 into his account via credit card for him and set up the terminal for him to play on. High stakes game? I wondered. Nope he was going to play an online fruit machine.

For the next half hour he roboticaly clicked away the full £1000, £2 a click even the "winnings". Most of the time he wasn't even looking at the screen as he was in conversation with a friend. The barman brought them both cokes and a heated discussion ensued as the fact that alcohol had once been served in the glasses was an issue for them both. I couldn't help but ponder the odd hypocrisy of a religious belief that meant they would argue over how well a glass had been cleansed of alcohol while mindlessly gambling what must be a months wages for someone.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Running Cold (again)

It's been a brutal few days of cards. The GSOP never got off the ground, Kings busted then Queens and I am out the door. The cash game on Tuesday was simply horrible with the fish hitting their 6% shots to win monster pots and nothing, just nothing going right. And then tonight more of the same.

The tournament was pretty horrible. I got crippled when my Queens got outdrawn by KQ. Then short stacked I get AQs on the button and run into AK in the big blind. He has slightly less than me so I am still alive but only just. I end up having to be all in blind in the big blind rather than UTG after the blind gets moved to another table. That turns out OK as the button puts me in with AJ and I turn my blind hand over to reveal AQ. A double up and I can pass some more. However I then get AK on the button and go over the top of a mid position raiser who holds Tens. They hold and I am out.

The cash game is slow and hot and I am about break even with £80 in front of me when I get Q9 of diamonds in the small blind. I call the 3 more to see the flop along with 5 others and get a fantastic 9s Td Kd on the flop. I decide to bet out and see where I am and also to build a pot because I am a big favourite here.

I bet £7 the maniac raises to £25 and then Trevor mutters, shakes his head and calls the £25. I have seen enough and jam it for £80 total knowing that I am only in bad shape against AJ of diamonds. They both think a long time before calling, the maniac is now all in too with a little side pot going on.

I am up against AcAs for Trevor and KcAh for the maniac. Happy days! Lets stop to consider my position here. I can win with any 2 nines, 4 jacks, 3 queens and the remaining 8 diamonds (don't count the Jack of diamonds twice). Thats 17 outs twice! Of course I can't actually win with drawing hands unlike the rest of the donkeys in the room and the board comes 3s 3h and the Aces stand up. Horrible.

Poker stove tells me: I am the 60% favourite.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 32.835% 32.34% 00.50% 292 4.50 { AcAs }
Hand 1: 07.032% 06.53% 00.50% 59 4.50 { AhKc }
Hand 2: 60.133% 60.13% 00.00% 543 0.00 { Qd9d }

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

A better grind

I'm liking this Skate demo more and more. It's getting to be quite addictive looking for the best lines through the park and getting the timing right. It helps that the game looks gorgeous too.

Skate clip

A drug experience I hope to never have

Today I learnt a new way to get high, Jenkem. What is Jenkem? Well it's the gas produced by fermented human sewage, one inhales it in order to obtain a psychedelic experience. No, I am not joking.

The BBC news reported on the plight of African street kids who had turned to Jenkem as a substitute for glue and other solvents.

"It lasts about an hour", says one user, 16-year-old Luke Mpande, who prefers Jenkem to other substances.
"With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life."


Then a couple of months ago an American 14 year old boy posted his Jenkem trip experience to totse.com.

Well today I finally did it. I became probably the first person in America to huff his own shit gas.

After breathing it in I immediately felt that I was passing out. I did not even have time to spit before I became unconscious. When I woke up my spittle had oozed out of my mouth and down my chin. I asked my friend how long I was out for. He said for about a minute, and that he had repeatedly tried to wake me but I would not wake up. During this short conversation I began to feel light dissociative effects come over me, accompanied by buzzing in my ears. The feeling got stronger and stronger until I felt like I was in a dream. This was somewhat enjoyable, it made me feel like nothing really mattered.

I am not sad to be missing out on this one.

Nutcracker Grind

This is from a new demo released on marketplace this week, EA's forthcoming game "Skate". As the title of the game suggests... it's a skateboarding game. I have not really ever been into either skating or its digital counterpart. It fascinates me and as an avid snowboarder I have respect for those who dare to throw themselves about on concrete, snow is a lot more forgiving. In fact this little clip shows exactly why I don't skate.

Nutcracker grind movie test


As unremarkable as that clip is it does however make me think this game is going to be crazy popular. The game has a replay editor that allows you to chop, edit and add effects to replays of you in-game and then post them up to the intertubes on EA's website. There you can tag, add comments and link to friends uploaded content. Already from the demo there are thousands of posts and people showing off some pretty sick moves. I really think this will set a precedent for sharing in-game user generated content. Now back to the park to put in some practice.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Big Daddy in da house!

Chronic fanboy that I am I plumped for the limited edition with die cast Big Daddy figure. It's pretty damn cool though and is going to look great menacing Spiderman, Mr Burns and Mr Incredible.

Now if I could only find some time to skive off and play the actual game....

