Euro 2012 Preview

The eagerly anticipated Euro 2012 Championships kick off today in Poland and Ukraine.

The 16 teams that qualified will battle it out over the course of the next month to see who is the best in Europe.

There seems to be less hype in the UK than usual. I think we are finally realising that we are an outside shot and teams like Spain, Germany and Holland are far more skilled than us.

I will however be fully behind England to win this thing. We have a recently appointed manager in Roy Hodgson. He was also Liverpool manager not too long ago where he didn't do too well. He is vastly experienced however so lets hope he can put a good plan into action.

Here are the groups and fixtures:

Looking at the groups we should get through by beating both Sweden and Ukraine. Our toughest game is against France on June 11th. I'm not too sure if it is a good thing to get this fixture first. It may have been better to play Ukraine first and bag a win before taking on France. Then again this is Euro 2012 and to be the best you have to beat the best and a win in game 1 will set us up for the other 2 group fixtures.

Our main striker Wayne Rooney is suspended for the first 2 games so it will be interesting to see what line up goes out against France.

Group B looks like the group of death with 4 tough teams battling it out for 2 spots into the knock out stages. You can never rule out Germany and their history shows us that they are big comp players. They start up against Portugal on the 9th.

Spain and Italy should go through group C although it would be great to see the Republic of Ireland progress.

Pundits forecast Poland and Russia to top Group A. Watch out for Greece though who are on an impressive winning run.

Lets hope for an exciting event..!! The final is in Kiev on July 1st at the Olympic Stadium.

Devastating Cobra

If you missed the big fight in the early hours of Sunday morning then you need to find a way to see it.

Carl 'Cobra' Froch won the world title for the 3rd time in his career when he destroyed undefeated champ Lucian Bute.

It was the IBF version this time and was fought out in Froch's home town of Nottingham.

The bookies got this one completely wrong and had Bute as quite a solid favourite to win.

It was an awesome display from Carl that lasted 5 rounds before the stoppage was made. It was a last chance saloon for him as he stated after the fight that had he had lost then he was going to announce his retirement from from the sport. He can now look forward to some more big fights.

Well Done Carl..!!

uNL + SSNL Poker Players Fantasy Premiership Football League Final Table

The Fantasy Football League for poker players that I set up last August for the 2011/2012 season has now concluded. We had 10 paid-up entrants in the money league and about 25 entrants in the free to enter league. The final money league standings are as follows:

The prize pool was divided into two sections as follows:

I managed to win second place in both December and May. Congratz to HH for taking 1st place in both sections..!!

I'm not sure if I will run it again next season or hand over the reigns but keep an eye out for it.

Peace

Man City win Premier League title

Gratz to Man City for winning the Premier League. As a Liverpool FC fan I welcome any team that does one over Man Utd. All you need is the last 3 mins of injury time to score 2 goals. What a game..!!

2012 FA Cup Final Preview: Liverpool vs Chelsea

My Liverpool boys will today bid for their second trophy in 2012.

A lacklustre premiership bid sees them languishing in a lowly 8th position. The only target left is to finish above local rivals Everton in 7th with only 2 games remaining.

In recent times the number 1 priority of English clubs has been to finish in the top 4 and to secure a Champions League place as this generates significantly more money than winning domestic cups.

However, having already won the League Cup adding another piece of silverware would make this a successful campaign if we beat Chelsea at Wembley Stadium. The winners also receive £1.8m and the losers get £900k.

This will be Liverpool's 14th FA Cup final having won the trophy 7 times already. It will be Chelsea's 11th final.

One of the biggest games on route for us was when we were drawn against Manchester United in the fourth round. It was an exciting game gripped also by the recent race row between Suarez and Evra. We took the lead through Agger but United equalised from Park Ji-Sung. It was great to give Man U a taste of their own medicine by getting a winner in the 88th minute when Kuyt scored. They normally do that to other teams..!!

Dalglish's reign has been in question after 13 defeats in the league this season. We all need this victory to show some kind of progress for Liverpool.

Good Luck The Reds...!!

Poker Players Fantasy Football League - Only 3 weeks left

We are nearing the end of the poker players English Premiership Fantasy Football League that I organised back in August.

The Original Link is Here

The last 3 weeks will be very interesting as I will attempt to catch the player in 1st place while the player in the 3rd place hunts me down.

I will gamble on a few changes that will hopefully catch Cam (aka Hillhurst Hotspur).

