Loire Valley tikay, wine country, was perfect.

I'm extremely, extremely happy. Life's just great and I'm trying now to be spending as much time as I can appreciating that.


Hope you're doing well, been far too long!  We still need to get that breakfast in be great

Hey guys!

Sorry, didn't see this!

Coin Rivet essentially a crypto platform, linked to Luxon to allow users to move crypto between FIAT and crypto quickly and compliantly If you ever need this service please reach out!!!

The $200k last year was good fun, I cam 16th, snuck into the money, Sammy won it for for $5.5m so came out very well from the comp, first tournament i'd really played (except for one a few days before) in about 4 years, had a few lessons from Sammy before, felt very comfortable in the businessman side, totally outclassed in the Pro side of course but it was a good feeling battling against the best players, the money bubble was one of the most exciting things i've gone through in gambling was so sick. 
Played the one in May too in Cyprus, with Hecklen, no luck that one -  I was too busy during August to play the invitational in London, played a pretty spicey $500/$1000 PLO game that was televised so that'll make some fun viewing if you find yourself bored for an afternoon. I wish I could play more tournaments they are so much fun, the best players in these are just so-so good, really you have to give them so much respect, you don't just fall out of bed and play this well takes years and years of work to master the craft like this.

Updates from me - betting going very well, Luxon making good progress, trying to open a casino in Ethiopia, and getting married in 4 days.

Life's fun. Miss  the good old days on Blonde!

Blimey, LilDave, the ultimate degen is back.

Great to hear from you mate.

Hey Teacake!

Just before my eldest was born, I took a few lessons and managed to get down to just over 40 on a 9 holer.  It was a really basic course with no par , so don't think it was ever equivalent to 100 on a full sized course.  Sad thing is I just discovered it has gone now, there were obvious issues with a fairly central London course back then.
Glad to see that there is a park there now. (https://www.standard.co.uk/reveller/attractions/springfield-park-will-be-london-s-first-since-the-olympics-a3900056.html)

My eldest did a couple of one day golf lessons last summer with no encouragement from me - she just fancied giving it a go.   Suspect she'll go past me in no time, but might go back and get more lessons with her. She seems much more naturally sporty than I was; but she literally watched videos of sprint techniques before school sports day.  Even though I was competitive, I can't imagine ever doing that at 13 even if we had the chance.  One of her mates is UK standard at athletics, so probably has good peer pressure too.

Other than looking after kids and work, still playing poker a couple of times a week.   I was getting pretty crap, but paid for Pad's course and am probably profitable again despite only ever watching a few of the modules.  Just needed something to get rid of a few bad habits.  If I ever had the time to do it all I'd crush.  Will be out in Vegas in the summer for just a week.  Have mostly given up on omaha, but still think I have a WSOP final table in me at O8. 

Yeh, getting into golf as a kid is defo the way, drives me wild watching some of these 12/13 yr olds just drill it round the course in the summer like its easiest thing in the world, IT'S HARD!

Glad to hear going well, still got your fingers in the poker pie which is as I'd expect See you on that O8 FT !

and it sounds like you're gonna be giving me some shots Simon

Knew I shoulda said I was off 20.  I also owe you the 2nd half of that story from that particular evening, I'm sure we both had a great night, but I'd be amazed if they ended similarly 

Haha, mate this is so intriguing, getting the sense this is one for the clubhouse not the internet

and it sounds like you're gonna be giving me some shots Simon

Welcome back.

When I read this, I thought of this Ash Barty article which is barely believable.  Would love to know which course it was.

Perhaps the greatest indication of her talent came not on the court or at the wicket, but on the golf course. “She was watching a golf tournament on TV,” says Dave Richards, Barty’s former coach at Queensland Cricket. “She turned around and said: ‘I reckon I could have a go at that.’ She went out the following day and shot a round of 81. Eighty-one! That was the first time she had ever picked up a set of clubs. It gives you an idea of the kind of talent we were dealing with

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/the-nightwatchman/2022/mar/24/ash-barty-tennis-cricket-golf-nightwatchman-grand-slams

That must be the lowest round of golf anyone has hit first time on a course.  I have played very rarely, but don't think I ever troubled 100 on a proper sized course.

