Get It Quietly

When Is An Endorsement Not An Endorsement ?

2010-08-27T23:51:00.003+01:00

Via @bengoldacre on Twitter, the Greenwich & Lewisham News Shopper made a bizarre Christian anti-gay rant its "Star Letter", as you can see here. However my favourite bit is that the newspaper tweeted :

"By the way, just because the letter wins the pen, it's in no way an endorsement of from us of the author's views"

As pointed out in the linked blog,

"Except that by calling it the "Star Letter" and giving it a prize, it looks exactly like an endorsement of the author's views"

So far so LOL. But what actually made me blog about this is it reminded me of an old "Hand Of The Month" in Poker Europa (remember that ?). Enthusiastic reader Mr. R. Brindley sent in a description of some pisspoor angle shot which enabled the hero to mincash in his local £20 freezeout. A few people posted to the effect of "that's super lame" on the Poker In Europe forum, only to be silenced by Nic Szeremata's clarification that "Hand Of The Month" did not in fact constitute the best hand of the month, but just a hand that happened that month.

I often wondered what happened to Nic. Perhaps he has found a home in the Greenwich and Lewisham News Shopper.

PS This one's for you Roland :)

How Low Can We Go

2010-01-04T17:15:00.003Z

Here in my ivory tower I don't have a TV and so I am spared the worst of it. However, Victoria Coren linked to a clip of Peaches Geldof talking about the Large Hadron Collider which, I'm sure you'll agree, sounded too good to miss.

The actual clip was contained in Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Review of 2009. Apparently, according to a comment on YouTube (must be true then obv) some band has a song entitled "Charlie Brooker Is Right About Everything", and I have yet to find any evidence disproving this. He is right about everything. Anyway, this review contains some truly horrendous TV - I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. We have the aforementioned Peaches Geldof being interviewed by the only person in the country stupider than her ; the footage of the 10 year old bursting into tears on Britain's Got (No) Talent, which is a lot more worrying than I thought it would be ; Nick Griffin on Question Time ; and what we can only describe as A Tale Of Two Paedos.

In Part 1, we are treated to a seance with Michael Jackson, who wants to tell the world, through the medium of the, er, medium, that the tabloids are full of "lies, lies and more lies". Yeah, says Brooker of the spiritualist, you really hate people making stuff up, in a tone that would cause any sarcasm detector within 800 yards to explode comedically. Anyway, Jackson fans in the seance get to share their love with the singer who has ceased to be, tears of joy all round.

The paedo in Box Number Two (so to speak) does not get off so lightly. Really, you have to watch this, I had no idea TV was now this bad. Apparently there was a full scale dramatisation entitled "The Execution Of Gary Glitter", mock trial, people like Gary Bushell commenting as if it was real, long walk to the hangman's rope, the lot. The only redeeming feature was the classic suspenseful courtroom scene "have you reached a verdict - Yes your honour", the suspense of which must have been somewhat lessened for anyone who could remember the title of the show. Which probably wasn't many of the people watching so there you go.

Anyway, check out the clips and I'm now catching up on the previous episodes of Screenwipe on YouTube, if I can stand the horror !

I Had That Osama Bin Laden In The Back Once

2009-12-08T16:03:00.003Z

While I'm blogging everything today, I couldn't let this go :

Spy Chief Faces Questions On Iraq Weapons Intelligence

Key extract :

"In the end it turned out that the information [about Iraq being capable of launching WMDs within 45 minutes] was not credible, it had originated from an emigre taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier."

Tune in next year as we invade Iran based on a conversation with a hairdresser which turns out to be about a film they saw on TV.

Also while I'm here : stupid people are funny -

Woman Decides To Stop Living In Jungle, Eating Shit And Generally Being Humiliated

2009-11-24T13:21:00.008Z

In more snappy tabloidese, Jordan Quits. Or as I gather from looking at the headlines while queueing in the supermarket, Jordan quit a day or two ago and now we've moved on to "Exclusive : The Real Reason Jordan Quit". While I haven't read the tabloids in question [1], and so the real reason might actually match the real real reason (see my title), I suspect it probably doesn't.

While reality TV doesn't normally feature in my relaxing downtime schedule, I did happen to catch some of the programme at the weekend. And what I didn't realize is that each week you the public get to vote on which particular victim, sorry I mean celebrity, gets to be demeaned in a cruel and vindictive manner. And in this particular series, Jordan has been picked something like six times in a row.

Does this remind you of anything ? Let's all pick on the weakest link repeatedly, make them eat bugs and stuff, until they break, then we all laugh ? Victims putting up with it because any attention is better than being ignored ? Two class clowns adding their own hilarious commentary and the passive majority sucking it all in because they have nothing better to do, and it feels good that it's not them everyone's pointing and laughing at ? But it's just a bit of fun sir. Yes, this entire country is 12 years old. Or in prison. I've never been in prison so I can't be entirely sure but I went to school and it sounds much the same [2]. This is a sick and rotten culture. Sick and rotten to the core.

PS While I'm here, I saw a back page headline "Wenger In Foul-Mouthed Rant At Theo". Or in other words, Football Manager Swears At Player. Slow news day ?

[1] In the interests of research, I probably should buy The Sun or The Mail one day and read it cover to cover. Just to see how ill it makes me feel.

[2] IIRC, Stephen Fry said that prison was much the same as public school, except the food was better.

Listening

2009-10-24T10:05:00.004+01:00

There was an interesting example of my point below in "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" on the last episode of 2 Months 2 Million. Here's a link, it's right at the end (10:00)

Basically someone suggests that Brian "Flawless Victory" [1] Roberts actually lets them finish what they're saying before interjecting with his own social analysis. Roberts replies "It's not my fault that these people can't talk and listen at the same time. That's standard for people of my ilk".

Sadly, it probably is. Yes, one can talk and listen at the same time ; if one is simply stating or re-stating one's own opinion rather than actually responding to what the other person says. And even if you're not actually responding, it's polite to make it look as though you are. However, when your typical response to something you don't agree with is to stick your tongue out and shout "UNH UNH UNH UNH", as is the case here, maybe that wouldn't work anyway.

If you haven't seen this series, it's a bit of an eye-opener. Three of the guys (Ansky being the exception IMO) come across as more and more unlikeable with each episode. I know TV documentaries can distort (and will whenever they can) but that's the risk you take when you sign up for one. If that's the balla lifestyle, you're welcome to it.

[1] I know, sigh.

Golf Blog

2009-09-04T23:22:00.003+01:00

Obviously I don't have enough blogs. So, golf posts will be going here :

A Corrective Against Sinful Pride.

If you don't like golf, don't bother. Frankly even if you do, it's just me venting.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff

2009-08-19T11:00:00.003+01:00

Michael : We even finish each other's -
Lindsey : - sandwiches !

I picked up Don't Sweat The Small Stuff a couple of days ago. It's really good, highly recommended. I might not follow every single tip (getting up at 4am may well help you to find some quiet time if you have a family and a job but it hardly seems necessary for me), but there's some really good advice in there. Interestingly, tip number 47, "Argue For Your Limitations And They're Yours", is exactly what I'm trying to say in the post below, but expressed much better.

The one that really made me start though was "Breathe Before You Speak", or to explain further, let the other person finish what they're saying before you answer. This is a really bad habit that I have had pretty much forever. I jump in on top of people to either finish their sentences or say what I want to say ASAP, especially in groups of more than 2 people. I even do this on the phone. I know why I have it too. When I was growing up, at the kitchen table or wherever, if you so much as let the other person finish their question, never mind pause to think of the answer, someone else would answer it for you. So, I apologise to everyone I've done this to (and it's pretty much everyone I've ever interacted with) and I'll try not to do it in future. If conversations keep fading into embarrassing silences then I'll reconsider, but I doubt they will.

The Power Of Negative Thinking

2009-08-13T23:41:00.004+01:00

I've been meaning to make some golf-related posts so here's a good place to start. I've been practising a lot lately and today I felt ready to burn the course up. First two holes, par par, today's the day ! Now, there was a competition on and the course was unusually busy with people who had waited for all the comp players to tee off. So when I was on the second green, the guy teeing off on the third, who looked vaguely familiar, suggested that I play through. I said there wasn't really any point because there were two foursomes right in front of us but we could play together if he liked. OK, he would wait for me on the 4th.

Third hole, par 3, I hit to the edge of the green and it bounced sideways off the bank and I had to hack out for a five. OK, no problem, unlucky. Then I caught up with the guy and I suddenly realised he was the guy I had referenced in a Facebook update about being happy to play with other people if they didn't constantly talk about negative things ...

Before we were half way up the 4th he was telling me "and one of my other problems is I slice the ball a lot ..." . I held it together, more or less, till the 7th where I managed to 4-putt for a 10. As the third putt rolled 5 feet past the hole the guy was laughing. I stress, not in a malicious way. Just sort of "ha ha, funny old game eh, ha ha". I honestly could have wrapped the club right round his neck. I held it together to play 8 and 9 in one over because he was promising to stop after 9 and then I might get some peace. No such luck though, and after that I played the worst back 9 ever, even after I had made an excuse on the 13th of "having to play these quickly" and left him behind. Which was actually a half truth because it had taken us 2 1/2 hours to play 12 holes, with his insistence on playing two more shots from the same spot every time he shanked one, and going off looking for them all in the bushes. The foursomes actually left us behind.

Now, that sounds like a lot of moaning and of course a good player would tune all this out, but I'm not a good player, I'm still learning (if you ever stop that is) and by the 12th I was on super life tilt listening to this guy. I'm a big fan of Dr Bob, can't recommend him highly enough. And he's a big fan of positive thoughts and words on the golf course. And in life IMO. Now, it's a fine line, you have to be realistic, you don't swagger up to every tee thinking "I'm going to birdie this hole for sure". But you try to put negative thoughts to one side. You play a bad shot, let it go, play the next one. There's a hazard in front of you, just put it out of your mind and swing cleanly through the ball. My golf partner today seemed to go out of his way, at every opportunity, to stress how difficult a hole was, how much he's struggling with a particular shot, even the odd positive thing like when he played a hole well is followed by "I'll never do that again !".

It just seems endemic in our society. There are so many people who seem to think it's impolite to talk about being good at something. Even to be good at something. More than that, that it's impolite not to constantly demean your own ability and success. The main reason I don't play live poker on a regular basis is the negativity of the people you have to play with. Same with watching football. Everyone wants to vent their anger and frustration on people around them, and indeed themselves, instead of actually working to improve themselves and become better at what they're doing. I'm starting to ramble now but if you had told me, at 20 years old, that I could become a professional poker player it would have been like telling me I could be an astronaut. But because I came across the game and loved playing so much I put so much time and effort into improving at the game that, bit by bit, I became better than I ever would have thought possible. The same is starting to happen with golf, I mean lol obviously I'm not going pro and never will, but just through constant practice and thought I am already better than I thought I could ever be.

You might be surprised what you can do if you put your mind to it, that's the bottom line. But I guarantee you that if you constantly run yourself down, and listen to people around you who want to bring everyone else down to their level [1], it won't happen.

[1] I should stress that doesn't apply to the golfer today, there was no malice in him whatsoever, he had just, in that English way, taken being self-effacing to a ridiculous extreme.

Room With A View

2009-07-04T16:05:00.002+01:00

So I arrived yesterday with the minimum of fuss. It is a cast iron law that you will forget something you meant to bring, and in this case it was the Tarantino DVD Box Set that I was looking forward to catching up on in my downtime. Oh well. If I had forgotten the Silk Cut for a beleagured WSOP-er on a three week tour of duty already, I myself would probably have been doused in petrol and had my ear cut off, so it could have been worse.

Speaking of films (smooth), I almost thought there was going to be a hold-up with the flight. If I may digress for a moment, I've often found that my favourite comic writers, for example Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin, also have the power to chill you to the bone at times if they so wish. One scene from Hitch-hikers that has always stuck with me is where Arthur Dent comes across a spaceship, covered in dust in an abandoned hangar, but still apparently active. It transpires that the passengers are being held pending the delivery of lemon-soaked paper napkins. And have been for 900 years. Every 6 months the robot flight attendants re-animate everyone to inform them that there will still be a short delay until civilisation is rebuilt and LSPNs are once again available, but until then thank you for your patience.

So I feared a similar scenario when the pilot suddenly, and quite angrily, announced that the entertainment system was broken and that it was COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE to expect people to have to put up with all the peace and quiet and so on. I mean in years gone by, people did manage to struggle through a transatlantic flight without being able to watch Piers Morgan interview Sharon Osbourne, and that was when planes were powered by rubber bands and steam so the flights took 3 weeks, IIRC.

Soon enough this COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE situation was partially resolved in that, praise be to the new world of technology, we were able to watch some films in sequence, rather than being able to choose our own like you could with, say, a £40 portable DVD player. And so the program was first of all Confessions Of A Shopaholic, then a film starring Jennifer Aniston, and then a film starring Julia Roberts. Something for everyone there. Despite this ALMOST COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE lack of entertainment, I think that my natural aptitude for doing nothing for hours on end has been further honed by on-and-off meditation in the last 6 months and so I breezed it anyway. Ship it.

On to the Venetian and my balla suite. However, I'm beginning to realise that The Way Of The Balla may not be for me. My Dad will be pleased to hear this - I think that some parsimonious Yorkshire blood yet runs through my veins and so even in my best attempts to achieve balla excess, there's always a part of me asking "How much ?". The suite is beautiful. And absolutely huge. It's bigger than my flat, with the further comparison point that it is not half full of junk. So I'm bouncing around in here like an electron in sub-atomic space (one for the crowd there). More importantly though, a serious Fawlty Towers situation arose in that my "Strip View" appeared to have a serious, key some would say, failing - I couldn't see the Strip.

I went back down to the lobby to make sort of gently probing English style complaints, as we do. A little later on during a very pleasant meal with Keith, Katherine, Jake and Vicky, it transpired that Vicky and I think very similarly on this issue. There are few problems in Vegas that a carefully folded $20 can't smooth over. However, we both have this reserved (or hung-up depending on where you are from) English fear that someone will rise up to their full height and say "Are you trying to bribe me" in a voice that can be heard half way to Sam's Town, even though this could only happen in Vegas about once every five years when a delirious service employee has been out in the sun too long. And so when reception told me that it was a Strip view sir, look let me draw it for you on the back of this cigarette packet, I meekly accepted in my jet-lagged state and assumed that probably if you squint from an acute angle you can see 10 feet of the strip over in that corner or something.

Fortunately for me, after some small amount of sleep, I regained my faculties and reasoned that if a room is advertised as a Strip view, the over/under on Strip hotels that you can see from it would be something like 3.5-4.0, and that buyers would be calling in the stewards if the make up was actually, as it was from my room, zero. And so, on consulting a more competent receptionist this morning, she immediately said "oh no, it wouldn't do, seeing as it's facing in completely the opposite direction". So she has organised me a transfer to another room that is more stripviewtastic and, while I was there, a fair bit smaller. So much smaller that I am no longer paying an extra $150/night for basically a room-and-a-half-ful of air.

So much for my balla credentials, and so much for the tipping culture as well. Because when I checked in yesterday I, assuming everything was in order, tipped the (less competent) receptionist $5 (mostly because I had made her endorse 11 travellers cheques to be fair). This morning I had to think I'm damned if I'm tipping you for fixing something that should have never happened in the first place, irrespective of the fact that you're actually doing a much better job than the person I did tip. Beat !

Cost Effective Celebrity Endorsement

2009-06-12T18:05:00.002+01:00

Obviously I'm not exposed to advertising all that much now, and hooray for that. However, I do like to watch the 6-max TV donkaments on the Internet playback, mostly so I can laugh at old nits who everyone thinks are great raise/folding 10BB stacks. Channel 5 have started inserting advertisements in the middle of these now which is kind of annoying.

Nowadays, as I noticed during my spell in an apartment while my kitchen was in bits, it appears to be illegal to advertise anything except car insurance on TV. So I'm watching this car insurance ad and Stephen Fry is doing the voiceover. Wow, I think, they're splashing out. Hang on, that's Paul Merton as well. OR IS IT ?

On closer listening though, it doesn't sound quite right. I'm almost certain that this is someone, possibly two people, impersonating Stephen Fry and Paul Merton. And now it hits me, what a genius idea this is. They're not saying it's Stephen Fry and Paul Merton. So how can they get done for it ? They save on the presumably 6 figure sums these guys can rake in for half an hour's voiceover work these days, and most people think it is Fry and Merton, even subconsciously, and who knows how it all works anyway. Do you really pick product A over product B based on which popular actor is reading the script ? Apparently people do though.

And just in case my ears are deceiving me and that was Stephen Fry and Paul Merton, then that's my idea, I own it. Get people to impersonate celebs on your voiceovers for £500 and pocket the difference. You can send me 10% for the idea.

And While I'm Here ...

2009-05-19T14:35:00.003+01:00

Really, that turned out to be bollocks ? Gosh, I totally believed it, I mean it was in the Sun and everything.

I'm sure all the papers concerned will make their mistake clear. It reminds me of the rare (perhaps only) occasion on which I had any respect for Kenny Dalglish, when he said that until the Sun printed the headline "WE LIED" in the same size font as their original Hillsborough allegations, they could GFT when it came to getting quotes from him.

The Court Of Popular Opinion

2009-05-19T13:56:00.004+01:00

If there's one thing I hate in the world, and it might seem like an odd thing to single out while there is so much horror and injustice in this world, but the one thing that provokes my rage more than anything else is sophism. Wikipedia gives a reasonable description of sophism, as follows :

"A sophist is a user of sophisms, i.e., an insincere person trying to confuse or deceive people. A sophist tries to persuade the audience while paying little attention to whether his argument is logical and factual."

In general, this happens when people start with their position and then try to come up with the arguments supporting it. If anyone is actually paying attention (unusual but occasionally it happens), of course this eventually (or sometimes quite quickly) leads to ridiculous hypocrisies and/or contradictions. Here's an example.

Harriet Harman on Fred Goodwin's pension, 1/3/09 :

"[I]t might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."

Harriet Harman on MP's expenses, 8/5/09 :

"The claims are assessed and only paid out by the House of Commons Fees Office if they believe it's a claim within the rules and that the MP is entitled to be paid out on that claim." [1]

Now OK, that one was a bit of an open goal. But this is everywhere. There are so many professions now in which this position-first-arguments-later line is required : politicians, lawyers, PR wonks, football managers :-). At least we haven't yet gone as far as the US, where they actually teach their kids how to do this, under the heading of "Debate". Even in America, people wouldn't stand for it [2] if colleges offered "Lying 101" as a course, or had big national lying competitions. But that's basically what this is. It's intellectual dishonesty and it is absolutely rife in our society.

Not just in the macro-society either. On having a break from 2+2, I can actually see that the sophistry of the wannabee lawyers on there was driving me round the bend. You have Chainsaw kicking up shit when two people exchange a word in Russian at his table, but insisting that stalling is fine because it's within the rules [3]. You have Jurullo kicking up shit when someone steals his blinds heads up when he's disconnected, but a month later in another stalling thread saying "It's plus EV and within the rules, so it's fine". You have Shaun Deeb almost bragging about how he 8-tables on his laptop while driving, and his mates defending it because there are other bad drivers on the roads too. You have Negreanu ... well, just being Negreanu, he does this constantly.

Sticking with the poker analogy, there are basically two roads you can go down. Socially Responsible or, as one poster so eloquently put it, "if it's plus EV then fuck everyone else". Again it's only after some time off that I really figure this out, but one of the best arguments against stalling, for example, is that if everyone did it, the game would become completely unworkable (try a $50 Turbo MTT on Party and you'll see what I mean). So most people don't do it, but a few ... I was going to be derogatory there but let's just say a few people do. OK. That's the path you chose. But when you take that path, you cannot credibly complain when someone else steals EV from you in a way that's "plus EV and within the rules".

It's linked to something else I've mentioned on here before, the situation where someone's "apology" actually makes them look worse than if they'd just said "yeah I did, so what". And there's been more of that on 2+2 lately as well. Just choose your path, accept the consequences and stop trying to bullshit us. Eventually more and more people will realise that when you change your argument to suit which side you're on today, you don't believe what you're saying. So why should we ? And then the Court Of Popular Opinion will bang the hammer and rule Guilty.

[1] Incidentally this story, from January, is most amusing in the current context.

[2] Would they ?

[3] The really laughable part is that he spends most of the rest of his time complaining about structures and tournaments being "crapshoots", when (for readers who aren't familiar with poker) in practice one of the main contributory factors to blind pressure in tournaments is slow play, including stalling.

A New Earth

2009-04-14T19:28:00.003+01:00

I picked up Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth in the airport this morning, and it's terrific stuff. I cannot recommend these books (that one and The Power Of Now) highly enough, you must read them. The latest one expounded on a neat paradox that hadn't occurred to me before.

