Viva La France!

Never thought I’d say this, but big respect to our gallic cousins for their recent strike action on Pokerstars.fr. Insane rake FTL. If the same kind of thing ever happened to the British poker market, we’d probably all just have a bit of a whinge followed by a nice cuppa to get over it. Of course, the French have always liked a bit of a strike so I’m sure this one didn’t take much organising.

Over on ipoker it looks like all the fish are on strike too. Where are they? Outside enjoying the summer perhaps? July has started well for me but the tables are so dry. I’ve played a couple of decent sessions (volume wise) but the rest have been short little “I cant see where my money is coming from on this table” affairs. My crappy PC hasn’t helped matters either. Last night I was ready for a decent session and it restarted 5 minutes into my first attempt and 0.00001 seconds into my second (just posted a BB). Mind you I won $97 in those 5 mins, so ship the green one!

In between playing I’ve been helping out my buddy Gee (see redundant blog link on the left). After a long period out of poker, he now has a bit of time on his hands and we’re working on his micro game. I’ve been over a load of his sessions and even played a couple of 20nl sessions on my old account where he sweated me. One table amused me greatly. Some idiot reg was giving chat abuse to the table fish and, well, everyone apart from me. He was quoting PTR figures left right and centre. I can only guess he must have been a slight winner or something and thought he was king. Funnily he didn’t mention my PTR stats. Seeing as we were 3BI up and the fish kept reloading, I started sticking up for him in chat. Cheering him on every time his illogical K7s shove held and generally tilting the idiot reg. Just like the pigeon feeding fella in Blur’s Parklife, it gave me a sense of enormous well-being. BTW, the top winners at that level are all like 17/14, 16/4 (seriously) and 14/10. It’s like another world. Here's hoping I can get him crushing there soon.

Our pool season is 4 matches old now and we’re 3 and 1. Sadly I missed the only defeat. All of our wins have been 6-5 and in the two that went to deciders – yours truly did the business. It’s a great feeling knocking in the win down our place as we have a great support from the locals. All the regulars, all the darts players, hell – even the Sunday night bingo players – can be seen cheering us on in tight matches. Our team has been bolstered by a new signing I recommended to the skip. He lives just around the corner from my brother (a mercurial talent but unwilling driver), so we have two players for the price of one. Bargain.

Our Snooker league is still a couple of months from restarting but we’ve only gone a pulled off a transfer coup there too. Last years skipper has called it a day so we’ve signed a guy who is one of the best players in the city. Since taking up pool, his interest in snooker has diminished, but he has a 120 break to his name and is forgoing a season in the top flight to play in the 4th tier (lol). There is a downside though… he’s Scottish so there’s nae chance he gets a round in :P