blonde poker forum

First of all thanks to Blonde for allowing me to post this.

Well I finally got around to it - I am going to attempt a world record. I have mentioned it in the past to a few people and been met with mixed reactions ranging from support to disbelief and mocking, however despite that, I am still going to do it. It is something I have intended to do since Flushy unfortunately failed in his attempt do it several years ago. It is also something I am deadly serious about, so I will be looking for as much support as possible from everyone- especially as I will be hopefully also raising lots of money for 2 hardworking charities that are local to myself: St Barnabas Hospice and Louth and District Hospice.

I will be attempting to create an endurance record for heads-up poker, which will also break the record for the longest time an individual has continuously played poker -which currently stands at 72hr 2 min and was set by Larry Olmsted (USA). (10-13th June 2004). I will be doing this by playing as many opponents as possible on a continuing basis and the record will be based on hours of continuous play of heads up poker. Guinness have accepted the claim (number 221852) and supplied all their guidelines and stipulations for the attempt, which as you can imagine are complex and far ranging.
The record attempt will be held at the Library Bar on the university campus in Lincoln and will commence at 8pm on Sunday 14th September. I am aiming to do over 100 hours which will hopefully take me to midnight on the Thursday.
I have a dedicated website for this attempt www.pokerplayingmarathon.com (http://www.pokerplayingmarathon.com) on which the whole attempt will be video streamed live. Also on the site people can donate to the two charities. There will be ‘bucket’ collections at the venue during the whole of the attempt, but also I am looking to raise a large proportion of the money by playing and beating other opponents.
All the games will be for cash (ranging from £10-£100 buy-ins) between a challenger and myself. Players wishing to challenge me, put forward their money which will be matched by myself, if I win the game all of the winnings, will be going to charity. If the opponent wins the game - in order to maximise the funds raised for charities, I am intending for them to receive donated equivalent cash value prizes.

I am not looking for any personal financial gain from this, as all of the money raised will be split between the 2 charities. You will see from the website a great deal of work has gone into this already, but all of it has been from willing (unpaid) volunteers. The media and IT assistance (cameras etc) is coming directly from the university, the venue is hosting the event free of charge and the only expenditure that has been incurred - which was for the domain and web hosting, has been paid for by my myself.

So how can you help?  I am looking for support in two ways, donations and physical turn out.

Donations can be in two ways, cash donations to fund my buy-ins and secondly prize donations that can be given in place of cash if/when the opponents beat me.

I am very confident of achieving a main sponsor to cover all of my buy-ins (I will update details of which when confirmed), so I am mainly seeking a range of different prizes, varying in value from £20 upwards.

The other way you can help is by actually turning up at the event, throughout the attempt it is required that I have 1 steward, 1 practicing nurse/doctor and 2 official witnesses present, as well as the dealers, IT support and of course someone to play against! Full details of which can be found on the site.

Thanks again to all and I hope to see as many of you as possible in September.

Best of luck with this Dave, I've seen how hard this attempt can be!

Knowing you though, you are just the right amount of crazy to pull it off  :)up

:respect: ;goodluck;

Best of luck man, a proper challenge.  But Boba Fett thinks it would be easy to do so if anyone fancies staking him he can take you on and both of you could go for the record!!!!

not 1 but 2 noble causes. gl sir, hope you get in the book

I read about this in the Echo,

I live in Lincoln, would be happy to come and play you, am sure I can drop some cash...

Perhaps will play you on Weds when you're at your weakest :D

Hi Dave, long time no see. Good luck with this.

If you are anything like Flushy I suggest peeps take you on about 9am on or near the last day, all flushy could do was talk about trains and stuff, he was out of it by then.

All that brainwashing by Tikay finally paid off eh

Best of luck with this record attempt.

You do know David Benyamine has been playing non stop on Full Tilt for 9 weeks dont you?

Just kidding, top bloke, Ive signed up for a match on monday.

Many Many thanks for your support and comments guys, I can assure you I have not taken this on lightly and have spent nearly 6 months preparing for this.

Please don't forget I am not just seeking players for this, but also the very important positions of witnesses, stewards and medical supervision, so if anyone can help out with these please use mail through the site at http://www.pokerplayingmarathon.com/schedule.html (http://www.pokerplayingmarathon.com/schedule.html).

Apologies to those who tried to book slots last night the booking form was showing an error. ;technophobe; ;technophobe; ;technophobe; It has now been punished severely and is behaving again. ;mexicanwave;

Wow, what an awesome thing to do. The very best of luck with this.

didnt flushy try this and done something crap like 2 hours?

I'm sure i remember it wasnt a fatigue thing that stopped him either, he done his whole roll playing $5 HU stts after about 1 1/2 hours didnt he?

That's one hell of a challenge................. out of interest what kind of preparation have you been doing for this? Mentally & physically this will have massive demands on you!

I will chip in with some sponsorship for sure.....GOOD LUCK   ;hattip;

Sigh

I'm also interested in this. Have you been practicing staying awake for 3 days at a time?...

yeah the best part is "practicing" staying awake for 3 days!

"practicing" ftw :)up

Good Luck Dave X

I would have loved to have come up and given you some support but its a wee bit too far for me.

Wishing you all the best and will be watching the updates.

Say Hi to Kay from me X

Very best of luck, this is what I call a challenge. I attempted a three-day poker marathon of sorts in Vegas without sleep but with regular breaks in between. Closing in the second day my head turned to mush and I was running about my hotel room doing handstands and cartwheels   :D

Out of curiosity will the play always be heads-up or will you be hoping to encourage full ring games? This would make the challenge a whole lot easier plus you have got the added bonus of getting a couple of cheeky micro-sleeps in between hands.