Hi Doobs, how you been!

You know it's honestly amazing, sporting acumen just such a powerful tool, all the footballers make great golfers etc (obviously having time is another big edge) but as good as enthusiasm, time, effort, temperament, hard work etc is there's very little substitute for just natural ability. When mates of mine get into golf can just tell instantly who's gonna race down to a 18 with very little stress. They are amazing these people, Barty shooting 81 on her first round is literally unreal.

Me I fear will be a herculean effort down to 16 and it's likely where I'll stay, but it's nice to have a focus!!

What you up to these days??

Very similar story only I joined a neighbouring club that has a recipricating agreement with Finchley.  I went from kicking it around twice a year pre covid to 14 hcap nowadays, playing every week but not overdoing it.  If you are struggling for a game midweek shoot me a message and we can do a home&away?

Mr Galloway, you have a golf game, expect a message.

Lets sniff out a bit of good weather and it would be a pleasure to see you again, been a silly old while.

Well if you do take up golf (you should) its going one of two ways, and it can only go one of these two ways.

1. You will take it up, have a few lessons, play once or twice, find it quite tough, sort of enjoy it but it won't grab you and you'll maybe stay interested and play here and there or you'll just drift out and not play any more

or

2. You'll become totally obsessed, any time at all there is any sunshine you'll either be out there playing or berating yourself that you're not out playing, you'll develop the expensive habit of wanting to upgrade your clubs every month and you'll become extremely boring to other members of any social situation when you meet someone else as into golf as you are

Join us, we will love you, don't be scared

How are you doing? Glad to see you still running the streets round here!

Oh, in other news...

I managed to recover all my old blogs, thinking of re-posting them all in their pure form.

Ahoy there Blonde!

I just randomly found myself trawling around on here after a couple of years, just remembered how much I loved this place, was so much fun, met so many fabulous people. I was chatting to the notorious A.R.Bboy the other day reminiscing about some old vegas nights where I met up with some blondes, I've been lucky enough to have more fun vegas memories than I deserve but the night I met Simon Galloway and James Atkin (both for the first time) randomly in Venetian goes down as a solid podium finish, I don't know if young people coming into gambling/poker these days have access to the same sort of community spirit that was abundant back then but very sad if not (assume not )

Could be of no interest but I'll give you a little update on my golf progression, as it's my favourite topic to talk about...

Mid 2020, I'd had my hand operation again, which took me out of action till basically the start of corona virus, and by the time the clubs re-opened it had been a good 11 months since I'd last been able to play... bad for anyone but terminal for a man at my level with my athletic acumen, so it was basically start over. In the past 18 months I've GRINDED my official hcap down from <number not recognised> to 26.8, sounds like a very minimal progression (which lets be honest, it is ) but I'm pretty happy with the way things are going. I was super determined to break 100 last year, I joined Finchley and was playing there 1x a week on average in the summer months, I went 13 consecutive rounds of 100-106, but getting the full 18 holes in without a big blowup is just too hard, the range of blowups has been quite varied too, I shot 44 (+8) on the front (which is about 2 shots harder than the back) with 2 birdies(!) then after par4 on 10 I proceeded to do 11(330yd dead straight par4) in 8, 12 (150yd par3) in 7 and stumbled my way into 101. I also got to the 108 (yes, 108) yard par3 15 in 73 shots (16&18 quite tough p4s, 17 simple enough par5) and went on to take a 9 there, usually my temperament is excellent (in golf and life) but fuck me was I totally and absolutely RAGING on the walk to that 16th tee    closest I came was a 25ft putt for 99 which I DID not leave short (shot 101) but I repeat, I did not leave it short.

So the quest for the u100 still goes on, I really am super confident I will get there this yr if I stay fit and can play, I think I'd bet pretty big on myself to break 100 at reasonable odds on this year, have already pledged £1k to charity + a monkey more for every shot under when I get there, hopefully for the sake of said charity I randomly light it up and shoot 92 Biggest breakthrough this year has been that I'm really getting all the way back in my pivot, I think I had a tendency to slide, rather than turn, amazing when you turn back properly you just snap pick up extra yards for basically no effort, I think my swing is better than you're average 27hcap guy, I just need to convert it into scores!