Coinflip si is in 3rd and still has his wildcard available for use which will let him make unlimited changes in a single week at no extra cost. There is a multiple fixture week ahead and I think it will pretty much be decided this week with the last 2 weeks being academic.

Here is the current table:

The prizes left to be decided are:

1st: $281.25
2nd: $93.75

Dead for 78 Minutes

On the right is a picture of a man who has been through a miracle.

Having seen his recent interview I had to write a quick piece about a truly amazing story.

On March 17th Bolton Wanderers Midfielder Fabrice Muamba collapsed off the ball with no one around him in a FA Cup Football match versus Tottenham.

He had just suffered a heart attack on the pitch and fallen to the ground.

Just before he fell he says that he had double vision and then shortly afterwards there was blackness and then absolutely nothing. Fabrice was dead.

Paramedics rushed to his aid and worked to save his life, pumping his chest for around 6 minutes with a defibrillator. He was then rushed to hospital.

It was 78 minutes before his heart started working again and he was left briefly in a coma. After 40 days in hospital he is back home and making a good recovery. He now has a zapper in his chest to start his heart up should it stop again.

The moment he collapsed

All the best Fabrice...!!

Life is short... Live It....

Liverpool FC - Carling Cup Champions 2012

We won our first trophy in 6 years...!! The last one being the 2006 FA CUP. This is the first silverware for Kenny Dalglish in his second tenure at the club.

It was an exciting match with the underdogs Cardiff City taking the lead and holding it to the half time break. Martin Skrtel levelled on the hour and it stayed that way for the 90 minutes.

We thought we had won it in extra time when substitute Dirk Kuyt smashed home an instinctive shot that had come his way the from City defence. However 10 minutes later with only 2 minutes on the clock Cardiff bundled home to make it 2-2.

Penalties ensued with Steven Gerrard missing the first one for Liverpool. There were then a few misses by both sides before the score was 3-2 to Liverpool with 1 pen left.

Up stepped Anthony Gerrard (Steven's Cousin). He connected well but slotted wide and it was all over. Liverpool had won..!!

Next on the agenda is the FA CUP which is at the quarter final stage. Liverpool have a good draw and will be one of the favourites to bag that one too..!!

GL Guys.

Comeback Complete + WBCOOP Event 7

The recovery from the downswing is complete. The graph shows what the month looks like with me hitting a low of -28 BIs.

It feels like I have been running way below EV though the graph does not show that. I always wonder how accurate the RED line really is. Personally I don't pay too much attention to it like other players do. I just try to play the best I can in every single pot.

Today I finished in 25th place in WBCOOP Event #7. I won a $16.50 SCOOP ticket + entry to the WBCOOP Main Event on Sun March 4th. I have 6 Tournaments left so lets try n bring back more tickets..!!

There was a pretty cool 4-way All-In pre pot which I took down, knocking out all 3 opponents:

Good luck to Liverpool FC for tomorrow's Cup Final. I hope that we will be seeing something like this:

Finally, a quick thanks to all of you that watch the YouTube clips on the side pane. It helps generate a little cheeseburger cash every month so keep clicking. Cheers..!!

Laters.

Pokerstars Cricket Night

I recently got a call from a Pokerstars Rep.

I was a bit sceptical when I received the call as I been reading about scams where people where posing as Stars Reps on Skype in an attempt to swindle players.

After a while talking to this guy it was apparent that he was really who he claimed to be and I began to trust him.

Stars organises social events for Supernova+ players to bring a more community feel to what can be quite an isolated job if you grinding alone behind a screen for hours on end.

I think its a great idea and there aren't many poker sites that would host these kind of nights out on their account.

Yesterday I attended the England vs West Indies T20 Cricket match at the Oval. Myself, 4 other players and the Stars Rep all attended and it was paid for by Stars. We were also treated to drinks and food and it was a fun evening. The players that attended all played different games from HU to SNGs to FR Cash to 6-max.

The game was pretty interesting although predictable at the end as England romped home to victory

Afterwards we hit a pub for a few more after game drinkz.

Here we are:

2011/2012 English Premiership Football Season - Poker Fantasy League

The new football season commences in 10 days.


So, you fancy yourself as a football manager?? Well put your skills to the test.

The official premiership site runs a fantasy football game of which i have played for the last 5yrs or so. 


I have created a league for Poker Players & Friends to join. We have 8 runners already so please come and participate.

