Fantasy Football – Team of the week.

Krul

Bosingwa, Enrique, R Taylor

Kuyt, Ramsey, Bale, Lampard

Suarez, Van Persie, Zamora

Ramsey might not play since he played in the Champions League on Wednesday.

The Secret To Winning At Poker

The secret is as Warren Buffett says:

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

And Mike Caro (from Super System 2, chapter 5 – Tips from Mike Caro University, Tip 14):

Beating strong foes wins much respect and little money. Beating weak foes wins little respect and much money.

And this is why poker is an immoral game. It’s the sharks looking for the fish who they can clean out. The winners are like the pool hustlers who search out players worse than them and take their money without these people realising what they’re getting themselves into or who can’t control their gambling addictions.

Fantasy football – team of the week

Krul (NEW) 4.6

Enrique (LIV) 5.1 – Bosingwa (CHE) 6.0 – R Taylor (NEW) 4.5

Mata (CHE) 9.5 – Silva (MCY) 9.9 – Arteta (NEW) 8.2 – S Wright-Phillips (QPR) 6.5

Suarez (LIV) 9.5 – Torres (CHE) 10.5 – Gervinho (ARS) 8.9

Total Cost: 83.2. Captain: Torres. Vice-captain: Mata.

That leaves 16.8 for the 4 players sitting on the bench which can be made of cheap players from the following teams:

NEW, WBA, QPR and NOR.

Other good picks for this week include: Aguero (MCY) 11.2, Cabaye (NEW) 6.0, Barton (QPR) 6.0.

My own team looks nothing like the above, but it’d do a lot better if it did. I do own Krul, Enrique, Bosingwa, R Taylor, Silva.

I transferred in Mata for Nasri. It cost me 4 points, but I made Mata my captain for the week so I hope it pays off. I’m guessing EVE are going to be very defensive playing City away this week. I just hope Nasri isn’t the player scoring and assisting the MCY goals. Chelsea have a good run coming up though so the transfer pays off. My only worry is how to get Nani into my team for next week when United play Norwich at home. If I transfer out Dempsey I can replace him with Nani if I can find 0.1 extra. Don’t know if I want to make that transfer though with Fulham playing QPR at home next week. I might transfer out Silva for Nani even though I’ll lose 0.2 on the transfer and Nani is only good for one week with Liverpool away the next week. Arteta for Dempsey will be a good switch that week with Fulham playing Stoke away that week and Arsenal playing Sunderland at home. We’ll have to see what happens.

Fantasy Football Tips (Soccer)

In this post I while be talking about the official game which can be found at: http://fantasy.premierleague.com/

Three very important pieces of information to consider to succeed at Fantasy Football:

Pick players that play for good teams.

Pick players playing at home.

Pick players playing weak teams.

The first point is obvious. The last two are less obvious.

You only get one free transfer a week and from then on transfers cost you 4 points each. This is something to be wary of and so when picking you’re initial team you want a good mix of players from different teams so that you’ll always have a big bunch playing easy teams and home games.

You also want to have a look at the coming fixtures. At: http://www.fantasyfootballscout.co.uk/ you can see each team’s next 6 fixtures on a chart (scroll down a bit and it will be on the right side of the page). They even tell you how easy/hard the fixture is for this team based on their own opinion. (Home games are in capitals and away games in lowercase. eg. “BLA” means Blackburn at home and “ars” means Arsenal away.)

Scout picks for the upcoming weeks:

Most of the big teams have fairly easy fixtures coming up.

Goalkeepers:

You don’t want to be spending a tonne of money on keepers. You can get good keepers for under £5.0.

Stoke (Begovic), Swansea (Vorm), Newcastle (Krul), QPR (Kenny), Villa (Given) are all decent options for keepers. Just make sure to rotate your keepers, so that your keeper is playing at home (when possible) and not playing against one of the big scoring teams such as United or City.

I went for Vorm and Krul and they’ve been doing very well for me and only cost 4 and 4.5 respectively.

Defenders:

Again, don’t spend a lot on defenders. You can get great buys for very cheap. The most we’ll be willing to spend is 6.0.

First we’ll go through the defenders at big teams that can be bought for cheap:

No cheap Arsenal defenders (I still consider Arsenal one of the big teams).

