Christopher Hamilton

This last week has been a relatively quiet one. I was down in London for three days for work. The cool thing about going down there is I get to catch up with friends that I don’t often get to see. So this time I met up with Mijin. We went out for a really nice steak and then turned the clock back to my time in Oz by spending the next few hours drinking and playing pool. It was a fun night which ended with me winning by a substantial margin. I was a little surprised since she’s a decent pool player, but all my shots seemed to come off and I was pretty lucky on a few occasions.

The next night, I had to finish my assignment for my Open University course. That was a struggle. No matter how long I sat there I just could get into it and really struggled to finish it. I finally managed to finish it at about 3am . I should receive it back at some point this week so I’ll get to know soon how badly I fucked it up.

The weekend was really a combination of two things; sport, and beer. Friday night we all sat around the flat drinking, playing poker, and then playing Pro Evolution 5 on the PS2. Saturday I crawled out of bed about 1pm and within about an hour I was back on the beer as the Scotland vs New Zealand Rugby kicked off. The day drew to a close at 4am, after about 3 games of rugby, some football, a fantastic boxing match, Ricky Hatton kicked ass, and then some more drunken PS2 playing with Fight Night 2, and then Pro Ev making another appearance.

Feeling a touch delicate after the 14 hour drinking session on Saturday, sunday was to be a day of rest..except Hibs vs Rangers was going to be on TV…I couldn’t miss it, so I went down to my Uncle’s friends with my Uncle and Dad, to watch Hibs play Rangers off the park, that was fun. Thankfully my Dad wanted a few beers so I offered to drive. I had managed to get my day off drinking. So you would think I would feel refreshed.

Well, no!

Since it was the first time I’d seen my little cousins in a while and one of them was recently a little under the weather, combined with watching the football with another 8 year old kid in the room, I’ve managed to catch a cold. My kids germs tolerance must have been low because this cold is kicking my ass. Every time I sneeze I get this shooting pain down my back like I’m putting pressure on a nerve or something, and I’m just exhausted. Essentially I had to take today off work, which I hate doing, and spend most of it in bed loading up on orange juice and Lemsip.

Hopefully I’ll be good tomorrow since I’ve slept most of today and I’m feeling better but still really tired. I almost never get sick too, damn cold!!!

Well that was my extra exciting week. for the rest of this one I’ve fot to firstly get over this cold, and then get on with preparations for my next OU assignment which is due in a couple of weeks. Oh the fun never ends!!

I’m going to be back down in London again this week with work. Normally I would enjoy the break from Edinburgh, since I get to catch up with my friend Mijin, but this time it’s a doubled edged sword. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’m doing and Open University course and unfortunately I have an assignment due this friday.

Normally I would be able to just focus on it and get it written and sent off, but for some reason this assignment is causing me no end of troubles. It’s not that I can’t handle the topic, but the fact that I keep getting distracted and only doing a small part of it. It’s an interesting subject, the Colosseum, but for some reason I just can’t get excited about it. I find that I have to force myself to sit down and actually start writing. Which is a slight problem when your on a deadline.

So if you’ll excuse me I’m off to force myself to do some more work.

Recently I’ve been having a rotten run of form. Virtually every tournament I’ve played over the last 2/3 weeks I’ve bubbled out of. It happened again tonight in one $10 + $1 single table SNG. I couldn’t help thinking that I was forever doomed to this terrible bubble boy fate.

So I registered in a 3 table SNG with the sole purpose of reaching the money. Even if it meant blinding out the hand after I made it there I just had to cash for my morale. That’s nearly what happened. We were on the bubble, with blinds at 400/800 and I had maybe 2 more orbits left before I was gone. I was dealt pocket 9’s and after a lot of thought decided to go All-In pre flop.

They held up and I doubled up. The bubble went the very next hand.

I had cashed.

