The schedule for the 2010 World Series of Poker was announced in December and not long after that, the “official rules of the WSOP” were released.  I won’t go into details of the playing schedule here - I only mention it because there is a controversial rule which caught my eye. From 2010, players will be allowed to use their mobile phones to text and twitter messages while they are at the table.

Has it really come to this?

OK, so the rule states you must be out of the hand with your cards lying in the muck before you can start twittering or texting. But that’s not the point. It’s rude to sit at a table full of people texting away on your phone. It’s rude for the same reason it’s rude to do it at the dinner table, or when meeting the President of the United States or when stood in the dock at the Old Bailey while being addressed by the judge. If you absolutely have to send a message, get up, leave the table and do it. But since when did anyone absolutely ever have to “twitter”? That is why this rule is being introduced by the way – so legions of morons can share with their legions of “followers” (micro-morons) whatever inconsequential and insignificant things are happening in their lives. 

So for what it’s worth I think it is a bullshit rule. What annoys me even more is that when I read the article reporting the story it didn’t say immediately afterwards that there had been universal howls of disapproval at the proposal. Presumably twittering is so important to some people that they have actively lobbied for this rule and the journalists, many of whom use Twitter “output” in their work, no doubt think it’s great. 

So in the 2010 WSOP you could conceivably get a table where everyone is wearing hoodies, shades and headphones and twittering on their mobiles the whole time so that no-one actually addresses anyone else during play. It’s not impossible that the micro-morons they are tweeting might actually be sat at the same table as them, in which case they could tweet back and avoid the need for real life communication entirely.

Is that what the organizers want? Tables of players with their heads buried in the mobiles tweeting stuff like:

“At the WSOP baby….. still a dickhead!”.

Sorry I should use the correct terminology and say “heads buried in their cell phones”. Because this is an American rule. And they can keep it. It will be a sad day if this ever catches on here. 

There’s a good argument that mobile devices should be banned at the table because they could be used for cheating, whether the person has folded his hand or not. And even if you don’t suspect the moron to be actually cheating it’s a legitimate reason to ban it at the table and admonish him. 

Bah Humbug. Maybe I’m getting old. 

Speaking of old, I thought I’d mention Doyle Brunson. Now he really is old - 76 in fact, and rather topically he likes to use Twitter. But I couldn’t help but take issue with something he said recently. After a trip to London Doyle had this to say:

 “Got back from London and it was the same, overcast and cold. I simply can’t find food there that I would give to Casper my dog. What’s wrong.”

Well the “overcast and cold” bit I can give him but I have to take issue with his complaints about the food. There are many, many thousands of restaurants in London and they can’t all be bad. Especially if you have got a few quid, which Doyle certainly has.  I find Doyle’s complaint about food interesting because it is a complaint I heard from another American when I was last in Las Vegas. He was about 25 stone as well.

Like I say, if you’re as rich as Doyle you shouldn’t have cause to grumble about the quality of the food in the capital. There are 48 Michelin starred restaurants in London, of which 39 have one star, 7 have two stars and 2 have three stars. I thought I’d share that with you as I just looked it up. (If you are wondering, as I’m sure you all were, about there being TWO restaurants with three Michelin Stars in London, the second is Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, Mayfair. He got his three star award a coule of weeks ago, in January 2010. Gordon Ramsey, previously the only holder of the 3 star award in London, must be gutted, the poor old “ex-pro” footballer and poppers sniffing adulterer). 

So when he asks “what’s wrong” I respectively suggest that the answer is “it’s you Doyle”.  Besides - we’ve got McDonalds here – what is he complaining about?

Talking of golden oldies, TJ Cloutier has been in the news recently and the news isn’t good for him financially. He appears to have gone broke. 

Before I mention his bad financial luck I ought to say a bit about TJ Cloutier. In his poker career and 71 years on this earth TJ Cloutier has won 6 WSOP bracelets, $9 million in tournament winnings and God knows how much in cash games. He is part of Poker’s Hall of Fame and he is widely regarded as the best player never to have won the main event at the WSOP. He came 2nd in 1985 and 2000, 5th in 1988 and 3rd in 1998.  You might think of him as the Jimmy White of poker.

Surely the 2000 event was the cruellest. In that match he was heads up with about one tenth of the chips in play against Chris “Jesus” Ferguson but fought his way to almost level. In the final hand he had AQ against Ferguson’s A9 and they got it all in preflop. Ferguson, tired of being outplayed, decided to gamble in the hope he might end it all. It was a bad call.

