Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[the sicilian]

Dismissed AK after the fact

however i kicked myself as i didn't think the hand deep enough at the time.

[gatso]

ah, ok I see now, lol

[77dave]

Time to move on boys or get a room


Tikay, how would you say if at all the credit crunch has affected/ will affect the UK poker scene?

[tikay]

I mentioned earlier how grateful I am that 50+ players played tonight's blonde League Event.

But I forgot to add.....

The Staking Boards (childish flaming apart, which has been minimal until the last few days) have been a splendid success, & we are extremely pleased with the way they are developing. The APAT Pro-Am was a superb example of how they can work, but there have been plenty others besides, Online & Live.

I rather enjoyed the Flushy's Bitch scenario, & young Rook cashing for nigh on $80k, great stuff, &  lovely example of trust between two blondes.

We deliberately set out to make it non-commercial for blonde, & have no regrets. I gave the bones of the idea to Tighty, within hours he had worked it up, debated it with the Mods, & it was up & running. Now it's "furniture". Maybe we got the "minimum 300 Post" criteria wrong, maybe not, but not disastrously either way. We did have to do something to prevent the "Jac Arama" scenario, where folks visit blonde for no other reason than to get Staked. That's just not the idea at all.

The slight disappointment we have is that so few use blonde Cardroom for staking purposes, but, equally, we understand why. Now, lo & behold, a regular blonde has decided to do something about that, & has Staked a player to grind it out in the Cash Games on blondepoker to the extent of several thousand dollars. That's huge - HUGE - by blonde standards, & we are very grateful, & I have told the guy as much. If we had just 3 or 4 more doing that, most of my headaches would cease, & I could be confident of blondes futrure, in the style which we know it.

There's always hope, one never knows. Soon, I'll be able to buy Tighty that Ferrari.

[Laxie]

Just buy him a fishing rod and an hour's instruction on how to use it.  He'd LOVE that!

[tikay]

Time to move on boys or get a room


Tikay, how would you say if at all the credit crunch has affected/ will affect the UK poker scene?

I do intend - tonight - to return to the AA v KK hand, because there are aspects of it which still are not understood by many, & facets of it, perhaps not speciufically relevant to the partiucular hand, which interest me. And so many mistaken assumptions on the debate! (Though mainly about my play, not Sicilians).

The so-called "credit crunch" & the UK Poker Scene?

Well, Online, not much. But let me tell you, many of the UK-Based Online Rooms are hurting badly, & have been for a while now. Trust me, they are. Have you seen how complex the rakeback/reload bonus Deals tend to be now? A sure sign of bad times, when you make a simple thing so bloody complex. Just offer x%, with no caveats, & be done with it. blonde Cardroom makes a profit, but it's tiny, miniscule. But we don't splash money around on wasted advertising or PR gurus, & we never, never ever, borrow money (never had an Overdraft, never will), so we are OK, but we just don't earn quite enough to pay our costs - mainly Live Updates & Wages. The balance comes (just about!) from advertising income, & right now, that market is as flat as a flat thing.

Live? That's much simpler. I could fill every Cardroom in the UK, easily, every weekend, & most nights. It's simple. Wise up, look after the punters, give them good value, build loyalty, schmooze them, da de da. Oh, & communicate with them. Honestly, it's a piece of piss to do. Sky, APAT & Virgin Events are massively over-subscribed. Ever wondered why? That's another story, a whole different ball-game, but easy to solve. The well-organised Series are flourishing, & deservedly so GUKPT, GBPT, Sky, etc. More will come, more will succeed.

Hope all is well with you & yours in Vegas, & I'm sorry I'm not coming out with Tom & Ralph, but I know you'll take good care of them. Don't stand downwind of Tom though, he has serious probs in the flatulence department.

[tikay]

Just buy him a fishing rod and an hour's instruction on how to use it.  He'd LOVE that!

Nah - he's run bad in that, too. A biggie would slip off the hook, be sure of that. I've never seen a man play so well yet run so bad for so long, but he never cpomplains, just waddles off, chuntering to himself. Proper bloke, & a man's man.

[wormster]

Hi Tikay, i hope all is well.

As regards the credit crunch, where do the cardrooms keep their money? As we've just found out from the crash of the Icelandic banks, UK councils & the police - among others - have millions tied up in them. Where do the likes of blonde, pokerstars, full tilt etc keep theirs? What would happen to online poker if a major bank went bust & a cardroom lost it's money?

