Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Am golfing today so will reply soonest

 

That was yesterday.

[tikay]

Am golfing today so will reply soonest

 

That was yesterday.

Played golf again today, will reply soonest.

[Marky147]

Am golfing today so will reply soonest

 

That was yesterday.

Played golf again today, will reply soonest.

    

[booder]

Don't encourage the tosser Marky.

[tikay]

Thursday. Am golfing today, so will reply soonest.

[tikay]

Actually, I may manage a few replies.

Lovely to see so many folks posting, & I'll try & reply to everyone. That Parkinson's Law thing is buggering me up though, somehow all my days are full. I'm not doing anything as such, but the days race past. WhatsApp is terrific, & I'd not want to be without it, but it is a time sponge. Some days over 200 Messages go back & forth, which annoys & pleases in almost equal measure.

Today is exactly 2 months since the Great Retirement Adventure began, although I actually bunked off a week early through no fault of my own. Retirement, & no responsibilities, is still a novelty, most especially getting used to not having to rush all the time, and so far I could not have enjoyed it more.

Played Goliath on Monday, had THE most wonderful day, more on which soonest ("soonest"....), then Golf on Tuesday & Wednesday. And today. Oh, & tomorrow.



 

 

[tikay]

For the Legal Team...

I mentioned the hoohah with EuroStar, trying to get a cash refund.

They wrote back to Gill & basically told her to bugger off, so Gill being Gill she pushed back but they stuck it in her eye again...


"I can confirm under our conditions of carriage on our website -
 
36.2 As a general rule, we will pay any refunds and/or compensation you are entitled to in the form of Eurostar evouchers - which are valid for one year from the date of issue. Upon your request, any refund or compensation you are entitled to under the PRR can be paid in money in a form chosen by us.’

Involuntary downgrades are not covered under Passengers Rights Regulation; therefore, we will not be able to issue this as a refund although I can get a voucher issued to you right away".



I guess that's that, & personally, I'd give best now. Life's too short & all that.

They really have been a shambles to deal with.

By way of contrast, I sent my Passport off for renewal on Monday & the new one is being delivered today, so 3 days from start to finish including posting. How good is that? Quite something when a Government organisation is more efficient than the Commercial sector.

[tikay]

Morning Tikay.

As seen as you have single handily closed down our Forum next door  , I will have to post my VEGAS trip report here.....

* WARNING * - contains a massive bad beat story.

As you know, I have been trying for years to get to Vegas with Sky poker, and scraped in via the last tournament satelitte. This would be my 1st ever trip to Sin City.
Flew from Manchester on Virgin with a stop over at Atlanta. Landing at about 9pm, I was slightly taken aback by the sight of all the lights from the city.

After checking in, I needed a drink and a nicotine fill up. Had a walk about the casino (Planet Hollwood) and decided to locate the poker room. 1st friendly face I saw sitting down playing cash was TommyD (he sends his regards to you and has promised to drop by here to say hello too). I declined the offer to sit down with him and super ollie to set fire to $100+ . I was only going to play Tornament poker on this visit. I had also predecided to only play roulette in any casino I went to.

The following morning I was surprisingly up very early and was feeling remarkably fresh. I decided to play the PH £100 10am tournament. Only 29 players and I cashed in 3rd for $335. I had arrived. Buzzing with that 1st cash, I tried my hand on the roulette tables. Another $250+ in winnings. Easy to make money here I mused to myself. Obv, the next 6 days found me out and I never made that much profit in a day again. I played 8 of these $100 tournaments over the week and I final tabled 7 of them. Sounds impressive.......but most had only 2 or 3 max tables to begin with. I cashed only once again out of all them......2nd for $400. So, only $65 down for the whole week on poker. I took that as a personal victory and put my $735 returns in a seperate wallet to bring back with me to help fund my annual Benidorm trip with the lads.

Went to the Sunday night welcome party. Apart from TommyD & Super Ollie, there was an array of Sky poker faces I knew. To name just a few......Ben nutter, DanTB, Timmy Ra Ra, Swog. Also got introduced to players like Granite and alvez. It was a really friendly night with a good vibes.

Had a walk down the Horseshoe for the FT of the Main Event. Bumped into Ian Simpson and had a really good chat with him. Nice bloke. I was a proper poker fan boy, and loved the atmosphere in there. Watched the final H/U hand live and all the razzamataz that followed.