In fact you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbV7Bgy0r7A

There is so much to like about this clip, especially TJ smoking at the table and the dramatic saxophone music at 58 seconds. And doesn’t TJ look like Fabio Capello? In fact I imagine that’s exactly what Capello would look like right this minute if he didn’t dye his hair black (he must do right – he’s in his 60s?).  It’s hard to believe this piece of film is only 10 years old - it’s more like something from the 1980s or even earlier!

Incidentally TJ Cloutier is also the owner of the most mis-pronounced surname in poker. (It’s Cloo-dier and I was told that by a girl in Las Vegas who had personally asked him so I won’t be having any arguments on this).

Anyway, during January, two of TJ Cloutier’s bracelets, including his 2005 WSOP $5000 No Limit Hold em event bracelet, appeared on eBay.  After being tracked down TJ admitted they were his bracelets and that he had pawned them. It wasn’t him who put the bracelets on eBay but the pawnbroker. He was quoted as saying

‘I don’t want to talk about it…yeah it’s mine…I was short…I pawned it….

For the record, the bracelet sold for $4006, which is a pretty paltry amount given his legendary status in the game and also considering its intrinsic worth.  According to Poker News Daily’s calculations:

“With its 96 grams (3.38 ounces) of 14 carat gold (58% gold, with 24 carats being solid gold) and 0.25 carats in diamonds, the cash value of the bracelet is roughly $2,350.”

TJ wouldn’t have got anything like $4006 from the pawnbroker though. However, there was a happy ending. The bracelet was sold to an online poker room (who clearly did it for their own publicity and so whose name I won’t mention) and they returned it to its rightful owner. I would laugh my head off were TJ to pawn it again. Or stick it on eBay and go play craps with the proceeds.

Ah, I shouldn’t laugh, but the last thing I’m going to do is say what everyone else is saying like “it’s sad for him” and “isn’t it terrible how he could lose all that money” and generally tut-tutting about how he has lost all his cash. Cloutier doesn’t want your pity.

So he lost a load of cash playing craps. So what? He will never want for being staked in a poker tournament and he will always be in the Hall of Fame. I bet he enjoyed himself spending his $9 million and he’s had a great life so far. What’s to feel sorry for?

On the theme of people falling on hard times I see that Gary Coleman, the dwarf actor from Diff’rent Strokes, has had a bad time of lately as well. Apparently he was taken into custody relating to an outstanding warrant for a “domestic incident”.  And it must be said he looked a right state in his mug shot.

From his glory days being signed by Kevin Keegan :

Keegan persuaded him to join Newcastle with this car in lieu of a signing on fee

to this mugshot in a Utah police station:

like Paul Gascoigne, life after Newcastle was never quite as good for Gary Coleman

Just a quick observation here, and I’m not mocking his height I hope you understand, but don’t mug shots usually have lines along the wall that act as height indicators? You know, like 5’-8’’, 5’-10’’, and 6’-0’’ marked against the wall in horizointal lines? Perhaps that is the 4’-2’’ line and the camera is too close up?

The article which reported this story charted Gary Coleman’s fall from grace:

“he received a suspended sentence for assault in 1998 after he punched a female fan during a heated row over an autograph. The woman, Tracy Fields, mocked Coleman’s lacklustre career as an adult actor. He said that he thought Fields was going to hit him, so he punched her”.

Well that defence worked for Steven Gerard and I jolly well hope his lawyer reminded the police that it should also apply to black midget out-of-work actors. But you have to ask yourself “Why didn’t she just hit him back - he’s only 4 foot 8?”

The article continued:

“Despite finding work with various bit parts and cameo roles, Coleman filed for bankruptcy in 1999, attributing his financial woes to mismanagement of his trust fund. Just last month, he auctioned off an autographed pair of his trousers on eBay for £248,000 to help pay medical bills.”

When I read that I was struggling to understand why Gary Coleman looks so pissed off. Compared to TJ Cloutier he’s had a right result. $4006 for a Hall of Famers WSOP bracelet or £248,000 for a midget’s second hand pair of jeans ?  If I were him I’d be spending a bit less time beating up women and spending a bit more time searching my wardrobe for a few more pairs of 18 inch waist jeans to stick on eBay. And then telling everyone about it on Twitter

Want to learn a little something about that infamous poker move called the Continuation Bet (or C-Bet as all the cool kids are calling it)?