Bosingwa (CHE) – 6.0

Jose Enrique (LIV) – 5.1

Richards – 6.0, Kompany – 6.0, Clichy – 5.9 (MCY)

Jones – 5.6, Evans J – 4.5, Smalling – 5.5 (MAN)

Notes: Ferdinand and Vidic haven’t been playing till now, but when they come back in somebody like Evans will be the first to drop to the bench. Jones and Smalling’s spots in the team aren’t confirmed either, although Jones has been very good so I think he’ll remain a first team player this year.

I wouldn’t recommend taking City defenders because this gives you less room for City strikers and midfielders since you can only pick 3 players from each team. I think Enrique is a must at his price. Liverpool will get a bunch of clean sheets this season as always. Bosingwa is good choice too although his price has risen a lot.

Other defenders:

NEW – R Taylor, S Taylor and others too are good options.

SWA, NOR, STO, QPR all have good cheap options in defence.

FUL, WBA have good games coming up even though these times are a bit rubbish. WIG will have a nice run of fixtures too soon.

Pick a spread of defenders. Don’t bunch up in a certain team. Most weeks you’ll probably only be playing 3 of your 5 defenders so you can easily rotate them. You shouldn’t have to use your transfers on defenders.

My defence is: Bosingwa (CHE), Jose Enrique (LIV), Taylor R (NEW), de Laet (NOR), Taylor (SWA). Taylor may be injured now and de Laet may have lost his first team place, so I don’t recommend him, but I’m leaving him in my squad for now because I don’t want to waste a transfer on him and CHE, LIV and NEW all have home games next week against easy teams, so I wouldn’t  be playing another defender anyway.

Midfield:

The players you need to be looking at are:

MCY – Silva and Nasri.

MUN – Young and Nani.

If either MCY or MUN have an easy fixture you definitely need to consider buying more of these players for the week if you don’t already have them.

Liverpool have Adam at 9.1 and Henderson at 6.6.

Chelsea’s Mata at 9.5 will also be a very big player this year IMO. Worth putting him into the squad when CHE have an easy fixture.

Arteta (8.2), Walcott (9.0), Arshavin (8.9) and Ramsey (6.3) are decent choices for Arsenal, but I’d be careful with them. You also don’t know if they’ll play. Walcott and Arshavin are quite expensive. Arteta seems to be a good buy when Arsenal have easy home fixtures. Ramsey is a cheap buy although I don’t know how many points he’ll get you. I’d stay away from the Arsenal midfielders for now.

Man City also have Yaya Toure (7.9), Barry (7.0) and Milner (7.5) lurking in the background at cheaper prices, but I think the main points are going to be coming from Nasri and Silva so it’s not worth wasting the space you have for City players on these guys.

United’s Tom Cleverly might be a decent cheap buy at 5.5 when he comes back from injury, but it’s unclear if he can hold down a regular first team place.

Other midfielders:

QPR – Barton (5.9), Wright-Phillips (6.4), Taarabt (6.5). I think Barton and SWP will be very good picks in the upcoming weeks.

Jarvis (WOL) has been a big name this year, but after Wolves 3-0 loss at Home to QPR, I wouldn’t recommend him. He costs 6.4 and WOL didn’t even score on home turf against a newly promoted side. Not a good sign.

You can find cheap midfielders at the newly promoted teams that have been doing decently till now. Fulham’s Dempsey has been consistent the past few years and costs 8.4 although Fulham are bottom of the league, so I’d be careful. Newcastle might have some cheap options in midfield that are worth having a look at. Also, buy set piece takers. Villa’s Petrov at 6.1 is also a decent option.

My current midfield:

Silva, Nasri, Barton, Dempsey and Jarvis. I will probably be dropping Dempsey and Jarvis in the near future. Dempsey is too expensive at 8.4 to be worth keeping. You can almost buy a Nani for that amount.

Strikers:

Again, all eyes on United and City:

MUN – Rooney (12.4), Hernandez (10.0), Welbeck (7.0).

MCY – Aguero (11.1), Dzeko (8.9), Tevez (11.8).

Rooney is the only player of the above that is certain to start every game. City have got great options up front, but they might be rotating them around. Last week Dzeko made way for Tevez. Does this mean Aguero’s spot in the team is sealed? Possibly, we’ll have to see what happens in the near future to find out.

Hernandez will probably be starting for United ahead of Welbeck on a consistent basis.