Visited most of the other casinos while there and was impressed by The Bellagio and The Venetian the most.

TommyD took me down Freemont Street one night. Wow. We ended up in an Irish bar sampling the Guinness for several hours   Enjoyed that evening.

Overall, I really enjoyed my 1st trip to Vegas. However, I never realised how expensive everything is over there. Mind blowing prices for food...drink....tips (?) etc. I will need some more coin if ever I am lucky enough to be able to go again.

And now for that horendous bad beat story......

On arriving back at Manchester (Via Amsterdam), It appears I had parked in the wrong Car Park. Sigh. Just the £550 charge for that.....plus £103 charge for the intial Car Park.........and a £60 icing on the cake charge for stopping for 90 seconds looking for the right car park on arrival. All poker winnings gone and no Benidorm trip this year for me. GG.

Hope you didnt mind me posting this here Tikay. And hopefully I didnt waffle too much  .

Cheers, Alan.

Firstly, delighted you Posted & gave us a little TR.

Ha, Alan rubbing shoulders with poker royalty. Lovely to see & it seems to me you had a blast. Weird, all those years you kept bubbling the satellites, & the first year I don't go you bink the package.

Glad you managed a visit to Fremont Street, it's unique. I wrote to Tommy D, he's on holiday right now but he promised to look in (on blonde) when he gets back.

8 MTT's & 7 FT's, incred, well done, even though they were short fields. As a rec, & imho, our priority in MTT's is...


1) Enjoy ourselves. (Win or lose).

2) Get a ton of table time.

3) Get the occasional cash.


Seems to me you ticked all those boxes.

I'm at odds with most people in poker, in that I enjoy my poker whether I win or lose, & every time I do a straw poll on it everyone mocks me. Here's my logic. As a competent rec, we can expect to make the money at our chosen (& usually small) stakes around 20% of the time, give or take 5%. So if we only enjoy it when we cash, that means we don't enjoy it 80% of the time. Makes no sense to me. If we use actual WINS as a yardstick, it's even worse. How often does a half-competent rec WIN an MTT? Very rare indeed. My Hendon goes back 20 odd years & I'm struggling to find more than a handful of wins, maybe less, (definitely less than 2 or 3% in my case) and yet it's been such a joy. Anyway, each to their own.

Hope you stick around Alan, & don't forget we have various football threads, though we rarely bother with L1 teams such as Stoke City. More seriously, I think you may at last have found a decent Manager in Robins, & I hope you have a decent Season.

[EssexPhil]

That is rampant bollo.

English Law is fairly specific. It is generally the consumer's choice whether to accept a replacement service or a refund for the non-service.

This goes back through various legislation, from the Supply of Goods and Services Act to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (the CPRs).

Suggest you first provide a copy of the article below, and invite them to reconsider. And that, if they fail to do so, would they please provide the mechanism for a complaint to the Rail Regulator. You would also be asking whether trying to force "compensation" via forcing a Consumer to have a 2nd service they do not want to supposedly make up for trousering money for a service they have not supplied should be brought to Press attention and/or be made the subject of a "super complaint" via the relevant consumer bodies. Because IMHO Eurostar should be forced to modify their Standard Terms

We are not talking about "fault". We are talking about you having paid for something you have not received. To put this in context, suppose you ordered and paid for an 80th Birthday card from Tesco's. And, through no fault of their own, they were out of stock. They would refund you. Not give you a voucher for an 81st Birthday Card next year.

https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/regulator-secures-eurostar-action-passenger-refund-rights#:~:text=Following%20a%20meeting%20yesterday%20%2817%20December%29%20with%20ORR%2C,refund%20rather%20than%20an%20e-voucher%20for%20cancelled%20services.

[tikay]

Gill looks lovely Tikay.

I think it's safe to say that in the MTT of life you've done pretty well. After being card dead at the start and a number of horrendous bad beats later on you have played your hands well and finally reached the final table as one of the chip leaders, good luck on the final table.

Afternoon Paul. That's an amazing post & it's made me reflect in depth.

Thanks, very gracious of you, thank you. Very perceptive, too, though with a few small amendments....

"you have played your hands well" should read "the deck was very kind to me when it mattered"


And


"reached the final table as one of the chip leaders," should perhaps read "min-cashed".


Broadly though, you are right. SO many ups & downs. And yes, I think I've had a sensationally interesting (interesting as opposed to successful) life.