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A Sick, Sick Run


After Wednesday's shocking blow up I was determined not to let my game nor confidence be affected in the GSOP £100 NHL freezeout. A sick run of cards soon had me in the right place yet still failed to materialise a win.

On Wednesday I made a simply shocking call with AJ for all of my chips and was against KK small blind on big blind. In hindsight my opponent pushed my buttons just right to get the call and it was an excellent example of how many events throughout a game can lead up to and influence a confrontation.

It took me most of Thursday to forgive myself for the mistake but come the evening I was ready for battle again. An early loss against a drawing opponent with top trips dented my confidence a little but then the cards started coming.

On average one is dealt a pair once in every 17 hands (odds of 16:1) and a specific pair - for example aces - once in every 221 (or so) hands (odds of 220:1). What this means is that in a dealer dealt game where each hand takes around 3 minutes to play (this is just a rough estimate) one can expect a pair every 50 minutes or so (once every 2 levels in a 30 minute clock game) and a big pair like aces or kings maybe once in a game (once every 5.5 hours). In fact it is not unusual at all to go through an entire game without seeing the lovely pocket rockets.

Between 8pm and 2am I was dealt pocket aces 5 times, pocket kings 4 times and also received pairs of tens, jacks, sevens, twos, fives and fours. A total of 15 pocket pairs, nearly ten hours worth and almost a lifetime supply of aces and kings (I jest, but truly that's a lot). When you then add in that 3 out of 15 times those pairs made a set on the flop (odds of 7.5:1) I was getting some sick luck. Of course lady variance is a fickle bitch and the one time I actually took my pocket aces to a full all in confrontation I lost as a 8:2 favourite was crippled and went out of the tournament soon after.

During the game it was remarked by a player who I have a lot of respect for that I was playing an "excellent, very strong game". Indeed it is a very easy game to play when you are being dealt constant premium starting hands. Of course he wasn't getting to see my cards as I was rarely going to a showdown, taking down even big pots without contest at the river. This has led me to realise that when the main event comes this weekend I must channel the spirit of this sick run and play exactly the same way cards or no cards.

I am highly unlikely to have such a good run of cards again so I must play the same strong aggressive game I was playing with those good cards but do it without a safety net. If I can get opponents to fold to a re-raise pre-flop with aces I can get them to fold holding any random 2. If a 2/3 pot flop bet against 3 callers to my pre-flop raise takes it down with kings then why not with a flush draw? Of course the danger here is that if I don't have the cards I am representing then my opponents could, but then again, nobody could be running that good could they?

Monday, August 20, 2007

Good Morning Internet

I couldn't make these up... Pet camel fucks Australian women to death

The camel had already been bothering the goat and had come close to suffocating it on a number of occasions, then...

On Saturday the woman apparently became the object of the male camel's desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as mating behaviour.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Bioshock Demo

So the Bioshock demo hit live yesterday and after a very long download I played it through a few times last night. The game is pretty damn good, atmospheric, flexible and great looking. The opening sequence had me sat waiting for the cut scene to move on until I realised that it wasn't a cut scene but the game waiting for me to actually move! The clue came when a helpful "use right stick to move" message popped up. Once going there were several genuinely creepy moments and it had me jumping in a few places too, scary stuff indeed. There were however a couple of things that irked me straight away.

First of all was the magic re-spawn points the "Vita Chambers". All it says about them is that if you die you will be re-animated in the last chamber you passed. Now this is being sold as an RPG/Shooter and the story I am led to believe is an important part of the game. In that case why the hell do they drop this magic box on you without any kind of back story or explanation to it? How do they work? Why do they work for you and not the corpses of the splicers you kill? At least its not a save point in the toilet but a little bit more detail wouldn't go amiss.

Next thing, the plasmids. These are a major part of the game, yet the first time I encountered one was when I clicked on a pick up. I just picked up a syringe and injected myself without warning, then started freaking out as a voice on the radio told me "Steady now. Your genetic code is being re-written". Would have been nice to have got a bit of story in advance of that. Perhaps a dialogue persuading me that it was the only way I was going to get through this alive? Especially seeing as the narrator/guide later tells me that the plasmids are what turned everyone bat shit crazy.

Finally the radio. Its a nice way to get a guiding voice into the story to get you started on the game and help you out but... How the hell can the mysterious Atlas see what I am doing? How did he know what I was looking at? How did he know that I had just injected a plasmid? The only cameras I am away of are the security ones and there were none nearby at the time.

I hope this is just irks for the demo because if a story driven game like this has this many holes in the story already it doesn't bode well. That aside the game plays really well and is remaining on pre-order. Roll on the 24th.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

My Big Fat Polish Wedding

I have only just stopped sweating vodka after this one. What follows is reconstructed from fragments of records I attempted to keep of the event. Bear with me, it was a marathon.

2:00 pm
We are late already. Jola is still at the hairdressers, I have put my suit on too early and now it is getting creased from sitting.