The whole consumer society and economic model of our culture depends entirely on the following two things :

1) We think that buying things will make us happy
2) But it doesn't

Think about it. If buying the latest thing you see in the advert actually made you happy, why would you need to buy the next thing ? As I said last year about the story with the robots. Half of us making crap that no one needs and the other half buying it.

Take It Or Leave It

2009-03-10T23:23:00.003Z

Over the last year or two I've been trying to learn about ... it's hard to be specific. The way the mind works and how you can become, at the very least, calmer and more relaxed about things around you. Call it Zen, call it Tao, call it whatever you like. As it says in the Tao Te Ching, very first line as it happens, "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao". Obv the rest of it then speaks about the Tao. Sort of :-).

That's my ego getting its little dig in. We'll see who has the last laugh. Just recently I've come across my favourite book to date, which is The Power Of Now. Read this book with an open mind and it will help you. Yes you. There's so much in this book that I could talk about, in regard to how it relates to my life and mental state. And I probably will (hippy blog alert). For now, let's just consider one small part of what it's saying.

If there's a situation you don't like, you basically have three options. Accept it, change it or leave it. Let's look at a couple of things I have been moaning like fuck about over the last couple of years. Number one : the WSOP and the corporatization of poker. Can I change that ? Nope. Can I leave it ? To an extent. I can turn my back on live poker but of course whatever game I play in someone's running it, someone's picking up the rake and they are probably going to use some of it to promote their site by putting muppets into live tournaments.

The last Matchroom tournament I played, I really enjoyed it. I know it went well but even so, I was relaxed, enjoyed the rush of playing in front of the cameras and was totally immersed in the game. Now, Matchroom are making money out of this and to an extent they are using the players to do this. So ? A few people have run good in these (not me though obv) and gained a reputation that's rather bigger than their talent. So ? A commentator might not like a play I make and criticise me for it on TV. SO ? What does any of this matter to me if I enjoy playing it ?

Similarly with the WSOP. Harrah's are raking the tournaments (Matchroom don't). ESPN are giving the players the square root of fuck all. The four month delay is a joke all round. TV players receive favourable rulings and generally swank around as if they're in Entourage. Bottom-feeding agents creep out of the shadows to exploit the naive. Immature, insecure people shoot angles and criticise others, including me, if things don't go their way. I definitely can't change any of that. My remaining options are accept it and play, or leave it and don't.

After telling everyone for the last 3 months I'm not going, I might change my mind on this one, and have a bash for a couple of weeks at the start. If I don't cop, come back, if I do, spin it up some more. What's most important is that if I do go, I accept that all of the above is how it is. The vast majority of it doesn't directly affect me (and I can definitely afford the rake), so ignore it. Better still, laugh at it.

Now I've gone on about poker more than I intended to, but all the same arguments basically apply to the corporatization of football. I sure as hell can't change that. Whether I accept it or leave it ... we'll see. There's always a middle ground there too - go whenever I feel like it but, once again, if I decide to go, then accept that the players are paid too much, fans moan a lot, sometimes my team plays crap and/or loses, etc.

There are other aspects of the book and the general idea that apply. Lots of them. Don't separate yourself from other people - this especially applies in football. If I see a Palace fan on the tube, as I did yesterday, I shouldn't be thinking "wanker", as I also did. It's the journey that counts, not the destination. "I'll be happy if QPR get promoted/I win a bracelet". Yes, temporarily. Then what ? If enjoy watching football, playing poker or whatever I do irrespective of the result, then that's permanent. And whatever you do, do it with your full attention. Here and now. Don't sit at a football match thinking "If I get the first train home, I might make the 100 rebuy". Don't sit at a poker table with Green Day on your headphones, hoping the break comes soon so you can have an ice cream bar. Focus on what you're doing when you're doing it. Then when it's finished, leave it behind and focus on now again. Now.

I have a long way to go, but I've come a long way as well. I'm a lot better about not dwelling on the past or daydreaming about the future. Sometimes when I'm reading a book, playing poker or just walking in the park I can switch off and find myself "in the zone". A little more each day, and we'll get there. Or we won't. It doesn't matter. That's the whole point ;-)

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG

2009-02-19T00:25:00.004Z

Surely this will be the Best. Film. Ever.

Pride And Predator

Thanks to Titmus for bringing that to my attention, and also predicting that the alien will get married off in the end.

An hour later : I am still in a state of shock at this awesome concept. Think of the applications. I mean, suppose you need a 100%, totally foolproof, super reliable, sex tester. Like for a Rumanian shot-putter or an attractive woman (?) you meet in Thailand. All you do is outline the basic premise of this film. If they tut and say "that's stupid", it's a woman. If they say "Oh my God that is the most AWESOME FUCKING FILM EVER", it's a bloke. Simple.

Separated At Birth ?

2009-02-16T18:51:00.006Z

Gus Hansen's boxing opponent Theo Jorgenson and Jim from Neighbours. It's been bugging me all week since I saw that poster. And then, ding ! You've never seen them in the same room have you ?

Also, while researching this, I was very sad to see that Jim in Neighbours died from a heart attack when, instead of calling an ambulance, his partner Fiona went to the bank to clear out his monies. What a bitch.

Taking It To A New Level

2009-02-13T08:37:00.006Z

The hypocrisy of the press should be a given on here by now, but it's always worth recognising when someone raises the bar to new heights (or should that be lowers to new depths). Especially when it's so obscene that you almost have to admire the sheer nerve of it.

From Private Eye, paraphrasing, basically the Mirror bought some pictures of Coleen Rooney sunbathing on a boat in the Caribbean, which is one of the locations (on the boat that is) that's deemed private under the "code of conduct" that the press pay lip service to. Standard so far. Then a columnist stepped up to the plate with this astonishing rebuke :

"It seems like she's going out of her way to rub our noses in the money she's recklessly chucking about, while the rest of us worry, scrimp and save ... She can well afford a holiday somewhere private, where she won't be photographed so we won't have to see it".

Wow. I mean seriously. *Golf clap*. One more time, they bought pictures from someone who followed the Rooneys halfway around the world, took telephoto snaps of them from half a mile away, in a location which they had agreed was off limits, and then criticised the subject for "rubbing our noses in it". Note also the subtext of "so we won't have to see it". It's like saying "You hate yourself for buying our shitty paper. Don't you." Which is probably fair. I would.

And finally, what's the best thing for the Rooneys to do with their money, from the POV of the economy you're so worried about. Spend it, or put it in a big vault and swan-dive into it Scrooge McDuck style ? Only last week Wayne and Coleen were ridiculed in the press (and by me on Facebook I must admit) for buying a meal with a 2-for-1 voucher. Ever get the feeling you can't win whatever you do ?

PS I know I should have more important things to think about right now. But I needed to get that off my chest :-)

Free To Be Free

2009-02-02T12:02:00.005Z

There is something I want to retract from a recent post on the poker blog. Can you guess what it is ? It is this bit :

"We'll see if I can maintain the level a bit better this year."

You know what ? No, we won't. We'll see how much I want to play and then I'll play that much. I made a post on Facebook yesterday about wondering how much is enough. I don't have enough to stop entirely, and fly Upper Class to Vegas every time, no. But that's not what I want to do anyway. I do have enough to chill, play when I want to, and not drive myself to meet artificial targets. I'm in danger of getting so caught up in the "professional mindset" that I forget why I quit work in the first place - because I didn't want to be professional all the time.

It's a Zen thing. "When hungry, eat ; when tired, sleep" as they say. Any time I want to play, play. If I want to play 100 hours a month, great, do it. If I don't, don't. A professional mindset is all well and good, and necessary when I am playing, but taking it too far just leads to me exchanging one regimen for another.

In some ways I think the blogs contribute to the situation. I was quoting numbers and using rankings to motivate myself on the poker blog, but that's kind of putting the cart before the horse. So I'm not going to do that any more. Does anyone really care if I'm #144 on pocket fives ? Even if they did, the question is do I ? And as for money, if I go busto, I'll let you know. Till then take it as read that things are cool. The same thing happens with the football blog, in a way. I think "if I don't go, people will know because of the blog and think I'm a lightweight". And so I sit through 0-0 v Watford on my own freezing my arse off when I didn't really fancy it to start with.

I am very, very lucky to be able to, within the bounds of conscience and consequences, do whatever the hell I like whenever the hell I feel like it. I shouldn't water that down because of what others might think of me, and of course the great irony is that if I don't water it down then most people will think more of me anyway, even though that's irrelevant. Now there's a Zen paradox !

PS Insert own "I'm Free" joke below.

Lunch Is For Wimps

2008-12-07T11:14:00.006Z

I had just about got used to the absurdity of banks being bailed out by the government in supposedly capitalist countries, when this came up (from BBC Football Gossip) :

"[Roman, duh] Abramovich has seen his most important stock market investment, steel producer Evraz, rescued by a $1.8bn (£1.2bn) loan from the Russian government, as concerns grow about how hard the Chelsea owner has been hit by the credit crunch. (Observer)"

Let's rewind a little. At the height of this lunacy, when the banks came cap in hand to the government a couple of months ago, I'd have said something like this : "OK, well we'd like to give you a $200 million handout. But. Over the years, we estimate that you have evaded (legally or otherwise) $500 million of tax. So now you owe us $300 million. Say thank you for your handout. Oh, and if you stiff any of your savers you're going to jail". And what happens then is, if the bank can't fund their debts, they go to the wall. All their assets are paid out to savers, and if anyone who had money in the bank is still short, they are compensated directly and personally by the government, I'd have no problem with that. What doesn't happen is these cunts who've been swanning around the City lording it over everyone and having their arses licked by the Mail and the Standard for 10 years get another fucking bonus. Instead, they can sit in the corner of tube stations going "spare us a pound for lunch mate" and I'll say "Lunch is for wimps". How cool would that be ?

If the bank loans me some money and I do it all playing roulette, do I get a fucking handout ? What the fuck ? Barnet Council, for example, lost £27 million of ratepayers money when Iceland went busto. Why is no one held accountable ? That wasn't your money ! And you lost it ! I don't care whether Iceland or Barnet Council are held accountable, as long as someone is. But no. So they close down nurseries, sell off more playing fields, subcontract more services to complete cowboys and probably still get voted in next time. What the fuck is wrong with us ?

At least I'm not paying any of it. Tax free gambling ftw. And finally, of course, we come back to Abramovich. This guy made a ludicrous amount of money raping Russia's natural reserves, buying huge oil and gas concerns for a song (it was "Blue Monday") through his cronies in the government. And if that's not enough, instead of spending it on a volcano island with a huge supercomputer for world domination, like any self-respecting supervillain would, he spunks most of it off taking the most loathsome football club in the world from bankruptcy to a bulging trophy cabinet. Then he hits "hard times" and the government gives him some more ? Jesus. Why don't you just give him the keys to the treasury and let him dip in and out as he pleases. Or is that practically what we've already done anyway.

What About The Rest ? Oh, They'll Have To Wait [1]

2008-11-14T14:49:00.005Z

I whinged enough about the 4-month delay in the WSOP Final Table when it was announced ; I might as well have a look at how it has played out. I am slightly more receptive to the idea than I was before, it seems that there was no apparent collusion, no one got Tonya Harding-ed and the consensus is that the one player who openly received coaching was still fucking awful by the time the final was played out (if not worse). But I still think it's mostly "a bad thing", and I'm sure that it would do nothing at all for my benefit in the (unlikely) event that I made the final.

However, it might do a bit more for others. There are quite a lot of rumours floating around 2+2 concerning how little of their own action some of the players actually had. The best one, "best" in the sense of being very sad IMO if it's true, concerned the short stack going in, Kelly Kim. OK this is pure gossip but a post claimed that Kim was only playing for 20% of himself, and had already lost his slice of the $900K (after tax, see below) being a degen in the intervening 4 months. And that's why he played like a super weak tight Luton £10 rebuy egg, sitting on his 3 big blinds, praying for someone else to bust (which they did in the end). If he didn't move up a place then he'd come out of the whole thing with nothing.

There were other mutterings about players being in make-up, owing money and generally also only having a small percentage of themselves. Then you have the tax situation. Now, if you're only playing for 20% of yourself, you only have to pay tax on that 20%, not the whole lot. Not even the IRS are that big a bunch of cunts. However, the winner Peter Eastgate is trying to claim a completely unanticipated windfall from the 4 month delay. By moving to London in the interim, he hopes to avoid his Danish tax bill (73%) and instead be liable for the somewhat less punitive UK rate (0%). This seems so blatantly offside that I'll be surprised if he gets away with it, and as I've said in the thread, if this should cause our own tax situation to change for the worse he can get hit by a flaming grease bus, as they also say on 2+2.

Still, after all that, you can see why a $10K patch here or there might make a lot more difference than you would think from naively looking at the payouts of $900K guaranteed plus anything up to $3 million equity going in. But it really wouldn't to me. Demidov stated in another 2+2 thread that he basically made no extra $ from sponsorship in the interim period. Marquis who, as he says, ought to be much more marketable in the US, only made "a little bit". It was clear enough to me at the start that the "extra sponsorship" angle ESPN and Harrah's were punting was a complete afterthought to their own motives for introducing the delay ; I hope that this is clear to everyone now, although there are still people blithely saying "I think it's good because of the extra sponsorship", as if Ylon Schwartz is on the back of the Rice Krispies box.

[1] The title refers to a possibly apocryphal but definitely awesome quote that is attributed to Thor Hansen. After scoring a $1 million win in Vegas, he was asked what he would do with the money. "Pay a few debts" says Hansen airily. "What about the rest ?" asks the interviewer, to which Hansen of course replies "Oh, they'll have to wait".

Update : Oh wait, it was all the players' fault. I thought it probably would be.

Where Is Your God Now, Old Woman ???

2008-10-21T17:35:00.003+01:00

This is the best thing I've seen for months and months and months :

Atheist Bus Campaign

Thanks to this campaign, London buses will be emblazoned with the message "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", for at least 30 days. Given that their target was £5500 and the total has reached 5 times that in one day, hopefully they can do more. I was very happy to ship them £10 and I will be even happier when I see one of these trucking through Enfield.

The Future Of Online Poker

2008-09-19T20:49:00.002+01:00

This is so awesome :

Denver Man Hopes Online Poker System Will Score

Take that, Jokerstars. I hope Mr. Gioia doesn't stop there because there are clear possibilities for expanding and improving his system. The shuffler could be steam powered, for example, to eliminate the predictability of AC current. Or maybe slaves with oars. And the cards could be sent out to the servers by semaphore, or carrier pigeon.

All in all, it#s a great idea. Bring back real poker online, none of this rubbish. Oh no, wait.

Running In The Family

2008-09-04T17:46:00.002+01:00

One of the main reasons why this blog has been so quiet for a while is that I'm no longer exposed to the things that make me so angry. I'm not going to read things in the paper or see things on TV that make me angry, as they probably would do on an hourly basis, because I don't read papers or watch TV at all. It's great, I can't recommend it enough.

Today, however, I was stuck in the gym in front of the TV sets as usual, and worst of all they've started putting subtitles up on the screen, so even if you have wisely plugged your earphones into Megadeth's 1990 opus "Rust In Peace" instead, you can't escape. So I was trying to ignore The Alan Titchmarsh show on whatever crappy channel that is on, and failing when onto the screen walks Carol Thatcher.

Now, as I said, I was mostly unaware of this but it turns out that the Mrs Thatch we loved to hate has basically gone, she's not there any more, that's what Alzheimer's does to you, it's not nice. Now her awful offspring has written a book going into some detail about the effects of the disease and the pathetic shell that remains. As she said on the subtitles in front of me, "I could have left it out, and got shot at, or put it in and still got shot at so what could I do ?". To which the correct answer is "You could have not written the book at all, you greedy cow". But of course Alan fucking Titchmarsh isn't going to blast that one down the tramlines, he's going to lob the next question over the net in the loopiest of arcs. Neither is he going to put the very obvious point that there must be a fair chance that Carol Thatcher herself is going to fall into the same decline in her later years, and how does she feel about the prospect of her own children writing books about how she's chewing the curtains. Which is a question I would dearly love to have seen asked, as it might have wiped the smug grin off her face for two seconds.

In the end, this is why television in particular has become so worthless. Maybe it always was, but the thing is that they feel they need to have "controversial" people on the show but then they're too scared to ask pertinent questions that might upset them (or possibly even too stupid to think of them). It's a total waste of time. And as for Mrs Thatch, while I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's on anybody, maybe there's a hint of karma at work here - be a total bitch who cares about nothing other than yourself and fuck anyone less fortunate, and you end up siring a daughter who is also a total bitch who cares about nothing other than herself and fuck anyone less fortunate, which in this case is you.

No No, After You, You Fucking Idiot

2008-08-26T10:54:00.008+01:00

Poker is full of contradictions and paradoxes. That's one of the things I love about it. One of my favourites is the way that some of the rudest people you will ever meet suddenly leap up onto the highest of horses about issues of "etiquette".

Speaking of horses, obviously the recent televised $50K HORSE event is a good example of this. Check out the montage of the "Prince of Poker" staggering his way to a $2 million prize while drunk as a skunk. Now, I don't particularly have an issue with the way Nyugen behaved. It's not as though I ever looked up to him, as some people seemed to do, and nor do I subscribe to this ludicrous picture of Chip Reese sitting on a cloud strumming his harp, breaking off only to shake his head at the way his memory is being disrespected. Life is wasted on the living, as Douglas Adams would say. The only real issue I have with it is how he was never penalised at any point, but there are about 20 reasons why I'd never be drunk off my ass calling everyone a motherfucker at a $50K final table and having to say "That's not fair ! You never gave Scotty a penalty !".

What I'm really interested in here is the way this was all triggered off. 2nd place finisher Michael DeMichele received some criticism from other players for (IMO) tame stuff like turning around and smiling at his friends after winning a pot and taking 45 seconds to raise Greenstein when he had a lock hand. By all accounts, Scotty then took it upon himself to "teach the kid some manners" by, erm, acting about 100 times worse. All rather childish, but the point is that DeMichele's mild "breaches of etiquette" seemed, to some at least, to be more deserving of censure than someone shouting "where's my fucking cocktail" at the hapless waiter, and so on.

On top of that, I came across this a couple of days ago, which illustrates the point better :

Poker After Dark - Hecklers

Let's just set the scene. What we have here is six poker players who have been pre-selected, from a very wide pool, for being the rudest, most self-absorbed and generally most obnoxious members of the species. And might I say that the producers made excellent choices. If you fast forward to about 4:00 (believe me you don't want to watch any more of this than you have to), you will see a huge "feeding time at the zoo" argument break out between just about everybody. And what caused it ? A slowroll ? A personal insult ? Something said about someone's mother ? Nope. These guys are all standing up, shouting over and insulting each other, and generally acting like pre-schoolers because two of them are disagreeing over the correct "etiquette" as to who should show their hand first. I could belabour this point to great length, but I would hope that the ironing is head-asplodingly clear.

The disconnect seems to be all about what "etiquette" actually means. Most people in the real world would think that it means being polite, and nice to people, in the hope that we can all get along with basic respect for each other. People like Hellmuth, on the other hand, use the word with a very specific meaning of "following pre-determined, almost arbitrary, unspoken conventions in certain situations regarding the procedure of betting and concluding a hand". I mean this is a guy who will talk about you like you're a dog, all day long, even when you're sitting right next to him, if you happen to commit some grievous insult such as outdrawing him or raising him so light that he can't accurately estimate your range.

I'd love to think that this oblivious attitude towards irony is an American trait, but of course it isn't. What fun we've all had with the "moody rule" here in UK card rooms, the local equivalent of the lollapalooza IMO. I've asked several times what a "moody" actually is without ever receiving an answer. And then of course there's the infamous "20 seconds to raise" rule at Russell Square. Nor indeed is it confined to poker ; footballers, for example, will dive, cheat and kick each other black and blue on a weekly basis but the only occasion (that I can think of) when someone felt so bad about something that happened that they agreed to replay a won game was when a player didn't throw the ball back to the opposition after an injury as "etiquette" decreed.

So what is my conclusion ? Cliff notes if you will. Well, for one, "pro" poker players (and by extension people) are delusional, self-absorbed idiots, and it's fun to LOL @ them. Secondly, I guess, if you're concerned about "etiquette", try being polite to people. You will find it helps things run a lot more smoothly. If you're concerned about being a rules nit, and worse than that, an "unspoken rules" nit, then fine, but please don't pass yourself off as Debrett's Guide to Etiquette while you're doing it.

Addendum : I forgot the best thing about the $50K HORSE which is Scotty's "apology". Go to post 54 to read it with the benefit of paragraphs. As classic non-apologies go, it's right up there. It just checks all the boxes :

[x] long list of excuses
[x] say there was no excuse
[x] blame everyone else
[x] refer to self in third person
[x] ludicrous contradictions ("I wasn't drunk" / "They couldn't even beat me when I was drunk")
[ ] actual apology to the people who deserve one

He practically says "I'm sorry for being more awesome than everyone else". As ever, the rambling, self-important "apology" is even more embarrassing than the original problem the person is "apologising" for. When are people going to learn that they'd be much better off saying either a) nothing, b) "I'm sorry, I acted like a twat" or c) "Yes, I did all of those things and more. So what ?"

