Italian Vegas

Sports Betting: £133.49. Poker: £122.00. Total: £255.49

Will be gutted if it’s true, not just because of the $60 odd I have left there (withdrawn just about everything I had, fortunately, not so long ago I had 2-3K!) but it was where I had such a decent run on the low stake plos. I guess the writing was on the wall when they did not let the americans withdraw unlike stars, I am guessing they simply did not have the money to do so! Hence they were in breach of their licence, which was why the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) were (sadly) correct to pull the plug prior to the main hearing at the end of July. There are rumours of them trying to get another licence in another juristriction, but seriously, how many people would risk depositing to a company who (at best) has been appallingly run and who have consistently given excuses for their lack of action. At worst, they have acted in a manner which could be described as fraudulent, allowing non americans to continue to deposit whilst not segregating the funds in seperate accounts (unlike stars).

By reading the thread on two plus two, there is someone with a friend who has just over $400k, yep, you did read that correctly, and plenty more with 5 and 6 figure sums. Worrying times indeed! Apparently, he was told that he could withdraw a maximum of $2.5k a week, which when you have several hundred thousand is clearly going to take ages, even though he was removing the most he could since Black Friday. I am also sure that the staff were watching VERY closely for chip dumping as it would be obvious that people may try to attempt it to get money off the site.

You would think that with so many customers and such a solid cash flow they would be able to organize something…but clearly the lack of trust is the big stumbling point unless there is a big cash injection sufficient to pay everyone their balance. And that would take very deep pockets..unless I win the Euromillions tonight it won’t be me I’m afraid…

It will be interesting how this will effect the Main Event Field size, surely nobody will turn up representing a site which could be bust and holding hundreds of millions of players money – they would get all manner of stick, wouldn’t they?

Looking forward to the start of the new season as far as Chalfont are concerned. As for Arsenal, well, who knows, unhappy times sadly Just got my Travel Club Renewal thanking me for going to the away matches, I was considering going to the CL qualifier depending on where it is, now I just don’t know Europa League anyone?

Thanks for reading and good luck.

Couldnt make it 3 winning days in a row.   Put more volume in today but the cards were definitely against me.   Still i think i played well and didnt get too angry or tilted at all for a change.  Dropped £446 which sounds a lot but (easily could have been more and) had such good run the day before im still on a solid +£731 for the last few days.  At end of the day if i put the sort of volume ive

My apologies for the big gap in time between blog posts, I went on a bit of hiatus after my trip to Vegas, and since getting back on the online-poker grind I’ve been super busy. I realise there’s a lot going on in the poker world right now but I think my Vegas trip report is long overdue, so here it is (major tl;dr warning!).

Day 0/1 (8th/9th June)
I drove down to Gatwick airport the night before my flight, as I like to side-step any panic-travel on the day caused by traffic and such. I also wanted to make sure my son Clark understood I was leaving, rather than sneaking off at 5am, so I said goodbye to him before his bedtime which ranks pretty high on the hardest-things-I’ve-had-to-do list.

The flight was pretty standard, although I seem to forget how long a 10-hour flight even though I’ve been on a few of them. At least I scored some run-good by being given an emergency exit seat, so ship the infinite leg-room as well as not having to worry about disturbing other people when you really need a piss  … I also caught a really funny film, Just Go With It, and presumably embarrassed myself a fair amount putting my girly-laugh to good use.

I also scored some more run-good that fellow poker pro Alex Martin, who has been a friend of mine on the circuit for a few years now. We ended up sharing a taxi to my hotel, as he was at a loose end as the guys he was staying with weren’t expected for a few hours. We met up with Mark Long, who had kindly offered to let me share his room whilst in Vegas which I snap called due to wanting the company, and my ‘inner nit’. His ‘inner nit’ had chosen Bally’s as our hotel, lol, but it’s spot on location wise and he used the old $20 trick, so we had a pretty nice room.

We ended up going out for a couple of drinks and had a nice meal at the Grand Lux Café (portions ftw). We played Beer Roulette (a tamer virtual online games than it sounds, we simply ordered each other a random beer off this list of about 25), and I got the bottle Michelob Ultra which has to be the worst beer I’ve ever tasted, and I’m including Carling when I say that just to give you an idea of how gross it is!