Mostly though I'm just loving playing, I'm busy and stressed a lot but 4-5 hours playing golf I can really switch off and not look much at my phone etc, I'm very lucky I've been to play loads of amazing courses (far too good for me!) and I play with guys off 4/5 quite a bit as well as my coach (who I've become gd mates with) who's +1/2 and playing on the course with sick golfers is just so good, when Dan is firing of a +hcap it's other worldly to watch, absolutely mind boggling how you watch him play and wonder how it's possible to play better, but how many many miles not good enough he is to make it to even the euro tour (or DP tour now) he is. What an absolutely brutal game it is. Really is a wonderful past time!

What goes down on Blonde these days, how's everyone doing? I still speak to a few of the old legends but missing a few guys on here, Tikay not seen or spoken too in forever!  Any golf tips greatly appreciated.

I swear to god Andy Wayman if you come rolling in here with that bloody picture I'lll hunt you down and hurt you

GOD DAM YOU TITTY

Ian White, on merit and consistency he's a slam dunk deserving of a place, he's got the game for the PL too. Just dont see it happening for the Diamond I'm afraid.

Obviously as top 4 in the OOM are auto in, MVG, Rob Cross and Gerwyn are in, and as these three have near on swept the majors this yr they'll be the easiest three. I dont think it really matters which of Gary, Bully or Snakey end up as #4 I think all 3 of them easily get in anyway, despite none of them having all that stellar a year. Nathan Aspinall as a WSOD winner and the UK Open winner this year would have to be included for me, and Duzza despite no major finals has won tournaments as well as semi finals of the Matchplay, the Grand Slam and the Grand Prix, been thoroughly consistent and has a superstar hype around him as the 3x BDO champ will be unlikely not to be included for me.

MVG, Cross, Price, Smith, Anderson, Wright, Aspinall, Duzza - I'd have these as a fairly certain first 8 for now. Next question is how many full time people will there be, 9 or 10, we know there is a least 1 spot open and I think a few people have a solid enough claim on it. The 3 highest ranked players no involved in that list are Gurey #7, Wade #8 and Chizzy #9. For me, Chizzy would be the clear front runner from these 3 players, Gurney and Wade have the advantage of very strong PL campaigns in 2019 in their favour, but Chizzy has had comfortably the best year, and is in comfortably the best form, none of them have done much at all in the last couple of Majors and both out in round 3 of the WC, so there is probably cases for a couple of players in the pack behind to get a spot with a big WC run. Chris Dobey has made 2 major semi's this year and is in the L16 of the WC, his path to the Semi is going to be Duzza then likely Price (not ideal!) but if he pulls off a Semi, or even goes out in a barmstorming 1/4 final vs Gerwyn... could be time for Dobey to get the nod. I don't think de Zwaan has done enough this year without a semi+ at the worlds to justify a mention, same with Ratajski, on merit you'd have to have Ian White in ahead of all those 2.

Will they do the contenders again? No idea, the concept last year was players who had never really competed and to give them a shot, if so, will they have a completely fresh set and not include anyone from last year? Los of uncertainty around this - assuming they do it, I think there is a couple of very strong cases;

Willie O'Connor in Dublin for week 4 has to be absolutely nailed on.
Fallon Sherrock somewhere, probably Liverpool in week 6.
Nights 8 and 9 are both in Rotterdam, no idea if they will re-use JDZ but Danny Noppert and Jermaine Wattimena seem excellent candidates.
Ricky Evans is so entertaining he'll almost defo be in there, maybe Nottingham week 2.
Ryan Searle maybe for Exeter in week 5 after some good late yr form.
Joe Cullen really should get a go in this too, Newcastle week 7 I reckon.
Jonny Clayton for the Cardiff leg in week 3.

