Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

"Aunty Martha reckons he's a pedophile"......

The spelling suggests a yank or Iron.
Auntie martha is a fictional person or someone you will never meet (like Arthur Daleys "err indoors") erm that's as far as i get, i'm whooshed.

Oh no - Aunty Martha is real. Lives in Leicester, or Liverpool. For sure.

The spelling was my mistake. Childish error?.......

[Dingdell]

"Aunty Martha reckons he's a pedophile"......

The spelling suggests a yank or Iron.
Auntie martha is a fictional person or someone you will never meet (like Arthur Daleys "err indoors") erm that's as far as i get, i'm whooshed.

Oh no - Aunty Martha is real. Lives in Leicester, or Liverpool. For sure.

The spelling was my mistake. Childish error?.......

Sorry - this has whooshed me completely - What is this about or have you finally gone completely? 

[RED-DOG]

Sorry - this has whooshed me completely

Now that is unusual

[AndrewT]

DFP posted revenues of 7,136 pounds for the period against 9,543 pounds. Administrative expenses rose to 166,450 pounds from 100,229 pounds.

Under £17,000 in total revenue in a year?

Why am I reminded of these two?

[boldie]

DFP posted revenues of 7,136 pounds for the period against 9,543 pounds. Administrative expenses rose to 166,450 pounds from 100,229 pounds.

Under £17,000 in total revenue in a year?

Why am I reminded of these two?

indeed...I nearly wet myself when seeing 7k revenue and 166k admin expenses...I must be missing something when people think Devilfish poker could be valued at millions.

[ericstoner]

DFP posted revenues of 7,136 pounds for the period against 9,543 pounds. Administrative expenses rose to 166,450 pounds from 100,229 pounds.


Reminds me of that old city adage, "You can fool some of the people all of the time,and all of the people some of the time."
You just know they'll get this flotation through.

[tikay]

DFP posted revenues of 7,136 pounds for the period against 9,543 pounds. Administrative expenses rose to 166,450 pounds from 100,229 pounds.


Reminds me of that old city adage, "You can fool some of the people all of the time,and all of the people some of the time."
You just know they'll get this flotation through.

Oh, I'm sure they will get it away OK. Valuations, of course, are based on assessed future earnings, so historical numbers don't have much relevance, & he is a "Brand" in himself. But it still took my breath away. There are so many different approaches to building a new Company. Not too long ago, the MO was to build the Company first, give it good foundations, a solid Balance Sheet, demonstrate good Management & Earnings capability, then float it, but the gestation from start-up to Float would never be less than 5 years. Times have changed, & it's often done the other way round now, in the quest for quick money. I much prefer to build the Company properly first, that way the Float income is maximised, & you are selling something tangible, & real, rather than a promise.

By chance, Annual Reports from 3 of "my" Companies, in whom I hold Shares, arrived yesterday - Fibreweb (BBA as was, they used to make Feredo Brake & Clutch Linings but they do all sorts now), Rolls Royce (a truly magnificent engineering Company, whose earnings are guaranteed decades into the future as over half their business is in servicing & maintaining their installed Engine fleet across the world), & Ladbrokes, who we all know. Proper Companies, with a proven track record & massive assets. Add up the P/E Ratio of all three, & I bet it comes to less than the proposed P/E for Devilfish Gaming, or almost any internet-based start-up.

The Market moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.

[Karabiner]

If I remember correctly Full Tilt had a business plan where they spent literally millions of $$$ and were hoping to have attained break even status after five years.

[tikay]

Went across to DTD last night & played their £100 Omaha. "Biggest" field yet - 17 - so ironic that from next Wednesday I believe it changes to a Limited Rebuy, £50 plus 3 rebuys Maximum. That might price out the wanna-learn newbies, but add a few experienced Omaha-ers. We shall see, but I'll play it as often as I can, it plays in a lovely atmo at a nice, steady, pace.

I busted 4th last night, just scraped into the lolly, £170. But it took from 9.15 until 0130, so I got over 4 hours of the best poker fun imaginable, with some lovely table companions, at no cost, & enough left over to buy a few rounds of drinks. It don't get much better than that.

Winner was one Joakim Constantinou - aka Uncle Kim - from Rob Creed & Raj, so the Creeds (Rob Creed is Frances's Dad) are on a roll. In fact, after I exited, with Kim holding some 60% of the chips in play, they did a chop. Whisper it quietly, before everyone gets on my case, but it was a DTD-style chop, (dare I say that?) so there was no haggling, arguing or hissy fits, it was all so civilised & amenable. Rob & I were almost never above our starting stacks, & probably played less hands in the entire Tourney than several who exited in the "semi-final", but in my case, I'm very much an Omaha plodder, & I do the tortoise & hare thing quite happily. Faces included, Kim apart, Paul Jackson (5th or 6th I think), Richard Berridge, & Barry Neville, who was an early exit. 75% of the players seemed to be playing 4 card Hold 'Em. A nice man to my left in Level one Raised it up UTG & got 6 callers - obviously, it's Pot Limit - & ended up flopping his Set & taking the Pot. His hand was J-J-7-3, paduki........I asked him "how, what, why?", & he said "I had pocket Jacks mate". There you go.

Kim is such a great Omaha player to watch, & he is in a different league to me, to most in fact. He had low chips early, arriving a Level late, & hung in for a few Levels, but after the Final began, he just gently turned up the dial & steadily, without any big pots, accumulated a towering stack.He just seems to know where he is in any hand. This is an example.....on this Board, on the Button, he tickle bet each street in a 3 way affair:

   

His holding? Non-suited 3-5. So bottom straight, no flush draw. And yet he knew his hand was good, & kept betting. I am always so wary of bigger straights, but he told me he had one of them on a flush draw, the other on trips - & he nailed both hands exactly.