Hopefully that's just a "what-if" question but with some huge financial institutions in trouble or already bust it may not be if  but when!!!

[77dave]

Tom is going to be a challenge, I know like you his heart rests with the green green grass of home, but im sure i can show him a thing or 3 in this town of mine.

Vegas has been hit by the credit crunch, they assumed that Vegas would never be hit as a gambler always finds a way to gamble, but Vegas has changed over the years and the income stream has adapted.

Smaller %ages come from the casino floor and more now from rooms, bars, restaurants, shops and shows. These have taken a hit recently but there is still plenty of money around compared to other towns in America.

Saying that the Venetian was overbooked last night and rooms were going for $700 for the night.

City Centre looks amazing the place is just huge and coming along nicely. Station casino open a new casino this month called the Alliante Station in north Las Vegas and as soon as thats open they start work on Durango Station which will be at the 215 and Durango crossing.

[kenjude]

Get well soon Seve, you are a hero to so many of us.

Spot on. I was at Lytham for a couple of days, with my Dad and my brother, the year he won from the car park IIRC and it was a privilege to be able to see him play in the flesh for a few holes on one of the days we were there. Truly a genius around the greens.

This is very sad and I hope he pulls through.

[wormster]

Get well soon Seve, you are a hero to so many of us.

Spot on. I was at Lytham for a couple of days, with my Dad and my brother, the year he won from the car park IIRC and it was a privilege to be able to see him play in the flesh for a few holes on one of the days we were there. Truly a genius around the greens.

This is very sad and I hope he pulls through.

I blame Seve for all of my golfing woes - I watched him on Tv & thought it was normal to play golf by hooking & slicing into the trees, playing a 3 wood off my knees onto the green & making par!

A true legend of the game who is probably one of the main reasons that golf became such a huge television event in Europe!

Fingers crossed that he makes a full & speedy recovery.

[byronkincaid]

Hi Tikay, i hope all is well.

As regards the credit crunch, where do the cardrooms keep their money? As we've just found out from the crash of the Icelandic banks, UK councils & the police - among others - have millions tied up in them. Where do the likes of blonde, pokerstars, Full Tilt etc keep theirs? What would happen to online poker if a major bank went bust & a cardroom lost it's money?

Hopefully that's just a "what-if" question but with some huge financial institutions in trouble or already bust it may not be if  but when!!!

If the banks went busto and nobody has any access to cash and our cards don't work, then it would almost immediately be anarchy I think, so you have the army patrolling the streets and I'm not sure how you play it from there. Somehow you need to feed everyone, what do you do about petrol? And as it would no doubt be a world wide thing have we got enough food in the country to feed ourselves over the winter?

So you can't let the banks go bust so you pump a few trillion in but I don't understand what effects this is going to have. Rampant inflation? Huge tax increases? They are saying no on the news but surely you can't just pull trillions out of thin air with no ill effects? As well as paying for 2 wars, the Olympics and the usual old boring stuff like hospitals, schools and MPs' expenses.

[Woodsey]

I mentioned earlier how grateful I am that 50+ players played tonight's blonde League Event.

But I forgot to add.....

The Staking Boards (childish flaming apart, which has been minimal until the last few days) have been a splendid success, & we are extremely pleased with the way they are developing. The APAT Pro-Am was a superb example of how they can work, but there have been plenty others besides, Online & Live.

I rather enjoyed the Flushy's Bitch scenario, & young Rook cashing for nigh on $80k, great stuff, &  lovely example of trust between two blondes.

We deliberately set out to make it non-commercial for blonde, & have no regrets. I gave the bones of the idea to Tighty, within hours he had worked it up, debated it with the Mods, & it was up & running. Now it's "furniture". Maybe we got the "minimum 300 Post" criteria wrong, maybe not, but not disastrously either way. We did have to do something to prevent the "Jac Arama" scenario, where folks visit blonde for no other reason than to get Staked. That's just not the idea at all.

The slight disappointment we have is that so few use blonde Cardroom for staking purposes, but, equally, we understand why. Now, lo & behold, a regular blonde has decided to do something about that, & has Staked a player to grind it out in the Cash Games on blondepoker to the extent of several thousand dollars. That's huge - HUGE - by blonde standards, & we are very grateful, & I have told the guy as much. If we had just 3 or 4 more doing that, most of my headaches would cease, & I could be confident of blondes futrure, in the style which we know it.