Gabriel Clemons, best performing German of 2019 should be included, if there was a German leg pre- judgement night he'd be a cert too, could potentially put him in week #1 in Aberdeen as no obvious Scottish contenders, Kryzstof Ratajski would be another deserving guy, could be another one for Aberdeen. Keegan Brown, Luke Woodhouse Jamie Hughes maybe for exeter.

My best prediction would be; (working on assumptions that they do pretenders and dont use anyone who appeared as a contender last year)

MVG
Price
Cross
Anderson
Smith
Wright
Aspinall
Durrant
Chizzy

Contenders;

Week 1 = Gabriel Clemons
Week 2 = Ricky Evans
Week 3 = Jonny Clayton
Week 4 = Willie O'Connor
Week 5 = Ryan Searle
Week 6 = Fallon Sherrock
Week 7 = Joe Cullen
Week 8 = Jermaine Wattimena
Week 9 = Danny Noppert

If they don't do the contenders, I reckon Dobey gets in there!

Tough ones to guess these!

Hello All.

Yes, I did indeed play the £1000 edgebaston GRAND! It was a veyr good fun, old school atmosphere event, with a very good bunch of people, in typical fashion we did an old school 8 way chop, winner winner.

My friend in running the card room at this casino so to support him i went to play it, enjoyed myself, anyone from that area looking for a good comp, its every month, nice quick structure, good group of people, fun event, decent top prize, well worth a go for a cheeky little 1 day punt.


I barely played much poker this year, been busy working, things are great here in London, even though I still not got a wedding organised, no holidays planned (was hoping to go away Jan-Feb again like last yr, but no one will come with me, scumbags) and had to have another hand operation as 10 yrs on from the original "incident" Ive had to have a little more bone removed.  Right after I did it the first time i went back to hospital and said I think they left a bit of stitch inside my finger, they told me they defo didnt, 10 yrs later they cut me open again, and what do they find... a bit of bloody stitch that's been in there for a decade Apparently it's not a big deal, I TOLD THEM IT WAS A BIT OF STITCH!!! Hand looks gross atm, but should be very good long term as was starting to hurt again, should do the golf game the world of good too! nearly 3 months since last played, very sad, going to be back firing next year for sure.

Most exciting thing on the horizon BY FAR for me is the world championship darts, starting a week on friday, very excited about that.

Draw for the worlds is out!!

First thing that jumps out is MVG's 1/4 final route appears about as straight forward as it gets, Ricky Evans is having a good year and Clayton and Bunting have both shown glimpses of utter brilliance this yr but you feel like MVG on C game should find himself in the 1/4s with little or no fuss, his 1/4 final seems almost certainly to be between either James Wade or Ian White, Wade's path to round 4 is fairly hazardless, Edhouse/Kyle round 2, probably Steve Beaton round 3, wuld be a fairly big shock not to see Wadey in the 4th round minimum. Ian White has a little more danger to deal with, Gabriel Clemons is a very dangerous floater and it's likely him or Hopp in the 3rd round, he does seem to have historically had a habbit of messing those types of games up too, but maybe not 2019 Diamond . Dont see too many shocks coming here, Clemons making the 1/4 would be a shock given he's likely had to turn over Wade and Wright but wouldn't be the most surprising thing to happen given the form of the 3 players this year.

