blonde poker forum

Bit late, but.......a week ago, on 29th January, blonde celebrated, or not, as the case may be, it's 8th Birthday.

Jeez, what a ride, some incredible ups & downs.

We even still have some original Members.

We began with a sort of Live Update from EPT Copenhagen, the first ever interactive Live Update, I believe. It was shite, obv.

Some water passed under the bridge since then.   

This was the first ever Live Update Post.

Few blasts from the past there.....


These are OUT

Dave Colcloughn (set of 5's los to Bad Girl's et o 7's)
Ross Boatman
Jac Arama
Barney Boatman
Joe Beevers
Denis O'Mahoney (his AA lost to 66)
Willie Tann
Steve Vladar - he hit his K with AK v JJ, but oppo four flushed wih JJ.
Isobel Mercier
Keith Hawkins, his QQ beat by KK
Martin de Knijff


Chip Counts

Xuyen Bad Girl Pham 50,000

Juklian Thew 13k

Stuart Fox 28k

Even then, Thewy was running golden.....


OK, position at 2200 hours Denmark time, = 2100 UK time.

Greg Raymer OUT - His AK on a K high flop ran into KK.....

71 runners left, 156 started 10,000 starting chips, so ave now about 21k plus. (Dave wont give me a calculator.....).
Blinds are 300-600, running ante is 50.

Gary Bush 12k
Xuyen Bad Girl Pham 55k
Jim Reid 4k
Joe Grech 1k
Gus Hansen 9k
Stuart Fox 30k
Devilfish 20k
Padraig Parkinson 12k
Erik 123 40k
Ram Vaswani 18k
Marcel Luske 26k
Bambos 20k
Julian Thew 14k. Julian was all-in with TT v AQ, flop A-K-T, (Julian hit set), turn, J (oppo hit straight), river - Thewy 4 flushed it!

If you want to know how a particular player is getting on, just ask.

Ram & Eric 123 are on same table.

Bad Girl & Bushy are on same table, Bad Girl is running the table.

Stuart Fox, Devilfish & Gus Hansen are on same table.

For those saddos who want to see what the first Live Update looked like, it is here.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=2.msg10#msg10

Times have changed, incredibly some of the faces are the same.

On the very first page of that Update were Nick Whiten, now of DTD of course, Bobby1, I KNOW IT & Methuselah Minor.

OK, I promise, no more reminiscing.

A rarity in that thread. M POWER posting without saying regards :)

Belated Happy 8th Birthday  :)

Thought you were older ;)

Happy 8th birthday Blonde!

Out of interest, why does he do that?

Forum posts aren't emails.

Sandy does that too. 

And geo.

hb blonde.

It seems to me like it started as a conscious idiosyncrasy to define his posts but once people started digging him up over it he obviously couldn't stop because that would be giving in to peer pressure.

Regards,

R

how many 2005 members are left?

@Tikay, where do you expect the forum to be in 5 years? What % of the top 100 posters atm do you think will be posting in 5 years.

Great great forum.

 :hello:

Shame El Blondie doesn't pop in now and again.

I have been here since Nov 2005 and in that time blonde and it's members have given me many hours of enjoyment and numerous helpful tips.

Many members have gone for whatever reason and I do miss some of them for one reason or another very much, new members have come along and keep the forum ticking away nicely imo

Happy Birthday blonde and looking forward to many more...

 :cheers: :birthday: :cheers:

Happy birthday blonde!  I'm proud to have been a member since 2005.  :)

lol, looks like I was 17 when I registered. The forum software showing its age a bit too...

 ;whistle;

100 posts per page option would be nice!

Happy birthday!

Joined July 2005 when Skalie, Gwibbo & Conor Tate (Sealey) were all deep in the main event and mostly just lurked about in the updates for the first few years.

Happy Birthday, I joined at the end of June 2005...I have held down a relationship with blonde longer than most women in my life.

Great place, and directly or indirectly met some really good friends through blonde who at different times in my life have been very supportive - and Celtic.

Very much so. His presence would not mean much to "new generation" Members, but for balance, yes, I'd love that. He had a very wry & dry sense of humour, too. He was, strange as it may seem to some now, THE draw-card at the time. 