Well, we’ve got just what you’re looking for!  Check out the latest video in our Youtube channel:

What do you think - helpful or not?  We’ll be adding more and more videos to the channel and to our Poker School page over the next few months!

I had a stroke of good fortune a couple of weeks ago when I was given a free £25 bet by Ladbrokes. The Australian Open was about to start and my friend suggested that Justin Henin was a good bet at 5-1. So on went my fee £25 and hey presto - Henin has waltzed to the final and is now even money. The amusing thing is that the friend who suggested the bet also happens to work for Ladbrokes. So cheers Ladbrokes! This must be like how a British bank must feel after being given loads of taxpayers’ money and then have the Bank of England buy its bonds for much more than they are really worth. Except they received 2 billion times more. And they didn’t say thanks.

Still the bet hasn’t won yet so I shouldn’t be giving it the big one because you know what happens when you do that! I think I’ll have a covering bet on Serena just to cover my “stake”. I wouldn’t want to “lose” on this one after my own personal “bailout” would I? That would make me a sort of punting equivalent of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Anyway, having had this interest in the tennis it means I have watched a lot of the coverage on Eurosport and let me tell you it can be tiresome. There is one commentator in particular who I won’t name (because I’m only 80% certain it is the person I think it is) but all he can seem to say is “wow”. I’ll give you some examples.  Long rally ending in brilliant winner - “wow” Player scampers back to retrieve lob and hit winner. “Wow!” Player hits back handed cross court winner on the run – “WOW!” You get the picture. If he has been saying a lot of “wows” and something truly phenomenal happens he deals with the situation by pausing for a second and then unleashing a louder “WOOWW!” The other day I counted 4 “wows” in 15 minutes and this gets rather irksome as you can imagine. This bloke is in his mid forties and seemingly hasn’t learned any new words in the last 40 of those years. Maybe he is trying to sound “cool”? Sounds more like a moron if you ask me (which none of you did to be fair).
 
But even Mr Wow was trumped by the tournament’s official ginger haired on-court interviewer on Monday. Having just switched on after Murray’s 3-0 win over the giant American John Isner I was subjected to a horrifically cringe worthy interview which was so awful it was almost funny. So I couldn’t let it pass without comment.

At the end of the match this bloke came onto the court to interview Murray. I didn’t recognise him but he had floppy ginger hair and was really full of himself - quite the celebrity in his own mind. So I felt like I should know who he was. He proceeded to give the worst sporting interview I’ve ever heard. If you had asked Garth Crooks to go out there with the instructions to “stare at Murray as intensely as you have ever stared at anyone in your life and try to be the most serious you have ever been”, he couldn’t have done a worse job. Bear in mind the following exchange took part in front of 15,000 people courtside. His opening gambit was:

“Now Andy I know you do meticulous research on your opponents before every match so I know you’ll have done the same on me. What’s your opinion of me?”

Hang on a minute pal, you’re just the interviewer, he’s the famous one. And I for one don’t even know what your name is! Murray didn’t have an answer to this and I can’t say I blame him. It was a good job he was in such a good mood though. He had played brilliantly - “10 out of 10” according to the studio and he had won 3-0. Just as well because I would have loved to have seen floppy ginger ask him that question after losing the final. 

Then he said : “go on tell us something personal about yourself”

This was met with a perplexed look, a sort of nervous laugh, and a long silent pause as Murray thought of a possible way to dignify that with a response. Finally and quite humourously he said “see I can’t think of anything, I really am boring” so ginger nut offered some help

“tell us the last film you saw” (as if that was “personal” information).

Still Murray couldn’t think of an answer. Well this was getting really awkward now. Floppy hair suggested “Avatar” to help him. “No” Murray answered but then finally came up with “Bruno”. And that was basically it - interview over!

He released the poor Murray from the “interview” and as Murray was walking to the exit he said :

“Hey, you’re lucky I didn’t ask you about your sex life”

>
>

WHAT? WHO IS THIS FLUFFY IDIOT? I asked myself. “Go on Murray, grab his Mike and shove it up his backside”. 

I made it my business never to find out the identity of this preposterous man but speaking to a mate the other day while we were watching the tennis he revealed all when our hero strutted on court after another match. Clearly my mate held similar views because he said.

“Since when does Jim Courier think he is a celebrity/comedian/personality”?

So now I know. I can’t say my life has improved for knowing this information though.

