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End of the quarter
Mar. 25th, 2011 07:15 pmIt's the end of March and so I am off to foreign climes - viz, Nice.
Having decided to rein back on the poker in an attempt to find a sweeter profit spot, I've actually had the spare time to watch many of those movies that I have recorded. This week I've managed "Children of Men" and "Spartan".
"Children of Men", starring Clive Owen, with solid support from Mihael Caine, Pam Ferris and Julianne Moore (and a young African actor whose name I fear I cannot recall - sorry!), has a superb little opening sequence where what looks like a continuous camera shot pans around, ending with an explosive climax. However, the plot, based on the PD James novel of the same name, doesn't really make a lot of sense. It seems to me that the author had two separate ideas and just fused them together: (1) that the world becomes infertile, with no females getting pregnant for 18 years, and (2) that Britain becomes some kind of siege-mentality country with gigantic refugee camps -- an exaggeration of the current system, I assume.
Both fair ideas, but not really compatible with each other. That's a common fault when non-SF writers tackle SF -- their "world vision" often seems to me to be riddled with inconsistencies.
That said, it's a competent British-made yarn, and Clive Owen is really rather good. Michael Caine performs the pants off him, obviously, and the setting of Bexhill-on-Sea as some kind of giant refugee camp hell on earth is nicely painted.
On the same disc I had recorded "Spartan", and for the first couple of minutes I wondered to myself "what on earth possessed me to record this?" It looked like a standard US secret service "never mind the rules" film that would appeal to middle America. As the film developed it became clear that things were not quite as they seemed, although the plot, to be frank, remained preposterous. Val Kilmer wasn't bad in the lead, and the film as a whole was more watchable than much of this kind of guff, but it wasn't going to be a classic.
Only at the end did I see why I had recorded it -- it had been written and directed by David Mamet. Watchable, but not a patch on his Homicide, Player of Games, or Spanish Prisoner.
+++++++++
Returning to the poker: it's been a bad quarter. About $300 down overall, and I'm not "owed" that much from the various points accumulations. More worryingly, this includes a $3k net loss at $100 buy in. Although I felt that I had been unlucky on Stars, and I also felt that since early March (when the names of the games were changed to "ordinary" and "cap") the standard 40bb-100bb games had benefited from an influx of weaker short-stack players, but the potential profit there remained marginal. And, more seriously, I was burning out.
So I decided to give the whole Stars thing a rest, and to just take it easy on Party Poker for a while. There's some FPP/Medal freerolls on Stars and Full Tilt that I can exploit to build up the cash pile on both sites, while Party looks as if it will remain profitable. For how long this will be the case I am not sure. There's some Russian bots/computer geek players who aren't bad, although they are beatable. Standard 40BB players at 12 or so tables, possibly some mild collusion (not sure about that yet, though). But there remain some weaker "standard" players (often, it must be said, from the UK, where they persist in believing that a style that works in Walsall cash games has got a chance online) who are basically ATMs.
These guys' main error is that they think a $60 pot bet will frighten people. That "fear" factor, which moves straight through to the bottom line as "fold equity" in a live game, doesn't have much impact when you are up against players with a bankroll of a 100 buy-ins just sitting in the account --- not to mention back-up elsewhere.
Once you have their range taped (in itself not very difficult, since live UK players have a reasonably constant style), decisions to call or not are automatic -- not infrequently leading to a comment of either "rigged!" or "how can you call for $60 with that?" or "fucking retards on this site!".
Lolzalooza.
++++++++++++
The EU is meeting this weekend over the eurozone stability fund. I shall be following it with interest.
___________
Having decided to rein back on the poker in an attempt to find a sweeter profit spot, I've actually had the spare time to watch many of those movies that I have recorded. This week I've managed "Children of Men" and "Spartan".
"Children of Men", starring Clive Owen, with solid support from Mihael Caine, Pam Ferris and Julianne Moore (and a young African actor whose name I fear I cannot recall - sorry!), has a superb little opening sequence where what looks like a continuous camera shot pans around, ending with an explosive climax. However, the plot, based on the PD James novel of the same name, doesn't really make a lot of sense. It seems to me that the author had two separate ideas and just fused them together: (1) that the world becomes infertile, with no females getting pregnant for 18 years, and (2) that Britain becomes some kind of siege-mentality country with gigantic refugee camps -- an exaggeration of the current system, I assume.
Both fair ideas, but not really compatible with each other. That's a common fault when non-SF writers tackle SF -- their "world vision" often seems to me to be riddled with inconsistencies.
That said, it's a competent British-made yarn, and Clive Owen is really rather good. Michael Caine performs the pants off him, obviously, and the setting of Bexhill-on-Sea as some kind of giant refugee camp hell on earth is nicely painted.
On the same disc I had recorded "Spartan", and for the first couple of minutes I wondered to myself "what on earth possessed me to record this?" It looked like a standard US secret service "never mind the rules" film that would appeal to middle America. As the film developed it became clear that things were not quite as they seemed, although the plot, to be frank, remained preposterous. Val Kilmer wasn't bad in the lead, and the film as a whole was more watchable than much of this kind of guff, but it wasn't going to be a classic.
Only at the end did I see why I had recorded it -- it had been written and directed by David Mamet. Watchable, but not a patch on his Homicide, Player of Games, or Spanish Prisoner.
+++++++++
Returning to the poker: it's been a bad quarter. About $300 down overall, and I'm not "owed" that much from the various points accumulations. More worryingly, this includes a $3k net loss at $100 buy in. Although I felt that I had been unlucky on Stars, and I also felt that since early March (when the names of the games were changed to "ordinary" and "cap") the standard 40bb-100bb games had benefited from an influx of weaker short-stack players, but the potential profit there remained marginal. And, more seriously, I was burning out.
So I decided to give the whole Stars thing a rest, and to just take it easy on Party Poker for a while. There's some FPP/Medal freerolls on Stars and Full Tilt that I can exploit to build up the cash pile on both sites, while Party looks as if it will remain profitable. For how long this will be the case I am not sure. There's some Russian bots/computer geek players who aren't bad, although they are beatable. Standard 40BB players at 12 or so tables, possibly some mild collusion (not sure about that yet, though). But there remain some weaker "standard" players (often, it must be said, from the UK, where they persist in believing that a style that works in Walsall cash games has got a chance online) who are basically ATMs.
These guys' main error is that they think a $60 pot bet will frighten people. That "fear" factor, which moves straight through to the bottom line as "fold equity" in a live game, doesn't have much impact when you are up against players with a bankroll of a 100 buy-ins just sitting in the account --- not to mention back-up elsewhere.
Once you have their range taped (in itself not very difficult, since live UK players have a reasonably constant style), decisions to call or not are automatic -- not infrequently leading to a comment of either "rigged!" or "how can you call for $60 with that?" or "fucking retards on this site!".
Lolzalooza.
++++++++++++
The EU is meeting this weekend over the eurozone stability fund. I shall be following it with interest.
___________