TV Update

2008-08-15T20:40:00.002+01:00

You can also see a brief (4 minute) interview with me (and my teeth) here :

http://www.five.tv/poker/

Just click "Watch Now" followed by "Latest" and there I should be, #30.

Brag : Also today I had my first "I saw you on TV last week", from a gym instructor, who followed it up with "You must be a millionaire".

Beat : It was a bloke.

Money Money Money

2008-08-11T18:33:00.002+01:00

Came across this today while browsing through the almost endless Cornell Fiji threads on 2+2 (cliff notes : guy who did a lot of work on the UB case arranged a $30K swap with Admo but then blew all the money in Bobby's Room and can't pay it back). Anyway here's the link :

Clarkson stung after bank prank

Cliff notes : when the government lost all that bank info, Jeremy Clarkson said "oh stop moaning, no one can take money out of your account with just the number and the sort code, and to prove it here's mine". Someone promptly debited £500 from his account to a diabetes charity and, best of all, there's no way he can get it back or find out who it was. Hooray for banks. The best thing to do by the way, if you're one of the few people in this country who actually has money and not just a pile of debts, is keep the bulk of it in a savings account and then transfer into checking account as and when you need it. Or just keep it on poker sites instead.

On a smaller scale today, George Wallace used to mention this in his Vegas routine, how if you give a cashier a certain amount too much so that you get sensible change, all hell breaks loose. My shopping bill came to £13.51 and, having a ton of change already but no £10 notes, I gave the guy £23.70. He stared at it blankly. "You've given me, er, £23.70 ?". OK, I said, trying to make it easier, here's £23.55 instead. He stared at it some more and started digging into the till. As I was talking to someone I'd just bumped into at this point I didn't pay much attention until he handed me a fiver and a fistful of change. "Oh, " I said, "I thought you would have a £10 note. Never mind". "No, " he said, "that's your change. £9.99". He had lost the 5p and actually thought I wanted £9.99 change. At this point I figured the solution least likely to lead to extreme violence and possibly a killing spree was for me to pocket the £9.99 and leave, and so I did.

On TV !!!1!1!!

2008-07-31T10:44:00.002+01:00

OK, so apparently I was on TV ... last night. Doh. I was kind of expecting that Matchroom would say something like "World Poker Open starts on Channel 5 this week" on their website, but if they did, I missed it.

Fear not though ! Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can still check it out (if you're in the UK). First of all go to Channel 5 Demand :

http://demand.five.tv/Home.aspx

Click "Join myFive" on the right hand side and fill in usual name & Email address. Caveat emptor, but I can confirm that they haven't sent me any spam in the half hour I've been registered. Once you've done that :

Click "Browse what's on Demand Five"
Click ""PartyPoker.com World Poker Open IV" (or any other of the fine programmes on display if you prefer)
Click "Episode 2"
Watch programme
Give programme 5-star rating along with comment such as "That Andy Ward is awesome, he should have his own show".

Or after registering, you may well be able to click here directly :

http://demand.five.tv/Episode.aspx?episodeBaseName=C5141090002

Enjoy !

Getting It Quietly

2008-07-15T18:23:00.003+01:00

So the WSOP is on hiatus till November, and the suits must be gnashing their teeth that none of Hellmuth, Matusow or Tiffany Michelle managed to make the final. Michelle was quite an interesting case IMO. Without wanting to draw too many conclusions from news updates that tend to be of doubtful accuracy at the best of times, it seemed to me that she was getting a little bit too full of herself on the last day or two ; calling the clock on people, asking someone "it's not that hard is it buddy ?" while they're thinking [1], and so on. Would she have done all that on Day One ? I'm sure there were a lot of people around her making those cartoon cash-register eyes when they realised what would happen if she made the final, and no doubt that contributed to her, er, controversial decision to take Ultimate Bet's money without bothering to inform Pokernews, who were both her employers and the people who bought her into the event in the first place.

In a vague comparison to the other Tiffany from a few years ago, I suspect that she forgot how she accumulated all the chips in the first place - blind aggression, although it seemed mostly post-flop in this case - and suddenly decided that she could play poker. With predictable results. Much to the disappointment of Effel, Pollack & co who were gushing about how great it would be if she went deep during the event itself. Er, excuse me Jack, but aren't you meant to be the fucking referee ? It reminds me of the time Gabby Logan asked the Cup Final ref who he wanted to win. He, of course, just gave her a look to indicate exactly what a fucking moron he thought she was, while if the ref had been Jack Effel no doubt he would have started on about how great it would be for global merchandising if United could pull it off again Gabby.

Anyway, that was all a sideline. There was a post on 2+2 about Raptor's blog after he got donked out of the event by Brandon Cantu. Here's the original blog post. I can kind of see both sides of the but you're really rich anyway/but that's how he felt and why hide it sort of arguments, but what really struck me was a post Raptor (or someone speaking on his behalf, can't quite remember) made saying how desperate he was to win a bracelet and how upset he was that he wouldn't for another year, and I just thought, why ? Raptor's won 7 figures online and he's extremely well respected among people who know. I wouldn't think any more of him just because he binked (I'm really starting to hate that word) a bracelet, and I don't think any less of him because he hasn't, to date. So why should I chase one myself ? It's all bollocks, and when you've got so many people selling the myth that it's all that matters, you can miss this sometimes. So play the WSOP if you really want to, and/or if you think you'll make more money there than elsewhere, but if not, then leave them to it. Which is more likely to be my plan next year.

[1] Sadly, as someone pointed out on 2+2, he didn't shoot back with "that's not what you said last night".

Picking Up The Scraps

2008-06-25T04:59:00.002+01:00

In poker and gossip both, I am reduced to foraging under the table for bits of skin and rind that even the dogs turn their noses up at. Personally, I've got nothing. Carlos Mortensen is very thin, Joe Hachem is very smug and Maria Ho is very hot. That's about it. In the interest of trying to entertain myself and anyone else anyway, I can cast around the Internet if that helps ...

============

Top source at the moment is this thread on 2+2. By far the highlight is this classic degenerasian story :

"Tuan Le made a bet with a buddy of his (a high limit Commerce player) that he, Tuan, could go for some period of time without playing craps. If his buddy caught Tuan playing craps, Tuan would owe $3K. If Tuan stayed off the craps table (or didn't get caught ldo), he would receive $1K. I don't know if this bet was for the duration of the WSOP or for some other Vegas trip, but there was a bet.Anyway, Tuan gets caught playing craps and owes $3K. They do double-or-nothing and he now owes $9K. They do it yet again and now Tuan owes $27K to his friend.

How can he make $27K really fast? By playing more high-stakes craps, of course!

He ends up dropping $630K."

That's like an urban myth that probably isn't true but is so awesome you really hope it is.

============

Another snippet is this bling vs bling confrontation between David Williams and our very own Devilfish :

"DF immediately started berating Williams on his play of the hand to which DW barked right back at him. This only enraged DF even more and the verbal assult continued...

DF...I don't need some punk kid telling me how to play
DW...well i don't need some OLD man telling ME how to play
DF...u better watch your Fkn mouth or I might knock your teeth out
DW....DO IT THEN!! and you won't be playing WSOP ever again
DF....keep talking big mouth and you'll see what happens
DW...yea well enjoy your time in our American JAIL (if u punch me)
DF...I don't give a fk about jail, i've already been there"

Someone quoted the line on a fight of Williams -190, which I think means that Devilfish would be like 7/4 against. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one lumping on the Fish at that price. Poster was probably fooled by the fact that Devilfish looks like he just stopped off from a Wurzels Reunion Tour. I'd certainly run a mile rather than rumble with the Devilfish (which I might need to if he finds out about that Wurzels comment).

============

Sometimes you really need to turn to the exuberance of youth. Especially today, after I witnessed a nit-off of gargantuan proportions between Tahoe Andrew and Vince Burgio. If there ever was a Battle Of The Draks, that would have to be top of the bill. And so, look no further than Tony Phillips' blog on Pokerverdict. Now, I went out for dinner with the Hitsquad guys after James Akenhead's result, and Tony's fine in person, no problem. I do think he gets a bit carried away in his blog, especially when he's "showing them what Tony Phillips is all about", as follows :

"I've had a lot of great poker minds telling me to ‘forget it’ [busting out 10th in the $1500 PLO] and ‘move on’, and ‘get a bracelet,’ ‘you’re playing great’ and ‘you’re a truly great poker player’. They are 100% right".

Confidence indeed, although he kind of spoils it by saying a bit later : "I'm not moaning, or telling you how great I am". Sorry mate .. actually you just did :-)

============

But is there anything wrong with being proud of your achievements ? Well, I'm here to win a bracelet, I suppose, and if I did then I would wear it sometimes. After all, what would be the point of having it if you didn't. I just don't think I would go as far as Alan Smurfit and carefully place it in front of my chips for all the table to see.

A year later.

In a single table satellite.

Or maybe that's just me. Oh well. I might be a lost cause this year, unless lightning can strike twice in the final event get-out stakes, but at least, even in the Year Of The Pro, Hellmuth is doing his bollocks. And on that happy note, goodnight for now.

On The Treatment Table

2008-06-08T23:07:00.003+01:00

This morning I woke up with someone jagging a knife in my neck every five seconds, or at least that's what it felt like, so I took my life (or at least my wallet) in my hands by calling a local doctor. To be fair, he was very good, and I feel a lot better. It was kind of funny though when he gave me a stern lecture about acupunture and Chinese medicine : "You don't know what's in that stuff. And they're only out for profit". Then he injected me with something I've never heard of and charged me $400.

Seriously though, I do understand why it's so expensive. The litigation-happy culture in the US has pushed medical bills through the roof and the general attitude seems to be "if you don't like it, go to law school", as in this poker instance related by Terrence Chan. Having found the guy in the Yellow Pages, I checked afterwards and found that the book contained 87 pages of physicians and 213 pages of attorneys.

Anyway he also gave me some cortisone tablets. Just like the footballers ! With that I should be fighting fit and ready to go tomorrow. I have decided to spend as much time as possible playing WSOP events and screw everything else. I didn't come out here to grind. For example, there's a comp at the Venetian today, but if I went deep I'd be knackered by the end of the day ; if I made the final I wouldn't be able to play the shootout tomorrow ; and all for the possibility of $30-40K which isn't going to change anything. I'm here to spin it up and try to win $300-400K which would enable me to make some things happen that I'd like, not to grind and get my money back. I grind 11 months a year as it is. So I'll be on a very aggressive WSOP schedule this week, especially now I feel much better physically. Let us gogogogogo.

Wzzzzzzop

2008-06-08T06:42:00.004+01:00

Well, I'm doing my bollocks happily enough, but I have to report a complete lack of shenanigans in the first week. The organisation is generally an improvement on last year and my top "playing with the pros" story is that I was on the same table as Jean-Robert Bellande in the limit comp, and he was a bit moany. Hold the front page. Socially I had a good meal in the Stratosphere revolving restaurant courtesy of Team Channing, nice to meet all the Hit Squad boys and well done again to James A.

I'm taking it easy this weekend (didn't play the $2500 today) before having another tilt Monday ($1500 shootout), Tuesday ($2K limit) and/or Wednesday ($3K HORSE). Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be on a table with Annie Duke, as in the $10K stud today (from Pokernews) :

"Annie Duke has just arrived at todays event. She arrives complete with a set of ultimate bet hats for the people at her table. It doesn't appear anyone has accepted her generosity. "

You have to hope that at least one person will give her the appropriate response as to what she can do with her ultimate bet hats. Even without the UB implications, how many people in a $10K tournament with no satellite qualifiers are going to say "Oh great, a $4.99 hat, I'll wear that all month, cheers". If that's all the damage control UB can afford they must have paid Bax and Rizen a hell of a price.

Update : Ooh, wait, I got one. Also from the Stud coverage on Pokernews :

"In seven-card stud, it is the job of the dealer to call out potential hands and also whenever pairs hit the board. All around the room several players are getting upset when the dealer is calling out "possible straight," "possible flush," or "pair of kings." "

I don't know what's better. The implication that players in a $10K tournament need to be told what the best possible hand is from the board, or that fact that this might actually be true in some cases. I can imagine doing that dealing the old £20 stud comps in Luton. "And a possible flush ..", "I know that, what are you telling me for, you fucking idiot".

Pain In The Neck

2008-06-03T17:47:00.008+01:00

Surprisingly, the title does not apply to anything Harrahs-related, but the fact that I have cricked my neck something terrible. Who knows whether it was the plane, carting luggage about or sleeping in a strange bed but anyway it's killing me. It probably wasn't a good idea to let one of the poker massage women loose on it either. If I ever do that again I'm going to say "be gentle with me" first, like a prom night girl in a romantic novel.

So that's my excuse for not playing the Omaha 8 later today, albeit that one was fairly close to the bottom of the list anyway. I'll keep building up with the single tables and limit cash for a couple of days till the 6-handed on Thursday. A quick session of $20-40 limit hit the spot yesterday when the single tables were all full, I might have to log a few more hours in that game, which played like $3-6 online for the most part, if that.

Overall there have been a few noticeable improvements so far. The single tables have their own room and a slightly better system of registering. On the downside, no $10 food voucher for playing the $500s, oh well nothing lasts forever :-). The nightmare of trying to register for a tournament in the first week appears to be a thing of the past as well. I like the way the $10K (and to a lesser extent $5K) tournaments are spread out, hopefully these will keep a lot of the better players out of the way while I crack on in the $1500-$3Ks. The poker kitchen has some better food, and more importantly there's now a Japanese restaurant right outside the elevators, which is a great result, Japanese being about the only relatively healthy food you can get in Vegas. If you know the Rio though, it's right underneath where that boat is winched around in the free show, so if one of those chicks misses her throw, I could easily see a bead necklace landing in my scalding hot soup. Risk and reward.

Finally on the subject of the ME final being delayed to November, in discussions so far, the most common complaint people have is that when you make the final, you're in form. But 4 months later you probably won't be. Further proof of two things : a) you can fuck with poker players as much as you like and most of them won't even realise, never mind do anything about it, and b) I'm in the right place to make some money for the next month :-)

Update : As it happens, the single tables have been stopped this afternoon because they don't have enough space for everything. This will be the case on and off till the 14th when another room is freed up. So I might actually start tomorrow in the $2K, rather than kick my heels all day again. I came to playyyy. Also neck feels better after a trip to Chinatown for some acupuncture :-)

Coals To Newcastle

2008-05-29T18:54:00.002+01:00

Latest in the long line of shit that you could not make up. Not if you tried for 1000 years :

Cardrunners Sponsors WSOP Satellite Room

Nothing to do with Cardrunners, just check out the last two paragraphs. For once, words fail me.

It's OK, I'm Not That Angry

2008-05-09T13:04:00.004+01:00

Some people seem to be over-reacting to the negative feedback the WSOP ME change has attracted. Olivert on 2+2 :

"I am talking about Super Bowl-style security precautions, i.e. snipers on the roof above entrances; metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs at entrances to screen every spectator, player, and media member; solid barriers in the parking lots to prevent truck bombs from approaching the building, helicopters and/or fighter jets patrolling the building from above to prevent kamikaze pilots and 9/11-style suicide hijackers from crashing planes into the building deliberately, etc. The security threat has gone up substantially from previous years in my opinion. There are too many people who are upset with the WSOP organization for moving the WSOP Main Event final table to November."

Dude, it's OK. I'm not that upset. And in fact, I'm not, really. I'm still not playing it, but that's as much because I don't consider the WSOP ME to be the be-all and end-all must play event of the year. I never have done. Maybe it was in 1993, but there's a 10K event every week now. I didn't find it to be great value last year (although it's possible I just had a bad table draw) and it is the single highest variance tournament you can possibly play by a factor of about 10. Variance is the break even to losing player's friend, but it's the pro's worst enemy.

So it doesn't take much for me to skip it, and this is enough. I do think this decision has been made with absolutely no regard for players outside the US. The benefits, nebulous as they are, all centre around US TV, US companies and the US market. The downsides are all significantly worse for players outside the US. For example, how many days before the final will Harrah's put you up in a hotel for ? Enough to eliminate the effects of jet-lag ?

Very few people have properly assessed the huge stress this is going to put on final table players for those 4 months (exceptions are Sheets and Temp Hutter on 2+2). Players should be compensated directly for this. It's not enough to say "Oh well you'll be able to pimp yourself out for a much better deal". For a start, suppose you can't, because you qualified online or you already have an exclusive agreement in place. In any case, I think that people inside the poker world are grossly over-estimating the amount of media interest there will be in this.

Oh well, as I say, it's enough for me to pass, and put in a solid month of prelims instead. Maybe if I do the lot I can spend what I have left on some dynamite and blow it all up, lol.

Party Poker World Poker Open IV Conclusion

2008-05-03T09:44:00.004+01:00

More spoilers, obv. After 6 days of pacing up and down at home, I played the semi-final on Thursday. This went pretty well, again I won't spoil it too much by talking about hands but after losing a chunk early on by flopping second best (try not to do that in this format lol), I worked it back to my starting stack, doubled up in a completely standard way, and then played well for about an hour and at one point had a very strong position. Unfortunately it didn't quite break for me from there and I ended up carrying 190K into the final, which was slightly less than average.

Yesterday I didn't feel as focused in the final and I think my play suffered a little bit. I flopped second best again, not having learned the lesson from the day before, and ended up 4th after going out on a standard blind v blind coup. Still, I copped $30K for that, and a few more in swappage, which was all in all not bad for a week's work and the experience might prove very important at some point down the line. Or it might not, but at least having copped a bit it was still worthwhile. Thanks to Beiju and everyone involved, I never realised how many people it took to run one of these ! And very well done to the winner Marty Smyth, who was very affable and played extremely well. It'll be interesting to see how it looks, I think I should come across well at the table but in the interviews who knows, I jabbered a lot of nonsense and it depends what they decide to use. I know I mentioned yoga and £10 stud tournaments so I might look a bit odd :-)

In an age where the word irony is so mis-used, I did think it was the genuine article when, after less than a week of sweating over $40K in equity, I was so distracted by the WSOP announcement on Thursday morning that it actually helped me to switch off thinking about the semi. God alone knows the stress people will be under waiting for 4 months to play for a share of $20 million plus. I'm not actually going to go on a rant about this now (sorry Richard). Something might come up on Poker Verdict because Hugo caught me on the phone when I was waiting to play yesterday, and I vented off a lot of nervous energy giving it the full gun on what I think of it all. Hopefully it will come across well, as I said to Jesse in an interview all my best work is motiviated by rage.

Anyway, now I've calmed down, I'm not playing it, problem solved. What really mugs me off in these spots is how the people who stand to benefit can never come out and say "Well, this is good for me and bad for you. Every man for himself, that's capitalism baby." Instead they have to try to convince you that it's good for you too, often using the most retarded, selective and specious arguments known to man. Well, you failed. This crosses the line and I'm not paying $600 to be treated like this. You can do what you like.

Party Poker World Open IV !!!!11!1

2008-04-26T11:34:00.004+01:00

This contains spoilers so if you do want to hang on the edge of your seat for 6 months until this is televised then look away now ...

So as I have mentioned elsewhere, I took my reservations about playing poker on TV, stuffed them into a small box and jumped up and down on the lid so they will never escape. Never ! And coughed up for the latest Matchroom/Channel 5 production, which is being filmed in East London this week. I turned up just as the Celeb heat was wrapping up, which was totally worthwhile for the purposes of ogling the two female players who were both smoking hot :-) Then there was a ton of hanging around, which I did expect to be fair, before Jesse did the intros and described me as an "anorak". TBH I would have been on firmer ground to contest this if I hadn't been sitting in the corner reading a fantasy novel at the time. Once we were ushered onto the set I did have an attack of the nerves, it was a lot like when I used to play football before a big game (as big as they got in College 2nd XI anyway). So much so that I couldn't remember my screen-name on Betfair when another player asked me, and they had to shoot an intro twice because I couldn't grasp the fairly straightforward instruction to follow the previous player onto the set.

I was still a bit edgy for the first level but settled down after I took the blinds once or twice. It was super hot under the lights which also took some getting used to. However, as the blinds moved up, once we were in resteal and then pushbot territory I was fine because I had played these spots 1000 times before online so I was much more comfortable with that than the other players I think. I'll save any hand discussion for the airdate, but long story short I won hooray. So I'll be back on Thursday for the semi-final which should be really interesting.

The other players were all friendly and really nice guys, with one exception, and everyone who was there will know who I mean, who was giving out huge "I don't want to fucking be here" vibes so I just let him get on with it. In particular Min Patel, the "Celeb qualifier" was very friendly and clearly took his poker very seriously. He was proud to tell me that he won the Party $300K last year, and justifiably so. I didn't have the heart to tell him I've won it twice :-). But if I had been asked to pick the "celeb" sight unseen I would have struggled, and then got it wrong, definitely.

