Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[RED-DOG]

Own up, did anyone send, or receive, a Valentine Card?


 

 

[tonytats]

 we can buy a beautiful bunch of roses for a fiver. But not today, obv.
Aldi n Lidl  think but dare we be so cheap to our lovely gfs??
M& S 12 roses £15 seems reasonable

[hector62]

Morning Mr T.

The chelsea buns were a triumph. I took some of them into my local bookies and they were in awe. I like to do something for them as they make me tons of coffees whilst I am in there, and they have listened to my coffee requirements  (strong, 2/3rd's of a cup, no sugar, and a white cup) and I get excellent coffee now. I also have given them banana cake and scones before.

[The Camel]

Morning Mr T.

This little story may add some of your wished for levity. I noticed your post about Walter Swinburn on the horse thread and I heard this on the radio shortly after his death. Someone told the story about after his retirement he went to Regents Park with his teenage daughter, or maybe it was his niece, and they decided to hire a couple of horses for an hour. The lady in charge was far too young to recognize, and probably had never heard of him anyway. She asked him if he had much experience of riding horses and he replied "  Yes, a little bit " he failed to mention the Derby win. She instructed him to mount up and then spent 5 minutes telling him his posture was wrong and he needed to be more upright, before she let him loose in the park.

I am in the process of making Chelsea Buns for the first time, if you were in the vicinity I would invite you over in a couple of hours to be the first to try them.
 

Great to see you Charlie.

If the  Walter Swinburn story is true, I love it. I do love to see humility, modesty & understated people, specially when they are or were giants of their profession. 

I was more familiar with his Dad, Wally Swinburn. He must have been very proud of Walter. I can't imagine what it is like when a son dies before the father. 

How is Phoebe? (spelling?).

How did the Chelsea Buns pan out? I'm more a fan of iced Chelsea buns, & you'd do well to beat the Tesco ones.

Unforch, I'm back in hard-diet mode again after my weight spiralled before & during Xmas, so it's all tinned toms, grapes, Ryvita & all that shite at the moment. It so sucks to have weight problems, but I guess there are far worse things to suffer from, & a little self-denial is actually quite satisfying.

Me too.

So why do you like Branson, O'Leary and Negreanu?

[Marky147]

Morning Mr T.

This little story may add some of your wished for levity. I noticed your post about Walter Swinburn on the horse thread and I heard this on the radio shortly after his death. Someone told the story about after his retirement he went to Regents Park with his teenage daughter, or maybe it was his niece, and they decided to hire a couple of horses for an hour. The lady in charge was far too young to recognize, and probably had never heard of him anyway. She asked him if he had much experience of riding horses and he replied "  Yes, a little bit " he failed to mention the Derby win. She instructed him to mount up and then spent 5 minutes telling him his posture was wrong and he needed to be more upright, before she let him loose in the park.

I am in the process of making Chelsea Buns for the first time, if you were in the vicinity I would invite you over in a couple of hours to be the first to try them.
 

Great to see you Charlie.

If the  Walter Swinburn story is true, I love it. I do love to see humility, modesty & understated people, specially when they are or were giants of their profession. 

I was more familiar with his Dad, Wally Swinburn. He must have been very proud of Walter. I can't imagine what it is like when a son dies before the father. 

How is Phoebe? (spelling?).

How did the Chelsea Buns pan out? I'm more a fan of iced Chelsea buns, & you'd do well to beat the Tesco ones.

Unforch, I'm back in hard-diet mode again after my weight spiralled before & during Xmas, so it's all tinned toms, grapes, Ryvita & all that shite at the moment. It so sucks to have weight problems, but I guess there are far worse things to suffer from, & a little self-denial is actually quite satisfying.

Me too.

So why do you like Branson, O'Leary and Negreanu?

Think Tikay has as high an opinion of Branson, as you do Daniel

[The Camel]

Morning Mr T.

This little story may add some of your wished for levity. I noticed your post about Walter Swinburn on the horse thread and I heard this on the radio shortly after his death. Someone told the story about after his retirement he went to Regents Park with his teenage daughter, or maybe it was his niece, and they decided to hire a couple of horses for an hour. The lady in charge was far too young to recognize, and probably had never heard of him anyway. She asked him if he had much experience of riding horses and he replied "  Yes, a little bit " he failed to mention the Derby win. She instructed him to mount up and then spent 5 minutes telling him his posture was wrong and he needed to be more upright, before she let him loose in the park.

