Windows 7 - More 'Doh's than Wins

When I purchased my new PC in July time, I was granted a free upgrade to Windows 7, from Vista, when the new OS was released in November. It eventually arrived yesterday, so I hastily threw in the disk and started the upgrade.
Halfway through I get a message saying 'Update Unsuccessful', and that it would revert to my old settings ..... FML. But for some unknown reason it didn't back out and carried on to 'complete' the install, or so I thought.
2hrs later I realise its totally fucked up my PC, when after 20 attempts to restart, it would'nt get any further than the 'Snazzy' Windows 7 Logo.

So totally pissed off, I then try to resurrect my PC back to Vista ..... no fucking chance. I've had to revert it back to factory settings and reload every fucking program, poker site, application again.

Then to put the icing on the fucking cake, I find I'd not copied my Poker Spreadsheet, or Household Budget Spreadsheets onto my external drive as I thought. So all my Site Balances, profit/loss figures ... plus our yearly Budget Info - Gone !!

....Blown out of the fucking 'WIndows' - so to speak.

Ok... Who flicked the Doomswitch ?

Feeling the bad side of variance over the last few days in my tourneys.

I've never been really short always playing the hands strongly pre-flop, some instance getting it all-in pre with expectations winning a big pot, but the KO hands have been exceptionally cruel ........ These are the KO hands from my last 7 Tourneys. (My hands first)

AA v ATs - I hit Trips on a J,Q,A flop !! and the river brings a King to give him a Straight.
QQ v 54o - He hits Two Pair on the flop and makes a Full House by the River
KK v 77- First card on the flop a 7
KK v TT - Second card on flop a Ten
KK v 88 - First card on flop an 8 .... (I'm beginning to hate KK)
99 v AK - Queen , Ten on Flop - Jack on River

Then I did cash in second place in this, but still a sick beat when we had level(ish) stacks. Making it worse was that I'd deliberately limped as I knew he would push.

AK v K5 - Flop T,A,6 ........ Turn -5 .......... River - 5

I need to be playing some big value tourneys in the coming days, when someone turns the Doomswitch off, and the variance works in my favour.

One silly mistake after another ....

I'm continuing my Tourney Only mode, and playing well for the first 3/4's of a Tourney than playing like a complet dolt when I'm nearing the money.

Started at the AOC Live game on Friday, on the final table , sitting on a decent stack when I try an all-in Bluff on the river against what I thought was a weak river bet. The bluff was called and I'm left as the table shortstack.Out about 5 hands later.

Tonight got down to the final table in a Small MTT on betfair, 2 from the money and I call an All-In from a Shortstack while I'm holding crap - he shows AT and I'm out next hand.

Then on William Hill, going OK in about 20th of 50, when a 4 way limped pot in the BB I get Q4 on a flop of AQA. Check,Check,Check,Bet,Call,Call (Me) , Min-Raise (Obviously an Ace !!), Fold, Fold, All-In (me ??!?! - WTF).

Really pissing me off now - I need to curb my boredom and wait for the right spots.

The Hunt For Thread October ?

Browsing though my blog and realised I haven't published my October totals .... 'duuh'

Anyway scores on the doors, boosted almost wholly by the 2nd Place in the OnGame $4k Gtd at start of month +$557.38.

A good excuse for one of my cleverer thread titles anyway !!

A Couple of Sparklers on Bonfire Night

After months of avoiding IPoker due to the disconnection problems I was having due to being on AOL, I had a comeback and play letter from Betfred - to which I replied moaning about the connection problems I get with the IPoker sites. Surprisingly I had a prompt reply explaining that the problems are of AOL's making due to their restrictive bandwidth at peak times - but that if I kept the lobby closed the problem wasn't as bad.

So looking for tourneys to play I decided to put some money on Victor Chandler to play their Daily $100 added game, and see if keeping the lobby closed helped the situation.

.......... Result !! and a Result !! ............. The site played without issues and I cashed in the tourney in 4th Position.

To avoid my interest drifting with just the one tourney open, and vowing to not touch the cash tables for a while, I opened up another couple of small tourneys - one on Betfair and the €1k Gtd on Boss.
Another Result when 4hrs later I win the Boss Tourney beating another 409 people in the process and earn €285.97 ($424.86) for my time !!

On a slightly more problematic note I'm having trouble with my PC Network Connections - really weird in that some websites just won't load .... the Browser tab shows the sites name but just sticks at loading status, its happening on the Ace of Clubs forum page and also William Hill Sports pages . I've tried IE8 as well as my regular Firefox, scanned for Malware, cleared my Browser cache, added the latest Java and Flash updates, but nothing seems to work. Hopefully it'll go as mysteriously as it appeared.

My Ideal Saturday

What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon,the wife went Christmas Shopping, and the house was peaceful so I played 2 MTT's, and got 'The Mighty' Forfar Athletic started on their Scottish Third Division league campaign in Football Manager 2010

On the Poker Front

1st/14 Runners and 9th/409 Runners
... plus a bit of Micro Omaha Cash while they where in the early stages - where I came away with a Profit also.

Profit on the Day $101.09

(For those interested Forfar went out in the first round in the 2 Cups, but have begun their assault on the League with a 0-0 home Draw against Stranraer, and a thumping 3-0 away win against Berwick )

X-Factor Live from 'The Priory'

Following on the increase in viewing figures gained from 'unique' performances from his 'Star Guests' in the previous 2 Weeks, by an apparently 'Off His Tits' Robbie Williams and Whitney Houston in here 'Skip Skop Scalleywag' persona, Simon Cowell has decided to continue the trend with this weeks show coming live from 'The Priory'.


Where they will be featuring 'Greatest Hits of Doped Up Shits' - the highight's will be 'Stacey' doing a rendition of her Step-Sister Amy's 'Rehab' and the not to be missed 'Duncan and Edward' putting their own original twist on 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.

And if the shows crap, then the after show festivities should be worth watching on ITV1 an hour later.

Rafael Benitez - Ain't Life a Beach

The freak 'Beach Ball' goal for Sunderland against Liverpool in yesterdays Premier League (nice you tube vid above :) was remarkably well acknowledged by 'Serial Whinger' Mr Benitez. I couldn't believe that he didn't ask for a rematch, or even the shooting at dawn of referee Mike Jones ...... and for once in his life I think he'd have good reason to complain.
By the rules of the game the 'goal' should never have stood, mention for such occurrences can be seen within the Fifa Laws of the Game document

Extra balls on the field of play
If an extra ball enters the field of play during the match, the referee must stopthe match only if it interferes with play. Play must be restarted by a droppedball in the position where the match ball was at the time when the matchwas stopped, unless play was stopped inside the goal area, in which case thereferee drops the ball on the goal area line parallel to the goal line at the pointnearest to where the ball was located when play was stopped.

Also covered here

POWERS AND DUTIES

The Referee:- stops, suspends or terminates the match because of outside interference of any kind

Steve Bruce argued that the referee would probably not have known what ruling applied in such a freak occurrence !!
A referee freshly qualified, refereeing an U-10's match maybe - but this is a man who is (almost) at the very top of his profession. Alex Ferguson had to retract a statement last week after he said Alan Wiley wasn't 'fit' to be a referee,following Man Uniteds game against Sunderland, if he'd said it about Mike Jones he wouldn't have been retracting his statement this week.

Being an ex-referee myself, I always try to see decisions from their point of view and realise what a difficult job they have in games that are covered by cameras from every angle.But in this instance I can't find any excuse for Mr Jones, he obviously saw the incident - but didn't do his job correctly.

Guess you could say it was a case of 'Taking his eye of the Ball'