Bling blang blaouw

Bit of a slow news week. Had my first good online week in a while, plus just over 2K or so including rakeback and bonuses. I'd take that every week obviously so happy enough. I'm currently spreading myself fairly equally across Green Joker, Stars and Tilt.

I'm toying with the idea of going to Marrakech, will decide in the next week or so. Very generous offer from a friend to kip in his hotel room. It would mean missing the IPO and the Westbury (my favourite monthly tournament) so will have to see.

Also getting excited about the RTE Late Night of Poker thing. Watched the first episode last night and thought it was so so. The plusses were the commentators: Padraig was very good and very funny as ever, managing to get the balance right between the viewing public who would know a bit about poker, those who wouldn't but would like to learn a little, and those who don't. Emmet was very good as the straight man. He avoided the pitfall that a lot of commentators paired with Padraig fall into: try to out-pisstake the pisstakemeister, resulting into the whole thing descending into 2 schoolboys giggling at each other's jokes while some poker happens in the background. The set also looked reasonable, although I could do without the "loser's bar". The minuses were mainly that it was hard to follow the game: chip stacks seem to swing wildly up and down from one moment to the next. I get that it's aimed at the casual punter but I'm not sure it hit that market even. I watched it with a few of that demographic and none of them seemed very impressed, or inspired to take up the game. Marty was suave as ever (the three females I watched it with all reckoned he was by far the sexiest thing about the show), and Andy was borderline insane as ever. The two Internet qualifiers gave very good accounts of themselves, as indeed did the celebs.

It's been suggested on Boards that I should try to get that online celebratory phrase "bling blang blaouw" onto the small screen. I like the idea and some people have pledged money to charity if I do, so I'll be trying my best to do so. The nominated charity is Irish Autism Action.

Big Mick has been giving me terrible abuse on MSN in recent nights about what he's going to do to me at the table, and how. He's obviously and understandably very confident but all I can do is give it my best shot. Who knows, he might freeze up under the glare of the cameras.

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