Good riddance New Zealand

We spent a month in New Zealand which was one of our favourite places that we visited on the trip. At the time we all swore to go back, and I would even have went as far as to say that I could have seen myself living either there or in Australia somewhere down the line. After the last two weeks, I hope I never see the place or anything remotely associated with it again.

After the disaster of the 93rd minute goal against Slovakia (the same Slovakia team that just beat Italy), I took them on again, backing Italy on the handicap, only to see New Zealand hang on for a draw. Then I came back for more in the last group game, taking Paraguay -1 goal and on various spread markets for even more. If New Zealand hadn't qualified for this World Cup, I'd probably be about 40k richer than I am now.

I've still done pretty well overall (the Portugal - N Korea game almost covered my losses from all 3 of New Zealand's), but it's still a bit annoying. I had a few bets on the outright at the start of the World Cup, and didn't really expect to be doing anything else, but I've found loads of bets on the group games that I've really liked. I expect things to be a bit quieter for me on the knockout stages though, and doubt I'll be getting heavily involved on anything else.

Poker hasn't been going so well over here. I've played 5 small NLH tournaments now and never really got going in any of them. I think I've played ok in them overall, apart from one of them where I got a good stack together then busted in two hands which I'm a bit unhappy about.

With the blinds at 200-400 with 25 antes, a new arrival to our table who was playing about 5.5k, raised to 900 in first seat. I was a bit suspicious at such a small raise from that position and maybe should have just passed my AQ, but instead I chose to take a flop. He checked the 345 rainbow flop, which confirmed to me he had a really big hand. What sort of hand can he have to raise in first seat but not want to bet this sort of flop (especially considering he was short-stacked), unless he was trying to trap me. I checked behind, prepared to give it up on the turn if nothing changed.

The turn was a Queen and he checked again. This confused me a bit as I'd have expected him to make a small bet here since I'd chosen not to bet the flop when he checked, and for some reason I completely changed my mind and made a bet of just less than the pot. Of course he re-raised all-in and I decided that I was now pot committed and called. Sure enough, he had the aces. It was a little unfortunate that I hit the Queen on the turn, but it shouldn't really have made any difference. On the flop I'd made my mind up that he had me beaten and had been trying to trap me, but somehow I still managed to do half my stack in the hand.

If I'd checked the turn, I could even have called a river bet out of curiousity and not really damaged my stack all that much. Instead, this left me pretty short and I busted shortly after in another pot that I probably could have played better.

I'm still feeling ok about poker. I know you have to run good in these small tourneys, and I haven't really. I've only played 6.5K worth of tournaments and still have 27.5K worth still to play, and these are the ones that I most fancy my chances in.

I'll be taking it easy over the weekend before the 5K and 10K PLO events next week, and hopefully playing a bit more golf. I've played three rounds so far, playing really well in two of them and winning 2% of a very good player in the main event. In the 3rd round however, I had a nightmare of a day and lost 3% to Nicky Power. I also lost $250 to Tom Finneran, who turned up with an 18 handicap and proceeded to fleece both of us by scoring 42 points, while complaining that his driving had been bad. I've never really been a believer in Karma and 'what goes around comes around' stuff, but funnily enough, Tom spent the night in hospital after being involved in a car crash later that day.

Seriously though, it turned out that his injuries were only minor and with this being America, he can probably look forward to a nice 5-figure settlement, which is just as well for him as he won't be getting any more action on the golf course.