Now I'm in the comfortable position of waiting to see who else makes the semis. If you're interested, they're doing live updates on the Matchroom Forum. I will probably pop down again on Monday as there are two heats and a turbo semi, and you can see all the hole cards in the Green Room [1]. Now that does sound anoraky I admit. But I have $40K equity in this thing at the moment so I think a few hours homework is well in order !

Update : I just had a look on that Forum and I see Jesse has described me a cross between Neil Channing and Annette Obrestad, lol. That's a bit more flattering than an anorak. I think. Seriously I like Jesse and you can see how good he is at his job when you're there, whatever you think of his commentating style (and I don't mind it).

[1] I don't know how previous shows have worked, but in this one active players were not allowed to sneak into the Green Room to check hands before they were knocked out, and quite right too.

The Man Who Broke Your Jaw In Monte Carlo

2008-04-16T22:43:00.002+01:00

Well, nearly. I'll come on to that. Various shenanigans at the EPT Monte Carlo have caught my eye, mostly via 2+2. On a sidenote, I've been to Monte Carlo on a jolly with work and I thought it was the ponciest, snootiest place in the world so I'm quite glad that a bunch of boorish poker players are oafing the place up. More power to them.

Anyway, it's almost all contained within this thread. The action starts around post 467, where Woody Deck, who may be known to a few Gutshotters, manages to provoke Joe Hachem into flying at him in a rage and having to be held back by security. As no actual fight took place, I was denied the opportunity to use the title of this post in earnest. Not to mention the possible "Hachem hit in face by Deck" that could also have arisen.

Typically, this all arose out of an "I want to see that hand" incident. Reports vary as usual, Hachem is either the innocent party who bluffed the river, said "you win" and folded, or a skank who was constantly trying to angle showdowns all day. I don't really understand the fuss myself. If someone bets the river, gets called and says "you win", then he must have some bunch of crap. Does it really matter what bunch of crap ? But anyway. Hachem then gets a considerable bashing for his general attitude in another thread in NVG. Frankly I'm on the side of the bashers in this one. The way the guy goes "one time" and "story of my life" when he loses is an embarrassment given that he won the biggest crapshoot in history to even be here. What comes across to me is someone who's not enjoying his poker. And seeing as he can hardly need the money, why is he playing at all ? I wonder exactly what terms he signed with Pokerstars. If, and I don't know I'm just saying if, he committed to playing X number of live tournaments for a certain amount of money, then that would have been pretty short-sighted IMO. Because it leads to the possibility of having to do something that you don't want to do, which seems a bit unnecessary when you've won enough in one event to be set for life. Nothing comes for free in this life, and poker sponsorship is no exception.

Anyway, soon after in the original thread, at post 511 banana-smoking wafflecrusher (you have to read 2+2 to understand any of that I know) Shaun Deeb takes exception to some comments made by our own Dr. Channing after his (Deeb's) exit. As Keith pointed out in the thread, it seemed like an over-reaction ; the problem in these spots is that often these poker reporters who drak around tournaments trying to dredge up anything of interest are very quick to report anything that might stir the pot a bit. And it always looks worse written down than it sounds in real life. Anyway Neil gets some random bashing off 2+2 for this and that, although citing his wikipedia write-up that one of his mates doctored for a laugh seems a bit of a stretch.

As for Deeb, I could have pointed out that the last time I played against him online he asked me "could you play any worse ?" after I won a small pot off him blind v blind, when I'd said nothing to him. But there was no point. I did find his epiphany at the end of the thread quite interesting :

"I really hate live and I am only playing live at wsop **** everything else"

That's basically my position, and it took me a lot more live tournaments than Deeb has played to work that out. It's a QFT. If you're good at online MTTs, the only live tournaments you can play that give a comparable hourly rate have such high buyins that your variance is through the roof, and frankly playing them on someone else's money with makeup seems to be the worst way of all to go about it IMO. Even if you make any profit you have to give half of it to your backer. The only tournaments that are just about worth playing are the WSOP because they have the softest fields and they're all concentrated in one place for a month which cuts your expenses per tournament. TBH they're probably still not worth it really but it's close enough to make a nice break from online.

So I'm looking forward to June, and if there are more rows and ructions I should really just pull out the popcorn and enjoy the show instead of getting uptight over it. That's live poker baby.

Here's Why We're Fucked

2008-04-16T12:13:00.003+01:00

I saw two posters in town today, right next to each other, on a bus stop as it happens. The first one was a "cleaner environment" poster, encouraging people to walk or take public transport. Great. The second one had two pictures. One was a speed camera. The other was a little kid looking into one of those picture-box play cameras. And the tag was something to the effect of "If you lose your licence speeding, it'll be like being a child again". I can't remember the exact wording but I swear I haven't exaggerated it.

So there you go. Save the planet. Provided you drive your own car. Because if you don't do that, you're not even a man. Our grandchildren will curse us with their dying breath.

Dahn The Den

2008-02-28T12:15:00.005Z

I have been watching downloads of "The Poker Den" this week. The Poker Den might just be my new favourite poker TV show. It's a lot like High Stakes Poker except that the buy-in is 1/10 as much (or 1/50 as much of the 500K HSP table). The play is about the same, the commentary is much worse (Gabe Kaplan rules), but there's so much additional comedy that it's just great. What's meant to be funny, I think, is the voiceover which you must check out at least once, I'm in stitches listening to it. It is the most brilliantly exaggerated sort of gangster cockney I have ever heard, I mean clapped my shells on. "THIS GEEZER GOT MUGGED OFF LARST TIME" roars the voice "CAN E PUT THE SMILE BACK ON IS CLOCK THIS TIME RAHND". If I play GUKPT at the Vic next month I'm going to talk like that all the time. IN YOUR DIAL.

There's loads more unintentional comedy like the set, Mad Marty and his teacher's desk, players saying "fuck" without being bleeped and generally MUGGING EACH OVVER OFF especially the table egg who is so bad even Jamie Gold is being condescending to him. Mad Marty is hopeless by the way, when he thinks of some completely irrelevant point he can make he throws his weight around, but when the entire table is telling the fish not to call with AT when Roland has KK because they want the fish to do his money to them instead, he's nowhere to be seen.

Definitely my favourite is when the egg rivers Devilfish in a completely gross cooler and practically slowrolls him because he can barely read his hand. Then, and I really hate it when people do this to me, he comes over and gives it lots of really sorry, if you'd done this or that blah blah. Devilfish overdoes it sometimes, especially with dealers, but I didn't mind just this once when he said, fully on camera and in front of everyone, "It's alright, I understand - you're a fucking idiot". God the times I have wanted to say that. These people mug me off.

Anyway the real reason I was inspired to post was the way one of the players introduced himself. I'm sure part of it was bravado, but even so, he put on his scariest face and said "Poker's not meant to be fun. It's a job, it's a business, you go in there, win the money and get out. If you want to play poker for fun stick to play chips with your mates when you come home from the pub". I really hope if it ever comes to that point for me I'll find something else to do. I still enjoy playing a great deal, being presented with puzzles to solve, working out the other players, playing final tables for decent money, and so on. It is still a game and if you keep it in perspective you can support yourself (and then some more) just playing a game that you enjoy, which sounds great to me. Maybe it's the harder kind of cash game ethic but when it's all about business or "crushing people's skulls" as another player said, that's all a bit too much for me. Fortunately, as I have mentioned before, poker is a game where you can psych yourself up to the eyeballs without it necessarily helping, in fact it can even impair your decision making IMO. Chill out guys. Enjoy what you do or do something else

Hobson's Choice

2008-02-25T13:50:00.003Z

While I'm not going to obsess over the American elections like a lot of blogs (and I'm actually referring to US poker players' blogs not the usual suspects over here), I was pleased to see that Ralph Nader is going to stand again. At least now people have the option of registering their view that actually you guys all suck corporate cock. Of course he's not going to win, but that's not the point. The point is that if 3% becomes 5%, then next time 8%, then 10%, then maybe something might change eventually. And anyway, if you don't vote for what you believe, what's the fucking point ? Tactical voting is like being confronted by two rapists and saying "oh well you look like you might be a bit gentler, one second until I lube myself up" instead of trying to fight them off. Even if you get raped either way, at least you can keep a modicum of self-respect.

As for the argument that, as may well have happened in 2000, the 3% who vote for Nader may cause the whole country to be completely run by one particular corporate cock-sucker instead of another for 8 years, then doesn't that really suggest that there's something wrong with your electoral system ? The US is fucked IMO, from New YorQatar to CalifArabia as Megadeth would say [1]. Frankly I'll settle for any candidate who just leaves the rest of the world the fuck alone.

[1] Following last night's gig I am happy to report that Megadeth kick ass more now than ever.

Media Madness

2008-02-23T00:36:00.002Z

Although this piece is football-related, I think it belongs on here because of the connection with the previous post. I'm sure you know all about Paul Gascoigne's situation. They were having a discussion about this on Radio 5 earlier this evening, which started off with all "the football family must rally round its most talented son" etc etc. Round the table this went until Steve Claridge as much as said "No, that's bollocks". He clarified that while of course Gascoigne's friends and family should help him as best they can, the "football family" had no more responsibility to Gascoigne than to any other ex-players who were struggling for whatever reason. In fact, he added, perhaps less so because Gascoigne has had many chances before, and because many of his problems are self-inflicted. Claridge said that he felt much more sympathy for players who had their careers ended in their teens through injury, or kids in Childrens' Hospitals, etc.

Further to this, Stan Collymore then called in to the programme and backed this up, saying that he felt he had received very little support from "the football family" through all his problems because, in effect, he wasn't as popular as Gascoigne. Now, whatever you think about these points, I applaud both Claridge and Collymore for coming out and saying something that is so different to the tune you usually hear. Claridge also had the self-respect to say "No, that's complete nonsense" in response to a comment someone had texted in, by Christ I wish the rest of them would do that once in a blue moon. You might agree or disagree, but don't forget that both Claridge and Collymore have had their problems with various addictions, and frankly I had more time for their point of view than the guy from Sporting Chance who is making god knows how much a week every time someone like Gascoigne checks in.

As for most of the print media, they can basically go and fuck themselves. When it's lovable old Gazza, let's all rally round and help him out. Which is all very well but when it's Collymore, or Frank Bruno springs to mind, it's let's all point and laugh and shout "OY NUTTER !!". It's pathetic playground crap.

Statto Obv Busto

2008-02-14T18:02:00.004Z

While clearly this twat who's suing William Hill is claiming the busto sports bettor limelight, another interesting case may have slipped under your radar. I only saw this as I was macheteing my way through the jungle of free papers on the tube, when one of them fell over my face and I was trying to claw it off. Angus "Statto" Loughran filed for bankruptcy this week. Popular legend had it that Statto lived in a mansion with a coterie of Filipino women tending to his every need, all paid for by gambling winnings. I dare say this was slightly exaggerated, but he may well have lived in a two up two down with one Filipino woman tending to his every whim paid for by gambling winnings, or something like that. Not any more I guess. The doomswitch can strike anywhere.

Update : Where I said "slipped off your radar", replace with "been blogged about by everyone else already in the day or so I've been offline". Damn you, information superhighway.

Best Poker Movie Ever By A Factor Of A Million ?

2008-02-01T15:50:00.000Z

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809733374/video/6207507

Even allowing for the trailer >>> movie effect, signs point to yes.

Book Recommendation

2007-12-27T10:19:00.000Z

Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

I've always enjoyed Elton's books ; I've never read anyone better at exposing the idiocy and hypocrisy running through society like the writing in a stick of rock. He lost the thread a little bit with Inconceivable and Blast From The Past, but those aside he's basically years ahead of his time. Check out Stark or This Other Eden in the context of what we now know about climate change, for example.

Anyway the latest is absolutely fucking brilliant. Do read it. At the very least you will see the implicit irony of my plugging it in a blog :-)

LOL Photoshopaments

2007-12-14T11:57:00.000Z

Over on 2+2 there is a thread containing some of the funniest photoshops I have ever seen. Really top quality. Here's the thread. The fun starts at reply 125 and it just gets better and better. I think my favourite is the one where the dealer has just called Eli a calling station and Harman and Doyle are giving him the evil eye.

Best of all for me though there's one at the end (at time of posting), reply 213 where it's Ram thinking "He played horribly, but don't expect me to give him his money back". The pic was taken just after Ram beat me heads up in that limit shootout. I played horribly ! Shit, the guy must have been there ...

PS Get Real (2) will follow when I'm angry enough about something again.

Get Real (1)

2007-11-22T15:21:00.000Z

Obviously I was going to comment on last night's debacle on my football blog, but as I was thinking it over it occurred to me that Steve McLaren is so very representative of the times we live in. It's probable that now the enduring image of his reign will be him clutching his umbrella with one hand while vaguely trying to wave players into position with the other, all the while making sure not to get his hair wet [1]. In some ways this is a shame because, prior to last night, the enduring image in my mind was him sitting in press conferences with that awful plastic smile insisting that everything was, and was going to be, great.

And so he would answer questions like this (these are all true to the best of my recollection).

[After going five games without scoring] "What are you going to change in the next match ?" - "Nothing, we're just going to keep doing what we are doing"

"Do you have the same confidence in Paul Robinson as you did in Peter Schmeichel at Manchester United" - "Yes, absolutely"

[Going into this weekend's games, with England 3.2 to qualify on Betfair] "[Generic question about chances]" - "Yes, I'm certain that we will qualify".

It's clear that his main priority was, at all times, to project an image of complete certainty in what he was doing, despite all contrary indications that he was a dithering half-wit, e.g. Beckham dropped completely/recalled/back on the bench, Robinson persisted with far too long and then finally replaced by an inexperienced keeper only for the crucial last game in very difficult conditions ... and so on. The problem with all this is that over a period of time it's hard not to start believing what you're saying, especially if you're surrounded by yes-men, which is not uncommon in football (see famous Graham Taylor documentary).

Basically it was all spin or,as we used to call it in the 20th century, covering your arse.

Now, what I want to link this to is the fact that, globally, there are some extraordinarily serious issues to deal with, and they need to be dealt with now. Climate change. Limited oil reserves. The general threat of overpopulation and resource shortage. Looming over all of these, the fact that we have wired ourselves up with enough nuclear hardware to take us all to hell a thousand times over. Worst of all, we've created a society where it's not in anyone's interest to incur short-term pain for long or even medium-term benefit. Which I'll come on to in a day or two, although if you have half a brain and half an eye open to what's happening, the parallels should be perfectly clear anyway.

1] By contrast, I recall Martin Allen, when he had just taken over at Brentford, standing out in an absolute downpour at MK Dons or somewhere, and saying afterwards that because the fans were getting soaked (in an open stadium), he thought he should show some solidarity with them. And that was just for his supporters, never mind the players. Now who do you think gets most out of his players - McLaren or Allen ?

Poker, Football and Economics

2007-10-18T15:03:00.000+01:00

I'm the first to admit that I don't understand Economics. It seems to me that 90% of it is just a mechanism for separating idiots from their money (and of course I'd never be party to something like that). It often makes me think about a short story I read once, a science fiction thing, where robots made loads of stuff and everyone had to consume it, or else. One guy couldn't keep up so he made his robot consume it instead. They found out and he thought he was going to get the chair but everyone decided "great idea" so they got half the robots to make loads of stuff and the other half to consume it all. Sorted. The parallels are clear, lol.

Anyway, I had been meaning to post something on here for a while about whether playing poker was a productive occupation, to society in general. And I would probably have concluded, not really, but unless you're actually a doctor or a teacher then STFU because you're no better. But before I got around to it (i.e. sometime, ever) this came up on 2+2. The original question was "Being told that professional poker doesn't contribute to society - anyone have a good answer ?". About 20 posts in, "plzbenice" answered, and I quote : "theres no argument agaisnt it because theyre right. so? ty for your money dumbasses now i go snort coke from a bunch of silicontits, have fun at your job sucker." Which was, IMO, the 10/10 gold star correct answer, end of thread.

Then I was thinking about this again when I saw in BBC Sport's sort of paper round-up, the bare-faced statement that "If England fail to qualify for Euro 2008, it will cost the economy at least £1.25bn. ". Erm, what exactly does that mean ? If, as I suspect, it means that people aren't going to whack £1.25 bn on their credit cards to buy their kids crappy replica shirts made in a Chinese sweatshop [1], then to me that sounds pretty good for everyone except the sweatshop owners, and I figure screw them. This just goes back to the robots. If half of us are making tat in vile conditions and the other half are buying it when we don't really need it, is this "economic growth" or a complete waste of time ? Don't ask me, as Leftfield Lydon said, I don't know. And when it all comes down, I quote freely from the same source : don't blame me, I told you so.

[1] On further thought, maybe some of it was to account for rebuilding contracts on town centres after England lose to Germany on penalties.

The Rockingest Hemisphere Of Them All

2007-10-07T20:24:00.000+01:00

I must admit to being more tense than I expected while listening to the closing stages of the rugby yesterday. Egg-chasing doesn't do a lot for me, it being the chosen form of physical torture employed at my school. What I love about it though is how many people are giving a shout out, not to their own club, not their own country, not even their own continent - no, let's hear it for the Northern Hemisphere ! The rockingest hemisphere of them all !

This really is taking the inclusive gang concept of international sport to the most ridiculous extreme. During Euro 2004, an Irish comic pointed out just how many "Old Enemies" we English actually have. Scotland, obv. Ireland, yes, the old enemy. France. Germany. Argentina. As he rightly observed, "Can't you fuckers get on with anybody ?". And yet now we're teaming up with all of these Old Enemies (well except Argentina), all in the name of that Hemisphere we love so much.

Despite our best efforts though, South Africa must still be favourites to take the trophy back to that evil smelly communist Southern Hemisphere. Hmmm. What we should do is get everyone together except one really wank country. The Faroe Islands maybe, oh no, hang on, they nearly beat Scotland once. How about American Samoa, no, they sound like they might be a bit handy at rugby. I don't know, fucking Andorra or someone. Let's all gang up together and pick on them. Then we'll be all the way back to the playground, which seems to be the whole point of international sport anyway.

Exercising My Option In The Free Market

2007-09-12T19:59:00.001+01:00

If I ever start thinking that my profession, poker player, is maybe not the most honourable way to earn a living, it's nice to be reminded exactly how much of a bunch of cunts some of the more "reputable" professions are. Here's something I found out today about banks (the hard way of course). Suppose you withdraw £300 cash from your (zero balance) credit card on the first day of the (effective banking) month. The next day, you pay the £300 back in. Then you do nothing with your card for the rest of the month. Take a guess how much interest you are charged on your £300 :

A) One day's worth
B) One month's worth

You bet. We are left with, as Terry Wogan used to say, the choice of B. How can they fucking do this ? And, on top of that, if you have a setup whereby you automatically pay the balance of what's due on your card every month, so that you are, according to the large print, not paying any interest, your cash withdrawal can be levied for interest for up to two months. What kind of society have we created, where we allow this to happen ? Where we elect governments who do fuck all about this kind of robbery ?

No doubt if there are any Boris Johnson types reading this they will say "Well it's your own fault for not reading the small print we live in a capitalist society where you are free to take your business elsewhere". Well maybe that's what I'll fucking do. I am inclined to pull all my business from the bank in question, and mainstream banks in general. To cash in my pensions. Who knows what these fuckers are doing with my money anyway ? For all I know they are [and by extension I am] the shareholders that the oil companies and airlines are lying about climate change for. For all I know they'll be at this arms fair this week checking out the best deals on guns, mines and torture implements, virtually if not in the flesh. And pensions are a con anyway. They're floated as being safe, prudent investments but in actual fact they're just a bunch of city wide-boys gambling with my money on whatever takes their fancy, and skimming off their cut while they're at it. To hell with them. I'm inclined to pull the lot and try to find the most ethical savings account I can, and stick it all in there. And if that costs me 1% a year then fine. Not a problem. I don't need to squeeze out the last drop, and the more I think about it, the more this desire to extract every last penny is the main cause of so many problems.

You can laugh if you like, but who's laughing tomorrow morning when I'm sleeping in late and you're stuck in the tube or on the road, on the way to stress yourself out all day earning money so you can buy crap you don't need just to get one up on your mates. More and more people are seeing through it every day. And with every person who says, in the style of Cartman, "Screw you guys, I'm going home", the whole tottering edifice slips that little bit closer to the edge. It's coming. The bill's in the post. Mark my words.

I Was Going To Do This ...

2007-08-01T16:48:00.000+01:00

... but now I'm glad I didn't. I went as far as making a list of all the well-known players who I out-cashed at the WSOP but I decided that even if presented in a jocular tone this would be getting it too loudly. Besides, the variance at the WSOP is so enormous that it doesn't really mean very much anyway. The highlights were that I outcashed Negreanu by a couple of K, even though he entered practically everything, and that Vanessa Rousso cashed for a grand total of $0. At least she can fall back on being a game theory instructor.