The weeks that United and City have easy fixtures you have to have some of the above players in your team. I think Hernandez might be a really great pick this year if he does start every week. He only costs 10.0 and should score a load of goals. Dzeko is tempting at 8.9, but he might not be playing every week.

Other strikers:

Aston Villa’s Agbonlahor has scored a couple this season and only costs 6.6. There’s also Darren Bent but he costs 10.0 so is probably not worth the money.

Leon Best for Newcastle has scored 3 goals this year and is extremely cheap at 5.1.

Liverpool’s Suarez at 9.5 is going to be one of this year’s topscorers IMO. When Liverpool have an easy run of matches it’ll be worth putting him in. Caroll at 9.5 might also be a decent buy, but a bit of a risk.

Arsenal’s Robin Van Persie is extremely expensive at 11.9 but is an option if Arsenal start to perform. Gervinho at 8.9 will also be a decent buy if Arsenal have an easy game.

I don’t recommend Blackburn players, but Yakubu scored twice this week and only costs 5.5 and I think Rochina has been decent and costs 4.9. Swansea’s Leroy Lita is only 4.4 and got a goal and assist yesterday. Fulham’s Zamora at 6.7 could also be a decent pickup since Fulham have a decent run of matches coming up.

Spurs’ Adebayor at 8.0 and Defoe at 8.4 will be decent options when Spurs get a nice run of games. They do have decent match-ups coming up although a lot of away games which is why I haven’t mentioned them much in this post.

Last but not least is Chelsea. They should do well this year, the only question is who will they play up front?  Anelka is 8.5. Torres is 10.5. Drogba will be back from injury soon and costs 10.1. There’s also Sturridge at 6.5. The problem here is that it’s not clear who Chelsea will play. They may only play 1 forward certain weeks too. Because of the uncertainty I would stay away. If Torres starts scoring then he might be worth putting in certain weeks.

My attackers:

Rooney, Dzeko, Agbonlahor.

I do want to fit Suarez in for Liverpool’s home game against Wolves. I might put in Hernandez for United against Norwich. Dzeko could lose his spot in my team if he doesn’t start today against Fulham.

Summary:

Players to keep an eye on:

Midfield – Silva, Nasri, Nani, Young, Mata, Adams, Barton, SWP, Arteta

Strikers – Rooney, Hernandez, Aguero, Suarez, Dzeko, Gervinho, Agbonlahor

Lots of teams won’t be going for players like Hernandez, Suarez and Mata so you could really jump your friends by picking them at the right time.

 

Update:

Spurs just beat Liverpool 4-0 at home. Players like Adebayor and Defoe are now looking good, despite Spurs’ away games coming up. Liverpool had two men sent off – Adams and Skrtel. Adams was a good potential pick for next week but is now suspended. Gerrard should be back for Liverpool next week but is very expensive. Suarez is looking less valuble, but I’m not writing him off. Kuyt could be good potential against Wolves next week, unless Liverpool’s confidence has been rocked.

Sunderland beating Stoke 3-0 after half an hour. I take back my advice of buying Stoke defenders and keepers (I don’t own any myself). Sunderland attacking players? Dunno. Possibly a cheap midfielder to fill a slot.

City are playing Aguero and Dzeko. Aguero scoring after 18 minutes with an assist for Silva. Silva and Aguero are almost musts for every team. I don’t have Aguero but Dzeko. Teams with as many of the following players as possible are going to be flying so far this year: Dzeko, Aguero, Rooney, Hernandez, Young, Nani, Silva, Nasri.

United – Chelsea kick off in 20 minutes. Come on Rooney!

Writing a book on poker

Gus Hansen

Lots of the top players have written books on win at poker. The current best selling poker book on Amazon is Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen. For those of you who don’t know who he is, check him up on Wikipedia or the HendonMob. He’s won almost $10 million in tournaments, although he’s only ever won a single WSOP bracelet.

I think he’s also gone bankrupt a couple of times. He’s a very loose player and he’s a favourite on TV. He’s crazy though and he’s the sort of player that goes on big swings.

Why did he write a book revealing how he plays? Doesn’t he know that this totally gives away his game and will probably make him easier to beat? He probably does know this, but thinks he can avoid it by changing his game up. I don’t know if he can.

