lil dave's lil life

I'm home!

I realise i didn't update here in forever and the main reason is that there has been nothing to really update. Not like the good days where there was always stories and adventures to report on! I just now emailed the guy who used to host my blog to try and get the old archives of the blogs. Don't suppose anyone knows how to find them - i always thought nothing is ever truly gone from the internet! Will re-post here when i do, there are a few i just really wanna read again!

So I'll fire an little update in.

Business

Had a bit of a reality check October/November/December - thought I really had everything sussed in the betting business, was gonna shave my head and open some BETDAVES try fleece some working class guys out of their paychecks with some FOBTs. Then, as things tend to do when you get a little cocky, a few small disasters occurred simultaneously.

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Learnt very fast this year that bookmaking is 19% marketing/player acquisition, 1% having any fucking clue about markets/sports/betting, and 80% about processing payments and actually getting paid. Between reglators, banks, wallets, payment merchants, greedy bastard affiliates and credit agreements, making the money seems very, very easy compared to actually getting your hands on any of the bloody stuff. Banks are constantly changing their minds about how they operate with gambling businesses and we're just entirely at the mercy of their constant changing of moods regarding the subject. If people cant deposit easily and in a method that suits them they just go somewhere else.

During all this banking mayhem our secretary, the only person who actually knew how any of the regulatory stuff worked (!) left us and since then we've been fluttering in the wind. I made the foolish mistake of telling our bank i wanted to take bitcoin deposits and they near on closed me down. Then, just after we built our very exciting new FOREX betting platform, I was informed our license terms had changed and we couldn't offer FOREX betting...so our very exciting new project has sat there cold for nearly 4 months.

We ended up losing about 65% off our net deposits and turnover dropped ~50%. Really rather tilting. 3 Months ago i ws thinking about what kind of world cup volume we were gonna be aiming for....now I'm just thinking please god get me back to Septembers numbers!

Lesson here is, respect the business, don't take your eyes off the ball after modest short term succes and don't be a cocky wanker.

Betting

Absolutely destroyed it during WC darts, the £40ew Rob Cross 125/1 was a nice little brucey too. Loads of games, easy to get lumpy bets on, amazing darts to watch, it really is absolute dreamland, so gutted when it ends. Darts is the stone cold nuts for watching/betting/talking about and you'll never convince me otherwise!

Done great the horses, good on the Tennis, decent on NFL and did my bollocks solidly all year on the football. Dam football, can't even bring myself to watch the shit anymore.

We've had a few very high stakes customers providing some blood pumping swings of late too, had a few 10-20% net worth swings of late and that's always a fun way to remind yourself you're alive. Been a long time actually since I swung such big % of my net worth, back in the day i was constntly swining 40-60% net and just didn't give a fuck, until after I lost, when i felt like the biggst knobhead in the world. I do kind of miss it actually as moronic as it sounds - I'm not sure if I'm just a degenerate at heart, if I just haven't tried enough different types of drugs or I'm just a little destroyed by the aftermath of my early twenties, but there is no feeling in the world like gambling for too much money at something. It just really cannot be beat, drugs, drink, sex etc nothing compares!

What does everyone else think? You feel the same or am I a bit broken?

As for results to date of the high stakes action, well...

Poker

I think i mentioned before but I made my Ali-like-return to the ring in poker at the start of September - after being persuaded by Franky on the last day of our holiday to come play the Vic £1k, where I was defeated heads up - by franky - cashed for £10k and used that as a London poker roll to get myself back into playing. After immeadiately dusting £8k of my money the following day at 10/25 PLO I spun it back up at the Palm Beach where I seem to have just run so sick every time I played. Obviously enjoying myself when im winning and not being a pro I don't have to worry about anything other than what wine i wanna order and playing with my cards, and I can just enjoy the game...sometimes i play tight, sometimes i play lose, just do what I want and i absolutely LOVE playing poker these days. Time constraints mean that 2-3 times a month is the absolute maximum I could ever play really but that's probably aiding my enjoyment of it too. The last time I played in 2017 I played PLO which I'd gotten bashed at everytime I played this year (0 in 3 sessions!) and ran crazy hot and ended the year + for tournaments (1 played) + in NLHE (maybe 7 sessions?) and + in PLO (maybe 4 times) what a grinder!

