Could England win the world cup ?

Answer : Yes but it's about a 50-1 shot.
England were abysmal against Spain in the football on Wednesday night, luckily for me I'd put 20 quid on Spain to win anyway as they were 2-1 and I think even against a full England side that it would have been good value. Against the depleted "B" friendly side that were actually fielded it I was even more please it was a good value bet. Spain were played good but were in second gear for most of the game, England played like they were a side who had never met each other before, only two players came out of the game with any credit, Woodgate and Barry. Crouch was unfairly given fouls against for the whole game just for being tall, so we can forgive him for not winning any free kicks that might otherwise have created some England chances, but apart from the rest were poor. It's time that people in England realise that England are not a great team. We have some good individuals, but picking the 11 highest paid players won't necessarily be the most efficient, cohesive team. Allardice would have dropped plenty of these prima's by now and not cared about the backlash. Unfortunately McClaren is now under the kind of pressure that doesn't allow you the luxury of taking gambles such as dropping Lampard for a more solid midfielder like Kevin Nolan or Joey Barton.
It's a shame but its time to face up to reality, unless they get lucky the England footy team won't win much. It's a bit like 'Boro last year making the UEFA cup final. It took a lot of luck and a lot of gamble to get there and in the end their luck ran out in the final 90 minutes in one of the most one-sided finals ever.

Colts 29 - 17 Bears

The Colts won the Superbowl last night. If you were interested and willing to feel tired today you probably stayed up till 3am like me to watch it. I had 20 pounds on Indy to win by 7-12 pts at 4 to 1 so I was pretty pleased when the man on the right started fumbling the ball, throwing on the back foot and generally choking his big moment. Of course the Colts still had to perform and Manning was excellent to watch. That's all for now, I'm tired and have too much to do for it to be a funday !

Mixed Bag

It's been a tricky week in many ways, it must be something to do with the full moon. Monday saw a $30 profit on the cash tables, Tuesday was tough-beat day and I finished the evening $80 down after being stacked not once but 3 times at .25/.50, 3 stacks=$150 so at least I made a little back. Quick summary is trips rivered by flush, FH beated by better FH (both flopped a set) and TPTK beated by a LAGG who happened to have AA this time. Ok, so getting stacked with TPTK is dumb, maybe I was a little tilty by then, maybe my read was off.

Anyway, Wednesday was Tottenham v Arsenal in the Carling Cup Semi Final which I watched in the pub with Hooks and Action Rich. Arsenal were lucky to win 3-1 thanks to two goals in Extra Time. The game was mostly cagey until the last 15 minutes of normal time when it suddenly came to life and bubbled with tension. Good game. Finally yesterday I played another $11 MTT for a seat in the Sunday Warm Up, which has much better starting times than the main Million. 54 entered and 2 places paid. Hitting Kings, Aces, and Flopping Quad 9's all within the first 90 minutes helped stack me up to 9k chips early. With only 81k in the whole tournament I was in a cracking position and could easily pick my spots until we were down to 7, when I had to make some calls to bust shorter stacks. Unfortunately 4 shorties doubled up off me and it evened up the whole table (worst one was KJ v my JJ but you don’t need to hear all that) Anyway I survived with some stealing until we got to 4 remaining, then got lucky with 99 v the chip leaders TT when I rivered a straight and finally after a few more hands and busts I finished in the top two for a Sunday seat. Pretty pleased with that. The best thing about the Million on Sunday is the thought, even if its just for a couple of hours, that you might be able to phone work on Monday at 7am and say sorry I've just won over $100,000 so I'm taking a duvet day today !

I'll leave you with best wishes for a great weekend at the tables and in life and direct you to one of my favourite posts I ever read. Hop on over to Bills Blog and see what you think about High Variance Poker vs. Low Variance Poker.