advice for cheapest last minute direct flight to vegas flying tomorrow.  Ideally from Manchester (if not London is fine).  Is there any way to minimize costs?  Which airlines offer direct flights from Manchester and on what days?

£393 one way, direct on Thomas Cook tomorrow. Think TC is the only direct option daily, Virgin go every Thursday and Sunday I think it is. Nothing remotely cheap from London.

Got a return date in mind?

Edit - doesn't appear that TC are daily from Manchester, my bad!

The poker scene in Middlesbrough really is a breath of fresh air.

When checking into hotels, most of the places say a credit card is required for incidentals etc, do they actually need a credit card or is Visa Debit ok?

Also when paying resort fees, are these paid on checkin or checkout?  Cash ok or do they insist on card?

thanks

Yeah, paid on checking out with either cash or card in my experience. If you wanted to cough up the resort fee from the off, I'm sure they would take it at check in. But who wants to pay up front for that shit?

Debit card has been fine for me for the incidentals.

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I have a potential issue with my trip. Printed off all the booking confirmations etc yesterday as we go next Friday. Flicking through it making sure all is as it should be, and I notice this paragraph on the main email from BA (its a BA package hol)....

''If the payment cardholder is travelling, you must bring the card
used to pay for this booking to the airport with you, for
verification, before you can travel''.

Now, I'm a pretty seasoned traveller and have never had to show any credit or debit card at any point in an airport, but this is my first time using BA's flight + hotel booking combo so not sure if this is the norm for them? The issue being the credit card that the bulk of my half of the payment went on expired last month and was disposed of. So the new CC details won't match.

Gonna phone BA tomorrow just for peace of mind, but can anyone shed any light on this? Seems a bit weird to need the card for verification purposes in a place where everyone is carrying a passport!

Hi Paul - good luck in the £3,200 Viva Las Vegas Final tonight.

Be great if you could bink a Vegas package.

Big +1 from me.

He also smashed the Mayhem freeroll yesterday, so much so that I had to turn my phone off cos the stream of '11 bounties', '12', '13' etc texts got pretty tedious.

It turns out AA doesn't fare well against hands like Q8, J9 and various other junk

I changed my modest wad at the Money Shop on Tuesday in York and got bang on 1.53. Went past today and it was back to a smidge over 1.51.  Find them to be the most competitive on the high street. Places like Post Office and M and S (unless paying with an M and S credit card) are woeful in comparison. Even Debenhams is better than them 2!

Yeah, even being 5handed, I think I'd still lean towards a nitty fold. Pretty tricky to play OOP down the streets, gonna be left guessing on so many flops and runouts if the villain unloads the clip. Stack size isn't great either, not a huge amount of wiggle room.

How often are people unloading the clip without it on sky?

True, so you either win a small pot or lose a large one?

Edit - although a small pot is still pretty reasonably sized at this late stage and with shallower stacks.

Yeah, even being 5handed, I think I'd still lean towards a nitty fold. Pretty tricky to play OOP down the streets, gonna be left guessing on so many flops and runouts if the villain unloads the clip. Stack size isn't great either, not a huge amount of wiggle room.

you protest too much

i have seen manchester city u21s twice live this year and the squad that played both games had nine non english players in it

next you'll be saying that the middle eastern millions at the club are a net positive benefit to the english game. which would be complete nonsense. all it does is distort wage scales, make it less likely that english players break through and play in european compeititons and remove compeititveness in the league

of course your side would be playing at rotherham, huddersfield and bristol next season without them, as you were before them

Ha, I can't argue about being plucked from footballing obscurity (ahead of Aresenal, Newcastle and Everton if you believe what you read). We certainly won the football lottery. Depends how far you want to dig. Vieira's U21 team is very much a melting pot of nationalities, whereas Wilcox lead a team mostly comprised of Manchester locals to a final. At one point he fielded a team that included 10 Manchester lads.

We can be accused of many things, but removing competitiveness from the league?! You do remember the 'Sky 4' that dominated English football for numerous seasons? Thankfully (IMO) that cartel was broken.

