Sugar sugar sugar james

The guy rocks. His blog is the most acerbic and funny one on the net.

The cat does not lie down for anyone but while he keeps posting gems like this below, I will keep singing his praises and generally acting like a servile f*** in front of him.

How fucking sweet is it when people who are not you fuck up? It automatically takes my self esteem up a notch to seem someone else fucking up. That guy missed the game winning shot? I didnt miss the game winning shot, I must therefore be better than him. I call it the transitive property of society. If A equals some dude, B equals you, and C equals your overall rank in the homo sapien heirarchy, it would read as follows: A > B, C -> C -1, or in english - You are better than someone, therefore you are ranked higher than you were before dude fucked up. The more people fuck up while you sit back and watch em, the better a life you're leading. Thats why Im sitting in the bleachers laughing at your shits and adjusting the tally marks in my abucus, you worthless bastards

http://sugarjames.livejournal.com/ -see the rest of his superb blog here

The Silent Feline returns

Apologies for lack of updates. I've been trying to sort out my living arrangements and this has distracted me for a bit. Anyway pending the return of presumably glowing references for the cat that my estate agents have requested, I will be moving to the beautiful locale of the brighton marina shortly.

This is within spitting distance of the rendezvous casino, not to mention several pubs, so i expect to resume my debauched lifestyle of gambling and drinking shortly upon arrival.

Other News?

Well I haven't performed too well in the last 2 weeks and have barely broken even. I put this down to bad luck(obviously), being a little unsettled due to moving between ealing, brighton and the mean streets of Upper Warlingham, the london suburb equivalent of west compton. At least, that is the picture Royal Flush will paint of it should you ask. In actuality, it is a peaceful, leafy suburban district where the pimps, gangstas and hoes are replaced by squirrels, foxes and the odd deer.

Nonetheless in this time i managed to take down another omaha hi lo PL tournament, making 3 in the last month. Ive only started playing these recently so it is cool that i'm having some success. I find cash games very easy, but tournaments are always a different kettle of fish and i'm learning bit by bit. Many of the stalwart principles of NLHE tourney play, such as tight aggression, changing gears and bubble punishment all apply so I'll get there in the end.

Also, I note Hectorjelly has decided to stop posting on 1808. Although i rarely read the forum there these days, this is sad news. He is easily one of their top players and his analysis is very good. He doesn't tolerate fools gladly which rubs some of the kippers up the wrong way, but I'd rather have a rude excellent poster on my site, than a bunch of polite morons.

I jsut hope he stops chasing those polish women and pulls his finger out and updates his blog as it was always very readable.

As for me, I've posting on blonde poker recently. It's a good forum, graced by its eponymous meister Dave "El Blondie" Colclough and some other interesting and funny posters.

I've been asked to mock kippers by many folk. There's no need to ask twice, this is the cat's vocation and if it's kipper mocking you want, Kipper mocking you shall receive!

There's a poster on the site who, though he seems a nice enough guy, is highly confused with certain aspects of poker. I won't name and shame him but let his name be a mystery.

Here are some priceless snippets from the mysteryman's poker book of theory.

" if i get a k utg depending on how things are im probably out of 10 times, gonna limp twice raise maybe 2 or 3 times fold the rest"

Fold AK UTG 50% of the time. hmmmmm.

Dunno where to start. Clearly ridiculous, AK is rated as one of the strongest hands in holdem, mainly due to the fact that it is only dominated by two hands. Passing up equity here is the equivalent of carefully gathering a knife, a gun, a stapler and a pen and paper and proceeding to fire the gun at your feet, saw your nose off with the knife and staple the bloody mess to a piece of paper on which you write "screw you face, never liked you much anyway."

Another point brought up was in a live sitation where several people had deepish stacks. UTG limps, UTG+2 calls the 1600 BB with 44, its folded round ot the BB who riases to 4800 and UTG calls the raise. Does 44 call the 3200 raise off his 40k stack?

HELL yeah! Especially as he beleives the BB has a big hand AK KK or AA. The debate centred around whether this was a correct fold, with the majority of respected posters all saying its an easy call for implied odds.

Mystery disagreed of course. I have highlighted the most fishy of his comments below.

"i think the laydown preflop with 4 4 is correct, if he has u on a big pair, hes not really gonna know where he stands with a flop of something like 4 q k, if he has u on a big pair u could easily of just made trips on the flop. the correct preflop fold imo, calling a raise preflop when u know ur a huge underdog is just bad poker no matter wot odds ur getting"

Has he ever seen a good player? Dan negreanu, Doyle brunson, Phil Ivey, sod it most of the top professionals have built careers out of being able to play weak hands well yet mysteryman(who ,as he ceaselessly reminds everyone, finished 14th in the ladbrokes league last year - yes 14th!) feels qualified to cast judgement on these guys as playing "bad poker." Laughable really.

The "no matter wot odds ur getting" is funny too. More kippery than 15 cans of kipper concentrate crushed into a matchbox and calling a reraise with 72 o/s.

