Wednesday, 31 March 2021

Pot Limit Hi’s And Lo’s

This tournament may be cheap, but no one could ever claim it wasn’t entertaining. Due to the low buy-in, guaranteed prize pool, and extended late registration, it attracts hundreds of players. The format is fun too.

I have a stellar record in this particular tournament. Okay, it doesn’t pay the rent, but you get my drift.

Below are six screengrabs: the first three from March 27 and the next three from March 31, 2021.

I finished runner-up in the first after having serious doubts about cashing.

Look at this hand, granted there isn’t much in the pot, but how can anyone scoop a three-handed pot with a pair of 9s, and on a paired board? This hand was actually played after midnight, ie in the small hours of March 28. The guy with 10-6-6-3 has no business being in the pot, but you see a lot worse than that all the time.

Below is the aftermath of the final hand, and below that is the top of the finishing table, but note especially the times – seven and a half hours. Jee-zus. Where else can you get cheap entertainment like that, and even get paid for it?

The second tournament saw me in second and third place much of the time early on, but it was the bounties that were really wild. True, I had some luck, but I can’t believe some of the hands people play at this game, something I’ve been saying for longer than I care to remember.

The two graphs show my position, and the final grab shows me being busted out twenty-fourth. I might have finished a tad higher had I not been disconnected at one point, but I really can’t complain. Same thing tomorrow night?

Sunday, 24 January 2021

Never Play Rolled Up Kings At Stud Hi-Lo

Having played this tournament Thursday night and made the final table, I kinda felt obligated to reprise it, which I did in style. Already in the money, I was dealt rolled up 4s and got into a raising war. A third player stayed the course, but as you will see from this hand, he had no business even flat calling.

canam999 was all-in before me, and I stared in horror at his hand, a prial of kings. Remarkably, my hand paired while his didn’t.


Having survived that horror, it was only fitting I should be busted out the same way, the guy with the massive stack starting with a low draw only sucking out with spades to scoop.

But...as will be seen from the screengrab below, I had no cause to complain. Can Our Hero do even better tonight? Watch this space! Gotta luv electronic cards.

Thursday, 7 January 2021

That Elusive Straight Flush

A straight flush is a rarity in poker, but is obviously more of a rarity at 5 card stud than at Omaha.

All the same, you don’t really expect to see two straight flushes in the same tournament, much less be dealt two yourself. This is what happened to me this evening.

This one happened deep into the tournament.

And this one a bit later.

We were already well in the money, and very short stacked, I took a chance with two small pairs. When the flop came 5-8-9, I called for the 7 of spades, and it came. It took me to the next level.

I should have been happy, but I couldn’t help thinking that only at hi lo, you can make a straight flush and still win only half the pot, something I did here twice.

Sunday, 3 January 2021

Lying About The Grooming Gangs — A Study In Gaslighting

Over the course of 2020, we have seen many laughable examples of media gaslighting, perhaps most notably, and laughably, by the MSNBC reporter who claimed the protests he was covering were mostly peaceful while a building burned in the background. He did point out that fires had been started, but heck, what’s a fire or two?

Another example of gaslighting is to claim Joe Biden is more popular than Donald Trump, that the Biden of 2020 is more popular than the Barack Obama of 2008, and that Biden’s son Hunter did nothing wrong when he was clearly using his father’s name to enrich himself and the Biden family at the expense of his country.

Having said that, things are not always what they appear. Two men attacking a third may actually be two detectives apprehending a murder suspect. A man dragging a young child forcibly into a car may look like a kidnapping when it is really an angry father attempting to take his recalcitrant son home.

But what does the above photograph look like? These are the mugshots of a child sex grooming gang, one of many that have been successfully prosecuted in recent years. Run the phrase “grooming gang” through your image search, and the photographs that come up are strikingly similar. Of course, there are exceptions. This grooming gang from Rotherham includes two white women. Genuine female sexual predators are extremely rare, because female depravity manifests in other ways. Most female sexual predators have been groomed themselves, or allowed themselves to be groomed, by men, as here.

And yes, there are white sexual predators including white child sexual predators; the names Robert Black, Ian Huntley and Roy Whiting spring to mind; serial child killer, double child killer, and child killer respectively, but how often do they hunt in packs, and how many of them have sexually abused dozens, in some cases hundreds, of underage teens for years? The answer is none. Yet there is now a concerted effort to convince us that the eight lowlifes pictured above are in some way exceptional.

These gangs have been alluded to as Islamic grooming gangs, including by Tommy Robinson. While this claim is superficially plausible, the men pictured here are more likely to be found in Mecca Bookmakers than praying facing Mecca. Under Sharia, rape is capital. Former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw identified the real problem years ago when he pointed out that certain men of Pakistani heritage regarded young white girls as “easy meat”.

This claim was denounced as “racist”, surprise, surprise, but what isn’t racist nowadays? Is it sexist to point out that the overwhelming majority of sex offenders are men? Is it sexist and ageist to point out that most violent crime – violent with a capital V – are committed by males between the ages of about 15 and 45?

If you hadn’t realised it by now, with rare exceptions, intersectionality – the totem pole of oppression – goes in one direction only.

The official report on the grooming gangs was published last month. Sources cited within it include so-called criminologist Ella Cockbain and self-styled grooming gang “survivor” Sammy Woodhouse. Both these women have gone on record claiming that most offenders are white. Not most grooming gang members, absolutely not.