I am in the process of making Chelsea Buns for the first time, if you were in the vicinity I would invite you over in a couple of hours to be the first to try them.
 

Great to see you Charlie.

If the  Walter Swinburn story is true, I love it. I do love to see humility, modesty & understated people, specially when they are or were giants of their profession. 

I was more familiar with his Dad, Wally Swinburn. He must have been very proud of Walter. I can't imagine what it is like when a son dies before the father. 

How is Phoebe? (spelling?).

How did the Chelsea Buns pan out? I'm more a fan of iced Chelsea buns, & you'd do well to beat the Tesco ones.

Unforch, I'm back in hard-diet mode again after my weight spiralled before & during Xmas, so it's all tinned toms, grapes, Ryvita & all that shite at the moment. It so sucks to have weight problems, but I guess there are far worse things to suffer from, & a little self-denial is actually quite satisfying.

Me too.

So why do you like Branson, O'Leary and Negreanu?

Think Tikay has as high an opinion of Branson, as you do Daniel

That's weird.

I can't stand either of them, but given a choice between Branson and O'Leary, I'd have to go with the bearded wonder.

[Marky147]

Especially when Branson has the better airline, too.

[hhyftrftdr]

Only met the guy in question once, at DTD (I vaguely knew him from next door). It was towards the start of his heater (it was in no doubt a heater as he's not a very good poker player whatsoever). All he could talk about was his golf betting and how so and so cost him X or if Y did this then he'd win a large sum (I don't give a flying fuck about golf so was stood there like a zoned out lemon)

I just had him down as a dull, gambling, 'poker player', ten a penny type, didn't think for a minute that he would be capable of such deceit, but I guess this is how they get people onside to part with their cash in good faith.

Really hope the people involved get at least some of their £££ back.

Talking of weight struggles, here's Percy Plump, right on cue.

Mr Strike was always telling everyone that he won £40k on some golf bet, for sure.

And I was thinking if he can get £1k bets on with any of the bigger FO Betting outfits, then he must be a pretty big loser.

I never for a moment thought he was capable of deception on such a grand scale though.

Where is he now, what's the score, is he in hiding? I assume it will end up in Court, & he'll do a bit of time.  

I'm not really in the loop so not sure what the score is, unsurprisingly his FB appears to have been deactivated. It sounds like some people are eager to involve the police and there is a mountain of screenshots and messages kicking about that he sent that one would assume can be used as evidence/build a case on.

If he does time, it wouldn't be for the first time by all accounts.

Incred scenes in the unlikely event he'd have approached me for 5k.....''I can get 27p and half a tub of Bisto to you, might take 3 weeks though''

[Lucky]

This exists and I think you'll appreciate  the mans commitment.  
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/wetherspoons-carpets-book-spoon-s-carpets-an-appreciation-kit-caless-a7367881.html

That's pretty good on the Geek Scale, Carl.

I'm awarding it a 7.


Moving on to less trivial matters, presumably you have met Neil Strike a few times? Ugh, what a sad, bad, do all that is. A whole bunch of friends & acquaintances have been taken for goodly sums, almost all of them between £2,500 & £5,000. A whole bunch of my friends Next Door got caught.

We can sit here & be all smug - "you have only yourselves to blame for lending him money" - but that misses the point completely. Most of us are decent human beings, & it's in our nature to want to help our friends who claim to have a few problems. It's not a weakness or something to be ashamed of, far from it.    

And I'm not being holier than thou, either, I've made the same mistake many a time & loaned money in good heart only to be shafted. And we can be wise after the event, & say "well he always looked a wrong 'un", but that kite don't fly, I've been done over by what appear to be the most liked & trusted folks you could imagine, including blondes with a great rep. If a friend needs a helping hand, we generally give it. And sometimes we pay in money, & lost friendships. That's just how it is.

This latest one is well bad though - genuinely criminal in the true sense of the word. I guess he'll end up doing time, but that won't help those who loaned him, that money has gone for ever.