Anyway, I seem to have run into quite a lengthy side track there so let us return to matters of poker and our old friend Anurag Dikshit made the news this week because he has finally ended his connection with Party Poker by selling off his remaining stake in the company. Anurag Dikshit wrote the software for the poker site and is one of the founding members of Party Poker. He once held 27% of the shares in the company and Party Poker was worth $6 billion at one point, making him a billionaire until the USA passed the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This sneakily passed piece of naff legislation knocked 75% off the Party share price overnight.

Regular readers will know that I am sympathetic to the plight of this chap after he got roughed up by the US Department of Justice. He agreed to pay a $300m fine for breaching the 1961 Wire Act (basically for allowing US citizens to play poker). Many say he should have fought this nonsense charge but when you’re mega rich, want the easy life and have aggressive American lawyers threatening you with God knows what then I can’t say I really blame him. 

Anyway, while the selling of his stake is not that newsworthy of itself there may be a clue from this act to what might be happening with a wider issue – the legality of US online poker. Listen to this quote from the source where I read this story:

“The 38.8 million shares of Party Gaming stock held by Dikshit amount to £114 million and helped to drive the price of Party Gaming PLC up during trading on Tuesday and Wednesday. Opening at 277.10p at the start of trading Wednesday, Party Gaming PLC trended up 14.2p over the course of the day, finishing at 292p.”

This comment implied that the share price rose as a result of Dikshit selling his huge stake. What this article glaringly failed to mention was that such a rise after a huge sell off contradicts all economic theory and is virtually unprecedented. When you sell over 10% of the entire share capital of a company, then as a rule, that share price does not rise. If you are ever rich enough to try it, by all means have a go and try to sell 10% of any listed company’s stock over 2 days and report to me what happens: I promise you that the price will plummet and you will lose a fortune. 

Someone once likened the process of a broker selling off a large stock position as akin to the British prisoners who dug the tunnel in the film “The Great Escape”. They would take small pocketfuls of earth out to the yard and release it through holes in their pockets onto the yard bit by bit, rather than dumping big clumps of earth that the guards might see. In the same way, a broker would sell little bits at a time for if anyone in the market notices it becomes obvious who you are, what you are doing and everyone will offer you peanuts for your stake. 

But Party Poker’s share price did not plummet.  It went up and this rather begs the question “why”?

The reason that the share price has gone up is because Dikshit washing his hands of the company is seen as a move away from their “tainted past” (not that he’d done anything wrong) and will position Party for a  return to the US market if the law should change. With Dikshit still to be officially sentenced in 2010 this would have not been as viable. But will the law change? Nothing official has happened on the UIGEA debate since 3 December 2009 so should we be optimistic that the dreaded UIGEA will be repealed and online poker will become legal in the USA?

Well this share price rise is a clear sign that the market seems to think so. The news that Dikshit has severed links has clearly sparked a buying frenzy because people believe Party will be back in business in the USA. And let’s face it, people who vote with their wallets usually know more than Joe Soap. 

So this share sale marks the final insult for Mr Dikshit.  Shafted by the sneaky UIGEA, 75% wiped off his company’s value overnight, his fortune slashed to a fraction, bullied by the US legal system into handing over $300million and threatened with unspeakable things, he is compelled to cut his ties with the biggest project of his life.  And the news of him doing so forces up the share price, gains he ain’t ever gonna see because he no longer holds the shares! I honestly hope he sold them to a friend and that he still retains the beneficial ownership.

And in theory he might still go to jail for two years when he has his sentencing on 16 December 2010 (although in practice he will have agreed that he wont go to prison as part of the deal and the DoJ will have insisted he doesn’t reveal this so they can still appear to be acting tough)

Maybe we shouldn’t feel too sorry for Mr Dikshit. There are probably a million people who could have written that software and he got 27% of the company for his troubles. If I had been the founder of the company, then trust me, no computer programmer would have wound up with 27%.

Well the jolly old Iraq “inquiry” rumbles on and Tony Blair is giving evidence as I finish this piece. So I shall spend the next hour or so watching him for tells which I will try to profit from at the poker table. Seriously, that’s all the “inquiry” will be any use for.

You can’t even call it an “inquiry” truthfully. The other week when Alastair Campbell said “I stand by every word in that dossier” no-one enquired “HOW”? When he said that “Britons can be proud of what we have achieved in Iraq” none of the 5 chinless wonders on the panel enquired “WHY” let alone shout him down with howls of derision. If they can’t make those basic “enquiries” when prompted so easily, you can’t really call the whole charade an “inquiry” can you?