If you want to sign up, please go to the link below and create your team. Once your team is ready, join my league. Code is: 685938-175587 

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/


Also if you fancy a small wager then put your name down on the 2+2 link (see below)



2+2 Fantasy Premiership Thread

GL

Sexy Six

My Cash Game run good continues and I am now up 6 days in row. It feels just like the old days!!

On the last Sunday of each month I play the Turbo Takedown, DNG (Daily Ninety Grand - Sunday Special) and from now onwards the newly re-named STORM. I also occasionally play the Sunday Million or Sunday Warmup

Today I didn't fare well in the tourneys and was dumped out of all of them by 11pm, ouch....

The end of the month is close and I am hoping to win the last four days of march to make it 10 up days on the trot.

I now play 10 Tables of NL100 as my standard with a few variations thrown in for laffs



Anyways, here is the graph:

Stats:

In other news, Sri Lanka absolutly smashed England in the Cricket World Cup and now meet New Zealand in the Semi-Finals. We have already beat them in the group stage so it should be a repeat battering.

Draw:

Cheers

6 Week Festival of Fun Begins

The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the tenth Cricket World Cup and will be jointly hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The World Cup will use Cricket's One Day International format, with fourteen national cricket teams competing.

The event will take place between 19th February and 2nd April 2011, with the first match to be played between co-hosts India and Bangladesh facing off at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur, Dhaka.

The first round of the tournament will be a round-robin in which the 14 teams are divided into 2 groups of 7 teams each. The 7 teams play each other once with the top 4 from each group qualifying for the quarter-finals.

The format ensures that each team gets to play a minimum of 6 matches even if they are ruled out of the tournament due to early defeats.

Teams qualified for the World Cup


Group A                       Group B

Australia                       Bangladesh
New Zealand                England
Pakistan                        India
Sri Lanka                      South Africa
Zimbabwe                    West Indies
Canada                         Ireland
Kenya                           Netherlands


The 2011 Cricket World Cup winning team would be taking home a prize money of US$ 3 million and US$ 1.5 million for runner-up

This should be a entertaining event and will definitely interrupt my online grinding... hopefully not too much

For the Non Cricket Fans (probably 95% of readers) here is a clip of my favourite player Sanath Jayasuriya destroying England

2010/2011 English Premiership Football Season - Poker Fantasy League

The new football season commenced today. 38 weeks of high octane action begins. So, you fancy yourself as a football manager?? Well put your skills to the test.

The official premiership site runs a fantasy football game of which i have played for the last 5yrs or so. This time i have created a league for all SSNL poker players. We have 6 runners already.

If you want to sign up, please go to the link below and create your team. Once your team is ready, join my league. Code is: 1602000-310925

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/

GL

ADS-HELL........

My god dam ADSL Internet Connection has been busted for a almost week now. I have spent many minutes talking to India which has been fun as much of the English conversation has been spelt out to me in phonetic alphabet by the call centres..... Hotel Echo Lima Lima (HELL)

Basically its still busted and TalkTalk are so lame that it takes 2 weeks to get an engineer out to my house.... They reckon that there might be a problem with the line even though the phone works perfectly. So it could not possibly be their modem or filter or cables that is the issue... hmmmm.. Strange that i have to pay only if the line is faulty as the other items are their responsibility. The phone works so they ain't getting a penny outta me..!!

Its 1am and I have just sorted a dodgy temp fix... so poker should be back tomorrow. When IT systems fail it is just so crippling to an online poker player..!!

However, it might be a blessing in disguise as my poker over the last 7 weeks has been woeful. Maybe a break from the tables is just what i needed...!!

Anyway as a newly qualified Supernova i am looking forward to my 1st $1m quarterly freeroll on 7th August. Not sure what to expect though in terms of runners... I am hoping that as this is restricted to SN VIPs and SNEs the field should be relatively small compared to a Sunday Million for example... As 999 places are paid hopefully i should get into the cash...!! The $150,000 1st prize would be sweet though. So what are my chances???........ Well, slim to none would be my guess as i suck at Tourneys.

My best tourney result came quite recently when i final tabled a UK freeroll. It was a satellite to the UK regional grand final with 9 places being awarded a spot in the main event. There were 4747 runners and i tried and interesting style of play which seemed to work well. With 50 players left i was chip leader and i hung on to that lead till about the last 20. When the final table was set, i was 3rd in chips and had made the cash (which was tiny) and received my ticket to the ME. I then went crazy and started to gamble wildly... big mistake... I was duly busted 1st at the final table.... lol..