On our way back to the hotel to go and sleep, which sounded like a pretty solid plan given it was now 11pm and I had been awake for approximately 23 hours at this point. Instead we went to this bar/nightclub place right on the strip between the Venetian and Bally’s. Alex and Martin were drinking Vodka and Redbull’s like they were water (which with all the ice they put in, they may have been), and we kept getting rounds in together, so needless to say I got completely wrecked. Factor in jet-lag and it wasn’t looking so great the next morning!…

Day 2 (10th June)
I felt pretty rough and a little shakey (damn Red Bull/vodka) but managed to man-up enough to go and play the $340 Deepstack at Caeser’s Palace. I hadn’t played there before, and they have a nice poker room. It was kinda eerie though as there the room was jam packed with 300+ poker players, yet was almost silent but for the sound of chips being shuffled. It seems everyone takes these $340s seriously!

I was playing a good tournament, and had a great table. Built up steadily to 40k from 25k when I get the following hand at 800/1600 (200). Seemingly tightish dude opens UTG to 4800. I make it 14k from 40k with AK. He tanks, then jams. I call. He has ATs. I lose. Sigh. I decided to play the $120 turbo after busting as it seemed the easiest thing to do, and bust that jamming 95s on the button for 15 bigs or something after an old guy limped the cut-off. Big-blind rejammed with 88 and I didn’t get there.

One thing about Caeser’s is, it is bloody freezing in there with air-con on. It seems in Vegas you have to make a choice between wearing sufficient clothing to not die of hypothermia inside, but melt in the sun outside, or be comfortable(ish) in the heat outside, or die of said hypothermia. I was feeling pretty ill when I came out of Caeser’s (damn Red Bull/vodka), and I thought walking outside in the warm and getting something to eat when I hadn’t had much all day would make me feel better.

So I headed to Fat Burger, which is this awesome fast-food joint I discovered when I went to Atlantic City a few years ago, and now make sure I go to a least once when I’m in the States. Unfortunately everything in Vegas seems to look closer than it actually is. I knew Fat Burger was opposite the Monte Carlo where I stayed last year, I knew the Monte Carlo was next to the new City Centre complex. I could see the City Centre complex from Caeser’s, therefore I deduced it wasn’t that far. 30 minutes later, after fending off a gazillion people trying to hand me hooker leaflets (invasion of personal space or what), I get there feeling rather worse for wear. I only manage to eat half of my amazing burger as I’m feeling pretty dodgy now.

I decide to try and get a taxi back to the hotel as I didn’t think I could manage another epic walk. So I walk the opposite way up the strip, which might seem illogical, but I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d passed to easily get a taxi. Of course there’s no where easy the other way either, so I end up walking through MGM (which is bloody huge) to the monorail. By the time I get to my hotel room, I’ve probably walked about the same distance it would be to walk back anyway, and been charged $5 for the privilege! Sigh!

So I get back to my hotel room and I’m nearly dying. Longy is feeling a bit rough too, but it’s Friday night in Vegas so we decide to do what most other people presumably do there on a Friday night. We went to bed at 8pm and slept for 13 hours. Lol.

Day 3 (11th June)
I’m feeling so much better after my monster sleep, although I do have a banging headach. Longy says there’s a Seven-Eleven just behind the hotel so I go to buy some paracetamol. Except American paracetamol is pretty weird and not called that, so I’m taking these little orange pills that I recognise only from Wayne’s World (probably not a good sign). We go and grab breakfast at this fairly budget looking place, but it was pretty awesome value for a breakfast and recommend it, it’s at Ellis Island Free Online Casino, and it seemed really popular, there was even a small wait to get a table. I had eggs, toast, some dodgy potatoes and a ham steak that Homer Simpson wouldn’t have been able to finish (given that he isn’t real), pretty sweet for $5.

Being the nits we are me and Longy decided to take advantage of the free-shuttle between Bally’s and the Rio, seeing as we passed it on our way back from breakfast. We were going to register for the $1500 WSOP Event, which was the biggest event I planned to play. We thought we’d got there in plenty of time to make the start, but sigh, there was a solid hour long queue to sign up and we ended up missing half of the first level.

I couldn’t have got off to a much better start as I received an early Christmas present. With a 4500 starting stack and blinds at 25/25 this hand comes up. UTG raises to 75, 1 caller, I get KK in MP and 3-bet to 225. UTG 4-bets to 450 and caller folds. I decide to just call as I figure a 5-bet looks too strong at this point. The board comes down a 567 rainbow.  He leads out for 750. I want to get the money in now with this flop but I decide to make it 1800 rather than shove, just trying to look a little weaker like I might have TT and fold to a shove or something like that. He pretty swiftly jams. I’m pretty much sigh calling here as he would play AA this way, maybe he has a set or 88 which I’m not exactly crushing. I’m kinda hoping he couldn’t fold JJ/QQ, but with half my stack in the pot, I’m never folding. It turns out he has spazzed out with ATos. I guess he put me on TT/JJ and was doing his best to rep KK/AA. He doesn’t bink.