And this is why I didn't do it in the end. It's impossible to resist the temptation to make bitchy remarks about people who had a bad series. However, Mike Paulle has stepped into the breach and done it all anyway (Parts One and Two). It's quite a departure for Mike who has always been of the "we're not worthy" school in the past, prostrating himself at the feet of the tournament poker gods. Maybe even he's had about enough of that by now. He lets his old-school heroes off lightly, but does claw at the faces of a few of the new boys. Some more justifiably than others. Now I re-read them, in Part One he "doesn't want to embarrass anyone" and doesn't editorialize, but in Part Two he's swishing his martini around and miaowing like Dorothy Parker on a bad day. "Secretly wants to be Maria Ho", ouch ! Let's hope for more of the same in Part 3.

Anyway, it's quite unusual to have the spotlight turned on the losers in tournament poker, so it's worth a look.

Update : Part Three.

Further update (8/9/07): It might be just luck, or it might be that Mike Paulle is on a roll at being interesting. A snippet from his latest, regarding the WPT final tables : "In all the times I covered WPT final tables we never came close to eight hours of play. Steve would whisper in Linda Johnson’s headset and the blinds would double long before they would have on a timed basis. ". Read that again if it doesn't strike you at first. He's implying, no he's flat out saying, that the TV producer was increasing the blinds as and when he felt like it. You know, this is boring, or, I fancy a sandwich, blinds up ! And all the while not adding a bean to the prize pool. Then they stop doing this and think it makes them St. Francis of Assisi. Cunts. Keep it up Mike. Stick it to the man.

Face In The Crowd

2007-07-29T15:30:00.000+01:00

I made my way down to the Vic last night to have a look at the refitted card room and play the £250 tournament. The new room is nice, very busy last night and the lack of smoking in the whole place makes a huge positive difference. The much-anticipated mural is actually very cool. What it is, you have to see it really, but it's a sort of montage of the London skyline, with a certain amount of artistic license in that Big Ben and the London Eye are on the same side of the river and Windsor Castle seems to have been relocated to Central London. But the cool thing is that when you get up close, it's made up of half-inch square "pixels" which are headshots (boom ! headshot) of various players, all shaded different colours to make up the overall picture when seen from a few feet away.

The tournament itself was a total donkfest. It's nice to be reminded how unbelievably badly people are capable of playing in these tournaments if they put their minds to it. It made the WSOP look like an elite gathering of the world's top players in the showpiece tournament series of the year. Wait a minute. No, really it confirmed my handy rule of thumb that in general the standard of play in a live tournament is equivalent to the standard in an online tournament with one tenth the buyin (exception : WSOP main event which compares to one hundredth the buyin online). So I was quite enjoying the regular sight of two people butchering a hand appallingly and the loser stomping off muttering to himself about how bad the other guy was. Unfortunately, although I like a fast tournament, an average stack of M5 with 20 players left is a little bit too fast and I succumbed around 15th, in one of two ways depending on how well you understand tournaments :

1) With AK against AQ god I'm so unlucky it was sick, or
2) My pushing with M4, being called by a hand that was miles ahead of my pushing range and losing.

Fortunately just in time to buy in for the £1000 in Luton and catch the last tube home. Thanks to Dr Channing for using his undoubted charm to persuade Sylvia to secure a Friday Day 1 for me and a Thursday for himself. Neil also promised to add me to the betting in this tournament, I wonder how he will price me up !?

Finally today I also signed up to Facebook which seems to be a slightly more grown-up version of Myspace. If you're on there, don't hesitate to hook me up and make it look like I have more friends, which seems to be the main purpose of the exercise :-)

Back In One Piece

2007-07-20T20:00:00.000+01:00

As above. The flight was a bit rough on the way in again, and it didn't help that a woman two seats across was hurling her guts up, but I managed to touch down with nothing more than a cold sweat to show for it. Also on the flight were Marty Wilson and arch-hagiographers Des Wilson and Tony Holden, who I would have hidden from had it been at all necessary. In fact it wasn't, as all three of them stood about four feet from me for 20 minutes in Vegas airport without blinking an eye. Which is all to the good quite frankly, there's no reason why they should recognise me and that's fine by me. On landing though I did see Philip Hilm, and quickly shook his hand just to say that I remembered him from Day 2 and well done. Over the years I have finally learned to show a certain amount of tact in these situations so I avoided any mention of chip leads, first player out or bokking.

Although it wasn't a great flight I did manage a couple of hours kip here and there which makes a big difference. Even so, a couple of days in a darkened room won't do any harm. And the last Harry Potter is out tomorrow ! What will happen ! I'm sad but I am actually interested to see how it turns out. I'm also quite sad because Lee Cook has signed for Fulham :-(. Good luck to him, he definitely deserves to play at the top level.

With that, you might be better off tuning in to my football blog soon enough, as I'm afraid normal can't-be-arsed-to-update service will most probably be resumed on here. Thanks again for all the comments, it's always good to have people funking for me and tuning in for a taste of Vegas.

Final !

2007-07-17T18:30:00.000+01:00

Minor funkage today for Jon Kalmar, who everyone tells me is one of the good guys. I'm slightly disappointed to see that after wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt (ironically no doubt) on Day 4 and a Stiff Little Fingers shirt on Day 5, come Day 6 he was kitted out in Full Tilt gear :-(. It would be good for poker in the UK too, although I don't usually go for this "I'm totally funking for this because it might be 1% beneficial to me in future irrespective of the personal and ethical qualities of who I'm funking for". It's like cheering on Chelsea in the Champions League just because it improves the English clubs' coefficient or some such bollocks. But anyway Skalie sounds alright so I will stress that I'm not directly comparing him to Chelsea :-)

Also some minor funkage for chip leader Philip Hilm, who was on my table on Day 2. He was in the most bizarre hand I saw in the ME, here it is, I'm going to make no attempt to editorialize it because it's just too strange. A geezer in early position wearing a Tam O'Shanter (lol donkaments, no stop editorializing), throws in a 5K chip without saying anything (blinds are 800-1600/200). Dealer says "call", he says "oh no I meant to raise", usual shenanigans. It's ruled a call. Obv three people call behind him including Hilm. Flop comes King high with 2 diamonds. Big blind bets out 3K. TOS raises it to 10K. Hilm raises it to 30K. Blind gets out, TOS calls. Turn is basically a blank. I'm so pokered out I can't quite recall who bet and who called, but anyway 30K more is shipped in by each player. Turn is the Ad. TOS now checks. Hilm pushes in his remaining 20K, TOS calls. Hilm shows the nuts, Q bit of diamonds. TOS shows, erm, K8. Kings with an 8 kicker.

That's not the reason for the funking though. The funking is simply because when my steal reraise attempt was called and I pushed forward my 75 offsuit, one finger on each card Action Dave style, Hilm laughed (good-naturedly) and said "good luck". I'd like to think that he recognised a kindred spirit.

Update : Hilm first player out. Top bokking !

Old School

2007-07-17T04:37:00.000+01:00

I played the $200 Limit tournament in the Orleans today. This was part of the Orleans Open, a tournament I have a bit of a soft spot for. The Orleans run their tournaments very well too, everything was like clockwork today, and an impressive 299 runners ponied up for the limidonkament.

I busted out around 50th, but it was once again a testament to the edge a good limit player has in these things how many hands I actually had to lose to bust out. Here's my favourite hand, which was frankly worth $200 on its own. I love the bluffing hands in limit, just for all the people who say it can't be done. Passive woman limps in MP, SB completes, I check the BB. Flop Tc 6h 3h checked around. Turn Kc, checked to me, I bet, woman folds, SB calls. River As, check I bet he sighs, shows me Qh Th and throws it away. A couple of hands later he says "You had a King, right ?". "Yeah" (I know lies make Baby Jesus cry). Sigh again. "Yeah, obviously you had a King". Or 7c4c. Pwned.

Finally for 2 points each can you guess which two members of the Poker Hall Of Fame played in this prestigious event ?

Aftermath

2007-07-15T20:35:00.000+01:00

Most people who haven't already gone home are doing so today, but I'm still here till Thursday. Don't ask me why. I had a reason when I booked it, but it's long gone now. I've just come off five nights in Caesar's where my $2000 bill was reduced by half thanks to waving my ME ticket around. I am obliged to give Harrah's credit for this, I stayed in the Rio (all suites) for $1000 a week and I had a terrific suite in Caesars for another $200 a night, all on the poker rate.

Not just that, but on the whole trip Harrah's have gone up somewhat in my estimation, raising themselves from the depths of "scummiest poker operators on the planet". That postion is now reserved for the CEO Poker Tour. It's easy to sit at home and read about bad rulings, players acting up and nothing being done about it, various organisational problems, and so on. But you have to realise that these are the worst cases. Anything bad that happens is all over the internet within hours nowadays. Meanwhile, up to 3000 players a day have been playing poker without any major problems. Like me. I didn't personally experience anything bad at all, and on the one occasion when the floor had to make a judgement call, they got it absolutely right, by stopping play at 2am on Day One of the shootout.

The one situation that Harrah's really have to answer for is the tent. They really should have used the ballroom, which is right next door, and stuck the crappy Expo somewhere else (I'm sure we could all suggest somewhere). It's not really fair to blame them for the new cards (as ridiculous as they were), the structures or the payouts, because these were all approved (and in some cases even suggested) by the players advisory committee. The satellite system was a bit clunky but people soon forget how in previous years you had to sit there for 15 minutes counting money and having forms filled in after you had all sat down. 6%-9% rake isn't that excessive (see CEO Poker Tour again) and if it's anyone's business I tipped an extra 1.5% or so on my winnings. The very worst thing that happened all summer IMO was the play being stopped on the bubble because Hellmuth was short stacked, and that was surely down to ESPN. I don't know how much the chip leaders complained, if at all. Maybe you just have to expect this kind of thing in televised events, it's not the first time.

And of course the games were just the softest you could ever imagine for the buyin. If you swerve the Saturday $1500 madhouses and tear into the 5pm limit events instead, then I think anyone with a good grasp of the particular game(s) would have a really good chance of cashing and/or FTing. That would be my advice to anyone considering playing next year. Learn the limit games. If you can beat $3-6 online in whichever game it is, and you have a basic common sense understanding of playing to win in tournaments, then you have good EV in these tournaments, take it from me.

A lot of people have said that the Bellagio or the Venetian would do a better job, but would they really ? I've always found the Bellagio cardroom a bit odd. Yesterday I stood at the podium for five minutes just wanting to ask some general questions about the games, and I was totally ignored. I don't know if this is because of my legendarily poor bar presence or because I wasn't waving a $20 around. Anyway, obv after a while I just took my business elsewhere. There seem to be a lot of problems with the current WPT event, draconian cell phone rulings and what have you. Meanwhile the Venetian have just hosted this CEO Tour fiasco, and while they ran their deep stack tournaments well, there's a big difference between running two tournaments at once with 500 people in the room compared to six tournaments and 3000 people. I'm not going to go as far as taking my hat off to Harrah's, but it is tipped a little more jauntily than I would have expected.

Dreaming Of Lions

2007-07-15T03:23:00.000+01:00

That's about it. Neil, Al and Tristan busted out yesterday. Willy Tann and Julian Gardner succumbed this afternoon. Now, I'm sure there are lots of nice guys and good players left in this event but it's of no account to me which one of them wins. If there's anything to say to the remaining players, do your best, enjoy it and try to keep it in perspective. Oh, and tell all those agents to go and ... well, my family read this blog now. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a picture :-)

I hope all the guys I mentioned above aren't too disappointed. As I said on Pete B's blog in connection with my own second place, if you always want more, you'll never be satisfied. Only one person will come out of this event without the temptation to think about the saddest words "it might have been". It might have been what though ? I could speculate about Jamie Gold's mental state, given some of the stories I've heard about him, but I won't. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Missing out on a bracelet by maybe 4 or 5 hands really didn't bother me for very long, but I only have one foot in this poker world and I am (just about) still connected to the real world enough to be happy about turning $40K in the hole into $80K profit on the trip whatever else might have been. On a trip to the bookstore last week I picked up an audio book of "The Old Man And The Sea". I remember reading this book at school and it having no impression on me whatsoever. Listening to Donald Sutherland read this book over the last couple of days was different gravy though. As I understand it, and no one else can understand it for me, the theme is that winning or losing doesn't matter as much as being a man and doing your best. You only answer to yourself. Sleep well guys. Dream of lions.

Shootout Final (Part 2)

2007-07-14T23:10:00.000+01:00

David Mosca (4th) : David is a 2+2er and was on my left so we chatted a fair bit. He was a very nice guy and an excellent player. He told me that he and Anh (3rd) had played about 10K hands against each other heads-up online, 50-100 kind of level. It seemed unfair that I was up against these two guys and Ram, seeing as I've just moved up to 5-10 limit on Stars. Still, it's a WSOP final, you can't expect a table of donks ! Outside a NL tournament anyway :-). David had a bad start but came back and started to looked very dangerous. Unfortunately for him he lost a huge pot to Ram when he bet the river, Ram dwelled for ages and finally called, at which point David threw his cards away. He was unable to recover from that and busted to Ram with A2 v TT. One thing I really liked about David's game, when he didn't have an auto-fold he would take his time and it was impossible to tell whether he was really thinking or just acting. Whenever I felt my decision was obvious (which it is in limit a lot of the time, because of course you only have 2 or 3 choices), I couldn't make myself slow down and so I was probably giving away timing tells when I actually did have to think.

Anh Nyugen (3rd) : I think that's his name. A lot of people were calling him "Van Diesel" for some reason. He was very quiet, methodical, completely impossible to read and looked a great player although I wasn't sure if he was maybe playing too tight 4-handed. Then again, you do need cards in limit and who knows what he was passing. He busted to Ram, all-in on the turn with 2 pair against Ram's flush draw, which of course obliged on the river. Had he won that pot, he would have been up to 500K three-handed and very dangerous. I wasn't really sure whether I wanted him to cut Ram in half (in that pot) or bust out so I locked up second, anyway there wasn't anything I could do about that. The only time I saw him animated at all was when he suddenly announced that I looked like some actor from "A Knight's Tale". I haven't seen that one but he's not the first person who's told me that. I have had a lot of lookalikes in my time, Essex and (briefly) England off-spinner Peter Such I think was the best one if not the most famous.

Me (2nd) : I just bet my hands. Bear in mind though, that in limited hold them, doing stuff like check-raising the flop with a gutshot is just betting your hand. Basically I have learned to play limit HE from reading Matt Maroon's book and Howard Lederer's chapter in the Full tilt book. Both these sources are fairly straightforward and heavily stress betting your hand when you have anything at all, especially on the cheap streets, and rarely if ever slow-playing. It's interesting that Maroon has said in his blog that Lederer is the only player who he really fears in a limit tournament. So I highly recommend these books. It worked for me. After winning a pot with Jacks to move up to 340K, I got chipped down to 200, then eliminated Baker and won a big pot with the Aces. From then on I just went on the most unbelievable rush. I was picking up big hands, not being outdrawn, winning multi-way pots with like second pair, having Ace high hold up unimproved heads up, everything. It was one hell of a buzz. It lasted almost exactly from eliminating Baker in 7th until the heads up match ...

Ram (1st) : Ram is Ram, a lot of you probably know him better than I do. As you can see above, he made some big hands in key pots but that's not to take anything away from his play which I thought was excellent. He was very, very focused and (for various reasons which I won't go into here but which many of you will be able to infer) not at all concerned about the money, just the bracelet. Heads up, I hate to say this but I can't put it any other way, he did get a lot of help from the deck. Let me stress that this was help he did not need. I said to Carlo afterwards, even though I started heads up 1.4-1.0, Ram was probably the favourite and probably would have won if the cards had run evenly. Once he caught me up in chips he was the clear favourite. The deck simply speeded the process. He won two pots in a row with 63 off, the first one with flopped trips against my (definitely overplayed) gutshot draw and another with a 7-high straight against my wheel. There was a hand where I had A7, he had 45, the flop was 732 and I don't need to tell you what came on the turn. In fact, luckily for me the river made a four-flush which saved me two bets. Those were the only really bad ones. The rest of the time he was just playing better than me and winning most of the showdowns, which is tough to beat. David Mosca, interestingly, wasn't quite that impressed by Ram, you can see his comments (and mine) towards the end of this thread. But I thought that Ram played really well and fully deserved the win.

What's quite interesting is that if you asked me to rank the players (other than me), I would put them almost exactly in their finishing order, perhaps swapping Mosca and Nyugen. This may be harsh on the 7th and 8th finishers, who were perhaps affected by the hands they lost to leave them trailing in the first place, and who knows how the rest of us might have reacted in the same adversity.

Shootout Final (Part 1)

2007-07-13T19:57:00.000+01:00

The best way I can think of to talk about the final is to go through the players, and talk about various hands and impressions as and when. So, in reverse order :

Rayvenia Puckett (8th) : Basically a local amateur who had given the tournament a spin. However, she was much, much better than you would have thought from first impressions. Given the structure of the tournament (which was awesome), anyone would have to have been extraordinarily lucky to reach the final without being at least competent, and she certainly was that. However, she probably was the weakest link in truth. She had Kings cracked by Ram's rivered flush, and then Kings lost to Noyan's Aces. Those two hands seemed to affect her quite badly and the rest of the table smelled blood in the water at that point. I did feel sorry for her because the one thing that was totally FUBAR about this tournament was the payout structure. Everyone who won the first round made $6500, which was far too much, while 7th and 8th made $12K and $9K respectively, which was nowhere near enough. It was pretty weak that Rayvenia only made another $3K for winning what was probably a very tough second round table over at least 8 hours play.

David Baker (7th) : Lost a couple of big pots early on, once when Ram turned a gutshot straight. I did think at the time that Ram was dangerous enough without hitting draws on people. David was on a short stack for ages and I thought he didn't play it all that well. He didn't seem to open-raise enough, and was mostly putting his chips in calling, even 3-handed. However, he kept escaping again and again and again. By this time I had been chipped down to 200K (partly by Baker with 88 against my AK) and the prospect of 7th place for a bag of rice $12K was weighing on my mind. Eventually I took him out myself with AQ v Q9 on a queen high flop. Everyone except David was probably pleased, not just for the payout jump but because it meant Greg "FBT" Mueller stopped calling the play :-)

Sondre Sagstuen (6th) : Had an awesome "bad guy in Casino Royale" look. However, he did seem to have some weaknesses. Warren, who was sweating most of the game, was quite critical of his play but that seemed harsh. He did, however, have a spell where he was caught bluffing too much and I think he overpaid me in a hand just after Baker was knocked out when I found Aces (just in time !). That knocked him down to the short stack, and when he raised my blind with only a few chips behind I thought I would take a shot at busting him with 64o. The flop came Q53, monster, I check-raised and he dwelled right up for his last 4 chips (which was the raise plus one chip). He made a very reluctant call with T7hh (one heart on the flop), and I rivered a 6.

Ishak "The Butcher" Noyan (5th) : This was the guy who knocked me out of the PLHE with AKs against my QQ. I thought he played much like I did to be honest, tight but very aggressively when he did play. Unfortunately his rush came too soon, when the limits were quite small, and he couldn't accumulate enough chips to really get going.

The Morning After

2007-07-12T19:46:00.001+01:00

Some have said that it's the worst day of the year, the day you are knocked out of the Main Event. Well, that depends how much you invest in it emotionally. I was a bit annoyed for about an hour, went out for dinner, played some blackjack, went to bed, now fine. I do think that I had a bad beat with the draw on Day 1. I've heard and read about a lot of donktastic antics in the first day or two, but unfortunately I didn't see a lot at my tables.

Here's an example, a day one trip report from the excellent Bond18. This guy definitely knows how to play, and writes damn good trip reports. Day two is also worth reading on the same forum. So anyway, he's doubled up early with a set, ran over the table all day, and finally had someone shove a huge stack in with AK against his Aces out of pique because someone called the clock. Where was all that on my table ? LOL. Oh well. At the end he says he flopped five sets, had Aces twice and Kings three times during the day. I flopped no sets, had Aces once and Kings once and won about 3K with the pair of them. What can you do ?

Anyway, the juggernaut rolls on, and for (the many) assorted stakehorses and attention whores who busted out, there's also the Bellagio $10K going on right now. From pokerpages coverage of that :

"The number of players complaining about the month they have spent in Vegas has grown tiresome. This is a 10k WPT tournament that thousands would sacrifice a thumb for the chance at a chip and a chair. If you'd don't like it go home! Vegas is sick of you too!"

Damn straight. If you don't want to play any more, bugger off home. Or there are other things to do in Vegas. Which I shall be going out to do in a moment. And of course today we are funking for The Guvnor (270K), Mr Big (280), Al R (120 odd IIRC), Tristan (100), Bad Beat (90) and The Camel (35). Gogogo !