Obviously I must be a superb cardsman still! Don't do coaching, no.

Being Engaged

Previously I said that I wanted to buy a house before I got married, get everything for a great life set up then when I was confident I could give Laura the standard of life she deserves I would propose, looking back that was actually just an excuse to not propose

but it just wasn't the right time. This year we had a great year the two of us, hardly any fights, both moved forward a great deal personal/business life, and just felt like we'd really grown super, super strong as a couple. Given that financially things had gone well the last 3 months and Laura was starting her own business and that had started well too, it just felt like the perfect time. I think we'll have been together for 5 years by the time we get married and lived together for nearly 4. I've been close to 100% sure for basically 2.5 years that I want to spend my whole life with her and rather than thinking about how the wording of my excuse not to propose sounded I started to get really excited about actually proposing, started to think about things we might have at the wedding etc.

Crazy to think that uncontrollable lunatic running around the world trying to throw his money into as many different holes as possible, would be living in London...with a girl...who wants to marry him! Feel like I should start buying argyle sweaters and reading the times.

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Proposal was pretty slick, and i was kind of spoilt by having a super romantic spot to fire the question...

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The resort we stayed in Koh Samui offered "romantic on the beach dinner" with your own waiter and loads of food. I was watching them build the canopy during the day, then whilst Laura was getting married I snuck out of our villa down to the beach, where - just along from the beach and out of sight of our table I wrote the words "MARRY ME" in seaweed in the beach!

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Seaweed, absolutely perfect for writing stuff in the sand too, and if you're lucky enough to be by the sea seems to be an unlimited supply of the stuff! I Originally went with "MARRY ME?" indicating a question, but felt in such a situation it was best to be confident, so i deleted the "?" and instead went for a statement. MARRY ME.

Was funny, and really amazing to me, that the guy who was helping me from the resort realised that the tide was quite high this evening (was very windy) and because of the angle of the beach was a pretty solid chance that the bit where I'd written it was gonna not be able to walk too if we took too long eating dinner. He brought our champagne over, and started saying to us "you should go for a walk on the beach before dinner" "It's lovely on the beach, you should go for a walk" "I'll tell the chef to wait 10 minutes so you can go for a walk" which is obviously a really bizarre thing for a waiter to say! They were amazing though and helped me too much.

Despite being like, 99.9% confident she'd say yes I got insanely nervous just before, to the point where I was physically shaking, I guess whatever you think about marriage as a concept, it's still a big deal - I had no idea how much it meant to me until 30 seconds before I proposed.

My god if she'd said no! In the middle of a paradise beach having dinner on my knees in full view of an entire restaurant 6000 miles from home...

Here she is! All happy and smiley - the future Mrs Nicholson!

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Small downer (tiny, tiny, tiny) is that she didn't really like the ring. So we went back and changed it, good thing is you keep the diamond and they change the setting for you if its not what she wants - which is amazing - it's a massive amount of money to spend on something and her not like it... We've somehow managed to fire another 0.5 carrat's in there too! So in 2 weeks she'll have her ring, will be the oe she wants and it will fit! Then maybe we can think about some sort of wedding!!!

Laura's family are from Romania, Laura is fairly meh about it but I feel like her family are going to want some Romanian influence to the wedding which I support absolutely, though I kind of feel like... I picked the ring (which wasn't the right ring, but still!) I paid for the ring, I booked the holiday, planned the proposal and asked the question...aren't my primary tasks completed here? I'm sure they'll let me know the date and I'll make sure my suit is ironed and be there on time. #groomlife

I just hope all my past shenanigans on stag does dont lead to me getting killed on mine.

I will post again with a few little tidbits from our hoiday shortly. Was incredible, utterly incredible.