I pretty much maintain my stack for the next couple of levels, with few interesting hands. Then I get this hand at 75/150, about 3 hands after being moved to a new table: I open to 375 with AKss in MP. The SB 3-bets me to 1050. All I know about him is he has a lot of chips infront of him (at least 20k), so I figure it’s fairly likely he’s been either playing aggressively or donking around. Playing a ~9k stack I could shove, but decide to give him the chance to 5-bet jam on me, so I 4-bet to 2475 with the intent of snapping if he jammed. He flat calls. This kinda sucks but only until the flop comes down AJ5 rainbow, which I’m obviously super-happy with as I’m now never folding which makes things easy for me. He checks. I bet 1475 to try and induce a jam, but he again just calls. The 6d hits the turn, putting backdoor diamonds out there. He checks again. I have just under 5k left and the pot is now ~10k. I bet everything except my 25-chips, so effectively shoving. Once he starts tanking I’m pretty happy I’m ahead, but then 2 minutes later he jams. I obviously snap. He shows AThh. So I’m pretty damn happy. I’m a 94% favourite in the biggest event I’m playing to have 4 times average chips and be in good chip posit…oh sfhg£$76yugczxcawqnsv4tghfghsg. Ten on the river.

Poker can be brutal. I’m such a nit when it comes to taking shots but the one time I do I get three outered in a sick spot. But meh, obviously this kind of thing has to be expected when you play live donkaments so although I’m sufficiently bummed it’s not like it’s a huge deal. A few years ago this might have induced me to go on some Vegas-fuelled Bajungi tilt, but I’m far too sensible for that these days.

Longy bust out with Kings shortly after me, and both at a loose end we headed to the Venetian to try and catch Simon Galloway, who was super helpful to me in his role in charge of admin stuff at Team Moshman, who I used to coach for. We had spoken to a lot, but never actually met. We ended up going for a meal with a bunch of the Team Moshman guys, including Collin himself, and his wife Katie Dozier. It was kind of one of those situations where there’s a shit-load of you round a table, and you only get to speak to the person next to you/opposite or whatever, but it was nice to meet all of those guys and put faces to screen-names so to speak.

Rather fortuitously we also bumped into David Nicholson in the Venetian, who posts on Blonde Poker, and who I’d met once before at Dusk ’til Dawn. It turned out he was staying with my good friend Stuart Rutter and some other poker players (including the legend that is John Eames), in their ridiculously sick house.

And when I say ridiculously sick, I mean it. John Eames’ room alone consisted of a bathroom with 3 sinks, a kitchen, a living room, and a wardrobe that had an upstairs as well as a downstairs!! They guys joked that he’d only brought 3 polo shirts with him, lolz, a bit too much closet space then! They had a sweet pool, jacuzzi, a gym, a huge TV and best of all, a butler! He wasn’t exactly you’re sterotypical ‘Jeeves’, he was a nice but quite abrupt American guy they jets them all around. Here are some pics of the pad:

We started off the evening by playing “The Apprentice” drinking online game (which we watched on Stu’s computer monitor in the lounge through the magic of BBC iPlayer and a VPN), whereby you had to be drinking whenever the contestant you were given talked, and I got bloody Melody who whouldn’t STFU! Fortunately I was fairly on the ball to the ‘holding your glass in the air whenever something cringeworthy gets said’ so avoided the double shots of rum forfeit on that, and thank God Melody was’t fired as the forfeit for that was a dirty drink with mixed spirits and some Tabasco sauce thrown in for good measure. Ugh!

The rest of the night was very much a mix of balla and fail.

Fail: We all headed for Henderson of all places, these two lasses that a couple of the guys were friendly with wanted to go to some gig there. Some of the guys get a taxi and me, Dave, Longy and Stu get ferried by the Butler there in a sweet ride. So we go to this budget casino and of course not everyone has passports and can’t get into the gig. #fail! Stu resorts to doing a one time punt on red, he see’s the wheel wrong and celebrates when it comes in black! Oops! It’s like not realising your opponent has backdoor straighted when you think your overpair has held!

Balla: We head to this closed off bar and get a table and Stu gets in some champagne for everyone, including a bottle of Cristal! Sick life!