I don't really think it's a question of being smug or otherwise. It's not even a question of helping hands and friends. It's more a question about how we identify what people we should call friends.

If we lend money to casual poker acquaintances who claim to be successful businessmen, poker players, punters on golf - then it says far more about our need to be liked and thought of us as being decent rather than actually being decent. If we want to be 'decent' - there are too many more deserving recipients of our decency to mention.

It's human nature to want to be liked - the shrewd thing is to know this and actually be shrewd rather than like being told we are shrewd

So no chance of a loan then Glenn?

It's quite interesting you posting Alan.

I know you through poker and we're friendly. I enjoy your company and I feel able to talk to you on a range of subjects. I know your line of business and I know you are successful at what you do and have accrued the monetary benefits that go with that. If you were mugged outside the G but still wanted to play poker - I'd gladly lend you £100 or so.

If you sent me an email telling me how well you'd run at poker and other forms of gambling over the last year or so but would like to borrow 5 or 10 large due to some short term business cash flow issue, there's an approximately zero percent chance of me thinking - aah poor Alan, let me see what I can do for him.

I'd wander out to the garden, crack open a bottle of Black Stump, light a fag and then muse on the first world problems some people have to deal with.

Nice reply, and don't worry, I wasn't asking, only joking. I'm pretty firmly in the "never a borrower or lender be" category.  I've only once lent a poker acquaintance £100 and I was only 50/50 expecting it back. When it came back in a few days, I was half expecting him to ask for another loan soon after,  but he never has.  

Me too, Alan, but the thing is, now & then we get caught short for cash - in Vegas, say, when we need dollars & can't easily access our bank account - so lending folks a few bob when necessary is often a way of making sure we have a credit line if needed in the future.

Fair point.  What goes around, comes around, and all that.  My wife and I lent our local greengrocer £3k last year, after he told us his mother was seriously ill overseas and needed an op. Apparently he'd already sent his last £9k and business was seasonally quiet.  He promised to repay in 3 months. It eventually took 6-7  months, a lot of chasing and stage payments for him to clear it.  A few months later his business closed and I now wonder whether the story about his mother had ever been true.

[EvilPie]

Morning Mr T.

This little story may add some of your wished for levity. I noticed your post about Walter Swinburn on the horse thread and I heard this on the radio shortly after his death. Someone told the story about after his retirement he went to Regents Park with his teenage daughter, or maybe it was his niece, and they decided to hire a couple of horses for an hour. The lady in charge was far too young to recognize, and probably had never heard of him anyway. She asked him if he had much experience of riding horses and he replied "  Yes, a little bit " he failed to mention the Derby win. She instructed him to mount up and then spent 5 minutes telling him his posture was wrong and he needed to be more upright, before she let him loose in the park.

I am in the process of making Chelsea Buns for the first time, if you were in the vicinity I would invite you over in a couple of hours to be the first to try them.
 

Great to see you Charlie.

If the  Walter Swinburn story is true, I love it. I do love to see humility, modesty & understated people, specially when they are or were giants of their profession. 

I was more familiar with his Dad, Wally Swinburn. He must have been very proud of Walter. I can't imagine what it is like when a son dies before the father. 

How is Phoebe? (spelling?).

How did the Chelsea Buns pan out? I'm more a fan of iced Chelsea buns, & you'd do well to beat the Tesco ones.

Unforch, I'm back in hard-diet mode again after my weight spiralled before & during Xmas, so it's all tinned toms, grapes, Ryvita & all that shite at the moment. It so sucks to have weight problems, but I guess there are far worse things to suffer from, & a little self-denial is actually quite satisfying.

Me too.

So why do you like Branson, O'Leary and Negreanu?

You don't have to like someone to have a certain admiration for the way they go about their business and achieve great things.

[The Camel]

This exists and I think you'll appreciate  the mans commitment.  
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/wetherspoons-carpets-book-spoon-s-carpets-an-appreciation-kit-caless-a7367881.html

That's pretty good on the Geek Scale, Carl.

I'm awarding it a 7.


Moving on to less trivial matters, presumably you have met Neil Strike a few times? Ugh, what a sad, bad, do all that is. A whole bunch of friends & acquaintances have been taken for goodly sums, almost all of them between £2,500 & £5,000. A whole bunch of my friends Next Door got caught.

