Good stuff, and the comments afterwards of course descend into the usual creation vs evolution argument. One stood out though:

>The 'theory of evolution' is as much a theory as the 'theory of gravity'.

It's not Gravity, it's Intelligent Falling. Angels are pushing from above.

 

In fact, if you will excuse my petrol-head tendencies for a moment....these days new tracks are springing up all over the world..Bahrain, China etc etc and what do they all have in coming? yes boring layouts...you would think the developers would deliver some signature corners, some overtaking spots etc etc but no..all soul-less.

In the UK you've got Craner curves at Donington, Brands sweeping here and there, Thruxton, Snetterton  all superb to watch

Spa in Belgium is a wonder to behold as well

but the new tracks? slowly stifling the spectator side of the sport.

Don't forget Cadwell Park - Lincolnshire's own mini-Nurburgring. Now there's a track with some soul. And the only one I've crashed at, back in my pre-children trackday days. Blasting up over the mountain before attempting to brake just enough for Hall bends before absolutely standing on the brakes for the hairpin while still recovering from the bends (with no runoff and lots of armco) is a serious adrenaline rush. Then you wind your way round a track that is surrounded by trees and feels narrower than your car before you head uphill where it completely opens up and you're taking a never ending bend at about 120mph. I get the shivers just writing that.

Oh, and on some forums I frequent it would be an insta-ban for anybody spelling Donington Donnington  . Although I noticed even BBC Breakfast managed that particular error on Saturday morning.

Ken Lee FTW



 

It's all gonna end in tears. I sometimes muse about what will happen when fuel really does get into under-supply, in 10 or 20 or 30 years. Women & children first? I think not. The Military & Governments will hoard it all for themselves, & sod everyone else. It will happen, it's nailed on.

We're under-supplied now - 50% price increase in 1 year is definitely a sign of low supply. And it's been said we're going to run out in 30 years since about 1910. It'll be market driven, like everything else. For example, the Canadian Oil Sands, which have been known about for a long time, costs about $50/bl to extract crude from. Up until 2 years ago, it was totally uneconomical to do. Now very profitable. And there is more oil there than in the entire middle east. Which is a lot. The Canadian oil industry is having a massive ramp up at the moment.

Market forces ftw .

Talking of flights, my boss flew up to Aberdeen last week, from EMA. Cost him £315 for a day trip as it was booked quite late. He's doing Venezuela next month (oil sand stuff, funnily enough) and the flights are £316. It's a strange market.

Hah. Call that a bad beat? I was on the benefit end of a fantastic one in the DTD scalp tourney last night.
Me - - pretty much the best hand I'd had after 1.5hrs of play
Unfortunate yank puts in small raise, I call, HU to flop
Flop -
Unfortunate yank checks, I shove my shortish stack on the flush & gutshot draws
Unfortunate yank insta-calls - turns over for the made full house
Turn
River.....




 

Straight flush to me. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiped!

If you're playing 3 handed, I'd be jamming that. Unless they've got A2 in the hole it's very tricky to call. If one or both does, of course it depends what comes off next. You've got 2 wheel cards 3 handed - you've probably got the best hand.

Not that I've played much Razz cash, but I've played some tourneys and HORSE. In a tourney I'd be folding that on circuit 1 and raising after that when a call costs more. But then it wouldn't be 3 handed in that situation.

I pokered with a Gentleman at Luton, I think (not certain) his name was Gordon White. Apparently he designed, or had something to do with, the software for "chip & pin" Credit cards, & sold the patent for zillions to the clearing banks.

He's a most charming & erudite individual, but he came up with a brain-teaser & I'm not certain he's correct. We decided to have a £100 bet on it.

He said there are only two words in the English Dictionary that contain all five vowels in the "correct" order - a, e, i, o, u.

I disputed this, but I came up with one, which he & others claimed did not exist.

His two words were.....

Fascetious.

Abstemious

I conceded both of them, but said, there & then, that this one also counted.....(He claimed it was not a word).

Abstentious. (Which I've googled tonight, & is correct).

So there are at least three. Anyone know any more?

He's definitely lost the bet. Another Google search turns up:
abstemious
abstemiously
abstentious
acheilous
acheirous
acleistous
affectious
aleikoum
anemious
annelidous
arsenious
arteriosus
arterious
bacterious
caesious
facetious
facetiously
fracedinous
half-serious
half-seriously
majestious
parecious
pareciously
placentious
tragedious
+ a few two or three word phrases with the same condition, but personally I don't think they count

And re your question about poker aliases, I'm one of those people. My name is Andrew, and on every other forum/site I register with, I use a variation of real name/surname as a user ID, but when I first registered online (Party, about 3 years ago now), I just wanted something a bit more interesting, anonymous and slightly nerdy. So I decided rex (latin: king) and 008 (one better than 007 ). Didn't help much, I'm still playing $30SNGs    .