2:45 pm
Getting even later. No taxis to be found anywhere. Service is supposed to start at 3pm

3:10 pm
Made it. Luckily just as the bride was arriving, snuck in the back afterwards. They haven't finished building this church. I am always surprised at the need for enormous new churches in a country with so much requirement for decent housing. This one has double glazed stain glass windows, devotional and practical.

3:45 pm
Stand up, sit down, kneel, stand up, kneel, sit down. We haven't even got to any kind of bit to do with the bride and groom yet, who is this day about? This is only re-affirming my loathing of the Catholic church. Hurry up and marry them already.

4:00 pm
Finally some rings are swapped... but what's this? no kissing and wild celebration. Oh, I see, it's time for communion. A bell rings and everybody kneels again. Fun.

4:15 pm

Outside at last, confetti, smiles... hang on, that's not confetti, they are throwing money, coins even. That's got to smart. OK, now we give them some flowers and its off to the reception in a mass horn blowing convoy.

4:30 pm
Everybody into the reception with a glass of booze in hand. "Sto Lat!", glasses smashed on the floor, time for food. Hope they manage to get the glass off the dance floor before the band starts.

5:00 pm

Hmm I may have to do something to slow down the pace of vodka intake. A shot every 5 minutes is just not going to be sustainable. I know, I will studiously avoid eye contact with anybody holding a bottle of vodka, harder than it sounds seeing as there is by my reckoning a bottle per 3 people set out.

The spread of food and drink is truly tremendous. There seems to be a constant stream of plates of various meat brought to the table with no sign of it letting up. Jola is in her element.

5:15 pm
At regular intervals a loud chanting issues from the tables near the bride and groom. They are being urged to neck more vodka and snog for the assembled masses. They really ought to combine this enthusiasm with the church service, would be far more fun.


The dancing has begun. The band do not disappoint, they are exactly what I expected. Be still my cynical heart. Luckily the vodka will dull my outraged sense of musical taste. Nobody else seems to mind.

6:30 pm

Now I understand why the dance floor is so full. Anybody sitting has nothing else to do but drink more vodka. By dancing one is able to reduce the intake to a shot every 20 minutes or so. The band play for 4 songs or so then have a break to allow themselves and the dancers a chance to get a vodka in. Thoughtful.

7:30 pm

I have given up trying to take pictures. If I can't focus how can I expect the camera to?

9:45 pm

The food is still coming. I have just been presented with a whole pike. It was not what I really wanted to see in my rapidly-becoming-more-delicate state.

11:00 pm

I need a lie down. I don't think I can take any more of this. I honestly believe my cousin is attempting to murder me via alcohol poisoning. I am going to find a sofa in the back corner somewhere and hope nobody finds me for a while.

01:30 am

Pawel found me, demanded I drink more vodka with him and his brother (the groom). Luckily as the vodka was being poured his mother needed him for some kind of errand. A lucky escape.

02:00 am
Escape was but a dream. I really think I may throw up at any moment. Perhaps I should, maybe it would be better for me in the long run.

03:00 am
Going home to bed, escorting aunt Terenia is the premise.

09:15 am
Good Lord my head hurts.

1:15 pm
Woken by telephone call, Terenia will pick us up in 45 minutes. It's time to start again!

2:30 pm
Tripe and vodka. Not quite the breakfast I was hoping for after last night and I am dismayed to see that the pike has found me again also. Christ just bring me a coffee and some aspirin. Oh God, the band have started up again. Where did I leave that especially small vodka glass?

5:00 pm

I have been hiding outside in a deck chair round the back of the restaurant trying to snooze in the sunshine and take on water but I have been discovered and ordered to dance. With the dancing comes of course more vodka. There is no way to avoid it. The only thing I can do is drink the damn vodka and hope I either pass out and they leave me alone, or they pass out and I can sneak off again.

7:00 pm
I have discovered the secret of Pawel's remarkable vodka tolerance. He has given me some tablets that - according to my understanding of the label - increase the metabolization rate for alcohol. I am reminded of the time when I would take speed to take the edge off the acid. Thought I had left that kind of shit way behind. By my reckoning I will die tonight with or without the tablets so I may as well give it a shot.

8:00 pm

Stone me! These magic beans of Pawel's seem to do the trick. The real proof of the pudding will be in the morning of course, but for now It's full steam ahead. I have since learnt that just about all of my male relations here are necking these things, it has all become clear.

9:00 pm
I have a new found respect for the band. By my reckoning they have been playing for 18 hours now with only a few hours for sleep and minutes between numbers for a swift vodka. Neither their nor the crowd's enthusiasm seems to have abated.

12:00 am
This party is winding down. Finally. The band are playing their final number after 21 hours of performance! That deserves a round of applause. All we have to do now is find somebody sober to drive us home.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Skater Falls 50ft and Walks Away

I can't believe this guy got up from this slam. My favourite bit is the commentator who - while watching the scenes of a man who as far as they know is seriously fucked be attended to - can not get over the fact that before the slam he pulled off the first 720 of the big kicker in competition.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Home Made Wine

What is the correct social etiquette when presented with a glass of home made wine that would best be used to clean brushes after varnishing doors?

