You have to give the man credit.
I had a strange desire to do something out of character yesterday and decided to tidy up some of the paperwork in my room. In the course of this I took a closer look at my recent Visa bill statements. I had a surprise to read in my most recent statement that my credit limit had been increased without any request on my part. It seems to happen every six months or so. I won't say what my new limit is, for security reasons, but it's #1,500 higher than it was one month ago.

Quite how my bank has decided it's safe to do this, I don't know. The increase in my limit does not reflect in any way upon any improvement in my personal circumstances. By any objective measure, my credit rating should in fact be below that of the Polish Shipworkers Mothers' Knitting Circle and just slightly above the Saddam Hussein Christmas Party Fund. The only thing that I have done to 'prove' my credit-worthiness is to have borrowed within my limits before and never missed making a minimum repayment. That seems to be all that it takes.

The personal credit market seems like a timebomb waiting to blow. If you have ever watched daytime digital TV you will have noticed that many if not most of the adverts are for debt refinancing companies. Banks are throwing money at people. I know one poker player who was several thousand in debt a few years ago. He was nevertheless about #12,000 below his credit limit. He decided to borrow right up to the ceiling of what he was allowed and to 'spin it up' in the Victoria. His thinking was that it was a freeroll. If he won, then he could repay the debt and would have a bankroll to play professionally. If he lost it, he was going to 'knock' them. There was almost no downside as far as he was concerned. In the event, he won a large competition soon afterwards and is out of trouble. But the bank has no idea how close it came to losing its maximum exposure to him. I wonder how much his limit has gone up since.

If you can't stand the heat.
With the temperatures in the south of England breaking the all-time records, I decided that I couldn't bear to stay at home on Monday afternoon and sought refuge in air-conditioned premises.

There being nothing worth watching in the cinema that I haven't already seen, I ended up sitting in Ladbrokes. I brought a copy of the Economist to read and figured that as long as I had a small bet about once an hour, they wouldn't chuck me out.

It wasn't busy there. The Tote opposite the road is more popular for reasons I can't grasp, but there was nevertheless some amusement to be had in watching the betting behaviour of the other punters in the shop. And what a prize bunch of dickheads some of them turned out to be. I watched one man shouting that the dog he backed had employed the wrong tactics for the race!

In case you haven't been to a betting shop in the last year, I should at this point explain that the big bookmaking chains have recently tried hard to move away from a reliance on ... how can I put this? ... anything that is remotely real.

For starters, the shop had two video games on which people can play virtual roulette. The machines were almost never unoccupied. In fact I think there was more interest in the machines than in any of the actual dog and horse races themselves. The players pressed their thumbs on the screen to place their bets. Most of the people I watched bet at least one chip on every number. The machines made a sort of 'ching' noise when they did this. Sitting in the middle of the room, I was treated to it in stereo. As a consequence of betting on every number, the machine would always say 'Winner' even though in many cases the player had actually lost.

Far more hilarious however, were the virtual races that are shown on the main screens that also broadcast the real races. I was first told about them by Dominic who said 'The bookies have finally dropped any pretence that they think of their customers as anything other than total c***s'. I can see what he means. It's like betting on a cartoon. Imagine Wacky Races for money!

What actually happens is that a randon number generator selects a number withing a given range. All the numbers within the range are allocated to various virtual horses in the race and the horses with the most numbers run at lower odds. There is a market for the odds shown, but no prices will ever drift or shorten. Once the random number generator has decided the winner, the screen then displays a generated race with cartoon horses. It's really just a lottery draw.

Despite this, the races now have 'form guides'. This is of course pure nonsense. In fact the small print on the wall makes this clear. Nevertheless I saw people studying the form and a friend of mine tells me that he once heard a mug punter complain 'Oh No! I've been waiting weeks for this one to come out again and they've made it only two to one!'

Betting exchanges are taking the business of real racing away from the shops. It's possible that a time will come when the shops won't be interested in real races any more. Why should they put themselves at risk by taking bets on things where a few punters might know more than them, when they can always fill their premises with people who want to bet on what is literally a lottery draw?

Not in the family way.
I don't come from a family of people who play card games or gamble in any way. My father tells of occasionally agreeing to be a 'fourth' at bridge when he was young and always wishing later on that he hadn't. My mother has never shown the slightest interest in non-athletic games of any kind. So I have only once managed to persuade her to come to the Victoria Casino. It was several years ago.

My mother doesn't quite get the idea that people actually play in casinos with their own money. It seems so stupid to her that anyone would want to do this, that she is convinced that much of what is going on is merely money-laundering.

When we went there I showed her the card room. As I walked towards it, an older player named X.X greeted me. I said hello in return. After he had passed my mother asked me who he was. Sensing a possible chance to persuade her that I was dealing with respectable people, I replied, quite truthfully: 'His name is X.X. He is a retired policeman. He was a detective with Scotland Yard'.