Andrew

Yes, I pretty much keeled over. Just regretted spewing so many chips on the flop.

Anyway, to break the suspense... wait for it...

Villain 2 had QJo. J no surprise there, but Q was disappointing, although made my turn fold even more valid.

Villain 1 had KK!
Yes. Indeed. He himself admitted he'd not played it particularly well - slow played into trouble, then magnificently got out of trouble with the turn.

I guess I should be relatively pleased I got away with any chips at all (unlike villain 2). The flop/turn actually did me a favour in the end, but it didn't feel like it at the time!

Thanks for the suggestions/help/advice anyway. It's my debut PHA post (I think).

I'd normally agree - Thursday £50 at DTD can be seriously loose - I've seen loads of really weak calls in the past. In this case, the table had been quite disciplined - 2 or 3 handed flops were normal, rather than 7 or 9. And a fair few folds post-flop as well. Noone had even been close to going out on the table in the first 40 mins; again, unusual for DTD Thursday.

I quite like the check-raise on the flop idea, but I was still worried about an overcard coming out if it was checked round, and I'm not sure it would have cost me any less anyway. I someone had bet, I would have had to 2.5-3 bet them, which would likely be more than the 1000 it cost me to realise I was almost certainly behind.

As for the hands - I'll let you make some more guesses. One hand was quite expected, the other one really surprised me.

If it helps, the river was a blank. Villain 1 shoved (around 3000 or so), villain 2 called all in (2500 left I think).

They both had me covered, but not by much.

I chucked 1000 in. I thought I was probably ahead, and didn't want to give A or K a chance to hit. In retrospect I realise that it was probably an overbet.

BOTH players called. Turn was K. (can't remember suits, not really relevant).

I check, villain 1 bets 500 (into a 4350 pot). Villain 2 calls.

I fold. I'm thinking I'm well behind at least one of them here, and possibly both, and with maybe 2 outs, even 10:1 odds isn't +EV.

Anybody disagree with the check/fold here?

And for bonus marks, put villains on hands...?

DTD last night. £50+5 freezeout. level 2 (40 mins in or so), blinds 50/100. Table been reasonably cautious up to now with a couple of players who've been calling raises preflop a lot. And I've been pretty dead, down to 3500 from 4000 start.

I'm UTG+1 and get QQ
UTG folds
I raise to 400
fold
villain 1 (tightish so far - limped a couple of hands) call
fold
villain 2 (fair few preflop calls, not much action postflop) calls
button folds, blinds fold

Pot is now 1350. Flop comes JJ8 rainbow. Action to me. What should I be doing here? Betting for information? How much? Checking? Was my preflop raise the right size?

Just thought of another good Nottingham word. My wife's family are much more "Nottingham" than mine, and they come out with this stuff all the time.

"Our spare room is full of rammel"

Rammel = junk

There are also a few words that I have come across which seem indigenous to the Nottingham area.

Nesh; one who feels the cold.

Tabs; ears.

Mardy, or mahdi; in a bad mood.

It was in Nottingham that I first heard the expression "jitty", meaning "path", "Cut-Through", or "back alley". In London, it's just an "alley".

I've never heard "jitty" in Nottingham. What you're describing is a twitchel, surely?

Yeah, I played Rugby for them - would have been 1984-91. I couldn't be bothered getting beaten up, so I insisted on playing in the 3rd XV in my last year there. Was much more relaxed . My boys are starting there in September, although they won't be playing proper rugby for 5 years or so (11YO before it becomes more than tag rugby).

The huge rivalry there is with Trent College - place for rich thickies that was (no apologies for anybody who went there) Although I think generally they were probably ahead in the rugby results over the years, if only just.

They were pretty strong in hockey as well, although the main hockey teacher was not someone a boy wanted to be in a room alone with...

Went to see it last night. I was prepared for the worst... but actually thought it wasn't too bad. Apart from several "but that's just stupidly unfeasible" moments (going down three huge waterfalls without a scratch - last waterfall was a carbon copy of Niagara falls, in the Amazon rainforest, which was cunning). I bet there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Lucas when National Treasure II came out, what with the whole City of Gold storyline. The motorbike chase and the jeep/lorry chase through the jungle were entertaining though.

6.5/10. No Raiders of the Lost Ark it was, but no Phantom Menace either.