We can sit here & be all smug - "you have only yourselves to blame for lending him money" - but that misses the point completely. Most of us are decent human beings, & it's in our nature to want to help our friends who claim to have a few problems. It's not a weakness or something to be ashamed of, far from it.    

And I'm not being holier than thou, either, I've made the same mistake many a time & loaned money in good heart only to be shafted. And we can be wise after the event, & say "well he always looked a wrong 'un", but that kite don't fly, I've been done over by what appear to be the most liked & trusted folks you could imagine, including blondes with a great rep. If a friend needs a helping hand, we generally give it. And sometimes we pay in money, & lost friendships. That's just how it is.

This latest one is well bad though - genuinely criminal in the true sense of the word. I guess he'll end up doing time, but that won't help those who loaned him, that money has gone for ever.

I don't really think it's a question of being smug or otherwise. It's not even a question of helping hands and friends. It's more a question about how we identify what people we should call friends.

If we lend money to casual poker acquaintances who claim to be successful businessmen, poker players, punters on golf - then it says far more about our need to be liked and thought of us as being decent rather than actually being decent. If we want to be 'decent' - there are too many more deserving recipients of our decency to mention.

It's human nature to want to be liked - the shrewd thing is to know this and actually be shrewd rather than like being told we are shrewd

So no chance of a loan then Glenn?

It's quite interesting you posting Alan.

I know you through poker and we're friendly. I enjoy your company and I feel able to talk to you on a range of subjects. I know your line of business and I know you are successful at what you do and have accrued the monetary benefits that go with that. If you were mugged outside the G but still wanted to play poker - I'd gladly lend you £100 or so.

If you sent me an email telling me how well you'd run at poker and other forms of gambling over the last year or so but would like to borrow 5 or 10 large due to some short term business cash flow issue, there's an approximately zero percent chance of me thinking - aah poor Alan, let me see what I can do for him.

I'd wander out to the garden, crack open a bottle of Black Stump, light a fag and then muse on the first world problems some people have to deal with.

Nice reply, and don't worry, I wasn't asking, only joking. I'm pretty firmly in the "never a borrower or lender be" category.  I've only once lent a poker acquaintance £100 and I was only 50/50 expecting it back. When it came back in a few days, I was half expecting him to ask for another loan soon after,  but he never has.  

Me too, Alan, but the thing is, now & then we get caught short for cash - in Vegas, say, when we need dollars & can't easily access our bank account - so lending folks a few bob when necessary is often a way of making sure we have a credit line if needed in the future.

Fair point.  What goes around, comes around, and all that.  My wife and I lent our local greengrocer £3k last year, after he told us his mother was seriously ill overseas and needed an op. Apparently he'd already sent his last £9k and business was seasonally quiet.  He promised to repay in 3 months. It eventually took 6-7  months, a lot of chasing and stage payments for him to clear it.  A few months later his business closed and I now wonder whether the story about his mother had ever been true.

The figues involved are absolutely stunning in the Strike case.

I'd lend virtually anyone £20 or £50. Friends I'd go to hundred or two without thinking about it.

But 5k or 10k? There's maybe 5 people who I'd lend that to in the world because I know 100% I'd get it back without any panic. But they wouldn't ask anyway.

[EvilPie]

The figues involved are absolutely stunning in the Strike case.

I'd lend virtually anyone £20 or £50. Friends I'd go to hundred or two without thinking about it.

But 5k or 10k? There's maybe 5 people who I'd lend that to in the world because I know 100% I'd get it back without any panic. But they wouldn't ask anyway.

Would they be off the list of 5 if they did ask?

[The Camel]

The figues involved are absolutely stunning in the Strike case.

I'd lend virtually anyone £20 or £50. Friends I'd go to hundred or two without thinking about it.

But 5k or 10k? There's maybe 5 people who I'd lend that to in the world because I know 100% I'd get it back without any panic. But they wouldn't ask anyway.

Would they be off the list of 5 if they did ask?

Hahaha, that is an excellent question!

Seriously, and this isn't after timing, just because you've had dinner with a guy a couple of times, maybe even shared a hotel room, why would that mean you'd lend him 10 bloody grand?