Now he lives in the Philippines, & he pretty much became disenchanted with blonde, I'm afraid. We had some testing times with blonde, he & I, quite normal in business relationships, but we hooked up in Vegas last year & I'm pleased to saw we are cool now. 

For the wider blonde Membership, I doubt his presence would mean much, the fashion being that old-skool have no real standing now.

No idea, Jim.

14 Members signed up on Day One, of whom the following remain regular Posters....

Karabiner

bookiebasher

Bobby1

NewportLad

I KNOW IT

LuckyBlind

Nick Whiten

Byronkincaid

Blimey, what a great question. I'll respond later, that one is quite deep.

 ;indestructable;

 :hello:

signed up day 2

28 of the 120 members who signed up before the end of February 2005, the first full month, have posted in the last week

I remember when Blonde first started and a group of you all turned up at Walsall with matching Blonde shirts and bleached blonde hair. I thought what a bunch of tossers :). Anyway I have a habit of branding players with certain monikers to help me remember them. I played with Tikay and in my mind he was tagged 'Chris Tarrant'. So for 2 days it was like why is Chris Tarrant looking at me like that? I wonder why Chris Tarrant is raising there? And after every question the sound de de de deeerrrr went through my mind.

You are suggesting I RAISED?

That kite won't fly.

it is yes. sorting that out is proving fun

Why would you brand tikay like chris tarrant? One is annoying tv presenter, and the other is. Oh. I see.

I'm not sure if you were there, but do you remember the talk Dave gave at  a Catman organised event?  I'd not long been a member of blonde at the time but managed to get an invite.  Met up with Claw, Ace2M and another chap (Dave - can't remember his blonde name, something Dave funnily enough I think) at Waterloo and we headed to Cat HQ somewhere in London.  Others were there too, I can't remember who off the top of my head and apologies if I've missed someone obvious.  That was a great night for someone like myself who was new to poker to be associating with the likes of DS, a fantastic introduction to poker.   Claire won the little freeroll tournament I believe. 

I was there, yes, I remember it well. I'm afraid blonde had it's leg well & truly lifted that night. CatMan had "CatGirl" with him, too. Interesting couple.  

Good fun though. I recall Claire being there, & Shelley Rubenstein, who used to scare me a bit back in the day, but we get along wonderfully now. She runs The Century Club in Shaftesbury Avenue these days.

There must be a thread about that night somewhere.

EDIT - There you go.


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=8515.0

"I'm afraid blonde had it's leg well & truly lifted that night."

Something not so good happened?  I didn't realise, sorry

Nah, no prob Graham.

Catman had pitched a deal to us, but it never panned out so good, & we wrote the cost off before it cost us any more. The evening was supposed to cost blonde nothing, & be the precursor of a UK Tour or somesuch, but I think it ended up costing us the fat end of a grand. Communication errors.....

Catman always came across to me as an opportunist shister. (Having watched his documentary series about opening what was essentially a pole dancing club). Hope that does not sound too harsh :)

Personally, I would not have used those words, no, but I get your drift........

Just checked my join date. Really didnt know id been a member that long. Says a lot really

Same. Thought I had been here about 4 years.

 :hello:

I'm from the 2005 class and I didn't even know Boo when I started . . . .so be careful kids you never know who you might meet ;)

Marky147 or Taximan that tournament in Spixworth outside Norwich that I think we all attended (Taxi I believe you bubbled and Marky you were TD?) was that before 2005?

I saw Dave about 18 months ago at APT Manilla , he seemed very happy with life .

Also saw  Gareth " The Nugget " Jones from Blackpool, he has changed his appearance entirely, gone are the days of wearing a suit and tie. I hardly recognised him.  

(http://www.pokerpages.com/players/images/photos_200x250/34356.jpg)           (http://www.theasianpokertour.com/wp-content/gallery/apt-asian-series-cebu-2013-side-event-winners/freezeout-1-champ.jpg)

I believe Magic Sami from Walsall has now joined them in the Philippines and they all seem to be enjoying life. Good on them.

 

I was wondering why I haven't seen him at the Broadway for a while.

I sat next to Sami few weeks ago and he was showing me all these photos of him holding big cheques in the air surrounded by sexy phillipino girls. Always was a lucky bastard.