I have been watching the Tour de France highlights show daily on ITV4 but tomorrow looks set to be the big showdown up the Col du Tourmalet. I will watch this stage Live and it should be fascinating as Andy Schleck has to attack if he has any chance of winning Yellow in Paris. With Contador favoured to beat Schleck in the time trial, Schleck must gain a lead tomorrow of over a minute to have any chance putting on the maillot jaune... You can do it Andy...!!

Poor Lance Armstrong had a shocker on one of the early stages when he crashed 3 times and effectively ended any chance of a podium finish... It would have been great to see him in his prime against Alberto Contador... would have been an awesome battle..

Peace...

Wimbledon Final...

After negotiating the usually engineering works on the London underground we finally made it to the Wimbledon Grounds to take our seats at the Men's Final to see Rafael Nadal vs Tomas Berdych. It was an awesome day even though the match was pretty one sided as Nadal smashed Berdych in straight sets 6-3 7-5 6-4.

Having been unable to defend his title last year due to injury, Nadal has now won 14 straight matches at Wimbledon. Nadal has proved beyond doubt that he is currently the world's best player and, at 24, he has plenty of time to close on Roger Federer's record 16 Grand Slam titles

It would have been great to see Federer in action but it wasn't to be. All in all it was an experience....!!

July Poker so far.....

I am currently around $40 down mtd which is actually an achievement considering that the pattern of last months results have just continued into July.... i.e the bad beats just go on and on. I have hardly played any poker in the 4 days so far but here are 3 hands that i have had:

1. I get all-in pre flop with KK against my opponent who turns over QQ. All is going well until the river, then BANG the Q hits and I'm stacked...!!! Great....

2. I raise with AA in MP and get one caller on the button. The flop is A36 (2 spades). I check and he bets around half the pot. I re-raise 3 times his bet and he calls. The Turn is a Qd and we get all-in with the Villain turning over QT spades. You know what comes next... yes his 25% chance to the hit the flush comes in with the 9s on the river. Stacked again.... awesome...

3. An absolute fish raises A6 UTG and there are 5 callers including me on the button with 55, maybe i should have raised but i flat called. The flop comes down A65 rainbow and I get all-in on the flop with the original raiser.... Yes you know the way i run these days.... Its time for the river card and what else could it possibly but the 6, giving him a bigger full house and leaving me stacked..... I have never had a bad run like this ever. Its been 6 weeks of non-stop bad beats with me down around $5k on the tables in that time. I am having to fight so hard just to break-even. The bonuses are just about keeping me afloat. I will receive a $1,500 cash bonus in a couple of days to put me up this month. Lets see if i can hang-on to that lead....

It's been a good day at the tennis so lets leave it there... i am enjoying a few vodka's as i review the photos of the day. I know that as soon as i log-on to pokerstars every fish will be busting me with any hand they choose to play... so lets play cards tomorrow...

laters...

Anyone for Tennis.....??

Yes, its here once again... The Wimbledon Tennis Championships start today and along with the World Cup that means loads of sport to keep me entertained.... how will i ever find any time to play some serious poker...!!

Anyway i have an even greater interest in this years tennis event as i have luckboxed my way to 2 tickets to the Men's Final... wooohooo, and with the new all-weather roof on centre court there is absolutely no danger of rain stopping play and i will be hoping to see Andy Murray destroy Roger Federer in the final... haha.... yeah right...

As for England's performance so far in the world cup, the less said the better.... We have once last chance on Wednesday to beat Slovenia and then maybe we can go on and peak just at the right time to lift the trophy.... oh wait... there's a pig flying past my window right now....hehe... Oh what a shame after the excellent qualifying campaign. It seems like the pressure on the big stage is just all too much for the lads... At the mo its all about the Latin American teams: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Mexico are smashing it. The only European Team of note so far is Holland with 2 wins out of 2.... The game goes on....

My poker exploits after 3 weeks of june are quite similar to an England game... woeful... In my last post i reported ending week 1 down around $200. Week 2 then picked up and i was up around $600 at one stage only too lose it all and end the week down around a grand. I fought hard to win pots, loosing many on the river when i had all the money in on the flop or turn with the best cards... the usual story... At the mo going into the final week of the month i am around $400 down mtd, still hoping to finish the month up by at least $1..... not too bothered either way as my focus will be on the Football and Tennis with a little bit of Cricket thrown into the mix (Asia Cup).