Sigh ..  what does a man have to do to win some money at poker ?

I think the real 'bad run' is more or less over, as I'm actually winning hands when I'm supposed to. When I'm a 80 to 90 percent favorite when the chips go in, I expect to win it .. 8 out of 10 times .. This was not the case for a while as people were just outrunning me on the river every time. Now it's a little bit back to normal, but still not enough to win the last few times I played.

I was out drinking with my friends on friday night when some of my friends there decided to start a little tournament at their house. Frankly, I was so drunk there I don't really remember a lot. I was there to have fun and not to win big money .. the stakes were too low for that anyway. So then I get a call from another friend of mine (by now it's about 2 o clock at night) that he's got friends coming over for a cash game and there's a spot for me if I want in. I was a bit sobered up by now and although I had lost that tournament, I did remember that I had won some good pots. So decided I should try my luck at this cash game.

The stakes were 20c/40c blinds and the game was no limit holdem (as always at our homegames). I got dealt some nice starting hands and played them well in the beginning. This brought my initial buy in from 10 euros up to about 35. My strong play was obviously invoking fear in my opponents as they started folding to my pre flop 3x blinds raises. Something that had not happened to me in some time .. The players were respecting my raises. I took down some minor pots this way, when I got dealt AK in middle position. I raise it up again to 1 euro 20 and get a caller behind me, IIRC he was on the button. The flop comes all low cards, I think it was 8 high. I put out a continuation bet with my AK even though I completely missed the flop in all possible ways. He calls and the next card is an ace ! I think for a litle while, but obviously not well enough and decide it's a good spot to push and try to double up through this guy, or take down the pot right here.  After some deliberation he calls ... with top two pair - aces and eights.

I should have known he connected on the flop when he called me and placed a nice bet on the ace to find out where i was. I put in a huge bet on a small pot ... my own fault. I'm not used to cash games yet, still have to get rid of some of those sit and go tendencies.

After that I have played 2 small sit and gos online at Full Tilt Poker for $5 each, placing 4th each time. The first one was quite a funny story. In the second hand I flop two pair with K10, and push all in after a raise. I get called by someone with JJ and he rivers a J. I lost all but my last 30 chips there, but managed to play it back all the way up to 5000 chips before going out with aces.

Still not winning in the end, but at least not getting rivered every single hand ! 

w00t w00t !

Today me and my colleagues finally got our new Nokia Internet Tablets. We already all have an N800 and managed to get our manager to get us the latest and greatest revision .. the N810. Of course he got one for himself as well, so we're now going to be tasked with explaining him all the cool things he can do with it.

If you don't know what an internet tablet is exactly, read my review over at Purchase Reviews

Review of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet from PurchaseReviews.com

If you don't care about reading a whole review, it's just a nice little gadget for geeks like me. A little like a UMPC, but smaller and it runs Linux. Nice screen resolution and networking capabilities so the possibilities are endless. The sky is litterally the limit with these little devices. You can throw just about any application on there and make it work. Want to play some old school Quake against each other over a wireless network ? Want to use it as a media player with a much bigger screen then any iPod (Install Canola to do that nicely), or maybe you're a security professional like me who like to have all the possible security tools directly available, in his pocket. Linux on the move !

So I just got it today and still need to install all the applications and games that I use. A small downside of this upgrade is that I have to get a new memory card. The N810 only takes Micro SD cards, and it only has 1 slot (the N800 has 2 SD card slots). Well at least it makes my wife happy, she now has an N800 with a lot of memory :)

I'm going to jump back onto my little device and sort out a little music collection on there for in the morining on the way to work. The age of the Intenet tablet is upon us. 

The site MMAYOU.com has recently interviewed Bas Rutten, about his role in the game Grand Theft auto 4. If you have played the game yourself, you may have noticed Bas Rutten on the TV in your hideout. This is not his only role in the game though, as he explains here :

MMAyou.com: Yo Bassito! You ready for the world’s greatest interview?

Rutten: You’re so f**ing on the f**ing minute man, I love you!

MMAyou.com: Haha, thanks man, I love you too. You ready to get started?

Rutten: Ready, ready!

MMAyou.com: Alright cool. Well, how are you doing?

Rutten: I’m doing f**ing phenomenal.

MMAyou.com: Nice! What’s new with you?

Rutten: As you probably saw, Grand Theft Auto 4 finally came out. And I’m really stoked because I had to shut my mouth for one and a half years or longer. I did that a long time ago.

MMAyou.com: Oh wow, okay. I thought it was just recently.

Rutten: No, and I did all the, but people don’t know yet, is that I did all the fighting also in it. So every fighting that you see that‘s done by me. I did it together with Amir Perets. I brought Amir Perets.

MMAyou.com: (laughing) That poor guy.

Rutten: Five days, eight hours a day we were in those crazy suits.

MMAyou.com: (laughing) Nice, (Bas laughs) he was probably beat to shit by the time you finished with him.

Rutten: Oh man, it was beautiful. It was so much fun.

MMAyou.com: Were the people at GTA freaking out?

Rutten: Oh, let me tell you (Bas laughs). I ask them “how violent do you want it?” They say, “give it all you got”. I say, “cool!”. So they go up you know and I started, and they load it into the computers and two hours they came back down and they say “okay, you can stop now”. (both of us start laughing)

MMAyou.com: Is there any chance of us seeing you, I hope you say yes to this, is there any chance of us seeing you in your own spin-off game?

Rutten: No, not yet. God knows what people… I mean the reaction of the TV show in the game is phenomenal. I have sooooooo many people calling me and apparently it is very well received.

It was funny because we had to shoot it a couple of times they were laughing so hard that I had to do re-shoots all day because you heard laughing in the background.

MMAyou.com: Was that you just improving or was some of that scripted?

Rutten: Yeah, somebody scripted that. They used just a lot from my street fighting DVDs I think.

MMAyou.com: Yeah, I noticed that.

Rutten: Yeah, the crazy stuff they put in, it’s all scripted. There’s a little improv but it’s about twenty percent maybe.

I really like Bas and I know he's trying to start a career as an actor. I hope this is another little step towards that new career.