Dave Nicholson, David Dial, Stu Rutter, Me, Longy, Lee Davy

Fail: Upon leaving this place to head for the trip we try and get a taxi outside. Zero taxi’s turn up over the course of the next half an hour. Rather than thinking to ask the casino to ring one (we were rather drunk by now obviously), we decided to try and hunt one down on the main road. No bloody taxi’s came past. Stu resorted to offering a guy with a pick-up truck $100 to take us in the back of his truck lolz. That could have been fun/dangerous! Stu gave him a $10 down payment and we sure saw him again! Finally after about 45 mins a taxi finally came past and we managed to head to the strip.

Balla: We went to a club called Surrender at Encore. It’s now 1.30am and to get us into the club and get a table with bottle service, Stu claims that his name is Joe Hart and all the Man City players are desperate to get in. It seems to work as we’re soon in this sick club, with hot girls dancing all over the place on poles, getting bottle service at this cool table. We spent the next few hours chatting it up with the randoms who thought they’d take advantage of the bottle of vodka/mixers that kept getting replenished on our table.

Was a pretty awesome night all in all, as at least all the fails were pretty comedy, and for a complete nit such as myself, it was interesting to see how the “other half” live! We left at about 5am, and it was kinda depressing to walk back to our hotel as the sun was rising. Well worth it though! Reading Dave’s blog post about the night he get going ’til 4pm the next day!

Day 4 (12th June)
The epic night out before put paid to the idea of playing the $1k WSOP event taking place, but I don’t think either me or Longy were that bothered after dropping $1.5k the day before. After waking up around Midday I took the opportunity to go to an outlet mall as I was desperate to stock up on some clothes as no-where close-by to home sells the kind of clothes/brands I like.

There was an Ecko store at this place which was my main motivation for heading there. I usually hate shopping but I was in heaven here. I pretty much liked everything. I must have spent at least an hour going round the store, and I ended up with a pile of about 15 things to try on, and bought most of them. Not only were the clothes awesome, but they were ridic cheap. When I do manage to find Ecko stuff in England, it’s like £25 a T-Shirt, £40 for a hoody. It was more like £6 a T-Shirt, £12.50 for a hoody in this place, so I was well away. I ended up spending about $400 lolz, and it literally only just all fit in my suitcase when it came to packing my suitcase (I’d packed pretty light for this reason).

I also bought two sweet pairs of trainers from the Nike store. I like Nike trainers as I know that a size 8.5 UK will fit my perfectly every time. It makes the whole process so much easier!

I looked for a toy to take home to Clark but didn’t really find anything I thought he’d like, so I bought him a small Ecko t-shirt to look like Daddy. Poor kid, it’s probably in his long term best interest to look less like me.

After getting back from the outlet center me and Longy decided just to go play cash online games in our hotel for a bit. Ended up just playing $1/2 for 3 hours or so. I got kind of a lame table draw as everyone was pretty nitty and weren’t that talkative. I also ran fairly Godish against the one guy I was talking to on my left, so I felt kinda bad. At least I booked some kind of win for the trip, as other than that, there wasn’t much win involved, poker-wise! Typical that I run good at bloody $1/2 but nothing else! I won like ~$350.

After a few hours me and Longy went to grab a bite to eat and had a couple of quiet beers before calling it a night. I was glad to get on with Longy so well, I presumed we would, but we kinda hung out a lot so would probably have sucked had we not done. Fortunately he can talk non-stop about poker much as I can myself so we didn’t run dry on conversation.

Day 5 (13th June)
This was my last full day, and fancied playing another tournament seeing as I had only managed to play 3 so far. It was pretty slim pickings for a one day tournament, and it turned out the Golden Nugget had the highest buy-in 1-dayer running ($230), so headed there for something different.

This had to be the softest donkament ever played, my expected ROI in that thing must have been ~6526%. Unfortunately a couple of hours in I probably got presumably the best player other than me and Longy in the field on my direct left ffs. The requirements weren’t high, but he was clearly solid MTT-er and we got chatting and it turned out he was an American online grinder that had been screwed by Black Friday, so felt kinda bad for him. I lasted about 8 hours but with 3 tables left I went out in a standard spot where I 3-bet jammed QTs for 15-20 bigs from the SB to a button open. He snap calls AT and I obv don’t get there.

With Longy still in but short I was at a bit of a loose-end. Figured I’d hang around to see if he bust or whatever. Had a stroll down the downtown street under the roof, which is okay but pretty damn tacky. I ended up deciding the nut thing to do was sit down at a Blackjack table that had hot dealers in low cut tops. I worked out I was losing about ~10-cents EV each hand if I bet $10 every time and thought it was worth it for a perv and a couple of White Russians. Lolz. How budget am I.

