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”.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
God, I hate Gary Neville too - he seems so dislikeable!
My sporting hero? Ivan Drago - I’ve mentioned him on this very blog many times!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Neville would kick ass on the paddy power 5 a side team and you would gladly have him