Other gems from mystery included the idea that he would fold the nuts, if he got too much action(god forbid you get action with the nuts) and "outplay" people later, and the idea that people who "know how to play poker" would fold AA preflop to too much action 1st hand of the WSOP.

I posted a quote from Paul Phillips refuting this and showing how folding AA to a table of allins is roughly equivalent to folding KK to A rag three times. He has yet to reply.....

I went into this in some depth so I'll post the link here rather than repeat my exasperated response to his rubbish. It's cool to have different opinions on poker but when you are talking nonsense front up and admit it.... you'll improve as a player!

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=6510.15 - This is folding AA preflop to a table of allins.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=6461.0 is where folding the nuts on the flop is talked about.

Experiments on animals

This isn't some post with a vivisection-fuelled agenda. I beleive experiments on animals to be cruel and unneccesary other than when its on dogs or when they test shampoo on monkeys(it's a service, u seen how long they spend picking bits of crap out of their hair??)

No, this is about posting all my hands in a tournamnet as an experiment. I may miss some out and stick to the key ones but should be good.

Tourney starting, let's see how it goes.

Paradise bankroll up and running

Those of you who read my blog regularly, god rest your merry kippery souls, may recall how i got my paradise bankroll up to 220$ about a month ago. Well since then i ahve played very little but lost about 40$ playing a 10$ rebuy the other day in which my KK got done by 74 for giant pot. Fair play. Anyway it had gone doen to 160 when Flush Royal suggested i play the 50$ freezeout on there.

With good bankroll management at the foremost of my thoughts, I duly registered 1/3 of my existing balance into this long shot adventure, cutting a 80 20 deal with the NORSE HORSE (flush) to mitigate the variance slightly.

The tournament started ok, i got up to 2700 early on when i raised AA to about 240 after some limpers - one caller. Flop came A9c 3. guy bet 20 on the flop. I decide this is not acceptable and raise him. He calls. Turn is a 6 non club. He bets 20 again and i again raise, this time heftily. He called. RIver was 7 non club. Again he bet 20, i stick in my last 400 as i feel he is either flush draw or pot committed with a good pair, but he folded.

After this i went a bit quiet in the middle stages and was blinded down to 2200 or so. A small accident somewhere along the line, left me with 1600 chips. Dealt T7 off in the sb at 100 200, i am thinking of folding until the whole table limps so i think feck it y not and complete.

Flop is rather juicy TT7. I check UTG bets 600 into the 1.2k pot and another player moves allin -happy days for the cat. I pause to make it look like i have a tough decision and maybe get UTG in there wiht his 89 or something, and eventually scooch my chips into the middle, but he wisely passes. IM up against TJ and he misses his J out and i am up to 5k or so in chips.

A few ups and downs before i get AA and QQ paid off on the last 3 tables and reach the final table as chip leader. Stacks were qutie short here. I had about 60k, blinds were 800 1.6k with antes and average was roughly 22k.

One guy on the table, the 2nd CL, COOLMAN2k was very aggressive and soon swiped my chip lead by raising a ridiculous amount of pots. I was pretty impressed with the effect of his raw aggression. THere were a lot of chips to be swept up and people were playign quite tightly. I think he mesmerised me a bit because i missed a couple of resteal opportunities, although he showed he was not in the mood for laying down to reraises by taking on a few people after raising with T6h and such.

Ultimately i got a couple of big hands, particularly flat calling KK when he raised then letting him push the K hi flop was a good coup, propelling me back to big chippie, although every time i got the lead he would snatch it back before too long. There was clearly only going to be 2 people left once the smoke had cleared and that is how it transpired.

SO headsup with Coolman. he took the first few hands with big raises while i held rags. Then i get K6s in the BB, with a mere 90K left at 4k 8k and running 200( ithink?) ante.

To some, this hand may look weak. Facing once of his raises it was a monster tho so when he make it 25k i pushed. He insta called with Q7 and i dodged the outs and took it down.

Play switched back and forth. if ever i limped he made it 20-30k so i decided to limp QQ when it came my way. He made it 25k, i checkraised allin feeling he would call for pot odds and he did with A5. my QQ held and now i held a decnt 2-1 lead.

After i took a few pots off him with bluffs, and he reraised me once and i laid down, i got JJ. I made it 25k to go, my now standard raise and he pushed allin with A2. My JJ held and i took the mofo down, although i have to say i was very impressed by Coolman's play. Still, 2.5k added to the paradise bankroll so not bad from the mere 30$ that was in there a few months ago.

More importantly tho, i am pleased to have registered a decent holdem win and felt that with the help of some cards i played well in this tourney, and maybe am getting a bit of form back. Earlier i also finished 3rd in another 50$ FO fo 390$ so overall a v good night.


A more informative/ results oriented blog entry here than the entertaining kipper bashing narrative you all yearn for, but do not fear for the tides of the new year will bring plenty of kippers washing up on the cat's shores, do not fear.

To one and all, A HAPPY NEW YEAR.