Quite randomly I get speaking to the guy sat next to me and it turns out he’s some sick online poker player who’s wife was still in the tournament. It was quite comedy that he Sharkscoped me from his phone to see who I was, and was pretty gutted that he had my Sharkscope completely crushed. What are the chances of me sitting next to someone playing budget blackjack in the Golden Nugget casino who wins more at poker than me? His online handle is Andressporano, and it turns out his a super-nice guy. He’s from Alicante in Spain but has been living in Alaska for the last few years. I had good fun talking to him about poker and such whilst waiting for Longy to win/bust (winning would be good as I had 15%, busting would be good so we could go out and have beers). Longy ended up making the final table, which must have been the lolest final table in history. I think the standard open was 5x lolz. Obviously he got sicked with QQ vs AJ to bust in 8th for peanuts, which was pretty brutal given how soft the table was.

It was like 1am and we were both kinda beat so we just headed back to the hotel, despite the taxi-driver trying to hustle us with hookers/asian massage parlours. GG your tip there mate.

So the pokerz went pretty shitty all in all, which obviously happens a high percentage of the time when you only manage to play 4 MTTs, however soft they are. If I was going out for longer I probably would have grinded the supposedly ridonkulously soft SNG satellites in the Rio, but I didn’t really see the point when I was going for such a short time. Live poker is so soft, and it’s kinda fun when you’re used to shove-botting online, but at the end of the day the variance is just ridiculous. I could probably play the same amount of poker I played in Vegas in less than an hour playing online. I definitely felt pretty motivated to get back online and start winning again after donking off a fair chunk in Vegas.

Day 6 (14th June)
With my flight at ~4pm I didn’t have time to do a whole lot before I left. I went to grab brunch with Longy and to say goodbye to him which was emotional. I really appreciated being out there with someone though, as in 2007 I did it alone and turned out to be a big mistake. This left me a bit of time to look for a present for the missus. She had mentioned she’d like some kind of designer hand-bag (joy) so I went to the ‘Miracle Mile’ at Planet Hollywood that had sod all, and then tried the fancy shops at the City Centre.

I bet I looked a right picture walking into the Prada store with my Liverpool shirt and Umbro shorts on! Felt rather out of place to say the least. You know the items have to be bloody expensive when instead of displaying the prices, they put them inside an envelope somewhere inside. I was about to get the hell out of there and tell Liz I’d buy her something nice at home, when I saw this bag I knew she’d really like. It was apparently in the sale, as it had an even more extortionate price crossed out above the one I ended up paying. This was going to be an epic fail if Liz didn’t like it, not that I was going to give her a choice of liking it or not! Thankfully, she uses it everyday now so in about 18 years time it will have been worth the expense.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about my journey home except it was rather arduous as you would expect.

Arriving home (15th June)
After the epic journey home I could not wait to see my son and fiancée, and I made sure I spend most of my time over the next few days with them after not being there for a whole week. I kind of didn’t realise how much I’d missed Clark until I got home. In the time I was away he started speaking in short sentences as opposed to just words, and I was kinda bummed that I’d missed this development, though it might only seem like a small thing.

All in all it was a really good trip. Although it wasn’t at all worth it for the poker, I had a good time around that including one really sick night out. However I have to say it was a bit of an epic journey to only spend 5 days in Vegas. I wouldn’t really recommend it for such a short amount of time, unless you avoid spending your time playing poker completely I guess. Next time I would definitely want to go for a bit longer, but having said that I don’t want to leave my family for the length of time I would need to get the most out of it. I guess I might get my future poker fixes on the European Circuit or something. Still, Vegas is such a sick place to go, and although my bankroll took a hit, it was definitely enjoyable.

Cliff notes:
Went to Vegas….Had a good time….Came back

Could have saved myself a few hours with that version!

Mostly due to just hardly playing, really. I’ve also had a few women issues lately that often get in the way of having a focused mind on the job…poker that is. Fckin women, I tell ya they’re all nutjobs, I will never understand them!

