Well I have had a rough and slightly unproductive few days. There is a tummy bug doing the rounds and with four kids, the chance of getting such a bug is pretty good.....yes I got it.
In the Ibuprofen fueled gaps between feeling rough, I tried to get MPlayer installed on my PC so that I could download BBC radio real audio streams onto my PC and onto my iPod (once it arrives). The problem is, the MPlayer installation will not detect the codecs I have installed for Real Audio no matter what I have tried. I am hoping someone on uk.comp.os.linux can help but I have not had any joy so far.
I have felt so rough, that I have not even played poker for a few days, that was until tonight. With nothing on TV at the moment, Mondays have become a poker night. So whilst the wife was playing on Bugsys upstairs, I thought I would have a go on Pokerstars. I had a good night.
I played in a $5.5 NL Holdem STT, a $5.5 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo STT and a $5.5 NL Holdem MTT. I came third in the Holdem STT (+ve by $3.5), second in the Omaha STT (+ve by $8) and 117th in the Holdem MTT (+ve by $1.30). I was most happy about the MTT result, okay 117th is not the best result in the world but I did not get much in the way of cards and when I did, I played them well. The fact I got in the money was due to a great new payout structure on Pokerstars that pays out to the top 20% of players, so with 716 entrants 144th was needed to get in the money. This tournament was an experiment by Pokerstars but I really hope they keep this structure for at least some MTTs.

Oh well off to bed now, doped up with Lemsip Max, honey and tequila.