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.

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!

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.