So I suggest if you watch it yourself that you play a little drinking game with the following rules. Every time Blair says “I believed I was doing the right thing” drink two fingers worth, likewise drink 2 fingers worth if he says “we make moral decisions, not just legal ones” (or any variation thereof). 

If he says “God told me to do it”, say “WOW”, get up the off licence, buy a can of special brew and down it in one.

Are you aware of our Royal Cash Races yet?  We’re running this cash race for the entire month of February, broken down into four weekly counting periods with more than $2,500 to be handed out during each.

The king of the heap each week will snag $500 - not enough to buy a crown but enough to set up up like Prince Charles Prince William for a few days of living the high life

We’re also running the Double Up Sparking STT promotion for the entire month of February.  This is an iPoker-wide promotion with $250,000 (yep, a quarter of a million buckerinos!) in cash and prizes up for grabs, solely for Double Up STT players.

Players get points for each Double Up they play, with more points going to the winner than the loser (makes sense I think).  This promo also starts from February 1st.

I’m also working on an MTT promo for the middle part of the month…stay tuned for more details!

Originally published in WPT magazine:

I have touched on this topic in some previous articles and it is certainly important enough to warrant further inspection so for this article I am going to talk about continuation betting and pot control in PLO – these are not mutually exclusive topics in the realm of PLO – in fact they are highly interdependent.

I mentioned previously in the context of continuation betting that whatever you do, make sure you do it smartly. As a player, and particularly if you are one who errs on the side of aggression, you need to trade off the propensity to continuation bet with the requirement to control the size of the pot.

You also need to measure your continuation betting frequency – if you continuation bet too much you are leaving yourself open to being exploited by good thinking players and it will end up costing you dearly. If you don’t continuation bet enough then you are leaving value behind you on the table. You need to strive for the happy place that lies in between.

As a starting point you should arrive at your decision to continuation bet based on key factors, primarily the strength of your hand on the flop, the opportunity your hand presents for improvement and your relative position to your opponents in the hand with you.

Let us first consider the impact of the strength of your hand and particularly how you react to one of the likely subsequent plays by your opponent – a check raise or raise. For this I consider that there are 3 categories of hands.

A.    Strong hand, proceed with confidence and comfort – these are your top set, top 2 pair and flush draw, wrap and flush draw type hands. You are confident that you can put the rest of your stack into the middle with decent equity against your opponents range. In normal playing circumstances the decision to continuation bet is a simple one as you are generally willing your opponent to make a mistake and commit himself to the pot.

B.    Weak Hand – you have missed the flop completely. Having raised it up in position with a hand like 8877ds the flop has come down an annoying AJ10r, when checked to you the only opportunity you have to win the pot is to bet and represent the broadway cards. Irrespective of your opponents next action you generally have a very easy time of it.

He folds and you win the pot, he raises and you have an easy fold, he calls and you need a further read before you can fire the second barrel although it generally isn’t a fantastic idea.

C.    Mediocre Hand – semi decent holding with some strength but little nut potential. This is a small wrap on a flushing board or one pair, a gutshot and a couple of back door flush draws. The common theme here is that you begin to hate life when you bet and get raised as you generally have to ditch your hand and get angry with yourself for denying yourself the opportunity to take a free card.

Continuation betting too frequently with this type of holding will prove to be a major leak in your game and you should tread very carefully as not only will you destroy potential value by failing to see later streets which will lead to profit but you will also be leaking valuable portions of your stack in situations where you continuation bet and are forced to fold to the subsequent raise from your opponent.

Forgoing a potential future revenue stream and lending yourself to an immediate negative revenue stream magnifies your mistake greatly – for this reason the requirement to concentrate on your continuation betting decisions and to ultimately make smart ones is of significant importance.

Whilst the above is a fundamentally strong starting point upon which to base your decisions I have warned in the past against playing poker like matching symbols – with that in mind you also need to consider your opponent and his tendencies.

Is he weak tight and does he fold to continuation bets a lot? Is he a passive fool that check calls to infinity with silly draws and weak made hands? Does he check raise with frequency and what type of hands does he do this with? Is he a tricky player? Is he more aware of your play than you realize? Will he just call your continuation bet with top set in the hope of picking up further value from you on later streets? All of these are important things to consider, understand and add to your artillery.

I don’t mean to scare people into not continuation betting enough; rather I am hoping that people will consider their decision to continuation bet a little more carefully. After all it is one of the best tools to use and it assists in putting pressure on your opponents and makes them ditch certain hands out of position that they could continue with in position and indeed against certain weaker opponents we sometimes get them to fold hands in position that they probably shouldn’t.