Anyways, what little playing I have done has been, well, interesting but very, VERY predictable. It’s been a case of little by little in the $15/6′s, still maintaining an above expectation graph which is absolutely miraculous for me, although it is starting to slow down there now. And then I’ve been dipping into 45/180′s on and off for the odd session to just go and fuck it all back to the community again! To add to all my record smashing 3 figure buy-in downswings which no winning player in the world can match, I discovered recently that putting all my 45 mans together, and it is over a long period of time because I play them every now and again, I’m on a 250ish bi downswing in my last 1000+ virtual games. Thing is, alot of regs who can no longer make money in the $15/9′s have gone over to the 45/180′s desperately trying to make more money, and most are succeeding, so the want to join them is there but the way I run obviously crushes any hopes and motivation of doing well at them. But that said, the more regs choose these fre online games as their last fucking resort, the worse they will get also, and I really can’t see it lasting much longer before mnost areas of online poker are altogether not worth wasting your time trying to make a living from!! Scary times indeed. As everyone knows Full Tilt have been booted out of the market for whatever reason, I myself had a few $k in there so am not best chuffed about that but I really can’t see them keeping BILLIONS of player’s money, I mean anyone associated with them, especially well known celebrities, will be hunted down and fucking killed if people don’t get their money back so their lives are going to be ruined also. What a fucking mess! These law breakers deserve a damn good kick in!!!

Two gentlemen make there way up a flight of stairs to the dragons den loft, one is carrying a covered flip chart and the other a giant cheese baguette (guess which one).

VOICEOVER: Ray Shitar and Howard Vegeberger are the majority share holders in an online poker site named “StoleItAll.Com”. Ray and Howard are looking to sell one percent of there company, in return they are asking for one hundred million, million dollars. Will any of the dragons decide to go all-in? Or will Ray and Howard bust out?

Ray Shitar: Hello dragons and lady dragon, today I, Ray Shitar and my colleague Howard Vegeburger have a very special offer for you lucky, lucky people. We..

(Ray looks over at Howard and motions for him to put down the giant baguette his gnawing on, Howard continues totally engrossed in his sarnie)

Ray Shitar: (whispers urgently to Howard) Put it down you fat fuck…we need this…
(Too Dragons)Sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought, ohh yes we have the deal of a life time for you lucky people, 1% of the greatest money making machine ever invented and all we ask for in return is a mere one hundred million, million dollars.

Duncan Bannatyne: Sounds interesting, can you tell me a little bit about the way the online poker business works?

Ray Shitar: (Looks perplexed) Well people give us there money, and we spend it? (Howard violently jabs him in the ribs) ohhh yeah, sorry what I meant to say is our customers deposit money on our site and then play with there own money against other players and we take a small percentage for providing the services required to facilitate online poker game onlines.

Theo Paphitis: Ray, Howard, I’ve been burnt by online businesses in the past, online processing fee’s can be so heavy they can kill a business stone dead, and with a poker room you have the potential for double the fee’s, inbound and outbound, how do you make this venture profitable?

Howard Vegeburger: Well Theo we only have to process inbound as no-one ever withdrawls.

Theo Paphitis: (Stunned) I’m sorry? Your saying no-one ever withdrawals money from your site! How can that be?

Howard Vegeburger: Well Theo, as you’re merely a successful business man and not a superstar poker player with a brain the size of a planet like me, I’ve drawn you a chart to explain what I like to call ‘The FTP Upside Down Pyramid of Poker’*, it’s the perfect system to make money just disappear.

Howard walks across to the flip chart and dramatically unveils the next page(see bottom of page to view a copy of the illustration)
Theo Paphitis: ummm, very nice chart, Can you please walk us through it?

Howard Vegeburger: Very well, players deposit on our site and we squeeze them through each level to ensure that there’s never ever money to return, you can see there are only three exit points for cash in our system, level one the rake, (pointing to graph) this goes to Ray and I and maybe a taster to you guy’s if you invest, as you can see we then take the money off the site and then rub said money on our tities, as illustrated here and here (pointing to crudely drawn pictures of himself and Ray)
Theo Paphitis: Very nice drawing, if this doesn’t work out maybe you could paint for a living.

Howard Vegeburger: Thank you, exit point two is hats and T-shirt manufacturing costs, this feeds back to the chump players at the bottom who we give the merchandise for earning points by paying on our site. We find this makes them feel like there getting something for there money, even if its just some shitty cap they feel a warm fuzzy glow about the brand. Exit point three is Phil Ivey, Phil loses the money in the Bellagio craps free online game, and we just write this off against our corporate tax bill so we end up not paying any tax.

Deborah Meaden: But surely players can just request to cash out whenever they want?

Ray Shitar: Yeah, you’d think! (Looks across at Howard and they both start giggling)

Deborah Meaden: Sorry? I fail to see what’s so funny?

Ray Shitar: Sorry, sorry honey, it’s so funny to us because we worked very hard to make our, so called “support services” so fricking awful no-one could ever withdrawal! Brilliant idea hey, Lady! It takes two and half years to receive a cheque! So as our customers are retarded degenerates, after a week there cancelling withdrawals and playing rush poker** and all the time there on monkey tilt from dealing with our customer reps!

