Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Before I Update the Diary, the Cuckoo story gives me an excuse to repeat some pictures I Posted last year - amongst the most memorable (for me, anyway) in the whole of 2009.

Don't forget to scroll down. The Link is safe.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.funnychill.com/files/extreme-pictures/heron-eats-rabbit-04.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.funnychill.com/media/460/Heron_Eats_A_Rabbit/&usg=__dd38PuMQltLL1Z10rZXvNuoiZII=&h=568&w=600&sz=79&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=EYFFWXW09ybXSM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dheron%2Beating%2Brabbit%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUK307%26sa%3DG

[kinboshi]

Hi Tony,

if you get a chance to watch some tv tonight I think you may like this;

BBC 2 Natural World - The Cuckoo

From a clip I've seen on BBC Breakfast, the Cuckoo is an amazing bird. It tricks other birds into rearing it's eggs & the chick murders any other chicks in the nest as soon as it's born. Should be fascinating stuff.

Also on TV last night, "What the Victorians Did For Us". If it comes up on BBC I-Player take a loot at it. Last night featured your favourite man, Isombard Kingdom Brunel & his iron ship SS Great Britain. 

And here's an interesting snippet, until the Victorians built the railways, we had "local-time".  In the show's example, sunrise in Bristol is 10 mins later than in London, so their clocks were 10 mins behind the capital. When the railways came & the trains got up to speeds of 60mph (which is the average of today's trains) there was much confusion as to which time they put on the timetables (local or GMT). So the railway owners lobbied parliament to bring in a standard time for the whole country.

See you in Brighton
Steve

Thanks Steve. Sadly, I missed all this, as I've been blonde-awol for a few days.

See you in Brighton on Monday.

You can watch all the BBC programs on the I-player for a week after they're broadcast...

Thanks Mr Prince Sir, though I fear that i-Player may well be beyond my limited techie-mind.

Yeah, it's really difficult.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gmxl7/Natural_World_Cuckoo/  click on the link and hit play and watch.

The cuckoo story is one of Nature's most intriguing.

My take was always, well, what do you think goes through the surrogate Mother's mind - a tiny reed-warbler, say - when it get back to the nest with a few juicy worms & grubs, & sees that bloody great ugly cuckoo - 5 times the size of it's Mum & hardly pretty - sat there, waiting to be fed?

"Blimey, you've turned out to be a big bugger".  I mean, they never seem to question it.

"Big bugger, yup, ah well, better press on, he eats enough for a family".

Instinct over logic I suppose.

Have you read 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins?  There's a whole chapter that deals primarily with this phenomenon.

[tikay]

Saturday 3rd January.

Unable to play the DTD £300, due to work on the Sunday, & despite hating to spectate at Poker Events, I nonetheless ventured down to DTD for an hour, just to meet so many friends, blondes, & "family".

And they somehow ended up with 296 (?) runners! Wow, just wow. That place rocks.

I'd told several peeps, Tracey included, it was an 8pm start, so it was a bit embarrassing that they found themselves at the back of a huge queue, not even sure of a Seat, due to my carelessness. But they all got in, eventually.

And I ended up Dealing.

Now, here's a thing. Imagine a bunch of Upstarts, all intent on an evening of fun, as kids do. "Kids" is not intended as derogatory, but compared to me, they are kids. Sorry, kidz. And they all end up on the same Table. (We know why, just one of those things). And Dealing is a non-dealer, can't deal to save his life, an old fart with yellow hair, a bit of a killjoy by his reputation as a blonde Mod.

Here we have a lethal cocktail, & I was bricking it, these kids could - if they so wished - give me the hardest of hard times. And as I'm sort of "representing" DTD, I gotta take it all, without recourse.

And I had the best night I can recall in ages. It was, I suggest, the UK In-Your-Eye Comp.

The Kids helped me, never heckled me, & despite my pot, card & chip clumsiness, were not patronising, not censorious, not condescending, just entered into the spirit of the evening, & we had the ball of balls. I almost felt sorry for Rooks, who was on an adjacent Table where, by the sound & look of things, someone's dog had died.

As for our Table, well, I invoked Dealers Rights, & after Banning Mondatoo for violation of the "English Only" Rule, had a tiny peek at the players cards every hand. OMG......

We saw a double all-in - Level 1 - Q-8 v Q-7. Eh?

Another Level 1 all-in was AQ-T v 8-7. Yup, all-in, pre.

The Chips flew in with J-2 v K-K on a Flop of J-5-5 - how thin is that J-2 there? - and the J-2 won.

The BoyBand, & the Kids generally, on blonde, push the limits a bit sometimes. But I'd not have them any other way. High-spirited, in-yer-face, lets have fun-ness. I love every one of them, they are all, make no mistake, good lads, deep-down good, & it's one of the many reasons we will keep this Forum going.

Thanks Boys.

To be fair, they need a little work on their game. Shocking, that's all I can say.

A few pics from the evening to follow.
 

[tikay]

I mean, look at that. How daft do them bins look?

But I have an ambition - see that hat? I want one. Badly And I'm gonna wear it on telly.

How cool would I look then?

The fella in Seat 9 - to his right, as we look - is, or was, I think, a one-time work colleague of Rooks. He was awesome, & played the kids off the park for the first hour, with obscene re-raises with pure air.

[tikay]

This was the adjacent Table, with "nirvana" in the foreground, & Rooks (not in pic) in Seat 1.

My table is to the right, & you can see Chip-Rich (I think) in 1, Random Walsall Bubble (he of the 8-7 All-In) in 2, & Wick in thwee.

[tikay]

Wick, Le Knave - "Dave Jones" ffs, - & Mondatoo.