I still don't have it correct obviously as a spluttering cough followed by an involuntary shudder only served to draw the ire of Jola who told me in no uncertain terms that I had offended the hospitality of our hosts. Personally I am not sure I offended them at all as they only smilingly said "It is very good, yes?", which is really too much of a rhetorical statement to warrant any other response than a meek nod.

Problematically I have been invited back to help "finish the batch" as they are expecting a baby and the wife can no longer drink alcohol. I think I feel a migraine coming on and will regretfully have to decline.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Guitar (anti)Hero

Went to see a band last night and it reminded me of a couple of things.
1) There is a reason why there are no major Italian language rock bands that I am aware of.
2) Rock should be left to the kids.

Italian is not a language that lends itself well to the Rock format. Opera perhaps, but here it sounded just a little bit odd. Of course when they did do songs in English it only made me glad for the others being in Italian as I was able to understand the god awful lyrical composition.

Take this particular gem of a chorus for example.

"I called her on the phone and I asked her out,
Do you want to know what she
said?
She said we are gonna have a good time.
Yeah!
We are gonna have a
good time."

Now I don't claim to be a lyrical genius myself but I can sure as hell tell the good from the bad and the down right ugly.

The band while technically very good had absolutely zero raawwk in them. Take the singer/guitarist for example. The man was mid thirties, bald (but not shaven), had his shirt tucked into his jeans and was wearing hiking boots (for comfort and stability no doubt). Not exactly going to have God fearing Christian parents burning little Johnnie's record collection is he? No this was £1.50 that might just have been better spent playing Euro millions.

What it made absolutely clear to me was that I must abandon all idle day dreams of picking up my guitar and forming a band again. This balding, middle age rocker was a message from above, like the lottery finger, "It could be You!". Yes indeed it could be me wearing comfortable shoes and singing my bad lyrics to a mid week crowd of uninterested punters. Rollins I am not.

I will no longer devote any more time to daydreaming about taking the stage to a screaming and adoring crowd before rocking them to within an inch of their lives with three chords and the truth. No, instead I will make do with playing Guitar Hero, on my own, in the dark and drunk.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

New Bioshock video. Anticipation Rises.

It's now only a month till Bioshock hits UK shelves (note to self: sort out that Amazon pre order).
This new video has just been released discussing more on the use of plasmids both active and passive. Passive plasmids look like a version of the RPG standard skill levelling system while active ones are just freaky weapons. Oh and it has Melissa to prove to Kirk that yes indeed she is a fox (well as far as women in computer game design circles go anyway).

Its Smokey, Playing to about 20 people.


Returned home from the DIY shop ready to fit some new blinds to go with the new windows to find Smoky playing "Living next door to Alice" outside the window. Its getting a bit like a shit episode of "The Young Ones" round here.

The best bit about this latest moment of surreality is that its pissing it down and nobody cares about Smokey enough to stand in the rain. Except for six people two of which appear to be nuns. Didn't Smokey used to be quite a popular "rock combo"? I'll bet they are loving their job now.

Hah the irony! As I finish up they are playing "Have you ever seen the rain?" and it's raining! geddit? No, nobody else watching did either.

The Ballad of the Broken Laptop

I'm in pain, suffering, a frustaion that claws at the heart of me. My laptop is broken. Not so broken as to be totally unusable, no that would make the way ahead clear. Instead its broken enough that it causes me grief but leads me to hope that it may be fixed simply.

After a week or so of fiddling and rebooting and cursing and screaming I have narrowed it down to some kind of loose/broken/dirty connection betwixt motherboard and hard disk. Basically it occasionally blue screens and subsequently the hard disk is not found by the BIOS. Until that is I give it a little thump and then all is well again. When you resort to thumping your laptop in order to make it work you are in trouble.

I toook it apart and cleaned and prodded and it seems to be a little more stable than it was but its still not right. I have to be very gentle with it and carting it about to take advantage of free WIFI and sunshine would seem to be a flight of fancy.

Still on the bright side I got a nice light and super cheap tripod so I can take non blurry long exposure shots now (like the one here, a full 60 seconds!) so I will hopefully be able to get a bit further in my HDR experiments. I just hope my laptop works enough for me to process them.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Death Toll Did Not Disappoint

Well its finished and I was glad to see that after a slowish middle section the killing and maiming picked up again towards the end. The end was... well it didn't make sense actually but hey ho.

I can get back on with my life now.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Can't rain all the time.


Raining Again, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

Or can it? Thunderstorm, an excuse to try some more HDR to try and get the colours and contrast out of the scene.

I need a lot more practice at this. The tone mapping is all off and the contrasts and colours are not as they appeared in the viewer when I was setting the tone map.

More experiments here

Busker Watch: Day 2

After the frenetic accordion of yesterdays trio I awoke to the much more relaxing strains of a classical guitar. That's 2 days and nary a disaffected crusty to be seen. It may be too soon to divine a pattern but I live in hope.