Q2 top seed is Gary and his path to the 1/4 final is a little dangerous, Brendan Dolan is a new man in 2019 and could test Gary who we just have no real idea about hit form other than we know he's massively lacking in match sharpness, Steve West and Ryan Searle both the type of characters to randomly turn up and average 100 but he should get through that in a BO9 set play game. his 4th round is almost guarenteed to be a tough game, vs either Nathan Aspinall, Krzystof Ratajski with Jamie Hughes a very dangerous floater in that segment too, if he's struggling Gary then this game could be extremely tough for him, his quarter final if he gets through is probably going to be vs Micheal Smith which will be another very tough game as Bully boy tends to turn up these days vs his old mentor. Smith's 1/8th isn't a complete cake-walk but he should be relatively happy with it, the biggest and most obvious danger is Dimitri who on an Ally Pally stage can beat anyone, however he's so out of sorts this year and on the TV stage too which is usually where he shines, he might even find his 2nd round game vs Payne or Portela a bit of a struggle. Adrian Lewis is defo worth a strong consideration too, as he's been showing a lot more form of late, an on form Jackpot could well be the un-doing of Smith in round 4. Laurence Illagan could be a dangerous floater in this section of the draw too, he should be out-muscled if he runs into Dimitri/Smith/Lewis anywhere near their A-Games but if he has round 1 vs an out of nick Reyes, runs into a struggling Jackpot in round 2, and will have a very winnable feeling game probably vs Darren Webster (who's had a tough year with injury, but seems to be a little better now) he might just sneak himself into the 4th round, I think whoever he plays in round 4 should be playing well enough to see him off but he certainly could cause a few pumping hearts LI. I dont envisage much suprises in Q1, but Q2 with some big names lacking consistency and a few dangerous wild cards we could easily see some nonsense from this section of the draw.

Onto the second half, Rob cross, not been in the best of nick lately, but has himself a reasonable draw to his 1/4 final, Kim Huybrechts dropped from towards the back end of the top 40 this year, recently he's shown some good performances but just cant quite find any wins, Steve Lennon & Danny Noppert can cause problems, Joe Cullen at 100% can be very dangerous, but he should be able to find his way through. Bottom half of this quarter's most interesting participant will be RVB, he has a opener he should win easily, and then a very difficult game vs JDZ in the second round, BArney will be bang up for a run here, and he'll be desperately hoping that his career is put to bed in a barnstorming 1/4 final vs Rob Cross, and not a 2nd round 91 average vs JDZ, he can easily make it to the 1/4 finals here, but a 3rd round exit at the hands of Chizzy seems his most likely swansong, if he gets past Chizzy, he probs has a 4th round vs Peter Wright to deal with before a 1/4 final vs Rob Cross, then a semi vs Gerwyn Price before his dream farewell which would be the WC final vs MVG, and this is all assuming he can get past JDZ in round 2! We'd all love to see it, but we very likely won't see it! This quarter for me I think is Chizzy's for the taking, there's plenty of dangerous players knocking about (JDZ, RVB, Keegan, Malicdem a handy player too) and he's likely got to beat Wright in round 4 and Cross in the 1/4s but i just think he's playing a lot better than them right now and I personally don't think these new darts are the ones for PW, Cross seems incapable of stringing 2 decent games together at the moment. If Chizzy keeps his form of the last 3-4 months up I think he gets through this 1/4. If he can get himself a semi final appearance here, to go alongside his WGP final I think that should get him a PL spot, an A-Game vs A-Game world semi final vs Chizzy and Price might be something to savour too!

Botton 1/4 and this is a tale of two halves for sure, Gerwyn Price, the man of the moment has the easiest draw to a 1/4 final of anyone I think, Willie O'Connor is a danger man in very good form at the moment, but even with that, there is basically no -one in the bottom 8th of the draw who should cause even a very very average Gerwyn (of 2019) any trouble at all, I think a solid B- game will get him easily to the 1/4 finals this year. Conversely, the top half of Q4 is absolutely littered with troubles - Daryl Gurney the top seed there will have a testy opener vs an in-form Justin Pipe, Duzza will be hoping to play him in rnd 4 but he's going to have another awkward opening fixture vs de Sousa or Damon Heta, both of whom had very good years, his first Ally Pally appearance he might find it a bit emotional Duzza and goign off as a bog fave vs a dangerous underdog coudl lead to some scares for him. Mensur and Dobey (who is having a fantastic year) shouldn't be too much troubled getting to round 3 but Ted Evetts is playing well right now and Ron the Bomb can be lethal sometimes, the bookies would say the most likely 3rd round fixtures will be Duzza/Gurney, Mensur/Dobey and you can pretty much see anyone of those 4 making it through to play Gerwyn in the 1/4 final, whoever it is will set of as a big dog vs GP, exciting 1/4 Q4 for certain!


Roll on, Roll on!