I so want Le Knave's scarf. His game ain't bad, either, ditto Chip-Rich.

[tikay]

In the foreground is Up The Mariners. Another slip of a boy, not even shaving yet.

[tikay]

Nakor, his handbag, & a large expanse of wall. I shall not be entering this pic in any photographic competitions.

[tikay]

So, that was Saturday. In the superb  "Chip-Rich Grimmed" thread, there are several footballing analogies.

Well, let's extend the theme. My Table had Gazza, George Best, Rodney Marsh, Cantona, & Stan Bowles. No Shearer or Lineker's though.

I'm quite sure that either Shearer or Lineker could grind away forvever with 4 x BB's.

[tikay]

I eventually left DTD at 1am, much cheered, & drove straight down to my Hotel in London, for Sunday's Show.

A visit to a service-station to feed my Latte addiction (has to be Coffee-Nation, it's the best), & suddenly, the cheer was replaced by doom & gloom, as I scanned the Headlines of the Red Tops.

Mugabe? Gaza? Rwanda? Congo? Cholera, AIDS, Credit-Crunch, Recession? Nope, worse.

"Lucy's Hell. Stress caused my boobs to shrink".

That was it. The whole front page.

Bested only by this, another whole page jobbie.

"Kate Moss has cellulite", accompanied by a picture of her thighs.

It's all too much.

And Newspaper proprieters wonder why the newspaper industry is dying. Let's hope it's soon, & painful. And the NOTW hurts most.

[tikay]

Sunday Night it was Richard Orford & myself. We did a 1 hour Pre-Record - no rehearsal, zoom, a clean take, from start to finish, one hour flat, then the three hour Live Show, no Guests, just the two of us.

700 runners - 700! We used to cap the field at 350, & have gone up in increments to 700. Now the 700 Seats go well before the Comp Starts, & folks scramble for Seats.

I stayed at Jurys Inn, Heathrow, way too tired to drive home, & took a Tour round the Airport on Monday morning, & spotted an A380. Seriously big, am them.

[tikay]

On Tuesday, the 'phone calls & PM's started to arrive as to that weeding-on affair in Ireland.

"What you heard, is it so & so?".

I'd heard zilch, but the suggestions to me as to the culprit were all way off beam. For starters, the guy they all fronted up for it busted early, so there's a bit of a flaw in the thought process there.

I'm astonished this has never happened before. Correction, astonished it has never come out on top before, because it has happened, lots of times. It just has.

Some Venues leave racks of Large-Denom Chips laying aroiund. What do they expect? These are not Librarians, or Accountants, these are Poker players, which means, by inference, a full cross-section of society. I can't be more diplomatic than that.

At the first venue I ever played in - Stanleys, Derby - I soon sussed that the Cardroom Manager was milking the Rebuys. (This was 10 years ago, I'm sure they are squeaky clean now).  It seems so natural to me, when we reach a Final, to check that the Chips & the Money tally, after allowances for colouring up. It takes seconds - 2 at most - to see if the Chips & Prize Money & Chips tally, & maybe 30 seconds to do a rough count of the Final Table Chip Stacks to make sure they add up right. Anyone with O-Level Maths could do it, without a calculator or pencil & paper. When did you last see someone check these things? When did you last see someone give a toss about these things?

In my Gala Notts days, I reached Finals on 2 consecutive nights & on each night, the chips did not tally, we (the Players) had been diddled out of £300 or £400. I complained. The then Manager (been left 8 or 9 years now) said "there's nothing I can do about it". What? WHAT?

I thew a strop, tried to gain support from the other Players, but they just wanted to play the Final.

But a few nights later, there was an argument during the colouring up of the "25 point" chips, as to where the Button, & thus first card, should be dealt. They were arguing over, potentially, a single 100 point chip. The argument escalated, a fight broke out, & 2 guys got Banned.

Go figure.

These days, with bar-code scanners & Cameras, it's all much better, certainly in the Licensed Venues. In Unlicensed Venues, you'd be nuts, 100% nuts, not to tally up the chips & money before the Final starts.

Look around you boys, your pocket might even be being picked right now.

Meanwhile, a debate about an iffy Ruling will run to 10 pages. But nobody knows or cares if Final Table chip Stacks add up right. How weird is that? And here's me thinking Reed-Warblers are mad.

[tikay]

OK, I'd better set off for the Brighton Grosvernor - I'm dreading finding somewhere to Park. The last time I went there I got THREE Parking Tickets on the same day. Nightmare, & odd that the Rendezvous, just up the road, is perfect for Parking.

The Comp will be full of the Upstarts tonight, & I won't be Dealing, I'll be playing.

Bring it on. Tonight, I shall be mostly Alan Shearer, & will grind away with 4 x BB's.

PS - PLEASE let Rooks, or some BoyBanders, be on my Table. They think I can't Dance. I can. I've got my dancing shoes on.

[gatso]

It seems so natural to me, when we reach a Final, to check that the Chips & the Money tally, after allowances for colouring up. It takes seconds - 2 at most - to see if the Chips & Prize Money & Chips tally, & maybe 30 seconds to do a rough count of the Final Table Chip Stacks to make sure they add up right. Anyone with O-Level Maths could do it, without a calculator or pencil & paper. When did you last see someone check these things? When did you last see someone give a toss about these things?

this happens every single tournament at the new international. before going on the short break prior to starting the ft each finalist does a chip count with the ft dealer. these counts are checked by the td during the break and are available for everyone to see

[Nakor]

Nakor, his handbag, & a large expanse of wall. I shall not be entering this pic in any photographic competitions.

Suits me sir.
You did well getting that photo of Tracey - WP GG