This might sound a little pompous & entitled, but I've lost count of how many people have suggested I write a bit of a book of my life. Well that's a bit OTT, but it has been utterly fascinating, so many weird & wonderful things have happened to me. Right place, right time, and whatever the opposite is I suppose. And I'm at that age, & especially now I have time on my hands, that I reflect on all of them all the time. Little things that happened that eventually became a catalyst for both good & bad fortune. Usually good.

Maybe when winter comes along & I have a little more time on my hands, I might try a little potted history. I suppose we ALL think we've had fascinating lives, & that may well be the case, but I definitely have. Ups & downs? Just a bit. Many - but not all - self-inflicted, or partly so. If, for example, we lend someone a bunch of money ( & I mean every penny we have or had at the time) & they stiff us, is that unlucky, or bad judgement? In my world, bad judgement. Finger-pointing or bellyaching won't ever get our money back. Much of how we view things depends on how we approach life, glass half-full or half empty. And the great thing about being in a hole in life, is the satisfaction of digging oneself out of it without asking for help or sympathy. Probably the most satisfying thing ever. I've been in a few tight spots, too....

All a bit waffley that, but you touched a nerve. Nice nerve, but a nerve. And by chance, a very nasty incident that arose on Tuesday has dominated my thoughts ever since & made me think on a wider basis. But that's another story altogether.  

Moving ever so swiftly on....I know you are a Tennis man, probably more than almost anyone I know, so you may be interested in our Tennis Thread. It only has 2 subscribers really = Dooobs (a poker player you may recognize from Next Door) & Ironside, & it's all about UK Tennis & our up & coming players. It's about 65 pages but I'll link you to the last page, & if it interests you, you can go from there. Here you go...


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=68041.msg2307128#new

[tikay]

That is rampant bollo.

English Law is fairly specific. It is generally the consumer's choice whether to accept a replacement service or a refund for the non-service.

This goes back through various legislation, from the Supply of Goods and Services Act to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (the CPRs).

Suggest you first provide a copy of the article below, and invite them to reconsider. And that, if they fail to do so, would they please provide the mechanism for a complaint to the Rail Regulator. You would also be asking whether trying to force "compensation" via forcing a Consumer to have a 2nd service they do not want to supposedly make up for trousering money for a service they have not supplied should be brought to Press attention and/or be made the subject of a "super complaint" via the relevant consumer bodies. Because IMHO Eurostar should be forced to modify their Standard Terms

We are not talking about "fault". We are talking about you having paid for something you have not received. To put this in context, suppose you ordered and paid for an 80th Birthday card from Tesco's. And, through no fault of their own, they were out of stock. They would refund you. Not give you a voucher for an 81st Birthday Card next year.

https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/regulator-secures-eurostar-action-passenger-refund-rights#:~:text=Following%20a%20meeting%20yesterday%20%2817%20December%29%20with%20ORR%2C,refund%20rather%20than%20an%20e-voucher%20for%20cancelled%20services.

Terrific stuff Phil, thank you. I shall pass that on to Her Ladyship.

[tikay]

Next up, & to stop booder Bloke with his constant moaning, let's deal with the Mystery Man.

Thing is, it's 1.15pm, I have Golf at 4.30 & I need a nap first, so I'll reply soonest.

[EssexPhil]

While I am warming to a theme, I have always been a firm believer in showing my opponents why it is in their best interests to do what I want.

Over time, the various rail providers are being nationalised. Although the situation in relation to Eurostar is more complex, as they offer an international service.

If I were advising any Rail franchise I would be very sure not to attract unfavourable publicity. Because that is the sure-fire way to be taken over earlier. And I really, really wouldn't want to be the person in Customer Dis-Service to be responsible for that fun. Because it makes natural headlines. British Rail franchise trying to deny British people rights under British Law.

I remember some years ago I was stuck on a Greater Anglia train. Going absolutely nowhere. No-one telling us why. And the person opposite me said if this happened in his country there would be uproar. I asked if he was Dutch-he was. Whereupon I gleefully pointed out that the (then-) owner of the franchise was Abellio. A Company wholly-owned by the Dutch National Railway...

[Marky147]

Next up, & to stop booder Bloke with his constant moaning, let's deal with the Mystery Man.

Thing is, it's 1.15pm, I have Golf at 4.30 & I need a nap first, so I'll reply soonest.

Incred levels of Booder baiting 


Busier than ever now you're retired