Finally, one more snippet for you though, Paul "Action" Jackson's account of, among other things, the Limit Shootout. I suppose you should just read it for yourself, I'm through with editorialising this kind of thing, it always gets back to people. Anyway, my chimpanzee dollars arrived in the bank this morning. Ship it !

Main Event Day 2 (Busto)

2007-07-12T02:51:00.000+01:00

Busto. Nothing to work with. Unfortunately my post-flop play isn't good enough to accumulate chips without hitting hands. Pre-flop I'm fine, which is how I was operating today most of the time, stealing and re-stealing with air just to keep up. But eventually someone found Jacks and that was that. Basically in 17 hours of play I never had a hand that could stand the action when I was reraised. Not even AK. I had Aces once, 3x-d the guy's raise and he passed. Kings twice, no action either time. I hung in as long as I could waiting for that rush but it didn't happen. I'll post some more thoughts on the trip overall when that's sunk in, but basically I had all my luck in one tournament, and if you could choose how to use your luck, that's what you would want !

I'm here for another week and if I don't play another hand of poker that sounds fine right now. Also I made my debut at the craps tables last night, in that quality establishment the Imperial Palace. Fortunately we lost and I decided that dice sucks, which is a brilliant result in the long term.

Main Event Day One

2007-07-10T20:58:00.001+01:00

That was a tough day. Where were all the donks I was promised ? Well OK, there were one or two, but I was stuck between two super-tough players all day. High water mark was 33K, lowest was 12K and I have 22K going into tomorrow which is a nice reraising stack.

Definite hand of the day, the antes have just kicked in so I raise it up with 96ss, one caller, a super-loose Central American looking guy with a huge stack. Flop comes 874 with two spades, so basically gin :-). I bet 1200 into about a 3K pot, deliberately small to give me room for a 3-bet shove. He obliges, making it 4500, and I shove for 15K total. He calls in three seconds with Jc9c. Flush on the river, ship it.

All in all it was good fun, if draining, and I am happy to say that there were no shenanigans at all on our table, no angle-shooting, no whoop-whooping, no tantrums, nothing like that. There were three excellent players to deal with, and two or three more who were very competent. All under 30 years old, obv. There were a few weaker spots, nothing too lol donkaments, but a few players who overplayed Aces post-flop, gave free cards by slowplaying when they really shouldn't have, and a couple who simply cracked up towards the end of a 15-hour day. I'm still there for tomorrow's rush, that's the main thing !

Getting It Loudly

2007-07-09T01:53:00.000+01:00

Bouncing around Vegas with 100K is fun :

I initiated the wire transfer from the Rio today. Predictably, it took ages with tons of paperwork. Anyway, I asked the cashier what guarantees I would have if there was a problem. She didn't quite seem to understand the question. On further prompting she said, "We are a major corporation sir. This is Harrah's".

I feel reassured already.

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We bumped into Padraig and Veronique in the Wynn the night after the final. Padraig rules and, on a first meeting, so did Veronique. She was telling Neil and me how she busted out of the Ladies Event with 84 suited, much to our approval. "I wonder who taught you that ?" joked Neil. "I know who got the blame for it" was Padraig's response.

=========

I was very pleased to see "Purle, William" in the Main Event runners list today. At 8am the morning after the night before I was completely unable to drag him away from the roulette table for breakfast. Despite the 115 degree heat here in Vegas, I was feeling a definite nip in the air ...

=========

John Duthie, or Mr. Big as Neil calls him, is certainly living it to the max here in Vegas. No cabs for JD, he is swishing around in a Rolls Royce ! As is befitting for the man who lays a good claim to making the sickest play of all the World Series so far. Facing a 17K bet on the river in a cash game, John decided that his opponent "didn't have it" and called with Queen high. Opponent had Jack high, ship it. Phil Laak was so impressed by this that he wrote down the hand details on his phone, "including suits", just to make sure that people would believe him when he recounted the tale.

=========

Here are some of my favourite threads and links from this year's series if you've missed any of them. If there is a common theme, it can only be that online players rule and circuit pros suck.

Nobody calls Earl a chicken

Everybody calls Esposito a chicken - this one is my favourite of all.

Should you call with AA on the first hand ? A 2+2er resolves the eternal dilemma. Or does he ?

Taylor Caby nails it - He's right. The online players have all the mobney and it's more like going back to school every year. And is that really Mike Matusow with the penultimate comment ? Good impression if it's not.

From the pokerpages account of the Limit Shootout final :

"There are two railbirds, clearly intoxicated, who are cheering/heckling Ram Vaswani. I can't tell which! On a big hand between Ram and David Mosca, in which the board was 5-5-4-Q-4, Ram bet 40K on the river and one of the railbirds said, "Yeah! Good bet, Ram!" Vaswani just snickered. Mosca made the crying call and Vaswani turned over 4-4 for quad fours. Mosca lost a significant portion of his stack from that hand. "Hey, Ram," continued the drunk, "did you play good, Ram?"

All fairly standard except that the drunk in question was Johnny Lodden :-). I quite like the vibe on Pokerpages with their reporting. I know Pokernews have all the hands, and they have some good people on their team, but the PP reporters are laid back, quite funny sometimes, and have a decent understanding of the game. They don't feel obliged to suck up to Harrah's, and in fact are all caning the Gaming Expo, especially their female correspondents, understandably. Most of all though, they were nicer to me about the heads up :-).

Also on Pokerpages, Michal Cheser. Standard too, in fact very perceptive, but what I love about this is that Pokerpages felt it was necessary to stress at the top that this was a joke, and you aren't a bunch of donks, oh no. So, ironically, the one ME comment piece that was accurate had to be portrayed as a work of satire so as not to upset everyone.

With that, it only remains to say LOL donkaments and watch out for me on day 1D tomorrow.

Shootout Day 2 (Part 1)

2007-07-08T19:43:00.000+01:00

We came back 6-handed on day 2 to finish the second round. As I said before, the structure was kind of odd in that the second round was much slower than the first, for no apparent reason. Our second round table took 4 hours to finish, and there were still a couple more in play when we did. If we had played through on the previous night it wouldn't have finished till 7 am, so clearly the decision to break was correct.

Anyway, having not written this up at the time, the final is still quite fresh in my mind but the conclusion of round 2 is all a bit of a blur. I do have the impression that this session was the best I played in the tournament. So, Bill Chen ran into Aces twice and was unable to recover. The weaker European player (who I realised was probably German, whatever) finally dribbled them away. I lost a pot to Noah Boeken where I correctly interpreted his flop 3-bet as an attempt to buy a free turn on a draw. He was clearly surprised when I bet the turn, but called (correctly obv) and rivered his straight. That knocked me down to 50K. However I turned a set in a big pot against Noah to recover. Noah saved a bet by folding the river on that hand, but he also folded the river for one bet in two or three other pots and I can't help wondering whether he was right every time. Folding the river in limit is a very dangerous game. Not only can you lose the pot you're playing, you can also encourage people to take future pots away from you. I basically don't do it unless I have completely missed a draw, I'd rather just drop the bet. I know, I'm a calling station :-)

Knowing that Noah was capable of putting a hand down, I was able to make a move on him when he was quite short-stacked. I raised on the button with T8s and he three-bet from the small blind. The flop came AK6, he bet and I thought I'd take a shot at it and raise. He slammed the table and folded after a little thought. This hand made the Pokerpages coverage, they speculated Queens (just like the hand I played in the mixed limit event) but who knows. I found Aces and tried to trap Noah for the rest of his stack, but he was good enough to save a full bet. Finally the Scandi also found Aces against him and finished him off.

Three-handed, the American and I put in five bets pre-flop (I had Kings). The flop came KQ8, he check-called me all the way with Aces. Maybe this is standard at a certain level, I mean I am very likely to have made a set with that pre-flop action, but it was still great play by him to lose the minimum there IMO. That gave me good momentum and the deck started to help me out as well. I had the American all in with AKhh against TT on a rag turn with 2 hearts, but missed it. Even so the Scandi dropped out in third soon after and I had a 200-70 chip lead on the break. Now the limits finally started to bite hard and basically one showdown hand would either finish it off or bring us level. Fortunately we pretty much committed on a flop of QT9, I had JT, and when the 8 came on the turn he made a resigned call for his last bet with KQ. Final !

Balla-ing It Up

2007-07-07T20:46:00.000+01:00

OK. First of all, for the next 10 days, you should either pretend this blog is called something else or, if the concept of getting it loudly does offend the senses, and I could understand that, peruse other areas of the Internet for the duration.

I like the Gold Coast, no problem with it, but I'm sorry, it just won't do after that result. Plus there are rather too many potential nippers in here right now. I'm staying here long enough to play day 1 on Monday then, whether I'm still in or not after that, it's Caesars from Tuesday-Sunday and Bellagio Sunday-Thursday. Unfortunately Bellagio is booked up until Sunday and even if I promise them major balla blackjack action they're not going to kick anyone out for me until they see the colour of my chips. Which is fair enough, and of course they're booked because of the WPT event starting Tuesday. But that's all fine, I can roll up on Sunday week and then half the point is to give them (the appearance of) balla blackjack action which should stand me in very good stead in the future. They would require me to put the whole 100K in action to wire it back for me, which is a bit much, so I'll probably still have to put my trust in the Rio not to fuck it up. This seems marginally safer than carrying it all back in my shoes. But only marginally.

So for anyone out here reading this, that's where I'll be. Unless you're on the nip of course. Then I'll be somewhere else.

Update : When I popped over to the Rio at about 7pm to sweat, they surprised me with an early dinner break, but that was good because I caught up with a few of today's runners for a quick meal at the Sushi restaurant in the Wynn, where I had by far the nicest meal of the trip so far, kobe beef carpaccio yum yum. And it's the first Vegas restaurant I've been to probably ever where they didn't bring me twice as much food as I normally eat in a day. Anyway, during the meal Mr. Big [1] advised that it's not worth playing blackjack at Bellagio for future considerations because you have to put huge amounts of money in play, so I'll probably just play some of the mixed cash games instead.

[1] John Duthie.

Shootout Day One

2007-07-07T07:35:00.000+01:00

This was written on the morning of Day 2. I can't be bothered rewriting it with dramatic foreshadowing and stuff so pretend it's then.

============

I don't know when I'm going to post this but I like writing these up while they're fresh. I won my table in the Limit Shooutout today. Woo hoo cash !!

I didn't know anyone on my table, it was a reasonable mix, a couple of weak spots, one very good player on my immediate left and the rest fair to moderate. I made QQ hold up against 4 opponents, somehow, and that moved me up to 5500 (3K start). Then everything went pear-shaped as usual and I dropped to a low of about 1200. Fortunately I found AQ and QQ just in time to double up twice. Then I won the key hand against the good player, a Dutch guy, who I gave the blog address to so if you're reading this dude, sorry about this hand ... I complete the SB with A5, he raises I call. Flop K3d2d check-bet-raise-call, I check-raise with the gutshot. Turn 9d I bet to follow it up, he raises. I go in the tank and nearly fold. But I have the 5d so I reckon 4s are good, Aces are probably good, and a diamond is enough to check-call and see. But if I miss these I'm going to fold the river. It comes a diamond, check-bet-call, and he has A5 no diamonds ! Sick.

So I was pleased to take a good chunk out of the best player at the table, who had position on me, and even more so when he lost a couple more hands and busted 4th. We jockey for a bit 3-handed, then this Scottish guy in a Ladbrokes shirt (about 100 "Team Ladbrokes" oiks have just arrived, 90 of them with a constant fag on the go) decides I'm bluffing all the time, I realise this and take him all the way to valuetown, with a decent amount of help from the deck to be fair. I started heads up with a small chip lead and went on a massive tear, two straights and a two pair all paid off, rarely in doubt, that one was just meant to be, even though the guy was playing just as well as I was.

We were the third table to finish out of 72, so I have a good 2-3 hours before we sit down again for round 2. I probably need to finish 5th in this to get out of it on the trip ... but on the upside I reckon I'm about 50-1 to win a bracelet right now. Bring it on !

...

Fun table the second one, and a good job too as headphones are now banned. Apparently it's OK to receive secret CIA messages on the bubble, but not once you're in the money. In the house, Noah Boeken, Bill Chen, Matt Matros and Jean "The Prince" Gaspard who regular visitors to Vegas will know. I had the usual ups and downs, but won a couple of big pots with KK (one against Chen and one against Matros). I lost a sick pot against Boeken with Q9 on a board of T87x6 when he had J9. That sucked. However I raised the last 3 pots of the night, and in the last one The Prince called me all-in with A5 v my AQ which I won to return to my high-water mark of 43K. That's almost dead on average playing 6-handed tomorrow. Matt is out, there are two Scandies left, one's quite tight and the other is a bit "how the hell did he win his first round ?". Then there's Chen, Boeken and another American who's pretty good. I didn't catch his name but we were talking about money and I said how strange I thought it was that American bills were all the same size, what if you were blind ? And he said that his girlfriend was working on a case that's going through the Supreme Court to get that changed. I always did wonder about that.

Anyway, for some reason the second round is literally half the speed of the first, in terms of blinds vs stacks, so they decided to stop it at 2am. Although there are at least 40 people left, I can't see many faces about. Ram's still in, Terrence Chan, Victor Ramdin, I think Isabelle Mercier, that's about it.

It was quite friendly as I said, there was a funny pot early on where Chen flopped a set and Boeken turned a bigger set. I couldn't resist pointing out that they were wearing Pokerstars shirts, what did they expect. Plus it was funny when Chen tried to 3-bet it to 3200 instead of 2400. Math, as he said, is hard. Matt pointed out that there were 4 Europeans at the table in what was supposed to be the American game. If I can take it down tomorrow on the 4th of July, that will show the fuckers and no mistake.

Out Of It

2007-07-05T22:33:00.000+01:00

As most of you will already know, I finished 2nd in the Limit Shootout for $120K. This is just a quick post because I have three very important things to do first :

1. Sleep
2. Hookers/Coke Extravaganza
3. Lots of sleep

Thanks to everyone for all the comments throughout the WSOP. Yes, all of them. If they weren't supportive, they were motivational. Very well done to Ram. The heads up was sick. He was totally in my head. Going on a rush from 200K to 1.4 million on a WSOP final table was amazing though. Proper report later. Much later, so don't hold your breath.

Perseverance

2007-07-04T04:10:00.001+01:00

Briefly, I won my first table in the Limit Shootout, so that's a cash. 72 players will come back about an hour from now. Full report once I have proper Internet back, in the mean time wish me luck !

No News Is Bad News

2007-07-03T03:12:00.000+01:00

Lack of updates is not because I'm tearing up the SHOE. On the first hand today, the other short stack tripled up with 8s. On the next hand, I went for it with 7s against the same two opponents and ended up losing to 6s and 2s. The end. Oh well, I've had worse. It's not as bad as driving to Luton for a Day 2 and going out on the first hand to John Ruppin. Quite.

Lack of updates is because my internet connection has gone kaput in my room. Not to worry, I'll do without for a couple of days, I'm moving hotels on Thursday anyway. If anyone here wants to contact me, text msg is yr bst bt.

$1000 SHOE End Of Day One (Not Busto !!!)

2007-07-02T11:37:00.000+01:00

ot*Applause*. Don't go nuts though. I have 2500 chips, and we'll be playing 600-1200 Stud on the restart. However, the average is only 10K so if I win my push-and-pray hand it could be game on. I'll add my thoughts of the day in the morning.

Update : This has been fun so far. The only thing more boring than NL hand histories is limit hand histories so I'll spare you them. I inched my way up to 5500 without ever managing to yard my way back to nothing like I usually do in the NL. Then I tried to play 3 pots of Limit Hold-em against Matt Matros out of position, with predictable results. 30 minutes of short-stacked Omaha 8 insanity ended up with no net gain or loss, and then I only found one spot in the final Stud 8 level to put it in, and split it thanks to rivering a low.

In the house today : Matt is a nice guy but I really wish he wasn't on my immediate left again tomorrow. Cyndy Violette was super nice, a decent player and a total MILF all in one bouncy little package :-). I was briefly on a table with Chris Ferguson again. At the other end of the spectrum, my favourite egg was the guy who berated his Hold-em opponent for beating him with A4s. "A4s ! That's a crap hand !". Then we switched to Omaha, and in quick succession the coach showed down Q665, 9772, J773 etc., naturally bumbling into half the pot each time. I guess he only gave Hold-em lessons. And in the "Typical Pokerstars" hand of the day, Warren had an unfortunate hand against another English player whose Stud High board read AcKcQcJc. He bet the river blind, Warren called, and the guy flipped over the last card, Tc obv.

Unfortunately, still being in the tournament means I can't play in this. Which is a shame. This was my chance to put in $125 dead money and annoy the crap out of all the proper players by babbling "ooh this is fun. What, three darts from this line here ? Do I have to start with a double ? What if we both get down to 1 what happens then ha ha ? Oh is it my turn ?". And so on.

Life Begins !

2007-06-30T20:30:00.001+01:00

I had a day off yesterday because, as the title suggests, it was my birthday. We had an excellent meal in Corsa (in the Wynn), great company, thanks very much to everyone for coming. Now today, of course, I'm having a day off as well through not quite being in tip-top shape for 14 hours of poker :-). I might play the limit HE / Stud 8 tournaments on Stars in a bit as practice for tomorrow's SHOE, and maybe a single table or two tonight.

Time is catching up on me and it looks like I can't do too much more damage. Hooray ! Probably just the $1000 SHOE tomorrow, $1500 Limit Shootout on Tuesday and then the Main Event. If by some freak of chance I don't make like day 7 of the ME, I'll decamp to the strip and play Venetian/Caesars etc., or maybe just do some touristy Vegas stuff instead, it is allowed. I heard that the Bellagio evening tournaments play through till 7am the next day, with a 5am bubble, so they don't sound so appetising !

I'll probably post some kind of WSOP recap when I'm done, maybe even before the ME as that's really a special case. I haven't had too many problems at the table myself but I've just heard so many stories, in person and online, about people having an attitude this year. And I'm talking about everybody. Players, dealers, floor, press, railbirds, there's an awful lot of aggression in the air and not enough of it is being properly channelled through betting and raising. I do think there are a lot of people here who aren't enjoying themselves, for whatever reason, and that's a shame.

PS I nearly forgot, Jon Shoreman is chip leader in the 2-7 Triple Draw, gogogo Jon !

$1000 Stud Hi-Lo (Dinner Break)

2007-06-29T05:55:00.001+01:00

Still there with 1850 chips (started 2000). At the first break I was about to, in the words of an Email I received yesterday, kill myself and eat my dog. In that order. All the eggs were scooping everything. On the restart though, I found (88)833 against (??)75A with my opponent raising at every opportunity. Once he hit another low card on 6th and raised me again, I thought that it was so obvious what I had, he must either have a low or some crazy trip Aces plus low draw, so 6th and 7th both went bet-raise-call but he turned over a lower full house. It transpired that he was raising the shit out of two pair + a low draw.

All this relentless aggression finally caught up with him, and another egg, as it does in Stud 8, there are definitely times in this game where you have to turn down the heat. Unfortunately I lost the last hand with Queens against Chris the Armenian Express's rolled up 6s to drop back to 1850, but we're still there. Still waiting for that rush. Also on the table is Randall Skaggs, who you probably haven't heard of, but he can play Stud 8 alright, in fact it's a pleasure watching someone who actually plays one of the "other" games at an expert level.

Update : Busto obv. Crippled in a multi-way pot with the best low draw on 4th, paired up on 5th and then drew QJ. Marvellous. Made my stand with (8A)8 and Randall turned his (54)6, or something like that, into two pair. Oh well. At least I busted to the best player at the table for once. I will probably find enough excuses not to play till Sunday ($1000 SHOE). Now, where's that dog ...

$2000 Limit (Busto)

2007-06-27T02:13:00.000+01:00

10 handed + loose players + no cards = busto. I'll spare you the details. I won three pots early on to get up to 6400 but I think I pretty much didn't win a pot after that.

Which was a bit frustrating because there were only 450 runners and the field was really soft. At least 80% of the players were seen to break one of the golden rules of limit hold-em tournaments : never open-limp, never cold-call. In the house today, Melissa Hayden was next to me to start with and she was quite good conversation, although she did admonish one guy for making a joke about "the seniors opening their colostomy bags". LOL admonishments. She was replaced by Howard Lederer, who didn't remember me from Bar Beat, which was a little galling seeing as we were actually on the same show. Pretty soon that table broke and I was moved onto one with JJ Liu, who never said a word, not that I was particularly chirpy by that point. And also seen wandering around was Ellix Powers, wearing a T-shirt that said "He Was So Mad He Called Me With Jack High". Dude, you had your moment, let it go :-)

Limiting My Losses

2007-06-26T05:28:00.000+01:00

Running count is now $17,000 in the hole on this trip. It's amazing to think that only 3 years ago I was in Vegas playing $70 tournaments in Harrah's and chopping them for like $700. I have no problem with what's been happening in the tournaments so far, I give myself a B for playing reasonably well with the odd mistake, but only the bustout with AJ in the first NL event was a really bad one. The single tables are just incredibly annoying though. I have now played 20 for 1 win and 1 chop. Those are the only two I've been heads up in, and they were both smaller buyins - I'm flat out 0 for 10 in the $500s. This can happen I suppose, it's a small sample, but I'm now just sitting down and expecting to lose which is no good at all. When I told a friend that I had dropped down to $225 just to try to get a result, he offered to take half my action in $500s, but it's not a bankroll problem, it's just - I don't know, it's just annoying to be almost $5K down in those and chasing it doesn't seem like the right thing to do. I'd probably be better off playing cash or practicing my SHOE games online in my room.