The reason people write poker books is because they care more about fame than money. I think the main reason poker players play is not for the money but for the respect they get for winning. Being able to say I beat Phil Ivey or I beat 10,000 players to win a WSOP bracelet is better than the money.

If it was only about the money people then people would probably quit when they make a couple of million. But a poker player doesn’t really have much to do with his life so he keeps playing to pass the time. There’s also the adrenalin rush from playing for massive stakes, taking massive risks and outsmarting your opponent.

Which poker books do I recommend?

I don’t recommend playing. It’s a waste of a life, but if you want to play, reading about the game is about the best thing you can do. I recommend:

The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky – probably the best book on poker ever written.

I don’t recommend Super System by Doyle Brunson, but it is a poker classic.

Dan Harrington’s books on tournament poker are also good:

Harrington on Hold ‘em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play

Harrington on Hold ‘em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame

Lastly, I recommend watching the CardRunners videos. Watching GreenPlastic is the single thing that improved my game more than anything else.

Poker is a waste of time, but if you’re going to play, you might as well play properly.

BTW, you can’t play real money poker on Apple iPads or iPod touch’s or iPhones.

Good earnings and poker updates

I checked my earnings from this blog today and I found that I made $500 from one site and $180 from another. Plus I might have made a bit from other affiliate sites that I’ve forgotten about. So that’s about $700 from this blog. Not bad for a site that was originally meant to be a sort of personal log of my poker career.

I haven’t played poker for about 4 years now and I really don’t regret stopping. Poker is such a waste of time and life. I think I might have made it big but I’m really happy I stopped when I did.

WordPress.com don’t really let you advertise but you can sneak advertising links into posts here and there.

This site has now had over 50,000 hits so even if a small percentage of visitors are clicking links and a small number of those clicks lead to people signing up to poker sites, the blog makes money. The blog hasn’t made any money in the last 3 years though and I haven’t really been giving the site much attention.

There’s been a lot of news in America about online poker sites being shut down. FullTilt and PokerStars being hit hard. I think it’s great that the American government decided to ban online gambling. It ruins people’s lives and is a waste of time. I’m not sure why they did it because they were probably making a lot of money out of it from taxing the poker sites, but I think it’s a great decision.

This year’s WSOP is running ATM.

So far the names I recognise that have won bracelets this year are: John Juanda and Bertrand Grospellier. A lot of the big players aren’t playing in this year’s WSOP, which, I think, is to do with the ban of online poker in the US.

Eugene Katchalov and Amir Lehavot also won bracelets at this year’s WSOP – both are Jewish (there might also be more Jewish winners this year, I didn’t research it much). Well done to my Jewish brothers, although it would be better if they were to use their talents to do something more productive with their lives. Anyway, they join the long list of successful Jewish poker players.

Poker: WSOP 2010 Main Event

The main event completed on November 9. Here are the results:
1: Jonathan Duhamel — $8,944,138
2: John Racener — $5,545,855
3: Joseph Cheong — $4,129,979
4: Filippo Candio — $3,092,497
5: Michael Mizrachi — $2,332,960
6: John Dolan — $1,772,939
7: Jason Senti — $1,356,708
8: Matt Jarvis — $1,045,738
9: Soi Nguyen — $811,823

England and USA through to next round

The US deserve to go through. They had a good goal disallowed against Slovenia for no reason. Dempsey also scored a good goal earlier in the the Algeria game. I’m disappointed that England came second, and the games will definitely be much harder having come second, but at least, if England do end up winning the World Cup, they would have really deserved it. It could be Germany, Argentina, Spain, Brazil for England in their next 4 games. Although you never know what will happen. There are always going to be upsets. (Besides, who knows if England will even make it to the quarter finals. Germany looked really good against Australia and they were unlucky to get a man sent off and lose their second game against Serbia.)

What England need to do to continue to do well is:

1) Wear their red kit!

2) Continue to have that desire to win. To realize that we’re not that good and really need to hard work to win games.

3) Never play Heskey again. Defoe and Rooney must start every game and if there is a substitution it must be Crouch who comes on. (I also don’t think it’s ever a good idea to sub Rooney off. If we ever need to make a comeback, Rooney can score that goal and makes things happen).

4) Practice penalties! We always go out on penalties. Please England, practice those penalties.