As we can see the decision of whether or not to continuation bet lends itself to pot control. I’m tempted to chuck in some cheesy cliché about them being similar to a horse and carriage or a hand and glove but in the interest of preserving this column from such atrocities I would ask you to just accept that they are highly interdependent.

The importance of pot control increases significantly depending on your relative position. When you are in position you can play inflated pots more comfortably with marginal holdings – as we have demonstrated before you are the one applying pressure and making life difficult for your opponent.

The corollary holds that when you are out of position the importance of trying to control the size of the pot increases. Strong hands can be played quite easily from any position but when holding a marginal hand life starts getting tough.

In an earlier article I demonstrated at length the problems with continuation betting AhJhJd7s out of position on a Qc9c6d board against a tricky opponent and it would be a worthwhile exercise for you to revisit that article yet again as it takes a comprehensive look at situations like this.

Top Tips for Continuation Betting

1.    Do it smartly – pay particular attention to how you play post flop with the mediocre holdings as you may be destroying value.
2.    Get the balance right – make sure that your continuation bet frequency isn’t too high but also be sure that you are utilizing this strong weapon enough.
3.    Respect position – don’t go bloating those pots out of position when you are holding marginal hands.

Where would you play if you won the €100,000 Sole Survivor package?  For me, I’d defo have the WSOP main event and a trip to the PCA in January on the list, those two would really be cool!  Marcel Koch became the very 1st paddypowerpoker.com Sole Survivor at last year’s Irish Open and he’s been able to play in some very cool tournaments as a result; EPT London (where he cashed in 80th place), GUKPT Grand Final, EPT Prague, ECOOP Main Event, the Irish Winter Festival and now EPT Deauville in France:

Next up for Marcel is the Irish Open; he won’t be able to have a shot at retaining his €100,000 Sole Survivor crown unless he qualifies with us online (we don’t make exceptions for anyone!) but will be gunning for 1st prize nevertheless and the €500k+ winner’s cheque.

Man, I’d love a chance to become the Sole Survivor!!!

I’ve got a confession to make but first, let me tell you about a couple of hands I played this week.  

I was taking part in a big cash game with deep stacks online. First off I got dealt a pair of threes under the gun and so I limped in. It was raised in middle position and there were a few callers. I made the call and the flop came AQ10 rainbow. I checked and the initial raiser bet the pot. One player called. I thought they were bluffing so I called with my pair of threes. The turn was a Jack and I checked-called another pot sized bet. My beautiful magic three came on the river. I went all in and got called. Unfortunately he had AK and made a straight! Unlucky. 

I bought in again and the very next hand I was dealt AK of hearts. The flop was 10-8-2 with two hearts and I was up against the same opponent who beat me in the last hand. I called his pot sized bet on the flop and did the same on the turn, determined not to let him get the better of me. But I still hadn’t made a flush or even a pair. He went all in on the river for double the size of the pot. It was a big bet but I just knew a heart was due so I called, hoping to hit my flush. And the 6 of hearts appeared on the river. I made it! 

Anyway, back to the real world and if you are wondering how I managed to play two hands quite so badly, then wonder no more. I didn’t – I’m making it up. In fact if you believed me I’m a bit insulted - it will be a cold day in hell before I play either of those two hands that way. But stranger things have happened. And this week one of those stranger things happened. In was an even more unlikely scenario. 

I did something unthinkable. I never thought I’d say this but I have to confess:

Forgive me Father for I have sinned….

I actually found myself cheering Man Utd on Wednesday. There I’ve admitted it. Go on, shout abuse and throw stones at me or something, I deserve it. I know this is indefensible behaviour but I will try to explain my actions. To be fair, I’m exaggerating when I say I was “cheering”. I never at any stage “cheered” or opened my mouth to offer encouragement. When me and my mates say we “have a cheer” on something we mean that we have a financial interest on that outcome, usually a bet of course. Well in this case I hadn’t even had a bet.

I never bet on Man Utd. To bet on Man Utd transgresses everything a gambler should stand for: value. Man Utd always go off at shorter odds than they should do because of the sheer weight of money bet on them. So as well as not wanting them to win on account of the fact I dislike them intensely, I never bet on them either, for the simple reason that it is never, ever value to do so.  This little arrangement suits me just fine.

