Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[The Camel]

Answers later this evening to Posts by Mantis (excellent, only 50% right, but thank you), Sicilian, Flushy (a Post I just don't understand) & others.

What post was that? The one about how you called pre with A8?

No, this (extract from) one......

Next up, with Hands being so difficult to play, as nobody would Pass anything

To which you replied......

 

If nobody passes anything then hands become very easy to play, you just played your hand for its value!

For you, maybe, but not for me. There are not many hands I can Raise with that would welcome 6 Callers. I sure do not want 6 Callers when I Raise with AK, because I miss the flop most times, & need to fire again - & that just won't work with a family pot. Hence my massive over-raise.

And that was what was happening - every Bet was called by, literally, half the Table. Now, I eventually got them all sussed, & worked out how to combat it, & I really enjoyed the challenge. But I did find it difficult to play against - which is exactly what I said.

The two big hands I lost were both to players who had just joined the Table, & I had no handle on them at all, which contributed to my (very avoidable) demise.

The only player I fely comfy playing pots with, was Garry Bush - the 2004 European Player of the Year! - because I felt I knew where I was with him, as we've played together so many times.

Garry is great Table Company. Once you get him talking, he has a lovely take on the game, analyses hands most interestingly, & knows how many beans make 5. I quite miss playing with him regularly, but he does not play much these days. I'm not sure, but I think he works in the Betting Industry nowadays.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL @ the idea that Bushy has got a job!

[MPOWER]

n the Semi, I shoved with 8-8, & ran into slow-played Queens, but I setted

Setted

An Olympians version of trips 

Regards

M

[kinboshi]

n the Semi, I shoved with 8-8, & ran into slow-played Queens, but I setted

Setted

An Olympians version of trips 

Regards

M

Well highlighted.

Please explain yourself Kendall, I think you tripped up there.

[tikay]

n the Semi, I shoved with 8-8, & ran into slow-played Queens, but I setted

Setted

An Olympians version of trips 

Regards

M

Well highlighted.

Please explain yourself Kendall, I think you tripped up there.

No no, it was intended. It's the latest tikay-ism to enter the poker vocab. All the boys will be using it soon.

I hit my set. I setted.

[tikay]

To set up.

Setted.

I setted.

He setted.

When on the couch playing poker, you can even settee.

Raif, of course (he of the Thierry Henry Cuckoo-Clock) will disapprove heartily. But he's Vegasing. There, there's another.

[Laxie]

Uh huh.   

[gatso]

forgot I promised you this Tony

the Warsaw Metro

I never used the Metro when I lived there as I always had a car but on my last visit I made quite a few trips on it and have to say I was very impressed. it's only 18 stations/19 kms at the moment with more under comstruction but what has been built is very impressive. trains run at 4 minute max intervals throughout the day, never longer. once a train has left a timer at the end of the platform resets to zero so you can see how long between services, I never once saw that timer go past the 4 minute mark.

journeys are cheap, about 50p for a single journey of any length

trains and stations are spotlessly clean at all times, no funny smells and no grafitti/vandalism. the carriages have tv sets installed and people strangely don't try to steal or break them.

the stations are huge cavernous structures so no stuffiness and no overheating even when the outside temperature is in the 30s.

so all in all a great, user friendly system except for one major (and incredibly strange) flaw

when building the network no-one thought to include facilities for passengers to buy tickets. in all the stations I visited I couted a grand total of one ticket machine and zero ticket offices. most stations have a top up machine for cards similar to London's Oyster but there's nowhere to get a card in the first place.

during the day this is fine as you can buy tickets from kiosks and shops but from early evening onwards those near most of the stations close and there is nowhere at all to get a ticket. at first I though I was missing something but then noticed that each time I travelled at night there'd be people near the station entrance asking people if they had any spare tickets to sell. I decided to carry a couple of spares from then on.

[tikay]

Even for those, like myself, who have grown tired of the antics Premiership Footballers get up to, & so have abandoned spectating, it's still a treat to look forward to big match reports in The Times by Martin Samuel, their supremely gifted football correspondent.

Here's a few extracts from his report on last night's Man-Utd-Celtic encounter.

Referring to Berbatov's two allegedly "offide" goals, he wrote....

Well, at least we now know what you get for £30 million-plus these days: a cloak of invisibility, apparently. ......Berbatov was taken off with 31 minutes remaining, denying him the opportunity to get quite possibly the most illegal hat-trick in the history of the competition, and, understandably, he did not look best pleased. Given the chance to be invisible for the night, why spoil the fun?
 