I am looking forward to playing some more limit tournaments. It was very interesting yesterday to sit at the table with the same players, alternating between limit and no limit. I seemed to have a lot more control in the limit, whether it was against the better players or the eggs. It really did emphasise the point that a bad player can get lucky and double up so easily in NL, but when you're playing limit, all the missed bets and lost pots due to passive play on the small betting rounds have a cumulative effect which should really help the better players. Of course a straight $2000 Limit event ought to attract more limit specialists, then again 600 players ponied up for Pot-Limit Omaha 8 today and I doubt whether there are 600 players in the world who are any good at that game. The big bonus for me in a limit tournament is that one brain freeze is much less likely to knock me out, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Update : According to Pokerpages, there were a lot of faces in the PLO8, including Chau Giang, Johnny Chan, Marcel, Devilfish, Bill Chen and, best of all, David Benyamine, who would rather play a $1500 donkfest than watch his fiancee in her first WSOP final table. Now there's a gambler :-)

As for me, I just have to toughen up. I'm such a nit to sulk over losing $5K in single tables when I'm still comfortably six figures up in the last six months.

$1500 Mixed Hold-Em (Dinner Break and Busto)

2007-06-25T05:42:00.000+01:00

This is cool. I'm up to exactly 5K on the break, from a 3K starting stack. I'd be surprised if I've made a profit in the No-Limit rounds, although that's partly because Annie Duke bokked me out of 1K with Queens when she came up behind me to smooch her boyfriend, who's on my immediate left. He's a really nice guy mind you. Anyway, half the table are just rocks and everyone is playing too tight/passive in the limit, which is a total pwnfest. So I hope I don't bust out in some stupid NL coinflip or cold deck. Tight is right in the NL anyway, as there are no antes. Also on the table was Rafe Furst from the Tiltboys, another nice guy and a good player, but he's out now and basically no one else has been a threat so far. There are still 4 levels to go tonight so stay tuned.

Update : Busto around 220th, predictably enough in the NL round. I made it 550 (playing 100-200) in the hijack with QJcc, the cutoff called. Flop Q84, bet call. Turn T giving me a gutshot, I check to give myself the option to check-raise if he makes a small bet but he basically commits me and I put the rest in. He has AQ. I think he played this well, his pre-flop call is good with the stack sizes and the flop call also good on such a safe flop. So props to him, and as for me betting the flop is clear and I'm not laying down on the turn when I pick up some extra outs. Call me a fish if you like but I don't think you win tournaments by making big laydowns for 1/3 of the average stack.

Here's a limit hand where I ruled supreme though. 300-600 limit, some egg limps in the hijack (doh, just never do that in a limit tournament), I raise in the cutoff with 77 and a total rock wakes up and 3-bets in the small blind (he tries to put 1200 in obv). Of course I call. The flop comes A53. He bets, I raise, he huffs and puffs and throws it away. Maybe this is standard at a certain level but I was pleased with it. I'm sure it was worth 600 on the flop to make him put down a pair, and in fact Mr Duke (who was sitting in between me and the villain here) told me later he said he had Queens. While the NL was a bit of a grind without antes, the limit part of this tournament was great, so I'm definitely going to change the schedule and play the $2000 Limit on Tuesday. If I wish I can follow that up with Stud Hi-Lo on Thursday, SHOE on Sunday and Limit Shootout on Tuesday week which would be an ideal break from NL before the main event. It wouldn't do any harm to ease off the single tables either. It's not as though I'm learning anything in them, and I didn't come out here to grind.

Vanessa Parody

2007-06-23T18:30:00.000+01:00

Over on 2+2, although Brandi still pops up every now and then to entertain everyone with news from her own special world, much of the attention has switched to Vanessa Rousso. After reports of an "altercation" at her table, a few people discussed how annoying they thought she was generally. Had Vanessa simply ignored it, or responded something like "LOL who cares what you knob-jockeys think", that would probably have been that, pretty much. Unfortunately (for her), she instead posted a very long, very defensive response which was almost immediately ripped to shreds as being both inaccurate as an account of what happened and laughable in terms of poker analysis (the phrase "I made an aggressive call" came in for some well-justified stick). Eventually the whole story came out, including how she couldn't deal with the situation at the table and had to encourage her boyfriend to offer the guy out instead. As usual, everyone comes out of it worse, although the guy who upset her at the table simply admitted that he shouldn't have said anything and came out of the aftermath OK. Here's the whole thread, it's not up to "Never Trust Anyone" but it's worth a read and, unusually, it becomes more interesting later as it diverges into a discussion on calling the clock and how to deal with criticism of your play at the table. Someone called "innerpeace" makes a couple of great posts towards the end.

In my experience of forums, a pack mentality can develop and once someone becomes a target then it can get a bit over the top. But I have found it to be very rare for someone to attract a lot of stick when they don't deserve at least some of it. I have been criticised on forums for being pompous and overly-judgemental, often anonymously and sometimes in quite vitriolic terms, but at the end of the day it was fair criticism to an extent and I managed to take it on board, although I do still have a tendency to take the pulpit every now and then ;-). In Vanessa's case, I haven't had the pleasure of sharing a table with her, but with so many reports of bad form (especially being a bad winner), there must be something wrong. What's quite interesting is how the issue of her being a woman comes into play.

I think it is definitely a factor, but in an indirect way. Behaviour like this is often found in players who have flown too high too soon. They either score a big result or attract a sponsorship deal before they have "paid their dues" by putting in the hours learning the game. At this point I could just refer you to "Fooled By Randomness", please do read this book, but in brief they simply don't understand how much of their success has been attributable to short-term luck. In my own experience, when I finished 2nd at the Vic for £10K I simply had no idea how lucky I had been because I hadn't really stuck any bad beats on anyone along the way. Instead, I won 5 or 6 hands where someone found a second-best hand and mine held up. I didn't realise at the time that this was in itself extremely lucky, as a 6-way parlay. So I gave half of it back before some of the truth sunk in and I went back to learning the game at the lower levels. It's probably lucky for me as a person that I didn't cop for much more at that point in my poker career.

If you do find yourself promoted too far too soon, this can cause problems. There was a guy who won about $400K out of nowhere in an early WPT event. Six months later, by his own admission, he was flinging cards at people and shouting "don't you know who I am ?". Now this is where the gender issue comes in. Rousso finished 7th in the WPT main event at just the right time, when sites were casting around for sponsored players and any moderately attractive woman was considered a very marketable property (Erica Schoenberg also attracted a sponsorship deal on the back of finishing 17th in that event). So, because she was a woman, she didn't even need a tremendously unlikely result to break through onto the circuit. 7th place for 10 times her buyin was more than sufficient.

What I'm saying is that many players who find themselves catapulted into a game that's too big for them, for whatever reason, will find it difficult to accept the bad times when they come, as they inevitably will, because they lack the experience and understanding to realise how much of what happens is completely beyond their control. This is when they start getting defensive, justifying their own play, criticising the play of others and reacting unprofessionally to bad beats and bustouts. And the point I am finally reaching is that this is, proportionally, far more likely to happen to a female player because, for reasons that are entirely understandable, a female player is far more likely to attract a sponsorship deal on the back of an isolated result or two.

I don't think there's any reason why women shouldn't be able to play the game as well as men. I do think there's a reason why they don't. I suspect that men are far more likely to obsess about the game enough to put in the huge amount of time that is needed (by everyone except the naturally gifted) to reach a high standard. I know it's a sample size of one, but a friend of mine could have been, and in fact already was, a really good player. However, she lost interest in the game after a couple of years and moved on. When TV and sponsors are so desperate to feature female players though, those who are out there are often promoted too far above their ability, and the result is that a false impression can be created. If you've ever watched a "women only" TV game you'll know what I mean. Now I think of it, this goes all the way back to Late Night Poker. A lot of the players on that show weren't great, but often they were so desperate for a woman to give some variety to the show, they ended up with someone who was completely out of her depth. I can think of two in particular who I know for a fact couldn't beat the £20 tournaments in Luton. Time Out once previewed the programme as "Six poker professionals and a supermarket cashier compete in the late night poker showdown".

My point is that it's not necessarily wrong for attractive women to become high-profile in poker, I understand how the world works. However, it does create a false impression. If you watch Vanessa Rousso play poker on TV you could be excused for thinking "Jeez, women are such donks, and pains in the ass as well". If you watched Vanessa Selbst, it would be a lot different. But the latter isn't on TV because she isn't considered as attractive as Rousso and so on, and more to the point because she seems to be a serious winning player who doesn't need sponsorship to play at this level. In addition, anyone who is promoted beyond their poker ability is also likely to be promoted beyond their emotional and mental strength, which is what leads to all the bad behaviour. Getting something without working for it sounds great to start with, but it leads to so many problems down the line, in many fields. Poker is so tough that these problems are exacerbated and the cracks are split open very quickly. Maybe it all amounts to being careful what you wish for, especially somewhere like the World Series.

$2000 Pot Limit (Bustoooooo)

2007-06-23T03:17:00.000+01:00

LOL foldaments. This was a good tournament for me to play today, in pot limit it's more difficult to have a rush of blood and murder all your chips in one go so I played a lot better than yesterday when I think I was a bit off the pace. As in the short-handed, I had a good start, peaking at 6800 after winning 3 or 4 pots (from starting 4K). Then I went card dead and over the next three hours basically made Laurie Butters look like Neel Chudasarma (one for the Luton old-schoolers there). I was moved to a funereally slow table and after that broke, onto a new table where the entire game revolved around everyone trying to bust this one guy who was so bad.

He should have busted me with a monster draw on the turn against my set but he managed to check-call it and check the river when he hit, leaving me with 3K. I moved tables again and made the most of my freeroll by doubling up with KK in the small blind against the button's AJ. I just called his raise, the flop came AA2 check check, and the turn a King, when we smashed it all in obv. Then I won another pot with Aces against a rather hopeful KJ on a J high flop, nicked a couple, check-raised Kenna James off a K53 flop holding 44 and that brought me up to 15K.

Then a Scandi raised in the hi-jack (Martin Wendt was at the table and this guy was talking to him a lot like they obviously knew each other), I reraised 2K in the BB with Queens and he made it about 5K more. I'd already seen him make a big bluff, and show it, so I elected to shove. He called with AKs, flop AAJ, gg me once again.

I was disappointed for all of about 2 minutes. I played much better today like I said, gave myself every chance and busted in an unavoidable coin-flip coup. Winning that pot would have given me double the average chips with about 160 players left. But it wasn't to be, so next up it's the $1500 mixed limit/no limit on Sunday afternoon.

$1500 NL (Busto)

2007-06-21T23:49:00.000+01:00

Busted out in level 4. I had doubled up on a coin flip AKs v TT and had 5K when the key hand came up. It was 2500 to go by the time the action was on me and I thought "The only hand I have to make a decision with here is Jacks". I looked down and there they were. I gambled, he had KK, gg me. Not to worry, better to burn out with 2500 runners. The standard wasn't that bad really, beatable but not totally lol donkaments. I'll be back for the $2000 PL tomorrow.

Props To Eli

2007-06-21T00:57:00.000+01:00

It turns out all these prop bets were initiated by Eli Elezra. If I can summarize the conversation in forum speak, it would have gone something like this :

Faces - LOL donkaments, I bet we could win like 5 bracelets each we're so balla. But of course we won't because we're too busy playing 50 million - 100 million against each other.

Elezra - O RLY ? Bracelet prop bets for rollz, suckas

Faces - You're on. Structures are OK right Daniel ?

Negreanu - What, you think I would make a big deal about appointing myself onto the advisory committee and then take a completely slapdash approach to doing the actual work ? Come on.

(2 weeks later)

Faces : ZOMG you won't believe these donks we need to move up to $50K HORSE where they'll respect our raises. And who approved these fucking structures ? Hey Eli, buy out the bets, right ?

Elezra : STFU noobs, haha pwned.

And then to top it off, Elezra himself wins a bracelet in Stud Hi-Lo drunk off his ass. Results : Elezra 10000000 Faces 0, and Elezra goes up about 90 notches in my opinion. Well done that man.

$2000 Stud (Busto)

2007-06-20T16:16:00.000+01:00

Bumped out of this one about 1am last night. Frankly I thought I did well to last so long. I've never seen so many people pair their doorcards in general, and specifically against me. 6 times from memory, I passed my big pair four times, called a couple of times with bigger two pair than his open pair / 2 pair + straight draw on 6th and both times lost to trips or better. I'm not sure if I could have called one or two of the others, but if someone pairs their door by 5th and you only have one pair, I think it's usually best to just drop it for the loss of a few small bets.

Oh well. It was quite fun again. Chris Ferguson was on the table, and in fact I took quite a few chips off him as he was the only opponent I could make big pairs hold up against. This sounds like a bit of a moan and I even let one slip last night the 6th time, which I'm not proud of, but I have to get used to losing more pots in limit games. You just can't lose more than 3 or 4 reasonable pots in a row in a $2000 NL without busting out. Like the 6-handed, the stud game rattles around and you play a lot more hands. I still have the SHOE and the Hi-Lo to play and I'm looking forward to those.

Walking to the Amazon room to play the event I said hello to Rolf Slotboom. When I asked him if he planned to play the Stud and the PLO rebuy (today) simultaneously if necessary, he laughed and said "I'm not here to make sensible financial decisions. If I wanted to make sensible financial decisions I'd be at home playing online". QFT as they say on the forums. I'm $10K down so far but what the hell. Onwards and sideways.

Don't Make Me Angry

2007-06-19T16:08:00.001+01:00

I don't want to moan because I'm in a good mood and up for playing as much as possible for a week or two but I hate stuff like this. Today's no limit final will be 10 handed instead of the usual 9 because, according to Pokerpages :

"The obvious focus will be on Phil Hellmuth, who is in the hunt for his record 12th bracelet. ESPN made the unusual decision to stop play last night while there were still ten players, so they could guarantee another appearance of The Poker Brat on their broadcast. "

This decision has been made by someone who either doesn't understand how this changes the game or doesn't care. I don't know which is worse. You can't just wish the bubble away because you want a famous player in the final, that's blatant favouritism. Would they have stopped it if Hellmuth (who is the 2nd shortest stack) was chip leader and bullying the shit out of everybody ? If I was the chip leader here I would be spitting blood at this decision, if this is really what happened.

What I like about poker is that there usually isn't any of this crap to deal with. It doesn't matter who you are, the rules are the same, the buyin's the same, if you have the buyin you can sit down and play on an equal playing field with anyone. As long as ESPN aren't involved, it seems. I'm glad I didn't play that event, and as for Hellmuth, how much is it worth, bragging about how many bracelets you have, when the floor is bending over backwards to help you.

Update : Uncorroborated reports indicate that Hellmuth lost money in this tournament through over-insuring his hands with Ivey. If that's true, it would rule so much.

Six Appeal ($2500 Short-Handed)

2007-06-18T23:56:00.000+01:00

I'm with Andy Bloch on this one. All tournaments should be like this (6-handed max). Or at least most of them, and you could have the occasional special 10-handed event for the nits. At a rough guess, you are dealt 50% more hands per hour, and you can play 50% more of those hands, so you play twice as many in total. I was very happy with the way I played but unfortunately it didn't work out.

We started 3-handed and I took about 2000 off this one guy in 15 minutes. I hit a fair few cards but I thought I pwned him pretty good. Finally a couple more players showed up. Then I busted some poor sod in a sick set-over-set coup, I flopped QQQ to his 555. At that point I had 12K. However I was soon coolered myself, AA v QQ on a Q high board, it all went in on the turn and I was back to 7K. I had reraised pre-flop making 1200 in the pot before the flop, so I really can't see how I can get away from this hand with only 4K more to bet. Then the pwned guy from before raised the button, I reraised with AK in the BB, he pushed, I called, he had KK. That was down to 4K, and then another 1500 went with AJ v a short stack's K6s. I worked it back up to 4500 at 100-200 before getting all in with AJ v TT in a blind-vs-blind coup and I missed, gg me.

And it wasn't just that I could play a lot of hands, there were two guys on the table (Tony Cousineau and "Hollywood Dave" if you know them) who were very funny, never crossing the line though, and it was one of the most fun tables I have ever played on. Every dealer was gutted when he was pushed onto a boring table :-). So all in all I feel surprisingly upbeat about doing $2500 in three hours. I gave it my best shot, it didn't work out, but it was fun. As I said, if only all tournaments were like this.

The Ironing Is Delicious

2007-06-18T16:50:00.001+01:00

Once again this update comes to you live via other pages on the internet. Apparently the final of the $5000 NL took all of 45 hands to play out. Stuart Fox was heads up having played one hand in the final. It would be a nice problem to have, being in the final and complaining about the structure, but it does seem to be a problem. The consensus at 2+2 is that final tables were taking on average half as long as they did last year, and the limit events are equally affected (if not more so). This seems to be a combination of keeping the levels at 60 minutes in the final (rather than extending to 90 as last year), skipping a level here or there on Day 2 (again compared to 2006) and that old favourite, players hollywooding in the final.

Now, here's where the ironing comes in. These structures were approved by the players advisory committee, Negreanu and so on. The same ones who "approved" the new cards, and were the first to moan about them when they actually played with them. To be fair the players involved did claim that those weren't the cards they approved. In this case, though, the structures were there in black and white, and the players gave them the OK. The 2+2er who made the prop bet with Negreanu (his $250K to DN's $50K that DN won't win a bracelet this year) had a good look at the structures when they came out and predicted exactly what was going to happen at the final tables, that they were going to be very fast. And this was one of the reasons he struck the bet. His understanding of the impact of structure was much better than Negreanu's, even though the latter was on the committee to approve them ! Of course Danny Boy could still come through on the bet, but we're half way through and he's been in one final. That final being ... the shootout, which is not affected by these structure issues !

I wonder how many other prop bets are floating around among the high-rollers. Phil Ivey was supposedly only going to play the 50K HORSE and the Main Event [1], but it transpires that he is on a huge prop bet with someone (maybe even Full Tilt as an incentive for him to play) to win a bracelet. They're even betting on each other, Brunson reportedly scooping $400K via Hellmuth's bracelet win. Whether this will affect the integrity of any events, we'll have to see.

As for me, I played the $1000 @ Venetian yesterday but no good, just one of those days where I couldn't get anything going. I'm in the $2500 Short-handed today which should be fun and, if that doesn't work out, the $2000 Stud tomorrow afternoon.

[1] By the way I'm already tiring of hearing that the 50K HORSE "is the main event". No it isn't. That's like in The Office where Brent and Finchy lose the quiz but when they bet on whether Finch can throw a shoe over the building Brent says "This is the quiz, this is it". The main event is the main event. The 50K HORSE is a big tournament for sure, but remember that it's not so much a measure of who has $50K to play a tournament as much as it is a measure of who can convince someone (whether corporate or individual) to stake them.

LOL Something Or Other

2007-06-17T05:58:00.000+01:00

Amusing hand from a rinky-dink satellite I played in this evening. Three-way on the turn, geezer bets 150, another guy calls, and the third guy moves in for 425. Wait a minute - he's left a 25 chip on his cards. So that's not all in yet. You can probably tell where this is going. The other two call. River pairs the board or something, what am I pokernews, check check ha ha ha I bet 25 all in, roll eyes towards ceiling fold, hold chip in one eye like a pirate for some reason and ... fold.

At this point I should call everyone donks and say my head exploded but they were nice enough guys and what do I know because I busted 3rd leaving the two of them heads up. Pretty funny though. If the other guy had shown a bluff he would have ruled supreme.

I'm going to play the Venetian tomorrow, probably, it was a bit annoying to go down there today to register and be told they weren't taking money till 6pm. At least I'd been to the Mall for some headphones (sweet) and a couple of books that seem very interesting so far. I bumped into the Boatman brothers just now and Ross is still in the $2000 with 3 tables left so good luck to him ; and I'm going to post some technical stuff on the Secrets blog either tonight or tomorrow morning if anyone's interested.

$2000 NL, Busto

2007-06-16T08:48:00.000+01:00

Went out around 175th, 153 paid. Was a bit annoying, not because of being close to the money, but because the lineup was pretty soft, only Julian Gardner was really a threat but the average stack was 35K playing 800-1600/200 so there wasn't much room for error. Hands after the break :

Can't remember the blinds exactly but I pushed with M6 two off the button with ATs, Julian called me in the BB with AJ and I flopped a ten to double up to around 16K.