I'm pretty sure the record is for heads up play only

Dave's been practising staying awake for years, it's the poker he's going to struggle with.

Good luck bud

Just re-read the OP all I can say is WOW! I really don't believe 100hrs of this is possible I hope I'm wrong though.

Tank is correct all the games will be heads-up, I looked into playing stt's however I figured it was almost unworkable, eg what happens If i am knocked out first (which will become increasingly likely towards the end lol)? it would mean I am no longer playing poker and subsequently the attempt is over. With heads up, I can almost immediately start a new game.

Many people have asked how I am preparing; well I started a while back by embarking on a healthy eating and fitness campaign. I am eating low fat, low sugar, lots of fruit and veg and food days are rotating with high carb' high fibre and lots and lots of fluids (water). I am also trying to cut down on alcohol intake. During the attempt I will continue with the health eating and despite having red bull as one of the sponsors, I will be leaving out the vodka to go with it, as I won’t be drinking alcohol at all until Wednesday evening which is when the record is broken..from then on its party time!!

It would probably make sense to also try and quit smoking to, particularly as I won't be able to smoke while playing (unless we move the table and equipment outside at certain times) but to be honest I feel I have enough to concentrate on at the moment, and I do have one of those electronic cigarettes that has always served me well on fights to Vegas etc.

As for the exercise I am just doing things like sit-ups, press ups and general flexibility workouts with the odd bit of cycling and when at the gym cross trainer work and rowing. I am hoping this will build up stamina as opposed to muscle.

The training for the lack of sleep is going to be the key issue, many have jokingly commented that I am crazy enough and that staying awake for days on end is something that I have done lots of times in the past...well to be honest it is lol. I have quite often been awake and active for days on end partying, playing poker or just up drinking and hanging out with friends, but the record attempt will be in entirely different circumstances and if I'm honest will also become quite boring at times. However, I will be adjusting sleep patterns on the build up to the attempt by skipping nights of sleep and continuing on as long as possible, I am hoping that by doing so it won’t be such a shock to my body when doing the record.

During the attempt I am allowed to take breaks, I am allowed 5 minutes for every full hour of play, these 5 minutes can also be accumulated up, so for example if I play for 6 straight hours I can take 30 minutes break. Comfort breaks are counted as breaks too so I will probably try and do something like 3 hours with 15 mins’ break then 6 hours with then a 30 min break and in the 30 min breaks I will shower and change and get some fresh air...or maybe even a quick swim in the marina which is next to the library bar that’s certain to wake me up! Thankfully I am allowed to eat while playing, so there shouldn’t be any issues with having to rush down food.

We will be carrying out a 'dress rehearsal' on the 3rd of September to get things like the table, seating and camera positions all sorted out, as well as testing the bandwidth speed for the video streaming etc. The dress rehearsal will commence at about 4pm and run on until we are happy with everything, so your comments on how it comes across will be gratefully received.

Thanks again for your continued support.

Sort your barnet out!!

lol don't worry it will be sorted shortly....but will certainly be back to being more noticeable.....

Just a quick update of how preparations are going. It is now only 10 days 7hours 35minutes (gulp) to go to the start of the attempt. Thankfully the schedule is filling up with people wishing to play, and other volunteering their services as dealers, witnesses and stewards, in addition we have lots of people saying they will be on the reserve list and just a phone call away if last minute help is required, so thank you to all who are getting involved. However there is a massive shortfall of medical help, without medical cover the attempt just can’t happen, please if you are a practicing nurse or doctor or know of someone who is and can spare a few hours of their valuable time get in contact as soon as possible.

Personal preparations are also going well, over the weekend I deprived myself of 2 consecutive nights of sleep and apart from the obvious bags under the eyes it was without too much suffering.

Several poker magazines are now covering the attempt as are local press and some licence trade publications which will also raise the profile for the charities. SkyPoker channel have also been a great supporter, I was invited down to their studios yesterday to take part in their ‘The Club’ programme as well as their 5 minute questions and answers programme. The Club will be shown on Skypoker (865) tonight (Thursday 4th) at 9.30pm (and then repeated a few times over the next week), I am hoping I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself, but much more importantly, that the profile and subsequent donations to the 2 charities greatly benefit.

To improve the openness and effectiveness of the fundraising there is now a dedicated bank account for the attempt, so those wishing to donate by cheque please make them payable to PokerPlayingMarathon.

There will be another update in a few days, hopefully also with news and coverage of the ‘dress-rehearsal’ that is planned for the weekend. Thanks again to all.

Sorry to those who tuned in to watch the club last night, the programme is to be shown tonight at 8.30pm.

Just 10 hours until the attempt starts now, so I would just like to thank everybody who has worked so hard over the past couple of months to try and make this a success..hopefully I wont those people down.

The schedule is looking pretty good but its still not too late if anybody wants to get involved.

Good luck my man, I shall see you tommorow

Get some sleep ffs

*Waits for Rookie to post the "You cant attempt this world record until you have 300 posts" post*

Good luck :)

Best of luck mate. Wish my schedule wasn't so packed at the moment or I would come and support you.

Remember whatever you do learn from Flushy's attempt and whatever else happens...don't play Jacko!!!!

Should of said - hanging on in there

Lol - sleep depravation!

is he still playing?
no news since 17th lol

He nailed it.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=36894.0