There's always hope, one never knows. Soon, I'll be able to buy Tighty that Ferrari.

Hi Tony,

I occasionally do random stakes for players. Is there the facility to transfer to other players on Blonde? if we could I would happily do it all on Blonde, no problem.

[wormster]

Hi Tikay, i hope all is well.

As regards the credit crunch, where do the cardrooms keep their money? As we've just found out from the crash of the Icelandic banks, UK councils & the police - among others - have millions tied up in them. Where do the likes of blonde, pokerstars, Full Tilt etc keep theirs? What would happen to online poker if a major bank went bust & a cardroom lost it's money?

Hopefully that's just a "what-if" question but with some huge financial institutions in trouble or already bust it may not be if  but when!!!

If the banks went busto and nobody has any access to cash and our cards don't work, then it would almost immediately be anarchy I think, so you have the army patrolling the streets and I'm not sure how you play it from there. Somehow you need to feed everyone, what do you do about petrol? And as it would no doubt be a world wide thing have we got enough food in the country to feed ourselves over the winter?

So you can't let the banks go bust so you pump a few Trillion in but I don't understand what effects this is going to have. Rampant inflation? Huge tax increases? They are saying no on the news but surely you can't just pull trillions out of thin air with no ill effects? As well as paying for 2 wars, the Olympics and the usual old boring stuff like hospitals, schools and MPs' expenses.

The End is Nigh! lol

A couple of interesting comments I've heard lately, and yes they are probably tongue in cheek, but they do make you think;

1) The Government found £250 billion to rescue the banks but have never been able to find a penny to rescue the NHS!

2) The Government have given the banks £250 billion of OUR money so that they can start lending US our OWN money back to us a better rate to make them well off!

But my original question is where do the online poker site, & all online gaming sites for that matter, keep their/our money?

What would happen if the bank or banks they kept the money in went bust?

Would we just lose it?

Would we be better off taking our money out now?

Hopefully it's all speculation and it will never happen.

[tikay]

Returning again to Staking Boards.

I don't Stake as such - I just do it under the Radar (never, ever, publically) for a few special friends, or where I think someone needs & deserves a break.  I should not complain, either. Thewy, Ian Oldershaw, Chili, have all paid me huge sums back, all of them over five figures, so I either got lucky, or chose who to back well. Probably a bit of both, to be honest.

I've never staked anyone on a blonde thread openly, but I've Staked a handful privately this last month or two, & been handsomely rewarded, with several very nice cashes.

Only one made it onto the Forum, & that was mistakenly - Simon Trumper.

I Staked Simon for a lot of reasons.

1) He's a very good friend.

2) I trust him implicitly. (To pay me, if he wins).

3) I like him a lot.

4) I respect his Omaha game hugely. (I can hear the derision from the young guns, but that's my firm view). I watched him do a mini "Omaha Teach-In" to complete novices recently, & it was just awesome. And no, I'm no Omaha expert, but leaving aside (because the fields were so small) the DTD £200 Sunday Omaha which ran for a month or two, my Omaha Fessie record is 9 Finals ftom 14 played, so I'm not as daft at it as I may sometimes appear. (Though how DID Flushy make that call against me in Brighton last week?).

Now, when Simon set out to be Staked, his Staking Thread was a model of how a Staking thread should be. He explained everything - his record, how he plays, what he does, why, & how, the lot. For that alone, he deserved the Staking.

It's here, his initial WSOP-E staking Thread.....

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=36985.0

He failed, of course, but then re-Staked himself for the The Vic Omaha Event, & Cashed for £22k+.

In that second thread, he went through the whole Tourney with a spell-binding hand-for-hand report, & when it got to the very end, got involved in that complex "chip count" dilemma, "play for £22k (of stakers cash) or settle for £8,500". And that was impressive - he knew, off the top of his head, the value of every chip in play, & all the meta-game options that presented to him, complex as they were. Brilliant stuff Simon.

I forgot all about it, & have been working every weekend since, so have not been to DTD for ages. (Only their Friday & Sunday Tourneys appeal to me). So, thinking it was maybe a little rude of me not to have gone up to DTD to get my cash, & thank Simon, I poodled up there on Sunday. Simon marched straight up to me, presented me with a white envelope containing almost £1k, his chest puffed out with pride. A truly lovely moment.

The Thread detaling the Vic Omaha Event is here......

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=37118.0

Great stuff. Thanks Simon, you are a Gent.