Blog when your winning you only blog when your winning...

Maybe I am a fair weather blogger, the last couple of weeks have been a bit grim and for once I am not talking about the form of the Baggies although I did witness the 3:0 demise at the hands of Stoke which did very little for morale. I have just not felt like recording my darker depressed self and to be honest there have been points in the last couple of weeks that even an Albion win would not have lifted the gloom. However today I have felt a little happier with life in general and for once my team did not let me down.

RDM made a few changes to the team with Brunt and Dorrans returning to the line up,  Pableo being rested and Scharner dropping back into the back 4. Carson had to make a few decent saves before Scharner put the Baggies 1 up and this was followed by an absolute gem of a free kick from Brunt. Cahill pulled one back for Everton just before half time to set up a tight 2nd half.

The pivotal incident happened  on the hour mark Arteta being sent off after stamping on Jara who might have been considered fortunate to escape punishment after a couple of particularly rugged challenges had left a trail of Everton players on the ground. Whilst Everton still posed a threat, Albion closed out the game with 2 well crafted goals from Tchoyi and Mulumbu. The only sour note was Mulumbu's soft dismissal for 2 bookable offences the 1st of which was for dashing into the crowd to celebrate the 4th goal.

Mulumbu's non stop work in our midfield and his unbounded enthusiasm has made him a fans favourite but sometimes he gets a little carried away and this is his second soft dismissal this season. We will miss his presence against Newcastle that is for sure. However his  dismissal could hardly take the shine off a very good result for us.

Poker back to my Roots...

Having pretty much given up on the game and cashed in the bankroll about a month ago I got lured back, i.e. I had time to kill and stuff to brood on which is not a happy combination. At a bit of a loose end this weekend I made my back into the fold of Brighton's finest recreational poker players, calling stations, degenerate gamblers and whining old gits and played a local live tournament maybe for the first time in 2 years. I passed a few hours chasing a few hundred quid falling just short 2 off the money and enjoyed it.  

The standard of play was awful and I was blessed with three calling stations on my first table who rendered any tournament strategy based on the concept of fold equity completely null and void. I might put all three of them into a big tournament just to irritate the hell out of the 4 bet re squeeze merchants whose whole approach to the game is based on the fact that their opponents cannot call.

Oh yes I can call your 4 bet pre-flop and your three barrel bluff with 2nd pair and I will give you a rubdown into the bargain don't you worry young man I have been playing this game for years I have never seen 2 cards I don't like and if I want to see all five cards on the flop then I am going to see them, short of lobbing in a live snake you cannot scare me off a pot.

Needless to say I tried a couple of continuation bets, realised this was a monumental folly, adjusted and just laughed when the uber station managed to snag a runner runner gutshot straight draw which he didn't bet on the river because he misread his hand. I never understand why professionals complain about playing bad players to me they the life blood of the game and should never be discouraged from supporting the poker economy.

Talking of Mugs

The terms of the Irish bail out have been announced it would appear that the emergency funding imposed on Ireland will cost an eye watering 6% which further rubs salt into the Irish wounds. The scale of the meltdown cannot be under estimated and the announcement that the Irish minimum wage was being cut by 1 euro an hour as part of the package to avoid the bondholders having to take a "haircut" is a sad indicement of the world in which we live in. The poorest people in society who probably benefited the least in the boom years have to make a sacrifice to prop up feckless bankers and maintain a coporate tax rate of 12%.

In the UK we are scrambling around to find a few billion to prop up the Irish econmy because it is not in our national interest for the Ireland to crumble into economic and possibly political chaos (the 2 tend to go hand in glove) not least because of the exposure of the UK banking sector.

I read that the two banks with the biggest exposure to the Irish Banking sector are RBS and Lloyds TSB. So not content to pile up their on loan books with countless millions of dubious loans to the property sector they found other banks to lend to who were engaged in the same practice. Words fail me and we are worried that the banking sector in the UK would be stripped of its talent if we made banks report openly about their bonuses, heaven forbid if the banks were run by poorly paid incompetents as opposed to the masters of the universe who have delivered such a profitable and vibrant banking sector.