How soon I forget

When I started this blog I had good intentions of posting regularly, to my shame I've let it slip a bit already. Time to make up :)

Unemployment

I had my 6 month interview today with the Job Centre, if your from the UK you will probably know what that means but if not what happens is when you lose your job the government pays you £60 a week to help you out while you find another. This only last for 6 months after that you have to claim another type of the same benefit, it's still £60 but they make you beg for it (joke). Anyway in return for the £60 you have to prove you are actively searching for work. So I had an interview with a very nice young lady who actually to my surprise was very helpful and she is now my case worker. I have to see her once a month so she can assist me to find work. This is OK because she is fit so I'm not complaining.

I went for a job interview last week which went really well, I think I should get a second interview, and as part of the help from the Job Centre I got today they are willing to offer a potential employer a £1000 grant to employ me.

Life

I'm just about healed up after my operation a few weeks ago and I have definite confirmation that all test were negative and no signs of cancer have been found. So I'm very relieved and happy about that.

I'll be a good boy and update whats going on with Poker tomorrow ish.

Update

Poker

I'm still playing double or nothing SnG's, I've moved up from $1 to $2 games. There is very little difference in the quality of players between the 2 levels. I've now played 27 games so far with a win rate at 74% and a total winnings of $11.35 I will have to run at $2 for a while because I haven't got any where near the bank roll on CD Poker to play $5 games.

Last night I played in a freeroll satellite at Pokerstars to the special $100k freeroll for UK and Ireland players. The game was so easy it was embarrassing all you needed to do was win one decent pot then fold till all the very bad players donked them selves out. The final is on 2nd August, no doubt it will be a real donkfest too.

Unemployment

I have an interview for a job on Wednesday, nothing brilliant but it would be nice to get back to work. Being unemployed is getting very boring, and as I've been out of work for 6 months I am now at the stage where I'm going to be abandoned by the government. So it's been really great that I've payed a huge amount of tax over the last 30 years to find when I get problems through gross mismanagement of the economy by the government and the banks it counts for nothing.

Lance Armstrong Cancer Campaign

I was just told about this and as it's such a worthwhile cause I signed up and thought I'd pass the information on here.

Dear Friend,

I just signed the World Cancer Declaration - a major global push to pressure world leaders to act now on cancer.

Right now, Lance Armstrong is riding in the Tour de France and dedicating his ride to this cause. And after the race, he'll send these commitments to world leaders and pressure them to attend the World Cancer Summit in Dublin this August. It's our best chance to push for better treatment, more funding for cancer research and access to care for everyone around the world.
But if people like us don't stand up, these leaders won't pay attention.

Will you sign the declaration? It only takes a moment and could make a huge difference:

http://www.livestrongaction.org/campaigns/commit-fight-cancer

While we've made tremendous progress in the fight against cancer, we still have a lot of work to do. By 2010 cancer will be the #1 killer in the world, and as you read this message millions are fighting the disease around the globe. We need our world leaders to take action now.

I took this action because I believe this crisis couldn't be more urgent. Will you join me? It only takes a moment:

http://www.livestrongaction.org/campaigns/commit-fight-cancer

Double or Nothing

Poker

I thought I’d try something different for a while as I was having very little success play multi table tournaments. There has been some talk on a 4kingpoker forum about double or nothing sit and go’s so I thought I’d give tem a try.

Now I’ve always steered clear of them because thinking about them logically you have to win around 60% of games just to break even. Anyway I tried a 10 seat game on Pokerstars and I was all over the place and went out the game in 10th, great start. I think the problem with the Stars game was the 10 minute blind levels on a very passive table the game just went on and on with 4 or 5 limpers per hand and all sorts of crap catching. So I started to get frustrated and pushed some marginal hands and bust out.

I then tried a 6 seat SnG on iPoker, these are turbo games and move along much quicker, also they are packed with very poor players. I had $10 on CDPoker which I couldn’t withdraw because it’s tied up with some stupid bonus that I never knew about so I thought what the hell I’ll have a bit of fun with it and see what I can do.So in 3 days playing $1 +.20 buy ins I have played 14 games I have a win rate of about 72% and I’m in profit by $4.00. Not a fortune, but I’m enjoying playing again, I’m a lot happier with the way I’m playing and I’ve been adapting to others play better. If I can keep the win rate up around 70% I’ll move over to Titan where I have a better bank roll and move up the stakes a bit and start to see if it’s possible to make money playing these double or nothing games or if they are just a bit of harmless fun to play when nothing else is working.

Won Some Money Tonight

Poker

Well it's been a while but I managed to take second place in a $2 buy in game tonight on Carbon and won a mighty $25. Hopefully that's got me passed my downswing, but we will see how things go tomorrow. I think I played pretty well too, and the only thing that stopped me winning was getting rivered on the final hand.

Learning Visual Basic

While I'm out of work I'm learning more about computers, I've just signed up for a computer course that should give me a CompTIA qualification. I'm also learning programming from books. Obviously poker being a hobby I'm using the programming to create little programs that relate to that.

Odds Estimator V1.1 alpha.exe

This is a little odds estimator program for NLHE I have just written, anyone is welcome to give it a try. I have virus checked it but please check it again before running.

Screenshot of the program



To use just fill in the number of outs as shown (no need to fill in the pot size) and press Calculate this will then give you percentage chance of your hand improving on the turn and or river (shown in red)



You can also calculate the maximum amount of bet you can call by entering the post size and pressing calculate again.



Please remember this is only an estimator and it uses a simple calculation that gives a rough guide. Later versions may use a more precise formula.

If for any reason the program doesn't work leave a comment here as to what happened and i will look into it.