On the potter front I got to chapter 16 with no further deaths. It's just as readable as the others and has managed to keep a reasonable pace so far. Still hoping for a massacre though, there shouldn't really be a sunset ending. Mind you with things as they stand in the book a sunset ending is not that likely.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Let the character cull begin.

69 pages in and we have lost 2 major characters already. I've got a feeling JK isn't going to hold back on this one.

Woot! Free WIFI


Free Wiffy, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.


Got me some free wiffy (as Niki would say, mind you she didn't actually know what WIFI meant. just that it was free and had something to do with coffee shops and laptops.) So now I am out of the dust and noise and into the warm and sunshine. Sitting in the beer garden of the Angel watching the world go by and about to get stuck in to the new Harry Potter along with the rest of the fantasy geeks the world over. Result!

Home Improvements

"Chilling" in Torun. In this case chilling = having all the windows ripped out at 8am, except that its really 7am because its our first morning here and there is a time difference and that. If these windows are as noise reducing as they promise then I will be happy as summer here means every bar (and there are a lot of them) gets itself an outside drinking spot. This makes the street outside noisy until everyone gives up and goes home, which is around 4am at the weekends.

So for now we have the buskers in all their glory providing the soundtrack to the day. At least its not the usual miserable voiced folk singer doing bad REM covers or (worse) his own political dirges. Nope instead today we have a three piece combo of clarinet, accordian and (what is that?) cello, I think, although he isnt playing it like any cello player I have ever seen.



So while I am in the middle of writing this post the police turn up. Seems there is a problem with permits for renovation or something. Of course my Polish isn't quite up to its full power as I have been in the country for 16 hours and it takes me at least a couple of days to acclimatise (honest). Naturally Jola is elsewhere as there is always something else that needs doing somewhere so I try and struggle through on my own.

It starts getting heated with the window fitters arguing and gesticulating and the police woman writing things down. I did consider to try for a photo but thought it might not be appropriate. Luckily Jola turns up in the nick of time to try and sort things out.

Turns out the shop downstairs has complained that we didn't sort out with them times for putting the windows in as the fitters had to put up a little warning cordon thing in case people got stuff dropped on their heads, which makes sense. So they want us to stop working and we of course aren't really down with that seeing as we have no windows in at all. All the time the band outside is playing the "Russian Theme" from Tetris complete with punctuating cries of "hoy!".

Now fines are being mentioned and its looking like 500 zloty (£100). That's quite steep so more haggling later and we have the fine down to 50 zloty (£10). Sometimes this country scares the shit out of me. How the hell do you argue a fine down 10 times with the officer on the scene? Think it through, if you can argue it down then its a matter of discretion for the officer at the scene. Put the flip side in place and your negotiations don't go so well and the police don't like the cut of your jib and who knows where it can go?

Anyway it looks like a deal has been struck and we are going to clean up some mess downstairs and postpone further demolition activities until after 6pm when the shop closes. Of course this is going to put the schedule back a bit.

UPDATE:
Having just talked to the shopkeeper downstairs we find that the shop had nothing to do with getting the police involved, it was all their own idea. Looking at the details of the fine the fine was for "illegally blocking the pavement" which is quite frankly total bollocks as the pavement wasn't blocked. All we had done was put some tape on the ground to warn people of the potential overhead danger. As said before, the police here worry me.

Monday, July 09, 2007

A dose of WTF!?



Wow!

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Tough Board, Hell of a call


Tough Board, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

Playing a pretty drunken game with two total noobs at Debbie's wedding.

Jola raised pot pre flop from the SB and got called by just about everyone. On a flop of AcAs9c Jola checks, Wal checks, Phil (noob number one) moves all in, Gary (noob number two) moves all in and its down to Jola to think it over.

In the end she made an outrageous genius/moron call. She was up against pocket twos, and K7(!!). Queens held. Ship it!

Sunday, June 24, 2007

On Top again

Got the result I was waiting for last night. Heads up against Rod in the Gutshot £100. Both of us were in need of a cash so it was sweet.

Heads up took an hour and the dealers were very patient seeing as we could have just chopped it and gone home. In the end we took £1600 each and played on for £300.

Rod got it in the end in a heads up match that could have gone either way. Three times I had him down to nothing and put him all in with a decent HU hand, and three times he woke up with something decent. Mind you he had me on the ropes three times too and I either outdrew him or had the big hand hold up.

So spending the day lazing in front of the TV. The latest series of Doctor Who is amazing, continues to impress and now im going to try and finish off 24 although it hasn't really been grabbing me much this time round.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Woot!

Finally got the mobile posting problem sorted out!

The problem was that my shiny new phone has a "Blog This" feature that lets you post pictures directly to a blogger blog. However when I tried it for the first time I never received a claim token back so couldn't get control over my mobile content.

After a bit of searching on the intertubes I found that I was not alone in this problem and it seemed to be an issue with 02. They were no help of course but after a post to the blogger help group and a follow up email all is well in the world.

