I really think I must be. All poker players go through down periods but I have not won a STT on Pokerstars for months. It has not been my play either, I think I have played pretty damn well in most of the tournaments. The best result I have had recently was a third (woot!).
Last night I sat down at a $5 NL Holdem STT. After a few hands I got AJs in the SB and the button, BB and myself saw the flop. The flop was three spades and I had the Ace and Jack of spades. The button bet, I raised and the BB went all in. The Button then went all in and so did I. I have no idea what the BB had but the button had a straight flush! Now I know the old saying about you need to know when to fold but I had the Nut Flush and the button had been going for it with any flush hand (and had been winning too - there was a string of five flush winning hands).
I was left with around 300 in chips with eight people left. This would be a perfect and reasonable time to go on tilt but I didn't. I hung in (I was 10xBB at that moment), waited my time and made it to four people left and had recovered my stack to my starting position. This was then the jinx hit and I got absolutely nothing and ended up basically being blinded out.
As I thought I was going out shortly, I started a Limit Omaha H/L STT as well. Again I played well, waited for good hands and was up to 3000 in chips with two people out. It was then that I got into a hand with the BB. I put them on the low hand, whilst I had the high two pair (QJ). Unfortunately the river gave them the low and the high with a straight. That crippled my stack (blinds were something like 300-600 by then and I went out soon afterwards.
I wasn't so pleased with my OHL performance but it just was typical of my luck on Pokerstars at the moment. I was going to play on Victor Chandler but unfortunately as I have signed up for the King of Poker Freeroll on Sunday, they won't accept my deposit bonus (and I am not going to throw away a 100% $100 bonus.
Back to ring gaming I think.

I completed my Party Poker bonus on Monday night and made a profit on top of the $20, so I was really happy about that. Around 23:30 a number of complete fishes appeared on the 50c/$1 Omaha Hi/Lo Limit table I was on and then spent the next hour or so completely donking their buyin off to other people. Thankfully by playing a tight but aggressive (and very patient) style, I was able to pick up some money with some good (but not necessarily 'the nuts') hands like lower three full houses etc.
I think Victor Chandler poker is my next destination, as they have a 100% to $100 bonus at the moment. Although I could not see any H/L limit action, so I might have to try Pot Limit.

Blimey, 'Am I Bothered?' Racing won the first race in the Fantasy Grand Prix!

Am I Bothered? Racing - 85pts

Raikkonen - 43pts
Klien - 14pts
Gene - 0pts
Red Bull - 13pts
Honda - 15pts

Apparently it was Raikkonen's awesome drive from the back of the field to come 3rd that gave the points total for him.

Perhaps I should have let the boys choose the team before.

One of my colleagues in the office has run a Fantasy Formula 1 competition every year for as long as I can remember (i.e. since I have been with the company, so at least nine years). Now that I am located back in the office, after being seconded around various other sites for the last four years, I was invited to join in again this year.
Initially I was a little less than keen as I have not been an avid follower of Formula 1 for the last few years. In the days of Mansell, Prost, Senna, Damon Hill etc I did follow the racing closely but over the years I have found Formula 1 becoming more and more clinical and risk adverse. Overtaking became rare and races were being resolved in the pits. Also I became more involved in Motorcycle Sport especially during the Carl Fogarty glory years.
However I remembered that my stepsons were still avid Formula 1 followers, so I thought it would be a good thing to come up with some teams with them. They were very happy to join in, especially as I was putting up the entry fee!
So for 2006, Team 'Am I Bothered' comprises of:

Best Team (going for the most points prize):

Driver 1 - Raikkonen
Driver 2 - Klien
Driver 3 - Gene
Chassis - Red Bull
Engine - Honda (Team Honda)

Wooden Spoon Team (going for the least points prize):

Driver 1 - Hiedfeld
Driver 2 - Rosberg
Chassis - Williams
Engine - BMW

Yesterday I blogged that getting the bonus on Party Poker was easy because they have the lowest rake requirement for any bonus, which I am sure I remembered from playing $25NL Holdem was $1 pots. Well I logged onto Party last night and along with my current philosophy looked for some Omaha Hi-Lo Limit action. Well there certainly was plenty of people on the O8B 50c-$1 tables (which is a pleasant change from just about every other site) so I put myself on the general waiting list and was soon seated at one of the tables.
The first hand then promptly went past the $1 pot level with the blinds but I noticed that no rake was taken. I quickly realised that Party must have a different rake requirement for this level of limit games - oh well, what was the rake point? It took a few hands and then I finally found out, the rake was taken at a $5 pot. Not too bad and half of Pokerstars requirement for a FPP at that level.
I played for just under two hours and ended up just +ve, I mean just because I was in profit by less than one small bet. This is not the recommended hit rate for making money playing limit poker which is one big bet an hour. The thing was though, I was playing really well and I mean really well, I was playing the winning hands spot on and even folding nice hands when the flop came out dangerous and then watching the turn and river proving I had made the right decision,
What I soon realised was hitting my earning rate was the rake that Party were taking, the rake at $5 was 50c. That is a 10% rake, which seemed to be consistently applied at the later rake points too (i.e. $1 at $10 pot). Now that is one nasty level of rake and is twice the level that Pokerstars take at the same stakes. At a similar level of rake to Pokerstars, I am pretty sure my earning rate would have been far nearer the one big bet level.
Oh well, I ended up being involved in just under 50 raked hands so I am already a quarter of the way to the $20 bonus being mine. So it could be argued that my earning rate was actually $5 for two hours and $2.50 per hour, which is nearer two and a half big bets. These bonuses can certainly help your bankroll building rate, even when they are a modest $20.