Peter Jones: This all seems too good to be true, if it’s so easy to make money at the online free online game, why do you need our capital?

(Ray and Howard look guilty at each other and then down at there shoes)

Ray Shitar: Well, you know, we had a bit of a problem, the Americans sort of threw us out and we didn’t want to give up on all that money, so well, we sort of did a bit of money laundering and then the American government found out, so there pretty pissed with us.

Peter Jones: How much money did you launder?

Ray Shitar: Not sure exactly, Howard’s the financial wizard, how much was it Howie?

(Dragons and Ray all look at Howard, whose gone back to eating his baguette)

Howard Vegeburger: Not sure really to be honest, (screws up his face)ummm, about two or three billion over two years, maybe a little more, maybe less?

Peter Jones: How fucking much! What kind of fucking idiot thinks he can launder two or three billion unnoticed! That’s like the GDP of a small African country, Jesus you’re a fucking pair of idiots, how did you ever think you could get away with it! Shit, I’m out.

Theo Paphitis: I’m out too! (pointing at Howard) I think that fat fuck would eat all the profits anyway.

Deborah Meaden: As a simple minded woman I don’t understand poker and it scares me, So I’m out as well.

Duncan Bannatyne: I’ve watched celebrity poker club on challenge TV, I understand the online game and I think you might have something worth investing in. What is the company balance sheet looking like, how much do you owe?

Howard Vegeburger: Well we owe two hundred million to our US player pool.

Duncan Bannatyne: Ok, maybe that’s manageable, anything else?

Ray Shitar: Ohhh, there’s going to be probably another half a billion in fines from the DoJ in the states.

Duncan Bannatyne: Anything else?

Howard Vegeburger: ohh yeah, with also had our licences revoked by our gaming commission, so we will probably be fined by them, and we might have to move the site to another jurisdiction cos we fucked up and put all the money in a big pot that we just dipped in and out of as and when we felt like it, so that might cost a few bob…

Duncan Bannatyne: Is that it?

(Ray and Howard look at each other)

Ray Shitar: Yep I think so, (Checks with Howard whose nodding his head in agreement) yep that’s its, (sudden look of realisation) no hang on there’s the Ivey thing!

Howard Vegeburger: Ohh yeah I forgot about that, yeah Phil’s suing us for like one hundred and fifty million or so, but that’s it, that’s the lot.

Duncan Bannatyne: You sure?

Howard Vegeburger: Yep pretty sure! (Ray nods in agreement)

Duncan Bannatyne: Well your up to your bollocks in debt, you’ve no licence to operate, your brand figurehead is suing you, the American government is suing you, your credibility is shot to fuck and your customer base is unable to play on your site. But you know what, I think you have something, I’ll pay the price if you give me five percent?

Ray and Howard together: Fuck off!

Duncan Bannatyne: How about four percent?

Ray and Howard together: Fuck off!

Duncan Bannatyne: Three?

Ray and Howard start to pack up and leave

Duncan Bannatyne: You’re fucking mad! It’s worth nothing without my money!

Howard Vegeburger: (Stares directly at Duncan) We would rather see all our customers out of pocket, all our staff out of work and this site in burning flames before we took less than a penny less than we think its true value is.

Fade to black

* Patent applied for
** Patent also applied for

I took a pretty big beating for most of the day today as I ran quite badly and wasn’t playing particularly sharp either. Case in point:

The SB was a fish that I was hoping would come along for the ride, otherwise I’d be more inclined just to fold 66 pre as the UTG raiser is an ok reg. Why can’t they both just have AQ?!

No-Limit Hold’em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
BB ($209)
UTG ($203)
UTG+1 ($270.65)
MP1 ($239.05)
MP2 ($205.25)
MP3 ($214.30)
Hero (CO) ($276)
Button ($200)
SB ($196.05)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 6, 6
UTG bets $5.30, 4 folds, Hero calls $5.30, 1 fold, SB calls $4.30, 1 fold

Flop: ($17.90) Q, 6, Q (3 players)
SB checks, UTG bets $11, Hero raises $34, SB raises $190.75 (All-In), UTG raises $186.70 (All-In), Hero calls $163.70

Turn: ($604.05) 2 (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($604.05) K (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $604.05

Results:
SB had Q, A (three of a kind, Queens).
UTG had K, Q (full house, Queens over Kings).
Hero had 6, 6 (full house, sixes over Queens).
Outcome: UTG won $601.05

I was originally planning on playing three sets of 4500 hands with breaks in between but ended up playing 14,404 hands STRAIGHT lol. Not an ideal situation obviously but the combination of me needing VPP’s/wanting to pull back to even/better than usual virtual online gamess (likely because that other big site lost their licence) meant that I played for 9-10 hours in a row. This is something that I have only done probably less than 10 times in my career and will try to never do it again. It’s just not healthy, although I feel surprisingly fine right now or I wouldn’t even be on the computer.