Now, discussing Ronaldo, & Sir Alex's beautiful pre-match bluff.

At times on the right wing, he was his usual self, all flicks, tricks and stepovers, although no dummy was quite as expertly executed as the one sold by Ferguson before the game when he said the player was suffering from fatigue after playing too many matches so soon after returning from injury and hinted that he would be rested. Many in his audience bought it and.....Celtic did, too

Now to the hapless Lee Naylor, the unfortunate Celtic defender charged with marking Ronaldo.

He decided the best policy was to let Ronaldo know of his presence early and may have regretted it as his opponent made it his aim in the next ten minutes to torment him as often as possible, feet flying in all directions and then, as often as not, the ball laid off squarely, simply, the footballer’s equivalent of a great sleight of hand card trick. One minute, Naylor would be staring intently at the ball in front of him, the next Ronaldo would have pulled off some act of distraction and it would have moved, imperceptibly, to a team-mate.

Football writing as you've never seen it.

[tikay]

forgot I promised you this Tony

the Warsaw Metro

I never used the Metro when I lived there as I always had a car but on my last visit I made quite a few trips on it and have to say I was very impressed. it's only 18 stations/19 kms at the moment with more under comstruction but what has been built is very impressive. trains run at 4 minute max intervals throughout the day, never longer. once a train has left a timer at the end of the platform resets to zero so you can see how long between services, I never once saw that timer go past the 4 minute mark.

journeys are cheap, about 50p for a single journey of any length

trains and stations are spotlessly clean at all times, no funny smells and no grafitti/vandalism. the carriages have tv sets installed and people strangely don't try to steal or break them.

the stations are huge cavernous structures so no stuffiness and no overheating even when the outside temperature is in the 30s.

so all in all a great, user friendly system except for one major (and incredibly strange) flaw

when building the network no-one thought to include facilities for passengers to buy tickets. in all the stations I visited I couted a grand total of one ticket machine and zero ticket offices. most stations have a top up machine for cards similar to London's Oyster but there's nowhere to get a card in the first place.

during the day this is fine as you can buy tickets from kiosks and shops but from early evening onwards those near most of the stations close and there is nowhere at all to get a ticket. at first I though I was missing something but then noticed that each time I travelled at night there'd be people near the station entrance asking people if they had any spare tickets to sell. I decided to carry a couple of spares from then on.

Thanks gatso.

I was interested in this (below) - do you have any pictures?

the stations are huge cavernous structures

It's similar in Moscow, where the Subway stations are like cathedrals, all marble & atriums & grandeur, rather like I imagine New York Grand Central to be. (And upon which I suspect Leeds BR Station is modelled).

London's Tube stations are, especially to the West & North of London, quite interesting externally, but internally, only the new Junilee Line Stations have any visual merit. But to be fair, they are all fit for purpose, I suppose.

The inability to buy tickets for the Warsaw Metro is an oddity, but not as odd as vandal-free TV's in the rolling-stock - imagine that in London!

[gatso]

here're a couple (not mine). they don't show it that well but give you an idea of the openplan style. I've also got some on my camera (not as good quality though) that I'll try and upload in a bit showing another station with rows of shops above the platform

looking at these I'm thinking cavernous is the wrong word. bloody big and openplan is closer to the truth

Click to see full-size image.

[gatso]

here are my dark pics, in the 2nd one you can see the 2 levels of shops above platform level. these stations ain't small

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Thanks Gatso, great pics.

I believe Kev is viewing them, Kleenex at the ready.

[gatso]

while going through my poland photos I found these 2 I took of the back of a car. the younger generation of poles love doing things in english, it's quite a cool thing to do but sometimes they don't get it quite right. at least the thought was there

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[Colchester Kev]

here are my dark pics, in the 2nd one you can see the 2 levels of shops above platform level. these stations ain't small

Click to see full-size image.

Thanks Gatso, great pics.

I believe Kev is viewing them, Kleenex at the ready.

Yeah, the blonde in the jeans under the lights is worthy

[Claw75]

while going through my poland photos I found these 2 I took of the back of a car. the younger generation of poles love doing things in english, it's quite a cool thing to do but sometimes they don't get it quite right. at least the thought was there

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

dunno - maybe they're into that kind of thing