I had an email this morning from both Pokerstars and PartyPoker. They were both offering me bonuses of some sort or another.
The Pokerstars bonus was the better one, one of their rare 20% reload bonuses. I love Pokerstars bonuses - they are a bit of a struggle to clear for a low level cash player but they do not timeout, so you can take your time clearing them.
The PartyPoker bonus was a little less impressive. They have apparently loaded my account with $20 and if I play ten times that sum of raked hands (I would assume this would be 200 raked hands) before the 25th March, I get to withdrawal the $20 (WOOT!!!). Now I cannot say I am too impressed with Party at the moment. They have this newish policy to wipe out your Player Points if you do not play for 30 days (and with our recent Broadband outage, that was a little tricky) and they indeed wiped my points out last month. On the other hand, Party has the lowest rake requirement for any bonus (i.e. there just has to be a rake, so $1 pots) and it is not my money in this case, so if I lose it - who cares. So I will probably have a gander on Party and see what O8B action there may be.

Following on from the Babylon 5 reference in my previous post, a few weeks ago a came across a Podcast that is being produced weekly about Babylon 5. I came across it accidentally via a Wil Wheaton dot Net -> SciFi Podcast -> Babylon Podcast route. It is produced by Tim Callender and Summer Brooks and also features everyones favourite Vorlon Jeffrey Willerth.
Every week it features a phone-in with someone involved with Babylon 5 and has already had Patrica Tallman and Stephen Furst on the show. If you are in any way interested in (IMHO) the best Science Fiction TV series ever made, this Podcast is definately worth the download each week.
It was from their website that I first heard about the sad loss of Andreas Katsulas from Lung Cancer. May the show forever be a memorial to him and also the late Richard Biggs and Tim Choate.

I finally watched the film Rounders this weekend. I have a DVD rental account with Screenselect and Rounders finally floated to the top of the rental list and was dispatched.
Now this film gets mentioned all of the time in the Poker community, whether that is the media or blogs, and is always referred to as 'the' Poker movie. I must admit after watching it, I have to agree. Actually it is so soaked in Poker references, I think some people might struggle to understand some of the narration.
But hell, who cares. It is a good film (even with John Malkovitch's hilarious Russian mobster portrayal) and I am thoroughly glad I have seen it.
This is the good thing about Screenselect, for £15 a month I can see as many films or TV programmes that I can physically watch. We have been hammering through TV series we failed to see on TV like Scrubs and ST:Enterprise or just episodes we missed. We have also been watching some films that we missed at the cinema (fairly common event with small kids) or just old classics e.g. we watched Some Like it Hot recently. There has not been much on TV recently, so this service (along with a re-run through my Babylon 5 collection) has been a nice distraction at home from the current hectic schedule at work.

After getting back to work after having the Flu, I have been very busy. I have only played one small STT on Titan in the last four weeks and have barely looked at the Python Challenge.
However in the last week I have managed to find a few moments to play with Level 30 of the challenge and with the help of hints from Bornedbored and collaboration with Nic, from the Python Challenge Forums, I have finally managed to complete this level. This level was not the most enjoyable by any stretch of the imagination and I am glad to see the back of it personally. Anyway here is the ROT13'ed solution:

Bapr gur jrocntr sbe Yriry 30 vf ybnqrq, purpx gur cntr fbhepr. Guvf gryyf lbh 'Gur cvpgher vf bayl zrnag gb uryc lbh erynk juvyr lbh ybbx ng gur pfi svyr'. Punatr gur hey gb '...lnaxrrqbbqyr.pfi' naq qbjaybnq n Pbzzn frcnengrq Inyhr svyr. Vs lbh ivrj guvf svyr, lbh jvyy svaq n ybat yvfg bs sybngvat cbvag inyhrf gb svir qrpvzny cbvagf. Nf vg gheaf bhg, CVY jvyy gnxr sybngf nf jryy nf urk be vagrtref sbe cvkry inyhrf. Gur pfi svyr vf abg ernyyl n pfi, vg vf na havqvzrafvbany neenl juvpu pna or genafsbezrq vagb na zngevk 138 k 53. Vs lbh hfr CVY gb qenj n cvpgher jvgu gurfr inyhrf ohg zhygvcyl gur sybngvat ahzore jvgu 90 (fnl) fb gur pbagenfg jvyy or orggre. Gur cvpgher jvyy erirny gur sbezhyn:

a = fge(k[v])[5] + fge(k[v+1])[5] + fge(k[v+2])[6]

a = gur erdhverq nafjre
k = bar bs gur sybngvat cbvag fgevat va gur neenl
v = vaqrk vapernfvat ol 3 sbe rnpu vgrengvba.

Onfvpnyyl jr arrq gb ernq guebhtu gur inyhrf va gur pfi svyr hfvat guvf sbezhyn, gb trg na nafjre. Vs lbh qb guvf evtug, lbh fubhyq trg na nafjre bs 'Fb, lbh sbhaq gur uvqqra zrffntr. Gurer vf ybgf bs ebbz urer sbe n ybat zrffntr, ohg jr bayl arrq irel yvggyr fcnpr gb fnl "ybbx ng tenaqcn", fb gur erfg vf whfg tneontr.' jvgu vaqrrq n ybnq bs tneontr nsgre vg. Gur grkg pbagnvaf gur vzcbegnag hey sbe gur arkg yriry juvpu vf 'tenaqcn'.