I can see England doing well in the first 60 minutes or so in their future games of this WC but not scoring enough and then being on the defensive for the last half an hour. Then letting in a late goal or going to penalties and losing. We’ve seen it all before. We just know we’re too sure….

England must continue to wear red to win

Teams in red do better.

Lifting the World Cup

I was going to post in my last post that England should play in red. I forgot to, but it’s definitely true. Teams do better when playing in red. Take a look at the premiership. Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool all wear. They have been the top 3 teams in the premiership consistently over the past 100 years. It’s true that Chelsea won the league this year and they wear blue. Wearing red won’t make you win automatically, but it gives you some kind of edge that shows itself over time.

England won the World Cup wearing red in 1966 instead of their usual white. Manchester United won the Champions League finals in 1999 wearing red against Bayern Munich. Bayern usually also wear red but because there would be a colour clash if both teams wore red, there was a coin flip which United won and so they wore their usual red kits for the finals and went on to win it. Liverpool wore red in their penalty shoot-out win in the champions league final against AC Milan in 2005 when they came back from 3-0 to 3-3. Milan usually wear red and black, that night they wore white and lost. Arsenal got to the CL finals in 2006 and lost to Barcelona. Arsenal wore yellow that night, Barca wore maroon (red) and blue. Manchester United won the CL in 2008. They wore red in the finals against Chelsea. MU lost to Barcelona in the 2009 finals wearing white. Barca wore their usual maroon (red) and blue.

Great goal in red

I’ve been saying this for years. The team in red stands a better chance of winning. It’s true for all sports, but most definitely for English football. There are studies all over the internet. Here are some links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6097954/Why-teams-in-red-win-more.html

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168210

The “experts” have supposedly said that it scares opponents and possibly gives the team wearing red more confidence. I personally think that the colour red just fires people up. Red is the colour of anger and passion. Red fires up the bull. Red fires up England to win.

Come on England! Continue to wear that red kit!

What England need to do to turn things around

1) England needs to humble up.

2) England needs to stop trying to base our team around Rooney.

1)

I love Rooney, but his comments about Algeria before the game were stupid. Rooney said Algeria would be an easy game. This didn’t help anything. It spurred on Algeria and makes the England team lazier. Everyone keeps talking about England having to stay positive. This is rubbish. They need to sit down in a corner and think: “We’re not that good. We must work hard to win a game and put everything into it”. England must be humbled. This might spur them on to put in some effort and hopefully come away with some wins.

Enough with the positive attitude. We need England to realize that a team must work hard to win a World Cup and just because your team is worth £200 million, this doesn’t mean the ball automatically flies into the back of the net.

The dutch team had this same arrogance in the past. Kluivert, Seedorf, Davids, etc. They thought that because they play for Barcelona and are getting massive salaries that they don’t have to work anymore.

I think Slovenia will knock England out. This World Cup means everything to Slovenia. They haven’t forgotten where they have come from. They haven’t sold out. The England players have forgotten where they’ve come from and are just focused on their flash cars and big houses.

2)

Why are we playing Heskey just to help out Rooney? It’s not helping and Rooney isn’t our whole team. Crouch and Defoe can win games for Spurs. We need to stop thinking about Rooney and start thinking about the team. Let’s play Rooney and Defoe up front. Maybe we’ll see some goals. Rooney likes to drop back and Heskey can’t score a goal to save his life. So basically we have no strikers. If Defoe were to be up front then we could score even if Rooney’s playing in midfield.

I think it was a terrible mistake to bring Heskey to the World Cup. Even Crouch was a mistake but not as bad a mistake. Heskey is an awful player. He wouldn’t get into most countries starting lineups. How is he in the England squad? What about Agbonlahor and Bent. How did Heskey make the team and they didn’t. Unbelievable that England bring Heskey to every World Cup. The squad has been picked and there’s nothing we can do to change it, but I don’t want to see Heskey playing another game for England this World Cup. I’d rather see Dawson up front than Heskey.

I think Mathew Upson is going to mess things up for England in the next game. I think Dawson should start instead. England aren’t going to win this WC. It’s disappointing. For the past 8 years or so we’ve had an unbelievable team of individuals. We have the best central defenders and central midfielders in the world plus Rooney up front. What a waste. Maybe in Euro 2012 our team will be more humble and actually want to win and something will happen. The problem is that Rooney will still be around and the team will be based around him again and things wil end in failure again.