Edit...might be controversial but we, as a club, owe nothing to the English national team.

Trippier will be playing in the premier league next year

hopefully for us. i know lcfc are interested

one of burnley's few premier elague quality players

A product of our youth system. Manchester City, ruining football since 2008

Was good to see a few of them on show at Turf Moor yesterday; Trippier, Mee and Whelan. Guessing Ireland was injured.

The Bromley's might not wanna hear this, but I'd like to see Ings at City. I fear we'll lose both Jovetic and Dzeko this summer so will need some striking reinforcements. A young English forward on a free would be lovely, and he couldn't help but improve further being surrounded by players like Aguero and Silva. Not sure if he'd be happy to swap playing every week to more of a squad player role though.

Totally disagree with that to be honest.
Ings is good but wouldn't get a game at City. We really need good young English players playing every week. I think it would be a Jack Rodwell/ Scott Sinclair situation where he would play less than 10 games next season and stagnate.
He's going to leave Burnley for sure but I think a much better option for him would be to go to teams like Southampton and Swansea.

Yes, but the concern is he goes to someone like Southampton, bangs in 40 goals over the next 2 seasons and we end up paying £25m for him in 2017

I think he'd get more game time than you imagine, if Dzeko and Jovetic leave (which looks highly likely). Though granted he wouldn't play every week, esp as we sometimes play 1 up top, but not many do at City. He's a slightly different prospect to Sinclair/Rodwell, Ings is much more raw in terms of talent and I think he'd benefit massively from training/playing alongside Aguero and Bony. I would actually like to see him go abroad, I don't think enough young English players branch out like that. Even just a couple of years on the continent could do his game the world of good.

I'm biased, but I have to defend our record with English signings because I think it's a tiresome media viewpoint that we ruin careers. I can't defend Sinclair, that was baffling! Rodwell would be a first teamer at City if he could've stayed fit, though this was always the risk with him. Adam Johnson would have had much more game time if he was less of a playboy in the clubs and bars of Manchester. If Richards wasn't made of glass that would've been nice But Barry and Lescott played pivotal roles for us for numerous years, Milner has done very well (and unfortunately looks like leaving cos City won't give him the 4 year deal he craves, sort it out City!!!!!!!!!!!), Hart is a mainstay of the first XI. Really can't blame our owners for snubbing signing someone like Barkley because Everton quote you more than what you paid for Silva and Toure combined.

Jason Wilcox (remember him?!) and Vieira are working wonders with our youth set up, we have highly successful teams down there that should start filtering the finest through to the first team squad in coming years.

Right, I've rambled enough, now off to watch us get beat by Swansea!   

Trippier will be playing in the premier league next year

hopefully for us. i know lcfc are interested

one of burnley's few premier elague quality players

A product of our youth system. Manchester City, ruining football since 2008

Was good to see a few of them on show at Turf Moor yesterday; Trippier, Mee and Whelan. Guessing Ireland was injured.

The Bromley's might not wanna hear this, but I'd like to see Ings at City. I fear we'll lose both Jovetic and Dzeko this summer so will need some striking reinforcements. A young English forward on a free would be lovely, and he couldn't help but improve further being surrounded by players like Aguero and Silva. Not sure if he'd be happy to swap playing every week to more of a squad player role though.

Ha, kinda don't really want to admit it, but I've only just realised the Rio connection.

Always learning

So many shite adverts on the tellybox these days, it's hard to name just a couple!

On the flip side, I do like the Homepride advert, and some of the Irn Bru ones can be amusing.

Its a flip between Sonnet and Lucky Man for the best Verve song. Who knew a place like Wigan could produce such a quality band?!

Some of Ashcroft's solo stuff is really good as well. Just a shame he was shit when he played at centre half for City a few years ago, and was soon farmed out to Fiorentina....

Why don't you have a flatting range?

[I'd guess he is mid-thirties]

Aren't old blokes interesting?

As, I assume, you don't know Paul, I'd guess he is mid-thirties, or, put another way, about half the age of Ralph.

He just sounds, writes & acts like an old bloke.

Ha, good luck trying to get that through, Tikay!