No booze and you lose

A fine win on Saturday gives Rot Weiss Essen a great chance to qualify for Bundesliga 3 next season but a win for Magdeburg at Union Berlin (which I attended) makes it more difficult.

Magdeburg currently lie in the coveted 10th place on 50 points. RWE are in 11th on 48 points, level on points with with Dortmunnd Reserves.

It's all in the mathematics (as Sir Mark Prescott would say) and it leaves Essen basically needing six points from their last two games. The crunch game is against Magdeburg next Saturday 24 May and I hope to be attending my first match since nearly missing my brother's wedding to watch the cup defeat against Hamburg in January.

It was my second time at Union but the experience was disappointing due to them selling non-alcoholic lager. WTF (I've learned that recently). Yet another human rights abuse. It was all a bit shady because they advertised it as 'Leicht' and the signs were not clear. The colour just didn't look right.

I can imagine them selling non-alcoholic beer at a Who concert but not a football match. Therefore, the crowd were a bit subdued. It's all wrong. The good thing to come out of the day was that Magdeburg were pretty poor.

So anything less than a victory, like the one we secured against Magdeburg in November, will make it a very long 1hr 40 mins journey back to Berlin on Saturday evening especially with the non-alco piss water swilling through my body and the likelihood the toilets on the regional German trains will be out of order. Wasserlassen ist verboten!

Rot Weiss top of the league

Yes, Rot Weiss are top of Regionalliga 3 (Nord) however it is not Rot Weiss Essen but rather Rot Weiss Ahlen. Second place is filled by Rot Weiss Oberhausen and it would have been a near clean sweep if Rot Weiss Erfurt had not conceded a late equaliser against Dynamo Dresden last Saturday.

Rot Weiss Essen scored an important away victory the same day to give them a slight chance of reaching 10th place and the soon to be formed Bundesliga 3. They now trail the team in 10th place by six points with five games remaining.

Results needed this week are for RWE to beat the struggling Hamburger SV II at home on Wednesday, Braunschweig to lose at home to the struggling Lübeck, Wuppertaler also to lose at home to the struggling Cottbus and Madgeburg to be beaten away at struggling Babelsburg.

If these unlikely events take place, I may go and watch Union Berlin play Dynamo Dresden on Thursday evening.

**UPDATE** Struggling Lübeck managed a 3-3 draw with Braunschweig on Tuesday evening.

Pay for poker with Paypal, pal?

Well you can buy stuff on Ebay, pay for subscriptions and even by someone a drink but I never knew you could pay for playing poker with Paypal but you can!

I've heard some horror stories about the company but I've never had a problem with them. A colleague of mine will tell you, as often as you want to hear, how somebody tried to steal $600 from his account and how it's still limited and how fucking useless their support is but he's Scottish and is always complaining about something.

I'm surprised more sites don't use it because once a person has caught the ebay bug, bought a couple of items and realised how convenient Paypal is then there is no reason not to use it for having a bet or indeed a game of poker.

Once thing that concerned me from the link above is the picture used. Have a close look and it is a picture of a wallet with playing cards inside them. Seems like cheating to me....