Nice work blogger team!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Great big bioshock binge

For the unbelievers out there, a slew of embedded Bioshock vids.

[EDIT]

Er... something gone wrong with the embedded videos. weird, was working yesterday.
anyway here's a link instead http://www.gametrailers.com/player/20691.html

Three Men Slippers

Have no idea what this means. Is it:
Size 3 slippers for men £30 a pop
Three kinds of slippers £30 a pop
Three pairs of slippers £30 a pop
bueller?

Posted by Picasa

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Games I am looking forward to: Bioshock


I dismissed Bioshock as just-another-xbox-shooter when I first started to hear about it. However since reading the excellent article over at gamers with jobs I am really rather excited by it.

It appears to be highly generative - unscripted battle scenes and nasty good AI - much like Spore is promised to be and if that is the case then the complex AI involved should make it an interesting game to play.

update:

I just got through watching the trailers available on Xbox Live. The game engine looks spectacular. They are available on the web here http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/html/download.htm

Thursday, June 14, 2007

TV Special #31

Kim & Aggie vs Trinny & Susannah.

T&S take on the style issues of K&A while the latter clean the former's toilet. Bound to be a winner. I really must mention it to Trinny next time we speak.

Alien in Bow?

Went outside to find some kind of stringy gelatinous snot dripping from the branches of my plum tree.

It was a bit like that scene - well any of those scenes - in Aliens where some unfortunate sod comes across some goo dripping from somewhere, spends a few moments poking it then looks up to be greeted with the jaws of the alien... and instant death.

I did look up (slowly) but saw nothing out of the ordinary (except for the goo of course). Pity the camera doesnt do macro too good.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Waiting for lunch to arrive


Desktop, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

Really enjoying the following things:

1) The really sweet panoramic stitch feature on the SE W880i.
2) Putting notes on photos at Flickr
3) Placing photos on a map on Flickr
4) Cross posting images from Flickr back to my blog

Really not enjoying:

1) Listening to Alex bitch at BE Internet on the phone.
2) Listening to the building site outside.
3) Trying to install god damn Aplaws+ with Tomcat on Fedora Core 2

Daily Commute


Mile End Park, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

How was your commute into the office today?

Having not been in in a while I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to cycle in along that route on a pleasant day.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Beer O Clock


Beer O Clock, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

Home after a tricky day. Couldn't get Aplaws+ installed, which is a bitch seeing as it's supposed to be a website-in-a-box solution for local authorities and we still haven't used it.

So now its Beer O Clock. The garden beckons.

The Couch Potato


The Couch Potato, originally uploaded by RickHawkins.

Falling at the final hurdle (again)

Just found this in my cameraphone. A shot of my chip stack about an hour before the end of play of day one in the last Gutshot main event. Its about 60,000 or six times what I started with.

I lost about a tenth of this thru tired play at the end of the day when I should have just rocked up but still, it put me into day two in 6th place out of 22.

I bubbled. Again. Four major tournaments, four bubbles. This is getting depressing.

Still I know I am doing something right, I get into the final day each time in decent shape and each time it feels like i get unlucky to not make the final table. This last bad beat for those who give a shit was when I put an agressive player all in after he re-raised my pre flop raise. He had K9 and I had AQ. K on the flop and I was crippled. I did manage to double up a couple of times but never got back into the game for real and I was out in 12th with 9 on the final table.

Roll on the GSOP August bank holiday weekend, time to break this trend.

Test


This work yet?

In the Office

For what seems like the first time in months. Going to try and be here all week so as to avoid distractions.

Speaking of which... over the weekend I knocked up a little app to interface to a feed from Xbox Live putting my gaming stats up on the right. I am really rather pleased with it but it has made me realise that I must be the only person I know with an Xbox 360. which makes me sad.

Friday, June 08, 2007

A good move played poorly

Just wanted to remind myself that often the subtleties of the play make all the difference.

In the Gutshot Wednesday £75 game I have been up and down to again 3.5k when I decided to take on a frequent aggressor from the small blind with a good trapping hand.

Blinds at 75/150
Villain raised to 2.5 BB from UTG (a regular bet and often from early position).
Folded to me in the SB with 86. I call because I have enough chips to see the flop and if I get a piece of this my hand is probably good and well disguised.
BB calls also and the flop comes... 578.

Im liking my top pair and straight draw here and decide to check raise as I am sure he will bet out as he has always done so before.

Indeed he bets, but this is where it gets weird, he bets 150. the minimum bet.

That confuses me as I was expecting a half to 3/4 pot sized bet that I could push all in on. (pot being 1200).

now what I did wrong here was make the pot sized raise committing myself straight away.

I should have re-raised to say 500 and let him pop it to 1000/1500 then I could re-re-raise all in.

Note that I am happy to get it in here with what seems to be a solid 14 outs twice if he has an overpair and amade hand against the overcards.

