Im not really called Dave:A blog of a bloke who plays poker then writes about it

[Linux]

Just read throught this thread, loving it. Keep up the ggod work

[DaveShoelace]

What times do you play in the mornings then Barry. I have actually spoke to a few full time fish who wake up about 5.30-6am and do very nicely for themselves

Yeah the best time is if you can get up from about 5.30am onwards. In her old job my missus would be up at 6 and I would get up around the same time and play thorugh till about 11.30, really easy abc poker and wait for some yank to reraise you obv aces with nothing. At the end of last year I played quite a bit of PLO at these times on FT and the games were always pretty good.

Not as easy to get up these days, sleep is my new mistress Im afraid.

[DaveShoelace]

So me and the missus have a bit of the old food poisening at the moment, hence my last minute no show at DTD this weekend (I woulld have bloody won it to I tells ya). Its funny, when I had my old job I would ring in sick for ANYTHING, a bit of a cough would be at least two days off minimum, but now I work from home and for myself, here I am writing and playing at my PC fully prepared to make that last minute dash to the bog at a moments notice. In hindsight, I think about 4 of the days I had off in 6 years of working were probably legitamate. I didnt have that many days off in retrospect even though I just inferred I had, but I probably could have braved it in on most of those days.

Now I never would use sickness as an excuse when I would wag work, Ive never done a good sick voice and always opted for something more unrealistic (because it would seem more realistic, I would reason). The kitchen flooded, I witnessed a road accident, Im stuck in a lift - in retrospect it was probably a subliminal attempt to get sacked, the fact that I would try and use a previous nights episode of 'One Foot in the Grave' as inspiration to get the day off work.

Oh well, gotta go and do another sprint to the toilet, wish me luck.

[action man]

id just like to add something to the blog.

Wednesday you got me wondering wednesday
got me wondering wednesday
got me wondering
1 banana
2banana
3banana
4

[jakally]

id just like to add something to the blog.

Wednesday you got me wondering wednesday
got me wondering wednesday
got me wondering
1 banana
2banana
3banana
4

Pub lunch?

[DaveShoelace]

One of my mates ex-girlfriends is setting up her own business where she is going into large workplaces at dinner times and doing manicures for the female employees. I think its a bit of a winner (I even suggested the name 'nail her' which didnt go down well) because at my old job we had people doing that all the time - selling perfume, craft stuff, make up, xmas cards etc in the foyer near the canteen. Instant clientbase all with money in their pockets and time on their hands - winner, winner, chicken dinner.

I gave her my all encompassing piece of advice for this and any venture taking place within a customer service building - take a baby with you.

The baby in the workplace seems to get more female employees away from their desk quicker than diarreha, a sale or a fire drill ever could. We had a woman sell birthday cards every tuesday near the canteen and and email would go round saying something like 'little joshy and his mum are selling cards in the canteen today' and guaranteed the place would be heaving like a take that concert.

Because most of the bosses at my job were female, the sight of two blokes stood talking about footy would never last long and we would be reminded that we were there to work. But when a female employee making a visit during maternity would bring in a baby....FUCK THE CUSTOMER, THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT HAS JUST STOPPED.

I sat across from the call centre for a while and its amazing how many calls would go unanswered because more than half the workforce has just upped sticks while the management have done likewise, all waiting in line to hold it and talk about afterbirth and sore nipples and whatever other god awful subject is involved in the miracle of childbirth.

I did a bit of calculating at the time and I estimated that babies in the office cost UK businesses a billion pounds a year and the company I work for approximatley £600,000 a year. I based this on time spent away from station, number of women that witness the baby, number of women on maternity in a year and the average wage of an employee. Naturally this didnt go down to well when I presented my spreadhseet, exploding pie chart and scattergraph to back up my claim, but I should have been working anyway so it was a minor victory for me.

And yes, I dont have kids.

[DaveShoelace]

To sum up, baby in the workplace has the same effect on women that dog on the school playground has on kids.

[AlexMartin]

Love that baby spiel. Class!

[bhoywonder]

Pmsl@dogs in playgrounds.ahh memories.200 lunatic kids chasing a random brown dog.

[DaveShoelace]

Pmsl@dogs in playgrounds.ahh memories.200 lunatic kids chasing a random brown dog.

Yeah, and the teachers would all have a system of calming the kids down, I reckon thats day one of teacher training

[Dingdell]

One of my mates ex-girlfriends is setting up her own business where she is going into large workplaces at dinner times and doing manicures for the female employees.

Bloody hell - manicures must be pricey where you live. Working one hour a day does not equal setting up your own business unless you're charging a hell of a lot! I'd love to see the first years forcasted earnings on that basis!

[DaveShoelace]

One of my mates ex-girlfriends is setting up her own business where she is going into large workplaces at dinner times and doing manicures for the female employees.