I read the account of one bloke who lent Strike money, and he really could not afford to lend the money, but did so anyways.

I have every sympathy for him but even if there is 0.1% risk they'll scam you, why risk the welfare of your family for some geezer you've met playing poker?

When I first got into gambling/poker a wise man said to me "What is the point of lending money? The absoluely best that can happen is that you break even on the deal".

So if you need a score for the taxi home, sure come to me. If you need 5k for the buyin to the EPT Monte Carlo until the cash flow problems in your business are sorted out, sorry, look elsewhere.

[nirvana]

The figues involved are absolutely stunning in the Strike case.

I'd lend virtually anyone £20 or £50. Friends I'd go to hundred or two without thinking about it.

But 5k or 10k? There's maybe 5 people who I'd lend that to in the world because I know 100% I'd get it back without any panic. But they wouldn't ask anyway.

Would they be off the list of 5 if they did ask?

Hahaha, that is an excellent question!

Seriously, and this isn't after timing, just because you've had dinner with a guy a couple of times, maybe even shared a hotel room, why would that mean you'd lend him 10 bloody grand?

I read the account of one bloke who lent Strike money, and he really could not afford to lend the money, but did so anyways.

I have every sympathy for him but even if there is 0.1% risk they'll scam you, why risk the welfare of your family for some geezer you've met playing poker?

When I first got into gambling/poker a wise man said to me "What is the point of lending money? The absoluely best that can happen is that you break even on the deal".

So if you need a score for the taxi home, sure come to me. If you need 5k for the buyin to the EPT Monte Carlo until the cash flow problems in your business are sorted out, sorry, look elsewhere.

Gotta remember. Until it all went wrong the strike would always bung 20% on top for a 2 week loan. It's so Nigeria scam it's untrue. Send an outlandish request and if people still talk to you move to stage 2. I'm torn between having sympathy for the scammed and just admiring the skill of the con

[Mohican]

The figues involved are absolutely stunning in the Strike case.

I'd lend virtually anyone £20 or £50. Friends I'd go to hundred or two without thinking about it.

But 5k or 10k? There's maybe 5 people who I'd lend that to in the world because I know 100% I'd get it back without any panic. But they wouldn't ask anyway.

Would they be off the list of 5 if they did ask?

Hahaha, that is an excellent question!

Seriously, and this isn't after timing, just because you've had dinner with a guy a couple of times, maybe even shared a hotel room, why would that mean you'd lend him 10 bloody grand?

I read the account of one bloke who lent Strike money, and he really could not afford to lend the money, but did so anyways.

I have every sympathy for him but even if there is 0.1% risk they'll scam you, why risk the welfare of your family for some geezer you've met playing poker?

When I first got into gambling/poker a wise man said to me "What is the point of lending money? The absoluely best that can happen is that you break even on the deal".

So if you need a score for the taxi home, sure come to me. If you need 5k for the buyin to the EPT Monte Carlo until the cash flow problems in your business are sorted out, sorry, look elsewhere.

Mr Camel, perhaps i can best explain.
 As you may or may not know, i used up a lifetime of run good in last years UKPC. So after spending the whole of day2 with Mr Strike to my immediate left, a beer in the hotel after and breakfast with him, he seemed a very pleasant chap, well known next door and seemingly a decent player(to me anyway). So in June,when i was approached for a small loan,I thought his approach not to be out of the ordinary. However, the interest seemed to good to be true and i was worried his FB account had been hacked.So after approaching a few friends in poker to get his number, one of them asked if I'd been approached for a loan and warned me away after his Wife ran checks on Neil's company(she's an accountant)after he'd been approached. So i politely declined and thought nothing of it. It seems that he targeted a lot of recs next door like me (especially the ones with a decent win rate/big scores)r and relied on his rep  there to convince them to hand over smaller sums. I wasn't too far from being one. I can name 10 without thinking from my team next door who were approached and there's with out doubt more than that who where. It seems he just used any contact he had in poker to try to further his addiction and i think he realised it was worth the effort to send all these messages as eventually he'd get a loan from a few.
 Cliffs- if he knew you through poker, there's every chance you'd be approached.