Christopher Hamilton

There’s been a great lack of things to post about recently. My game still sucks, it’s slowly getting back to where it was about 6 months ago but there’s still some way to go. My reads are getting better, which is probably the only good thing to come out of my maniac play before Christmas and I’m finding it a lot easier to lay down big hands when I’m pretty sure I’m beat. Still for some reason when I get close to the bubble in SNG’s I play like an absolute donkey. Before the bubble I’m ok, after the bubble I start to play pretty well, but around the bubble…sheesh you’d think I’d never played the game before, I’ve no idea what the hell is going on but I’m sure I’ll work through it.

I’ve got two live games this weekend which is great. I don’t get to play live very often so we decided to run our monthly game this Saturday night, and a guy from work arranged his game for tonight. Both games are normally a lot of fun, with the latter being a really tough game where almost everyone is a very solid player. Tonights game is going to have the added bonus of changing from a cash game to being a shutout tournament which we haven’t done there before, plus I’m going out for a few drinks after work so by the time I get to the game I’ll probably be a drunken idiot, which should do wonders for my table image since at those games I’m considered a very tight player.

Anyway, since this is just a stream of random crap I’m going to get back to work. If I can rope a decent amount of brain power together at some point today I’ll post something decent. Until then!

Within the last half an hour I’ve started to feel like crap. I think I’m gonna throw up..I have that pre-barf feeling going on…only another 3 hours to go at work so more than likely I’ll be fine until then and I’ll probably spend half the night praying to the porcelain gods.

****
Quick Weekend Recap

The weekend was a very chilled out one, I went to the Hibs game with my Dad and Uncle and watched them walk all over Dunfermline and score three fantastic goals. After the game I lay down on the sofa watching crappy movies on Sky and then stupidly fired up Stars. It was stupid because I was tired and not really concentrating, which contributed to me donking off my chips and busting out of the SNG very quickly.

Sunday was spent kicking back until late afternoon when I went to the cinema to see Underworld Evolution. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the film and Kate Beckinsale was absolutely gorgeous as always. The movie finished just in time for me to get home and watch the Steelers crush Denver which was awsome since I’m not a Denver fan at all. Then Carolina got whooped…Excellent!!

****

Well back to work, and trying to avoid throwing up over my desk.

***Update***

Well that was a weird couple of hours. I feel absolutely fine again so I’ve no idea what the hell was going on earlier. It was a little like when you know you’ve had too much to drink, and you know that at some point very soon your going to be sick but feel fantastic afterwards. I had all that without the booze, (booooo!!!), and without the vomit, (wooooo!!).

I haven’t really played a great deal of poker lately, even when I’ve been at the tables some would say!, but since Tuesdays are usually my night where I don’t study, I decided that after playing football I’d fire up Stars and play a $10 + $1 MTT. It was a rebuy tournament which I really don’t like because of the huge potential for donkeys who have been rebuying all day to suckout on you when they’re looking to double up before the break. Normally as a rule I won’t rebuy in these things. It puts me at a disadvantage but basically I think once you bust out, that you should be done.

Of course I followed my normal policy and didn’t rebuy but because of that I was pretty short stacked after the breaks. I had around 3500 to 4000 in chips and the chipleader had around 52.000. Holy crap…I watched a little of his table before the break and to be honest I’m not surprised. There was one guy who would bust out, rebuy, then rebuy again to get 3000 in chips, and on the very next hand would go all in. The chip leader would call and then rebuy guy would flip over monster hands such as 6-3 offsuit. I couldn’t believe it. This happened about 4 times while I was watching the table..why couldn’t this guy have been at my table, which was really tight.

I busted out after the break when one guy called my all-in (pair of nines; I was shortstacked and needed to double-up) with the monster hand of K2 when the flop only had a single diamond. Well he caught runner-runner for the flush but I’m not going to talk about it anymore because no one wants to read a bad beat story.

The one good thing about it all though was that I remembered how much fun MTT’s are and hopefully I’ll get a chance to play them more. I might even play in the WWdN tourney again next week since I’ve not really been able to play one for a while.

I just have to make sure I build up a decent stack before the break if I play in a rebuy tourney again because if you don’t your pretty screwed.

I received my mark back today for the assignment that gave me lots of trouble last week. Thankfully I passed with a decent mark. Nothing spectacular but around the same as 75% of my other results so I’m pretty happy. There were a few mistakes and some things that I didn’t answer properly, but it’s a pass and that’s all that matters.

On to the next one!

I finished my assignment last night and sent it in. After spending Wednesday night till about 4am writing the thing I scrapped it last night and started again. In the end I’m not sure if I’ve answered the question correctly but I was so pissed off with it I just decided that either it was good enough for a pass or it wasn’t and I’d have to work my arse off for the rest of them. To be honest I should be working harder for the rest of them anyway.

I’ve been told the marking shouldn’t take long so hopefully early next week I’ll find out how much I’ve fucked up.

well it’s just gone 3.40am and I’m still up working on this assignment. It’s my own stupid fault. I’ve had ages to do it and I’ve left 90% of it till the last minute.

I’m thinking I’ll probably go through what I’ve already written and try to flesh out the plan for the second part of it before I grab a couple of hours sleep. I really should be doing it now but I need 5 minutes to let my brain rest. I’m adding a cutoff point of 4 since I don’t want to be up all night. I have all of tomorrow to finish what I can’t today.

My heads gone all mushy, Rousseau and the French Revolution can fuck right off at the moment.

I’m going to stop bitching about it now and get back to writing the damn thing.

I’m not sure what’s up with me at the moment but I’m having some real issues sleeping. I think I woke up every 20-30 minutes last night. The result being I was half an hour late for work this morning.

I’m not really having an easy time of stringing any thoughts together at the moment. My brain just doesn’t seem to want to fire on all cylinders this morning. I have an OU assignment to finish for Friday so hopefully I’ll be back up and running properly by lunch time so I can get a large part of it finished.

Until that happens caffeine is going to be my saving grace.

Well all I can say is thankfully a new year is upon us.

My game towards the end of last year suuuuucckkkkked. My bankroll ended up being completely crippled and what’s worse was that I was making stupid plays, and generally playing like a complete lunatic.

Since Christmas I’ve barely played any poker at all, since it’s no fun getting your ass kicked constantly, but just after the new year I was at home and my flatmate was playing a small SNG. About half way through he had to go do something and asked me to look play till he got back. Well since it wasn’t my money at stake I played tight but took the advantage whenever I thought the other players showed weakness. When my flatmate got back he noticed he now had a huge chip advantage over everyone else and decided to let me play. For the rest of the SNG I played some smart poker, laying down when I had to and taking pots with nothing. In the end I walked away with the SNG much to my flatmates delight.

I didn’t play any more poker that night, but I fired up Stars the next day and played a couple of small SNG’s winning then both by playing the same way. I’ve no idea why I became a manic at the tables towards the end of last year but I think it may have helped my game more than harmed it. Now I’m more prepared to bet with junk when I think I can steal pots but I’m more aware of when I’m beat and can lay down big hands. Thankfully the bankroll has started to creep back up to acceptable limits and before long I’ll get back to what I had before the madness kicked in.

Here’s to some fun poker for 2006!

One last thing, good luck to Pinky who’s decided to take the plunge and play poker full time.