Home working

Because my US freelance is on holiday, I have more to do this week, so I am saving commuting time by working from home today and Thursday. There are various things you have to do when working from home (well, you don't HAVE to do them, but it is advisable). One is to prepare for the day normally. This consists of shaving, showering, and dressing reasonably correctly. Just getting a cup of coffee and sitting down at the keyboard in your dressing gown is not good enough. Some people advocate that you go for a half-hour walk, imitating the "journey to work". But since I'm doing this to save the time on that journey to work, this seems a bit pointless. But I can see the reasoning behind it.

When you work at home you work a lot quicker. This is because offices are mainly occupied by people chatting rather than working. Marketing people spend about 1/50th of their time marketing, one-fifth of their time in meetings, maybe a quarter of their time staring at spreadsheets and databases in a manner which makes it look as if they are working, but they are not, and the rest of their time chatting. Journalists spend no time in meetings (if they can help it), but do spend a lot of their time chatting. So, when you are at home, you are already 100% more efficient than you were, because there is no-one to chat to.

And with that, I note that my work day is about to begin, so I shall disappear for a while.

I'm going to try to cure my currently awful poker play by making a list of errors. My failure to bet on the river is coming back. It's a function of a couple of bad sessions and a feeling that all is wrong with the world. I must overcome it. And I must also avoid this bet on the river with an ace-high. It's terrible. I know it's terrible, even at the time, but I still do it. And, finally, I must find out why I do things which even at the time I know are wrong. This is the toughest one of all. If I can just stop that flaw, I think my win rate would increase by at least 1BB an hour.

up and down and up day

I played for a couple of hours in the 5-10 on Betfair today and I can honestly say it was just about the worst 5-10 game that I have ever sat down in. God bless the FT and its big spread on poker at the weekend. Except, needless to say, I promptly set fire to $300 and scattered the ashes off Betfair Pier.

Eventually, thankfully, things came good and I ended up thirty bucks to the good. But, my goodness, what an opportunity missed. But, one thing was proved. I can still beat truly awful games. It's those Stars/Binions-on-a-wet-Thursday games that get to me.

Simultaneously, and unusually for me, I played in an FPP tournament on Stars (this definitely shows how weak the Betfair game was). I paid so little atention to this that it took me half an hour to work out why the raise button wasn't working properly -- it was because I was in a pot-limit tournament. And then, about three-quarters of an hour in and who should I come face-to-face with? Why, Mr Fred Titmus, AKA Alan Engel. BTW Alan, I meant to mention a good book -- The People's Act of Love, by James Meek. Get it when it comes out in paperback. It will be seen as a classic.

Anyway, both Titmus and I managed to qualify, although I needed a three-outer to do it. After that it was plain sailing. None of this pissing around on the bubble. By then I had accumulated 50 gazillion chips and was spraying raises around like a demented gatling gun on heat, As Alan observed, it was a pity it was just a satellite. I noted that if it hadn't been a satellite, I wouldn't have had as many chips as I had.

Although these 90FPP sats (10% get 900 FPPS) are resoundingly soft, it still took me three hours to get the points (worth ten of her majesty's sovereigns, is my estimate). That's hardly worth getting out of bed for. Assume a qualifying rate of one in three and your ROR is about a quid an hour. Stuff that for a game of soldiers. However, the PLO sats look ridiculously soft, and faster.

They are running four or five of these 90 FPPers a day, so for the financially strapped with plenty of points on Stars, there's quite a bit that can be accumulated. The trick is to turn these into tournament dollars, which can now be traded on the open market at a rate of about 8 or 9 to 10, I think.

Currently toddling along in the Stan James Hendon Mob game. If only I could knock out a mobster, I would be pissing this league. But the opportunity never seems to arrive. So it goes.