The actual results are not that important but here it is. He dwelled for a while before pushing me in (which I called quickly) with pocket aces. Despite my many outs I missed and was on the cash tables moments later.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

A poor decision?

WillHill £20 game. 19 left 10 get paid. Avg stack is 7.1k. Blinds are 50/200/400.
I have 9622 in chips.

UTG limps. I have AK second to act and make it 1600.
Folds round to UTG who pushes for 10k.

Now this move screams AA/KK doesn't it? But (and I am blaming you for this Rod!) I know that there are people out there who do it with various holdings and I know that I do it with AK AQ and other pairs too.

I was ready to fold it as I would be left with 8K which is above average and not in any big trouble given the blinds. Then at the last second of the timer I had a tourettes moment and called.

Yes, it was aces, and no I didn't suck out.

Feel so stupid.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Monday morning cure

I was going to write a thing about the depressing nature of variance when it stacks against you in a statistically improbable fashion... but that was going to be way to much like a bad beat whine and I am trying to avoid those.



So instead have this.



Monday, May 07, 2007

Gilbert and Sullivan - Baby Got Back

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Soft Games = Big Wins || Bad Beat City

On the button I raise one limper to 3xbb (300) with K7.
The SB goes all in for 387 and then the limper goes all in for 590.

I have to call, embarrassed to show my cards but hey ho.

Up against A9 in the SB and Q9 for the limper, I take it down on a board of 4568J. sweet.

Exactly one round of nothing later I have the button and AA. One limper in early position. I raise to 300 wondering if they will remember my last raise with K7 in the same spot and get called by both the BB and the limper.

The pot comes down 449 checked to me and I stick 700 into the 1000 pot.

The BB passes and the limper min re-raises.
Now a min re-raise online is not as scary as it is live as it often just denotes a lazy inability to do anything but click the pre-set bet buttons.

I push thinking a bare 4 could never be in the hand of an early position limper that called a raise and a call out of position...

Of course he turns over 74 off to take me out of the game.

Kenny Rogers and The Muppets

Monday, April 23, 2007

Further musings on aggression

I have been trying to do some analysis of the successful aggressive game I played last night. I know the sample size is too small at the minute but here is a nice graph showing what % of the time I raised pre flop if first to act and from what position.

The series at the left that has no label shows the % of times I won the pot when raising from that position. Note that actual starting hands here are irrelevant.

What this shows is that button raises were way less successful than late middle position raises. I think this is for a couple of reasons.

  1. On the button the number of times you are first in is much reduced.
  2. Everyone expects the button to steal.
Not only was I unable to make as many moves from the button but they were only successful 25% of the time compared to 34.5% from 3 off the button and 31.25% in the cut off. Weirdly the hijack had a really low success rate of 18% of course this is just one game so its wrong to read too much into it just yet.

Back in the saddle.

So after coming home dejected I decided to not play any poker and just watch TV and have some beers.

That lasted till 11pm when I got to thinking about my game and why I went out of the tournament. After watching the eventual winner play and JJ and Tony Dobson i realised that I could probably be a bit more aggressive so I decided to have a little practice in a cheapy tournament.

The only thing available was the $4000 guaranteed (yes dollars not pounds) for a buy in of $25. Cheap enough given the exchange rate.

I sat down and proceeded to raise with any 2 if folded to me 3 off the button or closer. I also played suited aces, medium connectors and Face-x if x was > than 7.

If there was action before me I would either get out of there, or re-raise with position.

I managed to hit a few flops and pretty soon was chip leader with a massive stack of 8k by level 3! hmm.

I continued to play it hard. By now of course the other players were aware of my aggression and had started to call my bets pre-flop a fair bit. But with my stack I could put them to the test as soon as they showed any weakness.

I replayed the game through poker tracker this morning and I had very few legitimate big hands for most of the game. When I did get them I got zero respect and took down big pots.

By 3am I was the victor and $1500 (again dollars unfortunately) better off.

Looking at the game I did manage to connect early on and build a stack quickly so I thought I would try it again. The 1:15 2k beckoned (I love "working" at home) and I used the same strategy.

This time I hit fewer flops early but continued to push and soon was in the top ten. The break saw me back down below average after being unable to call a few all in re-raises but I pushed through the bubble and made the final table.

I was a bit unlucky to go out in 3rd place after battling hard on the final table but a top 3 finish is not a terrible result.

Of course I find it much more difficult to be so aggressive live. I will have to steel my nerves and give it a shot later this week. I think the £30 deep and steep will be the perfect game for a little tester.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

So I managed to bubble the Gutshot Open. Out in 12th with 9 paid.

I can't be upset about the way I played it however the final call was pretty much forced given the stack in front of me and the blinds.

Day one was a rollercoaster. I had decided to play it a bit loose early on and try to get a stack going and moving into level 3 I was sitting pretty on 18k after some of my connecting hands had hit.

A beauty was when I limped into the pot from the hijack (blinds 100/200) with 64 and saw a flop of A23 rainbow checked to me so I check along. The button puts out a bet of 400 into the 800 pot and its passed back to me and I call.