Bloody hell - manicures must be pricey where you live. Working one hour a day does not equal setting up your own business unless you're charging a hell of a lot! I'd love to see the first years forcasted earnings on that basis!

lol, i think that goes to show how much i know about manicures. In fairness she may have said something about it being part of a wider idea, im not sure (plus there are usually 2 hours in a work dinner hour dependant on shifts for most folk). If it is, i still think its a winner. If you disagree then....umm....look theres a baby over there!

[AndrewT]

One of my mates ex-girlfriends is setting up her own business where she is going into large workplaces at dinner times and doing manicures for the female employees.

Bloody hell - manicures must be pricey where you live. Working one hour a day does not equal setting up your own business unless you're charging a hell of a lot! I'd love to see the first years forcasted earnings on that basis!

She's just planning to go to the office where this woman works.

Click to see full-size image.

[Dingdell]

One of my mates ex-girlfriends is setting up her own business where she is going into large workplaces at dinner times and doing manicures for the female employees.

Bloody hell - manicures must be pricey where you live. Working one hour a day does not equal setting up your own business unless you're charging a hell of a lot! I'd love to see the first years forcasted earnings on that basis!

She's just planning to go to the office where this woman works.

Click to see full-size image.

I'm betting she comes from somewhere in the southern states of America?

[DaveShoelace]

I’m taking a short break from tournaments and my sponsorship deal with VC Poker. I must be the first player in history to put the breaks on a sponsorship deal and I feel a bit of an ungrateful sod to do it, but I’m prioritising a few things at the moment ahead of it. Without going into too much details, I do a few bits and bobs of PR type stuff with VC Poker that forms part of my deal and takes up a lot of my time, it’s not just a cash of turning up and playing (donating) for them. I plan on recommencing it in a few months time, maybe at the start of the year. They have been tremendous with me from start to finish and hope they don’t mind being a bit patient with me.

One of the big reasons for this has actually been my recent form at the cash tables. I have been stomach wrenchingly unlucky over the last, well I guess the last year as a whole at the cash tables but the last month or so in particular. I’ve got by of course and maintained a steady profit throughout, but nowhere near what that Sklansky graph suggests I should. So I am concentrating on my cash games more than ever and working hard with my coach every day to get better (And also to getting him to tell me when I’m not being unlucky, just shit).

But if you are being unlucky then why are you trying to improve, surely there is nothing you can do to change it? I hear you ask. Well not quite, I hate it when people bemoan their bad luck and I’m sick of the fact that I have been doing it a lot lately. But I do believe that the best way to negate bad luck is to increase your skill advantage. The better a player you are the less you are ‘gambling’ and if I can’t improve my form in coinflips then at least I can improve other stuff to counteract that. I played a few thousand hands of $100nl today to get my confidence up, I haven’t play $100nl for about 3 years and it was actually fun and really easy (I was expecting the standard to be a lot better than it was), I reckon a pro grinder could six- ten table $100nl and make a good crust off it.

The other reason is that for whatever reason, I’m fecking awful at tournament poker at the moment. It’s nearly been 12 months since I cashed in an event and although a lot of my early tournament exits this year were genuine bad luck, I don’t think I can make such a claim for the majority of 2008. I am so lucky that I’ve only had to buy myself into one tournament all year, because all I have to show for it is a £25 scalp from DTD.

Playing isn’t going great at the moment but everything else is. I love my writing work at the moment and I’ve even been invited onto that there ‘the Club’ programme next month. I’ve got my fingers in quite a few other poker pies at the moment (Some of which are a secret at the moment, ooooooooh) and although pocket kings are as about reliable as Royal Mail right now, the overall picture is looking very bright and rosey. Thank god I’m a bankroll nit and thank god for rakeback.

A few of my friends have recently fallen out of favour with a few of my other mates, because they are big players in the finance industry and are alienating people with their obsession with money. I sometimes wonder if I’m actually the same, I love everything about poker – the game, the thrill, the people, tournaments, the lifestyle, the stories – but it’s always about the bottom line first and foremost for me and right now I think I’m going down the road where I can make the most money. Tournament poker is great fun and one day I could get lucky and win big, but right now being the best cash player I can and writing every poker article ever written is what I’m all about.

So anyway, after all that I’m off to a tournament tomorrow, lol.

 Sky Poker very kindly invited me as a poker media type person to play in their first UK Tour event. Naturally if I win it the ‘I’m a fucking MTT god’ post will follow but it’s just a bit of fun and never hurts to rub shoulders with those television types.

I alluded to Royal Mail being unreliable in this post, get this. I saw through my window the Postie walking towards my apartments this morning with a parcel in his hand which I assumed was the brolly my missus bought off ebay that she won’t shut up about. I heard the sound of the letters hitting the floor of my front door as usual but that was it. I was mid cuppa at this point so when I finally went to pick up my post, the lazy fat sod went and posted a ‘you were out’ slip through my door and never attempted to ring our buzzer or knock on the door. In my best British stiff upper lip voice I rang up the Royal Mail hotline and complained about the lazy Bastard.

I blame the credit crunch.