Wow that was a long time ago, the Spixworth Motel... Rob Ward (ibuycars on Ladbrokes) still runs tournaments from there and it's actually a poker club now.

Just checked with my dad, he thinks the first one was Dec 2004 and he was the TD at the first one Rob held. I went to the 2nd one he held which would have been 2005, but I definitely wasn't TD as I didn't stop drinking all weekend :D

This thread reminds me that I need to get out more..... :)up

I still have my t shirt. Logo changed since then

sick rubz 8 years on!!! ;) I have a feeling it must have been 2005, if Micky was TD at the 1st one I definitely wasn't at there, bloody cracking weekend whenever it was

Wow, has it really been 8 yrs since you all didn't  believe I was a girl poster and branded me a bloke forever more?

fyp

I've still seen no proof to the contrary.

Any plans for the next Blonde Bash?

 :)up

I still like to visit blonde even though I never have much time to play or post, just a pro lurker.

I saw him recently too, first time in years.

Magic

Well he drinks like a girl if that's of any help.

Jeez what does that make me?

played the super 50 last night and drank lager for the first time in 20 years. Nearly £4 a pint but luckily I was to pissed for a 4th one

Do you normally drink other stuff or are/were you a fellow teetotaller?

That is such a great question Patrick. "I don't know" is the real answer.

Social Media changes SO quickly. Twitter only began in 2006, look at that now, & Facebook started 2 years earlier. The world of Online is changing so fast. Between 2005 & 2008, the most visited Social Media platform was MySpace, but that fell off a cliff.

Forums, I don't know, I think they will survive, there will always be a demand for specialist Forums where like-minded people can have a little fun, & relax together.

We have tried to widen blonde, the boom days of poker are over, & that has helped us, but overall there is a long-term decline here & on most or all other poker fora I believe.  We do make a lot of effort to keep the interest levels up with different stuff though. Not all of it goes down well, we can but try. The Advent Calendar was a great example, loads of Views & Posts, but a lot of disaffected folks too, we even lost Members over it. We just have to keep trying these different things.

We might run out of Sponsors soon, too, so we would need to approach that from a different angle. There are plans......think you'd be quite interested in them, actually, right up your street, but they are a long way from agreed or decided yet. 

Where will the Top 100 Regular Posters be in 5 years? I'm not even sure there are many more than 100 "Regulars", I don't really know, but it does not feel so. Maybe a few hundred, tops. Of those, I doubt 20% or 25% will still be here in 5 years. It is a never ending process, just like an Online Poker Site, to replenish the Membership. People move on, do different things, get fed up, whatever.

Thev chance of me being here in 5 years is close to 0%, I can tell you that. Win some, lose some......

Amazing question, had me musing for days.

I would be willing to bet (not you ofc :P) anybody that you would be here in 5 years, and if you weren't here in 5 years then its likely the forum wouldn't be close to what is it.

On the other side we have this status thing, where basically bronze < silver < gold > platinum > diamond and I was looking at "diamond threads" from like 3-4 years ago and almost all of the guys are inactive. Over there its very much a forum of individuals rather than a forum of friends which is probably the reason why I think the "top 100" on Blonde would very much be likely to be here in 3 years compared to perhaps the top 100 on PokerStrategy, although ofc its more likely to get new members over there.

I think blonde is so unique in a sense that on average, in almost every sense (hand evaluation, sports, off topic, poker topics in the rail) the discussions are on such a high level as everybody is really educated and experienced in the topics they are discussing. Rather than say 10 other poker forums, that will generally be just beginner questions and 6 post threads. Even when a beginner does come over, like chelseaboy, they are really greeted well and can turn into better players and better members as they understand the culture a lot quicker. John Black is probably a good one, his blog could have turned out really bad, but now he is a real "Advent Calender" candidate and instantly gets backing/support/friendships. I guess this is why many people were pissed off with the Greekstein situation as he was really a big part of the forum and at times would hold it all together.

One other thing which makes the forum so good is that you don't let it stay stale. Ironically, I used to be on a consultancy panel giving advice on how to optimize social forums and found it interesting/fascinating. Most of the old really good forums lost their "top 100's" and because the admins had something that worked in 2007-8 they felt they could just keep the same model and expect new arrivals to the forum to understand the culture and to enjoy it when in reality 2013 internet is very different to 2007 internet and people have a lot higher standards and are far less picky.