I’ll happily bet against them of course – gleefully in fact. And often with dire financial consequences, which is just one of the many reasons I can’t stand Utd. I’ll never forgive them for their Champions League Final victory in 1999.  With about 4 mins to go and trailing 1-0 to Bayern Munich the spread firms were quoting 0.6-0.8 on the goal supremacy. Well this was a stone bonking value bet with a capital V. Having created naff all scoring opportunities in 86 minutes they were implying that they expected 0.3 Utd goals in the next 4 minutes! (I suspect the spread firms were trying to balance their lop-sided books but it’s not impossible that some diehard Utd fans were actually selling at 0.6).

I thought I would be just nicking an easy 0.2 of a goal so I had a massive bet, with the added bonus that Bayern Munich might catch them on the break and I’d win 1.2 goals (if my memory serves me correctly Bayern had a really great chance late on).

Anyway, we all know what happened next – Utd scored not one but two goals and I wound up losing 1.8 goals, a whopping 9 times what I had planned on winning. Oh the agony. It wasn’t my biggest ever loss but it had to rank as the most gutted I’d ever been after a losing bet. In the space of 5 minutes my “low risk small return” value bet had turned into a massive unmitigated disaster. And all perpetrated by Man Utd!  What a nightmare.  I’m re-living that nightmare as I write this, believe me.  In fact, right this second I can see an image of Teddy Sheringham’s grinning face! Arrrrgh!! Snap out of it……

Anyway, I digress. To get back to my confession, I hereby admit that on Wednesday 20 January I did actually want Man Utd to beat Man City towards the end of their Carling Cup semi-final, or at least get a draw. The reason is quite pathetic really. Down my local boozer there is a £10 football competition which runs all season where you have to predict the finishing positions of all the teams in the Premier League with bonus points for selecting the winner of the FA Cup, Carling Cup and Champions League. The winner gets the lot, which I imagine could be around £500 and I am right up the top of the pile.  My selection for the Carling cup is Man Utd.

So now you see. Not a bet, but a financial interest none the less. But it wasn’t until Tevez scored a dodgy penalty that I actually gave a hoot who won. 

As you will have probably seen, he cupped his ears to the Utd fans gloating as if to say “I can’t hear you” and started doing his “talking hand” gesture (which I didn’t understand the meaning of at the time).  As he was goading the Utd fans I couldn’t help feeling what an ungrateful little sod he was. 

In the past 3 ½ years Tevez has managed to play for three clubs and still cannot speak a single sentence of English. He is a total mercenary and as little time as I have for Man Utd’s legions of plastic “fans”, I do seem to remember that they all pleaded with him to stay and always gave him massive support. I bet Fergie wanted him to stay as well, probably knowing full well that Ronaldo was off to Madrid but not wanting to break any confidentiality agreement to the likes of Kia Joorabchian.

And here was Tevez taking the piss out of them all, giving it the big one half way through the tie when they still had to play a leg at Old Trafford. Hasn’t he heard of the “early cheer”?

But then I realised the truth! 

And if you look at today’s tabloids you will see it for yourself from the horse’s mouth. It transpires that all Tevez’s abuse was not aimed at the supporters. Instead it was all aimed at one man.

If you put really crap facial hair on a rodent, it would look like this

In a radio interview given in Argentina he called Neville an IDIOT and a CREEP and a BOOTLICKER. And you know what? I make him absolutely right. Despite his lack of English Tevez knows a crawler when he sees one. So I can only say “Fair play to you Tevez” and please accept my apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick on Wednesday. 

Tevez confirmed that it was only Gary Neville he was having a pop at and his “talking hand” gesture was because Neville had been spouting off in the paper saying that “Man Utd were right to sell him” and that “Tevez wasn’t worth the money” etc (all unbeknown to me). Neville can’t possibly believe they were right to sell him so Tevez is right - he is just saying it to curry favour with the manager. I couldn’t see at the time but a different camera angle showed Tevez clearly seeking out Gary Neville, with Neville giving him a one fingered salute in return (wouldn’t it be great if Neville were to get a disciplinary for that?)

Now you might think I am being a little harsh on young Gary so it’s worth devoting a little space to Mr Neville here. Over the years, Man Utd have had plenty of characters play for them whom I didn’t like. I mean really didn’t like. Personally I find Christina Ronaldo to be the most offensive Man Utd player of all time and up until a couple of years ago I hadn’t noticed anything that particularly offensive about Gary Neville.