That big spike just before hand #14,400 was after I won a big pot off an amateur player at 400nl. It turned out to be a giant cooler disregarding his poor play pre-flop…I was 100% willing to stack on this flop but was happy with how much value I ended up extracting anyways. On the river, I really had no clue what he was holding and was pretty much just betting because I had what I considered to be the nuts lol (the way he was check-snap calling made me think that he wouldn’t have 45, but who knows) and was hoping that he’d call with 1 pair +.

No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (9 handed)
MP1 ($518.90)
MP2 ($479.25)
MP3 ($415.75)
Hero (CO) ($443.45)
Button ($660.55)
SB ($129.80)
BB ($575.25)
UTG ($400)
UTG+1 ($441)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Q, Q
4 folds, MP3 calls $4, Hero bets $20, 3 folds, MP3 calls $16

Flop: ($46) 3, 2, 9 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $32, MP3 calls $32

Turn: ($110) Q (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $76, MP3 calls $76

River: ($262) 6 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $184, MP3 calls $184

Total pot: $630

Results:
MP3 didn’t show [2s, 2d ]
Hero had Q, Q (three of a kind, Queens).
Outcome: Hero won $627

Anyways, the good thing about that marathon session is that I now only have 4K more VPP’s to clear tomorrow to hit 50K. It will still be a long day but there will be no stress about whether or not I’ll make it (barring power outage or computer fail lol, that would be a tough beat to take….) but I really hope it just goes somewhat smoothly! Can’t wait to take some time off in early July!

gl at the tables!

My date on Sat night ended up being a waste of time.She was nice enough, but after an hour of small talk the conversation died and when she mentioned she was probably going to head up the road I was happy to reel off the standard “Well it was nice to have met you,I’d better go and get my bus” speech.After my experience with my neighbour and other dates over the last few months I was beginning to wonder if it was my own social skills that were lacking.On reflection though if I don’t feel any spark with someone then I’m not going feign interest and pretend otherwise and I guess women on dates feel exactly the same.

The other girl I was texting reckoned the first pub I’d suggested for a meal wasn’t up to much and then wanted to speak on the phone first before meeting.On Mon night she’d said was going out with her brother for a couple of hours and would text and then call me later.After she didn’t call I pretty much decided to forget the whole dating thing and enjoy my upcoming two weeks off work.

She did text me the next morning to say she’d fallen asleep on the couch when she got in but that did make me a little wary.We eventually spoke on the phone at lunchtime and met up for dinner last night.My initial instinct had been to ignore her morning text and move on, but I’m glad I didn’t as she was lovely and we hit it off quite well.She was far better looking than her profile pic,was easy to chat to and we come from similar backgrounds too.

We’ve been texting each other last night and today and as her wee girl is away staying with her Dad until Sunday I’m hoping we can arrange another date for the weekend.
I’ll take things easy with this new girl and see how it goes.If it doesn’t work out there are still thousands of awesome girls out there.Here a few choice quotes from “profiles” I was looking at the other night…

For environmentally friendly blokes there’s the girl who is “100% recycled Awesome”.Another girl who has obviously watched too much reality tv declared “I’m a fan of awesomeness”.Hey,aren’t we all?!

It’s amazing anyone on the site is single as everyone is easy going,honest and loves to laugh.Either that or they’re just “totally crazy” or as one girl wrote “zippy and zonkers”.The girl who wrote the quote below looked like Noddy Holder.I did like her profile statement although I’m not sure where the “darkside” comes into things….”I’m not over the hill or under it,I’m dancing and laughing around it.Come to the darkside.Bring a torch.”

I’ve added my monthly poker stats for June and have decided to keep the $524 I cashed out on pokers Black Friday in my bank account.

Pokerstars $1989 ( + $395 for June)

Party $803 ( -$74 for June)

Total $2792

Total profit of $321 for June

Back soon….

Been so tired and giving in to the jetlag big time.  About to head to bed in a mo and hope i can get up mid afternoon at latest.  Managed more hours today but still all in the early hours of the morning, still traffic seems ok.   Think im playin well but im def running well so far, but its only been a few sessions so nout to get excited about yet although it was a little higher in stakes today.