The turn brings the 5 and I check again. The button puts out 600. I smooth call.

The river is a brick, 9 or something and I dwell a little before betting 2000 into the 2800 pot hoping the button has an Ace and puts me on the steal.

The button dwells before calling and flipping 45 for the flopped nuts and the now second nuts.

However the medium unsuited connectors that gave me the stack started to take it away as I misplayed a couple of key hands when I should have got out of dodge.

Going into level 5 I was down to just over 3000 and in big trouble, in need of a minor miracle. It came in the guise of AQ in middle position and an easy push to the UTG limp. UTG starts to dwell and counts the pot and counts his chips and counts the pot again. Finally he calls and shows AKs. What the fuck was he thinking about?

So now I am crushed with a dominated hand, but the flop gives me a pretty queen and a much needed double up. Back in business.

I then proceed to go on the rampage stealing pots and blinds and soon get my stack back up to 14k. It is then that I get moved and to my horror it is to the "seat of death", Table A seat 1. Seven players had been knocked out from that seat, all holding overpairs.

I sat down muttering a mantra of "there is no such thing as an unlucky seat" over and over and it wasnt long before I realised why it was so "unlucky".

To my right were the 2 current chip leaders. Aggressive players who were involved in almost every hand with a raise or a re-raise. The had the chips to play like deep stack cash game and were hitting draws and pushing people off pots.

I decided to play it cute a bit and be passive two thirds of the time and put in a re-steal one third of the time. It did me ok and I got my stack up a bit.

Then I get my first (and as it turns out my only) big pair of the tournament. KK in the SB. The chip leader makes his customary raise and I flat call not wanting to get in a pissing match with him just yet. The flop is Ten high 2 hearts and I make a bet. He raises me and I push all in. The amounts escape my memory. He dwells for ages before passing and saying "I had a pair". I tell him I had a pair too.

Up to 30k now.

I then take down a 27k pot with AK. I raised the UTG limper from 2nd position and it folds back to him and he makes the call. Flop is AT2 with 2 clubs. He checks and I put out a 2/3 pot bet (around 6k). He dwells before thumping his stack into the middle for 11k more.

I mutter "oh dear" as I am not sure that I am ahead. AA re-raises me pre flop, but could he have got involved with AT or even TT?

Its not much of a decision and I make the call. He shows AJ and I get my stack up over 40k

I take down some more pots with position bets and occasional pre-flop steals and at the last break I am up to 52.5k sweet!

The last hour and a half is a real battle as I go card dead and dont get too many chances to re-steal against the big stacks on my right. By the end of the day I have what feels like a mediocre 44.5k

Going into day 2 I am surprised to find that I am 5th out of 23. However that is about all the good news for the day and I remain card dead for the first 2 levels and battle to keep my stack where it is.

I then get a couple of steals picked off by the re-raise and one where both the blinds come in and get busy on the flop.

with blinds at 1200/2400 and a 400 ante I have a tiny stack of 24.5k. On my BB I have decided before the cards come that I am pushing to any raise if I think I have fold equity. Middle position player moves all in and I am ready to muck them when I find AK.

It only takes me a second or 2 to call, Its a no brainer with that stack. He flips Jacks, hits one on the turn and its game over.

So close. The guy who took my chips only just had me covered and went on to 2nd place and £8000. Bastard.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Got My Game On

woot!

1st place in the WillHill 12k guaranteed. Nice £3460 pay day!

Was a fairly straight forward game. My big hands stood up, I got the best of a couple of races and I guess getting Aces 3 times and Kings 4 times and only having the Aces cracked once early for not a lot of chips helped too.

That brings this months profit up over the £4k mark and gives me loads of confidence ahead of the weekend's big games.

Bring it on!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Renaissance

Seeing as its renaissance week at the Gutshot I figured I may as well give the blog a resurrection. (again).

So what has happened since November?

Well I had a good run in the Monday night WSOP sats and got together a total of 4 tickets. Unfortunately I didn't manage to spin any of them up into an actual ticket to Vegas. Came close a couple of times, but no cigar.

I won the Saturday night £100 for a nice pay day of £2500 which boosted my bankroll and live profits.

Also had some decent successes online and cashed out some profit there.

But what does the future hold?

This Friday there is a nice event, the Gutshot Mammoth. Its a non direct buy in game with a prize pool fed only by daily £10 re-buy satellites. The Gutshot website has added some money to the prize pool and a big TV too.

I got there last night after busting out of the live sat - pocket tens no good against pocket sevens, silly me - by winning the consolation freeroll. woot!

I have bought into the £500 main event on Saturday after cashing out some profit from WillHill this last week. Ill play a sat for that too on Friday.

Big weekend ahead.

Gutshot Results



Oddly it seems that mostly if I make the money at the Gutshot at all then I win. Mind you the 1st places in the freeroll sats stopped playing when we got to the money and all get called 1st. I really need to play more games that aren't sats to bigger games at the club.