The room was absolutely buzzing last night, the Hold 'Em £25 I think) attracted a whopping 164 runners, that place really looks & feels the part when it's busy.

OK, the M1, A43, M40 & M25 await, I'm off to Feltham to do tonight's Show, & I have some meets with the Suits this afternoon about this & that. I'm not sure if I'll come home tonight, or stay over, but I'll be back in the Midlands by the weekend for sure, to play the 3-2-1.

[tikay]

If I remember correctly Full Tilt had a business plan where they spent literally millions of $$$ and were hoping to have attained break even status after five years.

That's true I believe, & it's almost a standard business model these days. But it's just not something that would ever sit comfortably with me, or any Business with which I'm involved. The John Kirkland style, which he ingrained in me, was to build the business first, control the cash, & fund the growth from earnings. Overdrafts were unheard of in the B & K Group!

We each ran our subsidiary companies independently, with our own Bank Accounts, & we were all entitled to use group Funds for borrowing or overdraft requirements. If we borrowed from the Group Facility, we paid Double Bank-Rate, & if we had cash-at-bank, we earned Double Bank-Rate in interest! He was in the "Turnover is sanity, Profit is vanity, Cash is King" school & we all got judged on cash-control over & above all else. And we were pretty much forced to hold back half our profits at each year-end (easy in Construction, just leave them in W-I-P) as "wool on our backs". Each subsidiary had a common goal - to earn enough in bank interest to pay the overheads for the following year, with any likely shortfall being made up from retained W-I-P or Profits. So we'd pretty much know, say, 2001 Earnings, straight after 2000 ended. So if the wheels suddenly came off, or a big Contract goes tits up, & a big black cloud descended on us, the wages & overheads were safely tucked away, & all would be well, no redundancies, no knee-jerks required. That's prudency at it's most extreme, & is only possible in a privately-owned Company, it would be unthinkable in a PLC.

And that's why I'm so stubbornly, blindly, unmoveably, financially prudent in business, I had 20 odd years of that drummed into me. I'll not likely ever make a fortune, but as sure as hell I'll never go busto.

[tikay]

By the way, Des Bling Bling Jonas was in DTD on Tuesday, for the £50 Rebuy.

He warned me he was warming up for the 3-2-1.

"Tell them all on that blonde site that they are wasting their time coming - it's all gonna be shipped to the big black geezer".......

He shared a table with a hoodie & shade wearing, non-smiling 12 year old, & it was hilarious, Des played him like a fiddle. Hoodie-Boy arrived with a stack so tall he was hidden behind it, & left 20 minutes later, chip-less & heartbroken, aided no doubt by the fact that Dessy bluffed him off pot after pot, & showed every time. "Ain't no hoodie-boy can beat The Big Black Geezer" said the man himself. "Teach him to wear a hoodie, wots he doing, trying to intimidate me. ME?" said Des. Dave Smith dipped his bread too, & the poor lad learnt some lesson. Got himself a new arse though.

[Ironside]

I've not forgotten I need to answer Simon Galloway's Post, & Question, that'll be later.

For now, though, a Question for everybody.

In any well run CardRoom - I'll use DTD as an example, where the Dealers are perfectly trained & consistent - but it applies to any good Poker Playing Venue.

When the Dealer is about to be changed at a Table, he/she fans the deck of cards out, face-down, in that sort of semi-circle-arcy thing. And THEN they do an odd thing - they turn ONE CARD face up.

Today's question is - why?

I've asked almost every Dealer I ever saw do it, & not one knows the answer - except, often, "because that's the way we are trained to do it". Fair enough - but why?

Oh - I don't know the reason either. I'm just curious. Some would say I'm very curious. Odd, even.

Well I reckon that it's simply an extension of that clap hands thing that the dealers do when counting or changing chips just to show that they haven't palmed one, except that this time it's with cards.

Simple really....

Simple really? Sorry Ralph, but I think not!

We all know why Dealers/Croupiers/Cashiers do that clap hands thing, but I fail to see the connection between that, & it's quite obvious purpose, & a Dealer turning over a single card from a face-down "fanned" deck.

But at least you came up with an answer, & in that, you were unique. Which implies that nobody knows the answer, or, more likely, a total indifference to my, I readily accept, fairly geeky question.

But everything I see or do in life prompts a series of simple questions in my arguably child-like, inquisitive mind, viz, "what?/why?/how?/when?".

Those Dealers turn that Card over every single time they change Tables, & yet not one of them has yet been able to answer the question I have asked so many of them - "err, excuse me, but why did you just do that?". At best they say "no idea", or "because we are trained to do it". If you were a good Dealer, well-trained, would you not want to know why you were asked/instructed to do something, if the reason were not plainly obvious? Clearly not, but I know I would!

I suppose we are all different, but I just need to know why, in life, or in poker, certain things are the way they are.

the real answer is to force the imcoming dealer to shuffle

[maccol]

sounds good to me Iron

[Ironside]

sounds good to me Iron

it is good as its the truth

with one card face up the new dealer is forced to shuffle

wheras without a face up card they "might" accidently just start dealing

not going to happen alot  but its a safe guard

[dik9]

It is a courtesy to the other dealer to say without words, the cards need shuffling, so rather than the next dealer just picking the cards up he is forced to shuffle, some dealers do it differently, i.e. half shuffle the cards but still usually turn the top card over. What you should never see though is a pre shuffled deck waiting for the next dealer.

Well thats what the explanation the person who trained me many moons ago said

EDIT: It is also an excuse for someone to bet the dealer a fiver that he can't turn an ace over