The pressure I had put myself under to get there vanished and I began to loosen up. Within less than 5 hands I had doubled up again and things were looking good. So to cut a long story short:

**********************
PokerStars Tournament #15244474, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
27 players
Total Prize Pool: $270.00
Tournament started - 2005/11/17 - 16:38:41 (ET)

Dear whoisspain,

You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $100.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.
***********************

I ended up playing some really good poker my luck seemed to be in too. Coin-tosses fell in my favour. I was catching crazy straights from the big blind with rags. It felt great.

Here’s hoping the win is going to set me up nicely for the WWdN Tournament tomorrow night.

I’ve just received my affiliation details for Full Tilt and PokerStars. So if you don’t play on either site yet, please sign up by clicking on one of the links over there on the right

Oh man am I tired today.

I was sitting with one of my flatmates watching tv last night and having a *cough* few *cough* beers. Beetle Juice was on and we both love that movie so watching it was a complete no brainer. After it had finished neither of us were particularly tired so we threw on a Family Guy DVD. Once we both realised it was 3am though it was time to go get some sleep.

Then for some unexplicable reason I wasn’t able to get to sleep. A few beers on a week night usually combine to make me drift off quickly but not last night. No, I lay there until 5am…

I should have just gotten up and ready for work but I persevered. Not even some normally relaxing music, (usually some blues), on the iPod helped. I finally managed to fall asleep but had to get up at 8am for work. Only 3 hours sleep is just not a good idea.

I’m very grateful for caffeine, it’s going to be my saviour today.

A few more mugs of coffee and i’m goingtobeabletotakeontheworldw00000t!!!

I stumbled upon this super cool South Park Studio that lets you create your own South Park style characters. It’s an easy way to completely lose 20 minutes while you create crazy knights and vikings, and almost any kind of combination you can think of.

I decided to create one of myself. I made a boring version, then a completely crazy version, then one somewhere in the middle and decided that it would do..

So here it is

Want to create your own? Here’s the link

I played a couple of the new PokerStars 180 player SNG’s last night. It’s the first time I’ve played poker since friday and it was a lot of fun. Well except for getting busted out, which always sucks.

The first tournament I was small blind and there was a small raise and everyone folded round to me. I’m dealt AJ so I call. I probably should have raised but I didn’t. The BB folds so there’s two of us in the hand.

The flop comes Q - 10 - K

Nice, the nut straight. The only thing that worried me was the two clubs.
I bet out around half the pot.

He raises All-In.

I figured he had either hit trips or was on a flush draw and wanted me out of the hand.

I thought about it for about 2 seconds, and called.

He flips over Q Q

So, as long as it’s not runner-runner clubs and the board doesn’t pair I’m fine.

Turn - 7

excellent, another rag please dealer.

River - K

Noooo!!

I busted out of my first 180 tournament in 136th….that sucks!!

After that I thought I’d play a small $10 + $1 multi table SNG and I was doing really well. I got to the final table with a decent stack. Not the chip leader but I had a chance. Then my internet connection dropped.

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.

What made things worse though was getting it back up and running just as I bubbled out of the tournament.

Damn it!!

A couple of hours later I played my 2nd 180 player tournament. These things really are fun.

I won’t go into this tournament too much but I finished in 20th, 2 off the money. My 2 pair, A’s and 10’s, were crushed by the guy catching a queen on the turn to make a set.

I played really well throughout the tournament with a lot of confidence and I’m sure I would have been able to at least get to the final table, but it wasn’t to be.

My game has really improved over the last month or two but because I haven’t been able to play as often as I would like, my bankroll is still very modest. I plan on building it up over the next few weeks/months to allow me to play these tournaments more regularly. Ever since playing in the WWdN Tournaments I’ve found that I really enjoy MTT’s and I want to be able to play them more but to do that I have to have a decent bankroll to cope with the times when I don’t make the money.

While last night was financially unsuccessful I had a lot of fun for several hours and I’m really glad Stars have made these tournaments a permanent feature.