Against my will I walk these shores

To the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street, yesterday afternoon for a Standard & Poor's meeting on corporate securitizations. I didn't really need to go or have to go, but it's all part of my "make an effort to meet new people" campaign. Result. Boring seminar attended - one. People met and spoken to - zero. I'm sure it isn't quite meant to be like this.

The problem is that I can't summon up the courage to go up to people and introduce myself. This, as I am sure you will be aware, is a bit of a problem for a journalist. But I'm not a real journalist (or so I keep telling myself). I'm more of an editor and a writer. And I can go up to people to introduce myself, if I have to. But, if it's an option, then I don't.

A pity, because there was a nice-looking woman (and, of course startlingly bright) talking on Sovereign securitizations. Of course, I know that most people might not find a wopman who can talk at length about the securitization of Gazprom's future earnings as a come on, but, hey, that's me. And could I summon up the courage to introduce myself? Nope. So, Krystal Richard, if you are reading this and are available, can I take you out to lunch?

Didn't learn a great deal from the seminar, either. Rating agencies are funny beasts, a bit like Excel spreadsheets that tell you what bankroll you need. They perpetually move the goalposts, and they always move them too late for you to do anything about it. And they are the greatest experts at covering their arses, along the lines of "just because we have assigned a single B minus rating to this debt, that should not be interpreted as us saying that we do not think it will be fully serviced". Yeah, right.

Well, I guess that's utterly busted my chances of ever going out with anyone from Standard & Poor's. It was good while it lasted.

But the Great Eastern Hotel does have excellent toilets. Perhaps I should do a "Good loo Guide" for hotels? It's always amazed me that US hotels have such crap bathrooms (as a rule) and even crappier baths. Either it's a swimming pool or it's a tub. I assume this is a result of Americans tending to prefer showers.

++++

And, brilliantly segueing to today's matters, I'm at home today, and the plumber should be coming round in, oooh, a couple of hours. I await with keen anticipation the sharp intake of breath as he looks at the bathroom floor and utters the magic words "It's gonna cost ya".

December Figures

An interesting month:

First, the numbers:

		$2-$4	$1-$2	$5-$10	Bonus	$3-$6	$4-$8	Grand Total
Party	Win	$162		$93	$68	$330		$654
Ultimate	Win	$141	$48	$12	$100	$23		$325
Stars	Win			$42				$42
Virgin	Win	$176	$8		$40	-$212	$43	$55
	Total	$479	$57	$147	$208	$141	$43	$1,076
	Total Hrs	57	22	2	0	17	1	99

Background colours achieved by random choice of hexadecimal numbers.

As you can see, I managed my $10 an hour target for the month. From tentatively playing three tables on Ultimate at the start of the month, I was regularly playing three tables of $3-$6 by the end. No tournaments, no pissing around. Profit maximization.

One upshot of this was that the 99 hours seemed considerably more hours than my normal month's play, even though the number of hours was roughly the same. I played 14,000 hands of limit, and for much of the month it was a bit of a struggle. In this sense, I am quite confident that these figures are repeatable; indeed, that they are improvable.

The next target is $10 per 100 hands. That would generate $1,000 in winnings in 70 hours rather than 100.

The one nightmare session was a few hours on Virgin where there were loose players who refused to fold and refused to lose. I got crucified.

I think that signing up for Virgin was a mistake, but the rakeback and deposit bonus, plus the promise of very weak players (which, with no Pokertracker available, seemed quite likely) tempted me. However, the software is terrible. I mean, genuinely the worst. Party is a Bentley by comparison. In addition, hands per hour are funereally low, and although the games can be loose and weak, they aren't that way all the time. There are the standard four or five players always there (Shouka, I swear, never leaves the house or sleeps) who are hoovering up the weak money before the games die, like they did on Betfair. These guys are not particularly imaginative and can be taken off hands where they are clearly on a semi steal (a bet out by Shouka after a limp in early position and a board of QQ5 rainbow quickly got raised by my JT-suited on the button. He folded after the obligatory "hmm, I'm thinking of calling" pause)

I'm going to continue until I see what the rakeback looks like and I have worked off the deposit bonus, but I really find playing there a chore.

I also cashed out my $1700 in Paradise after going there and getting the "the waiting lists are full" message just once too often. This is a software glitch that has been going on for months and is known by the operators. It's sad to quit Paradise -- I've played most of my online limit games there and it is still where I have won the most money. But the old owners did nothing with it for the last two years, and the new owners are suits in marketing who haven't got a clue. I had hoped that the cross-sells to sports betting clients would make it a softy fishtank, but the software flaw made trying to get a table a battle in itself. So, farewell Paradise.

That really just leaves money in Party and Ultimate (although a couple of grand sits forlornly unused in Pokerstars), and Ultimate might get the heave-ho if the regular deposit bonuses don't make up for the tighter nature of the games. I'm running quite well at UB at the moment, so my glasses are a little rose-tinted.

In terms of hours played, I knocked up 50 on Party, 25 on Ultimate and 23 on Virgin. Virgin just happened to be the home of the really bad game for me this month. But it's almost impossible to play more than two games on that site, because there are no audio cues that it is your turn. Oh, don't get me going on that software. Christ, it's hard to believe that a company could come up with something that bad after seven years of experience to work with.

For February, it's $3-$6 at Party, unless the games look awful, in which case I will three-table at $2-$4 instead. By the end of the month I hope to be trying $5-$10 and $3-$6 at weekends. This isn't really on the cards at Ultimate, where at these levels everyone is everyone else's cousin and you might as well walk into the Vic. $15 an hour is probably the maximum I can realistically hope for on Ultimate.

There is the vague possibility of single-tabling $15-$30 on Virgin, since, when the game is operating, it looks loose and beatable. But I have my suspicions about Scandinavian-run sites with a heavy population of Scandinavians, often with two at the table from the same town, and a small liquidity of players. Stars and the like spot use of MSN very quickly, but the people at Virgin probably think that Collusion is an eau de parfum served at airport duty-frees.

Onwards and sideways.