However say I were to ask my Liverpudlian friends “if Man Utd went sky diving on a team bonding exercise and one of them accidentally took a tent up instead of a parachute, who would you prefer that person to be?” the answer is always “Gary Neville”

In fact I was quite shocked at the depth of feeling against poor old Nev.

Take another hypothetical example. Say I were to go to Anfield and ask: “if some Man Utd players were giving a football lesson at a local school which was near an army firing range and a stray bullet made its way on to the pitch and tragically killed one Man Utd player, who would you prefer that unfortunate player to be?”

“Gary Neville” would be the instant response without even pausing to exhale on their Benson.

And if I were to ask “say a Man Utd player was crossing the road and a motor cyclist hit him, knocking him into the path of a juggernaut which ran him over and sliced his head clean off, only for the motor cyclist to run over to the scene of the crime and stand over the corpse, take his crash helmet off and reveal himself to be GARY GLITTER, which Utd player would you want that to be?”,

within a nanosecond the answer would be the same: Gary Neville. 

The reasons they don’t like him range from his incessant moaning and his badge kissing at Anfield to his self appointed Trade Union representative role in the England Squad, when he tried to get them to strike because the FA had the temerity to ban Rio Ferdinand for missing a drug test.  Others just point to a sheer lack of talent. And on that point, when we talk about bootlicking you have to wonder just how far he must have crawled up Fergie’s back passage to get a 5 year contract at the age of 30 in one of the best clubs in the world, injury prone and with no ability to speak of. 

So, sympathies for G Neville aside, I have to say that I have been converted by the views of my Liverpudlian friends who are people whose opinions I respect. So move over Christina, Gary Glitter is putting on his leathers and he’s not aiming his moped at you.

Of course I’m not wishing any harm on anyone here but just as no one likes a grass, no one likes a crawler. So speaking hypothetically, I’m just saying, that if either Ronaldo or Neville HAD to be horrifically decapitated in a random accident perpetrated by a filthy old nonce, then of the two, I suppose I would prefer it to be Gary Neville. 

PS: I hear John O Shea is out for the season, which means G Neville is one step closer to actually playing that second leg at Old Trafford against Man City. And if Man Utd win, I don’t expect Gary Neville to hold back with the celebrations. City fans will be like their Liverpool cousins in wishing that Gary had been “glittered”.

First off; congrats to thefuzzbuzz (a.k.a loosecannon on the very popular Irish poker forum boards.ie) who took down the weekly Omaha game on Monday night for just over $4,000!  This tournament is one of the best Omaha events available anywhere on the internet; the buy-in is $100 + $9, the guarantee is $15,000 and there are loads of feeders available to play daily.  There are $10 + $1 rebuy feeders each day at 4.05pm and $12 +$1 rebuy feeders each day at 9.05pm.  There are also $15 + $1.50 freezeout sats and a $10 rebuy last chance feeder every Monday at 6.30pm.  I’m gonna play it myself one of these days, though we really just get Noel ‘BigCityBanker’ Hayes to take a few shots as he is the team’s Omaha expert!

Next up, we’re running a weeklong $5,000 Cash Race starting from Sunday evening:

The cash race runs from January 25th 00:00 to January 31st 23:59 and the top 60 players will win cash or prizes - the top player will take down $1,000!  Get onto the tables and make your mark!

As you know, we’ve extended a special invitation to President Obama to take part in the Irish Open 2010 this April - and if he shows up we’ll add $1,000,000 to the prizepool!  President Obama is a known poker player, having taken part in Dealer’s Choice games while he was a state representative in Illinois (supposedly he prefered Stud to Holdem and was a cautious player) so maybe he’ll take us up on the offer.  How cool would that be!!!!

There is our regular Thursday night Irish Open Ticket Only super satellite on tonight at 7.30pm - a great way of getting to play without having to pad out the prizepool for the rest of the package; who needs accommodation when the tables stay open so late?!!!

Onto the caption competition…

It’s Paddy outside the US Embassy in Dublin, hand delivering the invitation to Obama along with some sexy cheerleading types!  Can you come up with a good / funny / clever caption for this?  The winner gets an Irish Open feeder token worth €16.50 + €1.50; please remember to leave your poker nickname (screenname) so that I can award the token if you win!

Still waiting to hear from Obama…

…no, not Ivan Drago, we’re talking political power here!

We’ve extended an invitation to the Irish Open 2010 to President Barack Obama, an acknowledged poker player, and will add $1m to the prizepool if he turns up and plays!

Hopefully if he does he’ll know the game is Texas Holdem, not Five Card Draw!

Check out the press release HERE