400-800/100, I make it 2300 on the button with KK. Big blind calls. Flop comes KK8 and before I can even think about how to get paid he sticks me all in (with A8). Yes, really. Sweet !

Bustout hand, 800-1600/200, I make it 4500 out of 30K on the button with AJ. The small blind raises to 20K. This is such a clear call online or against any aggressive reraiser. However, this guy might have been tight enough for me to let it go. I dwelled a bit, shoved in the rest, was shown QQ and lost, gg me. Oh well, AJ on the button with M7, can't lose too much sleep over that. Annoying though because I was planning to raise the button with any 2, so 90% of the time I just let him have it.

Overall it was good fun. I had a soft table early on, found it more difficult in the middle stages but once the antes really started to bite felt comfortable again. Considering I had average chips with 200 players left out of 1600 and I'd only won one race (and lost a small one), I think I gave myself every chance and we'll probably try again on Monday ($2500 short handed).

$2000 NL, Day 1 Dinner Break

2007-06-16T03:28:00.000+01:00

Still hanging in there with 7900 chips. I would have had a chance to launch them in at 300-600/75 for half an hour before dinner but someone's chips disappeared on the break and they had to pack everyone off to try to sort it out. Hands of moderate interest :

Level 1, 25-50. Scandi makes it 150 2 off the button. I make it 500 with QQ in the SB. He reraises, must have been about 1600 total, and I decide nuts to this and shove for 4K total. He asks if he can show me his hand (to gain a reaction) and is told "No". At this point I think I'm good and try to subtly induce a call. Obviously too subtly because he folds. And shows me Kings. Later it transpired that he was from Finland, which as I understand it is not part of Scandinavia. But even so.

Level 4, 100-200/25. Chinese woman limps UTG and I make it 850 with AdQd behind her. All pass, she calls. Flop comes T62 with two diamonds. She donks 1500 and I shove (LDO) for 6K. She tanks, shows JJ and mucks. Some dude looks at me and says "AK diamonds ?". She says "No way, I wouldn't put all my chips in on a draw". No, but I think you'll find that what I would do is the key question here.

I was then moved to Devilfish's table, and enjoyed a typical fish grilling when I 3x-d his early position raise with AA. He finally tabled 66 and passed (he was quite short stacked to be fair so it was a close one). The Fish was in good form and friendly to me. So at least someone doesn't read this blog.

That put me around 14K but since then I haven't picked anything good up, and any time I've tried to nick I've been snapped off. So, we'll have a gamble once we restart and see what happens.

Dollars

2007-06-14T18:42:00.001+01:00

If anyone here in Vegas wants to trade your cash $ for my (cash £ or dollars on Pokerstars), Email me.

The Iron Curtain

2007-06-14T06:02:00.000+01:00

Quite a few people aren't happy about the final table setup here in the Rio. Whenever they can, they're sort of curtaining off the final table and having a delayed broadcast on the internet which is an hour behind, all in the name of a few $ of course. I'm not even going to insult you by asking you to guess how much of that money comes back to the players involved. You know how much. Anyway, obviously I haven't been inside it yet, but I gather that the audience is very limited. I read that ZeeJustin's parents flew in for his final table but they weren't allowed to watch it [1]. Luckily the four ZeeJustins who had been knocked out were able to keep them company. Well, that joke's been made so many times now one more won't hurt. Which is what he said ... alright I'll stop.

So I also read that Matusow, of all people, was threatening to boycott any broadcast final table he was in. I'm not sure he's thought that one through. The bottom line (quite literally) is, however much anyone whinges about it (including me), if they said you had to sit on a spike at the final table like in Blackadder, everyone would do it.

I'm still firing blanks in the $500 single tables, hopefully I won't do the whole roll on them before I even start the tournaments. I will be kicking off in the $2000 on Friday, so I might have a quiet day tomorrow just to gird my loins for that. Meanwhile Keith (Hawkins) and Guy (Bowles) are both going strong in today's $5K No Limit, let us gogogogo !

[1] This bit's actually true.

Feet Under The Table

2007-06-12T19:38:00.000+01:00

Made it in one piece, the worst part of the journey was the descent into Vegas which was a bit bumpy. Immigration on the other hand was a breeze, they didn't even ask me what I do for a living. This must be a change of policy because I've always been asked before. Or maybe it's just a Vegas/poker thing as all they really wanted to know was how much money I had on me (and other players were asked the same thing). I stayed awake long enough to have a meal in Aquaknox (Venetian) with Frode, Jan Sjavik and Julian Thew which was very good.

I'm checked in the Rio, and it's something of a blow to my "everything about Harrahs is crap" attitude to find that the room's really nice, good value for money. Both my ATM cards work, and my dollar account appears to be completely juice-free, score (Citibank dollar account ftw). The staff seemed to have sorted out a lot of the poker problems and I'll be able to start going for gold once I'm de-jetlagged. I managed to resist the $1500 Shooutout today, tempting as it was. Word on the street is that the Bellagio are kicking in a $25K seat to their daily tournaments, rather than just taking it from the prize pool as I (and probably everyone else) assumed, which would make those a lot more tempting. If anyone can confirm that one way or the other, please do.

I've made a conscious decision not to spend half the trip in my room on the Internet, and that includes forswearing 2+2 and a lot of blogs, so if anything really juicy happens let me know :-). I couldn't help noticing that Hellmuth won his 11th bracelet yesterday, with the size of the fields and his apparent emotional state so far this summer I didn't think he would do that. Credit where it's due, he may be an emotional cripple but he's good at what he does in poker tournaments.

Update : OK scrub that. Bellagio are not adding a $25K seat, they're basically taking $25K of your money (if you're the winner) and saying "you have to play this". Which isn't so appetising. We'll play it by ear tomorrow. Also this evening I opened my account by (sigh) chopping a $225. I just can't be ruthless enough turning down these deals, especially against women ...

What's An Angle-Shooting Skank Like You Doing In ...

2007-06-05T15:29:00.000+01:00

... oh no wait, yes, you're in the right place. Courtesy of "Bond18" on 2+2 a Devilfish/Shannon Elizabeth tale that I enjoyed :

"A bit after this “Devil Fish” David Ulliot came over to the table and began blatantly hitting on Shannon Elizabeth and asking her to come to dinner. She at first begins with some excuse about perhaps still being in the tournament, not sure when we’re getting done, even though they had already told us. He continues to spit his game, telling her about the various places he’ll take her. She seems to reluctantly agree, and says “why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you when I’m all set here.” He gives it to her and she punches it in to her phone. Hmm, I seem to recall this trick from my single days. Well done Devil Fish, I certainly hope at your age I still have the stamina to be tournament poker player, and a guy who harasses C movie stars half my age for what will be an incredibly awkward and platonic evening."

What's A Sick Gambler Like You Doing In A Place Like This

2007-06-05T14:45:00.000+01:00

I went to the gym this morning. As I was walking past the treadmills I thought "Wow, that guy is the living spit of (well known poker player)". Then he said something to the guy next to him, and I looked down for the subtitles ... yes of course it was Bushy ! We had a quick chat, he said he normally goes to the gym in Friern Barnet but he was with a friend who lives this way. Generally he seemed in good form, said he wasn't going out to the WSOP though.

Now most of you are probably so wot so wot, you met Bushy in the gym big deal, but this always freaks me out when I meet someone from the poker world in the real world. I always think of the two worlds as being completely separate. It was just one of those funny double take moments, I would have assumed it was some crazy lookalike and walked straight past if I hadn't actually heard him mumbling like only Bushy does in the whole world :-)

Off And Staggering

2007-06-02T15:19:00.000+01:00

Ever since the WSOP really "exploded", the first couple of days have been noted for a few "teething troubles". However, instead of having fewer problems year on year as Harrah's gain more experience running the thing, it seems to be a little worse each time around. Until now, when by all accounts it's a lot worse.

Check out 2+2 for a litany of complaints, but cliff notes are as follows. Many problems pre-registering online ; "new and improved" cards that attracted the derision of absolutely everyone [1] and were withdrawn tout suite ; registration lines up to "4 to 6 hours" long, and worse than that people who "pre-registered" still had to wait ; hour-long waits to play satellites, despite legions of dealers sitting at empty tables flicking their plums [2] ; and so on.

Then if you have the patience and/or stubbornness to overcome these obstacles and play poker, you might end up next to Hellmuth, betting 1/6 of the pot on the river, being called by Ace high, mucking and kicking his chair over. Is he going to do this every time he loses a pot for 6 weeks ?

If they haven't improved the situation by the time I arrive, I'll be playing elsewhere, just coming back in for the ME. And if everywhere else sucks too, I can either do something else or come home. The bottom line is that you have to vote with your feet if you want situations like these to improve.

Still could be worse. Against my better judgement, I picked up "Bigger Deal" the other day and now I'm slogging through it. I shouldn't be critical because I knew what to expect from the prequel, so I'll just say that it's much the same except without the hope that he'll do his bollocks because he's being freerolled everywhere, mostly by Pokerstars. What strikes me though is how all the gimmicky things he goes to, and seems to quite enjoy, sound like hell on earth to me. Poker cruises with dealers throwing up on players through seasickness and comedy nights where the highlight is some bloke streaking. Twice. A boot camp where you pay $3K to get shouted at by Annie Duke (insert own joke here, I don't need to repeat myself). The "World Cup of Poker" where you have to play like a total weak-tight rock (not that Holden finds this difficult generally) under instructions from your "captain" (some egg off the Internet). The one plus point is that it reinforces my conviction that all this shite is for people who can't actually play, be they organisers, celebrity figureheads or suckers, I mean customers.

On the credit side, there are a couple of interesting quotes, my favourite being Barry Hearn's "A light bulb flashed over my head ... Wow, here's a sport where the players pay the prize money ! Well, I just had to get into that." Ex. Fucking. Xactly.

[1] Except for one guy who said "I like them. Anything that pisses off all my opponents so much is good for me".

[2] One player who queried exactly why he had been sitting at a table waiting for a setup for an hour was told "Where's your rush to get to ? The Bellagio and Wynn are full".

The Climate Mash

2007-06-01T11:11:00.000+01:00

OK, here's my last word on this before I, erm, fly half way round the world just to be a sick gambler.

http://www.climatemash.org/index.html

Now, if this doesn't convince you, nothing will. PS not a rickroll. PPS most awesomely of all, it's the same guy who recorded the original.

The Land Of The Free

2007-05-29T09:48:00.001+01:00

Is this the stupidest thing I have ever seen ? One more time :

"The Unites States is based on having freedom of religion, speech etc. which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist etc) but you must believe "

Now, we can all laugh at the stupid Americans but unfortunately this is becoming a common state of mind to a lesser extent. How often do you see or read a point of view which basically boils down to "You're free. Free to do it our way or fuck off". That's not what freedom is boys and girls.

Link brought to my attention by "Professionalpoker" on 2+2.

How To Save The World

2007-05-17T12:08:00.000+01:00

I keep meaning to update with more of what I do all day, and I will, probably, but one thing I have been doing is getting involved with some environmental causes. Most of the focus within the environmental community right now is on climate change, and rightly so because this is an absolutely key period.

Now, let me clarify where I'm coming from here. If you think it's all a big scam, or that a 5 degree temperature rise would be great, time to catch some rays, then fine. Don't let me take up any more of your time. I'm not interested in discussing it and you can read whatever you like into that, I don't care.

If, on the other hand, you do think it's a problem but you're kind of "yes, but what can I do about it", that's where this post comes in. What you can do about it is respond to the Draft Climate Change Bill Consultation. Click here, download the consultation response form and have at it. I'm all for people doing their own research [1] and writing their own comments, but the key points that need to be made IMO are as follows :

- 2% annual cuts leading to a 60% reduction in CO2 emission by 2050 is not sufficient. These figures are based on research that's 5 or 6 years old. Current research indicates that these cuts will not only fail to keep the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 550 parts per million (ppm) (it's currently 359 ppm by the way), but also that even at 550 ppm, temperature rises and climate effects would be more severe than anticipated in the original research. 3% cuts leading to an 80% reduction in CO2 emission by 2050 is a minimum, and some organisations are pushing for even more than that.

- 5-year budget periods would not work. As soon as there's a change of controlling party in the middle of a period, it falls apart. Outgoing Government does fuck all about it because they're not accountable when the budget period ends. Incoming government shrugs and says "it's not our fault, it was them". Annual budgets are required to make these weasels do what they're told.

- Current plans do not include emissions from aviation and shipping. To use that most favoured tool of the political columnist, the fatuous analogy, this would be like going on a calorie controlled diet where chocolate doesn't count. However transport emissions are regulated, they can't just be ignored.

I think those are the three most important points. Apart from that, don't be too cynical about whether this makes a difference. I saw a great clip at the weekend from 2003, where Margaret Beckett is saying "Well the fact that there's an open discussion about climate change can only be a good thing". What her body language and exact choice of words is really saying though is "Yeah right, good luck with that". But due to weight of public pressure, this is now happening. But it's vital to make the bill strong enough. Basically, it's not much odds to me. Come 2050 if I'm still here I'll be sitting in a rocking chair on a porch toting a shotgun and laughing a gap-toothed laugh. If you have kids though, and you want their kids to have a world to grow up in, do it now. These consultation responses have to be in by 12th June. And what the hell, if the sceptics are still reading, fill out your own response saying "I don't care because what's really important to me is that the people running energy companies become billionaires instead of just hundred millionaires". Either use the democratic process or don't moan about it after the fact.

[1] A couple of suggested Links and resources to start you off :

Friends Of The Earth Briefings and Resources

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change

Speak For Yourselves

2007-05-09T17:15:00.000+01:00

So what's the burning issue that motivates people to demand action on the Internet ? The possibly devastating effect of climate change ? US foreign policy ? No. Well yes. But also, many people seem to think that the most important issue of the day is that celebrities should be allowed to drink-drive more. Free Paris Hilton ! Here's the text of the petition :

'Paris Whitney Hilton is an American celebrity and socialite. She is an heiress to a share of the Hilton Hotel fortune, as well as to the real estate fortune of her father Richard Hilton. She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives'

Quite how Paris Hilton provides hope for anyone who isn't also an multi-millionaire heiress isn't clear. What is clear though is that if your life is so fucking mundane that Paris Hilton provides excitement, that doesn't really say so much about celebrities as it does about you. Turn your fucking TV off and live your life. Then it might be a bit more interesting.

Vegas Baby Yeah !

2007-04-28T09:31:00.001+01:00

Won a main event seat on Stars last night. In the interest of keeping up the pretence of the title of this blog, that's all for now except see you there !

Day In The Life

2007-04-22T11:25:00.000+01:00

The one thing I think most people are curious about regarding my balla poker pro lifestyle is what do I do with my time ? Especially when I don't have a TV (that bit freaks people out). It must be hard for someone with say three kids and a full time job to imagine exactly what I do all day to avoid going nuts. I could say the same of them, but I've always liked a bit of space :-). Anyway, I'll try to explain as best I can, for information and entertainment.

Obviously I spend some amount of time playing poker. What do I do with my time might be the question I am asked most often, but it's possible that people are actually more curious about how much money I make, and just too polite to ask. When you can win $60K in one lump it's a bit hard to quantify, but in my regular online grinding I'm looking to make somewhere around $80-$100 an hour. At the moment I'm playing around 4 sessions a week where I fire up anything from 4 to (I'm trying to increase this to) 7 or 8 tournaments and play them out. A session averages around 4 hours and that's usually between 8pm-midnight on a weekday, maybe 6-10 on a weekend. That's pretty much fixed, it's when the best tournaments are. Believe it or not, $80 an hour isn't that great and there are definitely players out there who would laugh at it. I could (and should) improve my rate by taking on more risk but I have to balance that against going busto which would be a total disaster for me at this point. It's different if you're 22.

Hopefully though I can also improve my rate through study, thought and practice and I do spend a fair amount of time thinking about poker. One thing's for sure, if you're standing still, you'll get left behind. I have thrown my weight into tournament (or donkament as I shall refer to it forthwith) poker, it's what I'm best at. I could spend a lot of time learning some form of cash game, but it would take a long time with a definite loss of income and I'm so accustomed to knowing what I'm doing in tournaments that there would be a severe psychological impact to feeling like a fish again. Sad but true. Anyway, I think my game has improved a lot over the last year. I have recently discovered PokerXFactor which I highly recommend. I've probably spent about 8 hours over the last week watching Rizen talk through a video of his Stars Sunday win. Re-reading books, revising my own play and just plain thinking is time well spent.

In theory I could improve my game through strategy forums and posts online. In theory. If 99% of them weren't terrible. Poker forums jumped the shark some time ago. Blogs were the new forums for a while but eventually they became so widespread that the same thing happened. Plus, many of my favourite bloggers either don't post about poker any more (Phillips, Chan, Schleger, Maroon), don't post at all (Camel, Pokerbastard, Matros) or have gone mental with their own sense of self-importance (Negreanu). Every now and then a wild card like BlueScouse pops up but everyone and his dog has a poker blog now and that's the problem. You might notice though, that some of the blogs mentioned were more about poker gossip than poker strategy. In the area of gossip, some poker forums have stepped back up to the plate.

The basic life of a poker forum goes something like this, if it succeeds at all. A few amusing or clever people get together on a forum and make it any good. Word spreads and lots of eggs start reading the forum. Some of the eggs are complete idiots who swamp the forum with bullshit. Amusing/clever people get sick of it and leave. The end. The only way a forum can prevent this happening is with diligent, fair, accountable and exhaustive moderation, which the majority of forums just can't do. In my experience, all but one, as I think TwoPlusTwo just about manages to keep on top of it.

If I ever run into Brandi Hawbaker in Vegas I ought to buy her a drink. Just a drink mind, that's it. Like I'd know what to do with her (apart from slap her upside the head as she sounds incredibly annoying). Anyway, thanks to the magnificent trainwreck of the "Never Trust Anyone" thread I was sucked back in to the world of poker gossip. So now I spend far too much time reading about who's busto, who's on coke, who's scamming who on the golf course, what donkament winners are complete eggs, and so on and so on. Everyone has their vice :-). It's great though. I can deal with idiots much better now. Before, whenever anyone said anything stupid I just couldn't stop myself from arguing with them. As you can imagine, this was quite often. And it's not hard to see how a lot of people would have thought I was a bit of a pompous twit. Sorry :-). Now I just laugh, which is much better all round. If you do post on forums regularly, the best advice I can give you is don't fight anyone else's battles for them. There's no need.

Anyway I'm rambling. So I spend some time on 2+2, "Bonified" is me if you care. And some of the strategy posters aren't too bad. If someone posts a hand from a decent size live tournament I'll often skim through it just to pick up a sense for the dynamic in these events. There's occasional useful information about the WSOP or whatever too. 2+2 is mostly it though, maybe the odd skim of the Hendon Mob if there's any particular issue brewing on there (as there is right now). At this point I must give a shout to guys like Pete B and Hugo who spend a lot of time wading through blogs and forums just to find the odd diamond in the waste, much appreciated.

That's about enough for one post. In a bit I'll post about all the non-poker related stuff I do, if you're interested.

I Hate To Say I Told You So

2007-03-15T15:31:00.000Z

From this blog, February 2005 :

"Do you think the British taxpayer would end up in profit when the dust settled [on the 2012 Olympics] ? I know Atlanta made a profit but if there is one thing the Americans are good at, it's making a few $$$. Anyone who thinks we would do the same is advised to consider the Millennium Dome and the new Scottish Parliament building. I have no confidence that we can make a profit on the whole deal. No confidence whatsoever. "

And today : The budget for the 2012 London Olympics has risen to £9.35bn.

Just the four times what we were told when the bid was put in. So far. And in hindsight, allow me to add Wembley Stadium to that list of buildings. ty gg.

Fame ! I'm Gonna Live Forever !

2007-03-13T22:37:00.000Z

First the Guardian, and now this. Post dated Feb 17th.

Update : Now linked directly to the post in question.

Online Tournament Action Action Action

2007-03-11T10:54:00.000Z

There are a couple of tournament on Stars coming up that are worth having a look at ; on Tuesday Pokerverdict are kicking in $2000 to a $20 tournament, 1500 EST (I suggest you check on the day exactly when that is our time), here's the link. It's a little unclear but I don't think you have to have originally signed up through Pokerverdict to be able to play. I was able to register OK. If by any chance you don't have an account on Stars (unlikely but anyway) Pokerverdict will also pay your $20 buyin. Can't say fairer than that. Of course I am not recommending that anyone open an additional account on Stars just to take advantage of this (cough).

Also tonight on Stars they're guaranteeing $1.5 million in the Sunday night eggfest and even if that's met the field should be pretty tasty so I'm going to have a rare shot at this. 8-30 start tonight because of US summer time.