I often also think about who will have the most posts on a forum in like 25 years, like people could theoretically eventually had over a million posts on a forum, which is just ridiculous

Alright Patrick to steady laying it on. You are in for Christmas Eve this year :)

Some well made points tho.

Blimey, another far-seeing Post.

I'll answer it properly after I have given it some thought.

I will pick up now on what you describe as the "Greekstein situation" though, as I have had a few PM's this week asking my view, & wondering why I have not Posted on his Diary.

None of us at blonde were pleased he disappeared, he has a Diary which gets huge clicks, Posts & views, so his absence hurt us. So blonde has to be better for his return. It did not "just happen" either, a lot of stuff went on under the radar. My last (private) note to Cos, early this week, was very long indeed, & a little sharp in places, but I essentially said "get your arse back here, you know you want to". I never got a reply, (I never asked for one), but we got a result, for better or worse. That was the main thing. I hope he & I remain friends, too. He could stir the pot a bit at times, but he was so helpful to young Reece, more than anyone realises, & he started that "tikay WSOP thread" too which humbled me incredibly. Nothing is ever black or white. His beef was with our Sponsor, not us, so it was so bloody awkward.  

Situations like that are horrendous for people like Tighty & myself, & the other Mods to a degree. Cos had a beef, & I understand that, but we, & I, got caught in the crossfire, in horrendously difficult spots.

We had a similar spot several years ago with Camel, who took his leave of us. But we remained good friends away from blonde, & I kept on his case, & eventually, when he was good & ready, he returned. He has been a revelation too, as expected, & was responsible for what is now, by a country mile, currently the busiest, & most viewed, Thread on blonde.  Things like that are very satisfying indeed to me.

Me still here in 5 years? I'm going on 66.......

I also find some of the Moderation aspects too tiresome these days, & at my age I simply don't want to waste whole mornings, as I do sometimes, often in fact, doing under the radar Moderation with the disaffected. I'll never get that time back, & I'm becoming intolerant of it now, I've had enough.

When we Ban, or Cooler someone, (extremely rare these days) we get all the "Censorship" & "Free Speech" bollox, & we get called from a pig to a dog all over the shop, but when we sit on our hands, & alliow people to dilute the mood & tone of the place, say inappropriate or indelicate things people think we should act.

Andrew Kensaid this of Social-Media platforms acording to Wiki.....


British-American entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen criticizes social media in his book The Cult of the Amateur, writing, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering

I think that is an interesting take.......

Your point about the "culture of friendship" here is spot on.

PS - Don't place that bet. ;)


EDIT - Correction. I DID get a reply from Greeky. I have not replied to it. 1-1.

Thank you.

In brief, blonde, or any other Forum, is what it's Members make it. We have a tremendous core of really good Members here. They ARE blonde.

Apart from Vinny, who's bald.

Jan 31st  ;indestructable;

Blonde is a rather unique forum really. Hence its longevity.

I would guess its had more drama's and problems than most of its size. I have told a few work mates over the years about the grims, fights and dramas and they could not believe it.


As someone who really does not like poker much it offers much more on a variety of subjects it should entertain anyone (just look at the number of guests normally browsing).

Making money from it and how poker is now is kinda yesterdays dream, unless you do something simialr to SomethingAwful (allowing people to become members for $10 to remove adverts and have their own icons etc). Then again Blonde does updates :( which cost.

The only change I would do it just drop the front website and have a standalone forum.

more tee total but never drink tea or coffee. Last decent drink I had was the blonde bash.

Belated birthday greetings Blonde from a forum lurker.

Wow - i was March 2005.

And stuck with a name that I assume very few people remember the basis of!

So, where's M3Boy these days?!

Dear Jamie the BSQ host-that-was, if you want to change your name just PM a mod

M3 still plays the circuit regularly

I think that's the first time I've ever read the first thread.

Blonde had it's first 'lapsed' member by page 2.  Amorc had made 3 posts by then, and never returned for a 4th!

Looks like I was late to the party - didn't sign up until April 2005!