Although she was indeed a victim, of the predatory Arshid Hussain, Woodhouse was in every sense a willing victim. Some of the claims she makes about Hussain are not worthy of belief, although she does admit that at the age of fifteen she helped him rob a post office. Did he “groom” her to do that?

Woodhouse became pregnant by Hussain not once, but twice. She hated being raped so much, she went back for more. Woodhouse went on to start a petition called “Stop rapists from accessing children conceived through rape”. How many of the four hundred thousand plus people who signed it stopped to think that if passed into law it will allow any woman to stop a man having access to his offspring simply by claiming she was raped?

Not everyone was taken in by her little girl lost act; she was refused criminal injuries compensation because the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board recognised her agency.

The aforementioned Ella Cobain co-authored a paper published by the Institute Of Race Relations in January this year. As might be discerned from its title: Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative is more concerned with promoting its own narrative than in documenting actual abuse.

The Institute Of Race Relations is an openly Marxist organisation that has championed convicted murderers Mumia Abu-Jamal and Satpal Ram.

Returning to the official report, its lack of proper citations and its twisted rhetoric are a wonder to behold.

Thus at paragraph 89 we are told:

“Studies have indicated that societal and cultural issues around misogyny may also be an enabling factor. Objectification of women in society has been suggested as a reason why violence against girls may be normalised and accepted.”

This is pure feminist propaganda. Misogyny means arguing with a feminist or simply disagreeing with one. The objectification of women is another piece of feminist nonsense. Physically attractive women are often admired by both sexes; one may admire a bird, a horse, a building, that doesn’t suggest indecency, only good taste.

In spite of this and other attempts to whitewash (pun intended) the grooming gang scandal, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. In December 2017, the Quilliam Foundation issued a report that concluded there was indeed a heavy involvement of Pakistani men in the grooming gangs, even though it did allude to “outdated and sexist views of women”. The way certain individuals or groups view women isn’t and never was the issue; the law should be enforced to protect vulnerable girls, that means recognising and imposing severe punishment on all offenders, whatever their race.

Saturday, 14 November 2020

Man, Dat Was One Bad Beat

Unlike most poker variants, stud hi-lo can be said to have an element of skill to it, but bad beats are still rampant. The three screengrabs below are from the 01.43 (London time) tournament on PokerStars, November 14, 2020.
Our Hero was sitting out this hand, but the guy next to him had rolled up 9s. You can usually expect to take down half the pot with such a monster, especially when filling up on sixth street. Alas, he was already beaten.
On the final table but hoping to improve, guess who made a prial of 3s on fifth street not realising he was behind? Fortunately, this time the other guy had the bad beat; I hit a house, he didn’t. Try that at hold ’em!
I was busted out on a bad beat, aces against kings, the other bloke made two pair, but that wasn’t a bad finish considering.

Friday, 13 November 2020

White Privilege In Croydon

Considering so many shops and businesses are either working at reduced capacity or closed altogether, central Croydon was quite busy Saturday. Near Surrey Street, a homeless woman I have seen for many months was pitched in a doorway with all her worldly possessions. She is younger than me, probably quite a bit younger, but looks older with her rotten teeth, and as at 64 I am not in good shape, that says something.

I noticed she had a mobile phone. Well, she could hardly have a landline. She told me Crisis had given it to her. I asked her if she couldn’t get hostel accommodation or something, to which she replied the council would split them up, them being her and her husband. I asked about him, and she said he was on the other side of the road.

These two were not begging, at least not aggressively. I walked up to him and asked about their situation. Couldn’t they get housed together in some sort of apartment? He said they, meaning the council, were working on it. I asked him his name, and he said it was Phil. He was probably older than his wife but didn’t look so wretched; a beard can have that effect, and homeless men are not generally as tragic as homeless women.

Talking of the tragic, if it weren’t so tragic it would be comic that we are forever being told – on both sides of the Atlantic – about white privilege and something now called structural racism. Clearly Phil and his wife left their white privilege at, not at home, that is for certain.

Then there are the feminists who never cease reminding us about that other chimera, sexism. Earlier this year, Samira Ahmed was complaining she was paid “only” £440 for an episode of Newswatch while Jeremy Vine collected £3,000 per episode of his programme. What does that tell us about privilege? Primarily that it derives from money, though not necessarily from talent. If you have the connections you can be an unrepentant junkie and still wallow in privilege, but let’s not talk about Hunter Biden. What it does tell us about poverty and social exclusion is that it is an equal opportunity employer. 

Sunday, 1 November 2020

Royal Flushes, Roundabouts And Swings

I play very little poker nowadays, and always for very small stakes, usually micro-stakes. As is apparent from the top left hand corner of each, the two screengrabs below are from pot limit Omaha hi lo games. They were played October 25 and October 29 respectively.

In the first, I had a royal flush draw but folded on the flop. If the diamond had been a 9, I might have continued; had it been a 10, queen or king, I would definitely have, but I reasoned that in the unlikely event of making a royal, I would much more likely end up winning ouly half the pot. Naturally, I was disappointed, but look what happened four days later. Had I called the flop, I would have made queens full, but look at the river card and the winning hand. Dude, what a fold! I cashed in both tournaments, taking bounties on the way, and with a bit of luck I was eleventh in the latter, busted out a few minutes short of five hours. It’s always better to be paid for your entertainment rather than pay for your education.