'Hmmm,' said my mother, 'I wonder whose money he's playing with.'

I can't win.

Great uses of the Internet
The Internet Movie Database is running a poll for its registered users. The question is 'Should the Star Trek movie franchise call it quits?'

So far 16 per cent of the 5198 who responded have clicked the box marked 'I have absolutely no opinion'.

I wonder whether anyone actually registered with the site just so that they could express their indifference.

Click here to see the latest poll results

The above link will switch to another poll in a future date so I will have to remove it later.

He's only got the right hand, Mike!
It's November 14, 1994 and former World Heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman is challenging IBF World Champion Michael Moorer for the title in Las Vegas. Moorer is the clear favourite, being 27 years old, while Forman is well over 40, overweight and less fit.

In the later rounds, Moorer's cornermen are telling him that he is winning the bout and that he merely has to avoid a foolish knockout to retain the title. Pointing out the weaknesses in Foreman's challenge they scream again and again 'He's only got the right hand, Mike!'.

The implication is clear. So what happens in the tenth round? Moorer gets close to Foreman, lets his left hand slip away from covering his head and gets clobbered by a massive right hand uppercut from the older man. He drops to the canvas and fails to make the count. It's all over.

I think of this every time I give or get advice about poker or other gambling. It's so much easier to spot someone else's flaws than your own, even when someone else tells you what your own flaws are.

Last night I saw a friend playing a heads up match online. I realised that I had encountered his opponent before, so I called my friend and told him that I would never bluff this person under any circumstances. He felt differently and later on I watched him continue to bet his chips away to a calling machine.

He's only got the right hand, Mike!

You've bin Blamed !
My faith in human nature was given a boost recently when I learned that Aaron Barschak, the self-styled 'comedy terrorist' who breached security at Windsor Castle, was getting terrible reviews for his Edinburgh fringe show. It's great to know that publicity doesn't always reward the completely untalented.

Of course it does take some skill to get past royal security dressed as a terrorist, but it always looked like he was a one-trick pony and the dire reviews his show has earned bear this out. The show has not sold well.

Click here for an example of the reviews

But I have a confession to make. I once did try to make humour out of Osama bin Laden with pathetic puns too. The difference is that I was doing it about 18 months ago when the man was still alive and the US was blaming him for the September 11 atrocities. I am almost certain that he's dead now.

The occasion was when my friend Dominic told me that he thought that someone should write a Lloyd-Webber type musical about his life but he needed material.

So here it is, the song listing for:

You've bin Blamed!

Jihad's the way (ah-huh, ah-huh) I like it.

Osama, we're all crazee now.

The phantom of the al-Qaeda.

I am 16, going on a suicide mission.

Luton calling.

Another Brick in the Bunker.

Mullah of Kintyre.

Every little thing she does is ... forbidden by the religious police.

Another dumb job
In the spring of 2000, I was in need of employment and joined a website design company. I was in a sales position (of course) and this involved cold-calling small and medium sized companies out of the Yellow Pages to find out whether they were interested in having their first ever website.

I usually started by asking the person who answered the phone whether the company had a website. If they said yes then I asked them what its address was. Of course I wasn't interested, but the reason for the question was to establish whether the receptionist understood the difference between a website and an e-mail address. Remarkably, even as late as 2000, there were many many people who didn't know the difference and some companies had e-mail address without having websites. It was quite common for the receptionist to say 'Yes we have a website and it's info@btinternet.xyz.co.uk'.

It was also common for him or more usually her to say 'Yes, we do. I suppose you're going to ask what it is (sigh). Hang on.' And I would hear her heels clacking down the corridor to ask someone what the website address of the company she worked for was!

It is quite worrying to discover how dim and closed-minded the managers of small and medium-sized enterprises can be. I recall asking one woman what her company's site address was only to be reprimanded with 'I'm not divulging that. It's confidential information for clients only'.

Then there was the man who told me that he would never have a website for his business because of what it said in the book of Revelations.

Two converations stand out in particular:

No. 1

Me: Does your company have a website?

Company boss: No.

Me: Is there a reason for this?

CB: Yes. Because I'm fucking thick.

Me. I see. That's a fresh objection.

CB: I've got a domain name though!

Me. Good

CB: And an e-mail account! But I don't know how to use it.

Me: So are you thinking of getting a website?

CB: Well, not until I have learned how to open my e-mail account. Tell you what. If you come up here (Bedforshire; I was in London at the time and he knew this) and show me how to open my e-mails, I'll buy this website you're selling.

I didn't take the matter any further.

No. 2

Me: Does your company have a website?

Oily Rag: Well, you'll have to talk to me later when the guv'nor gets back, because I can't get at it now.

Me: So you've got one?

OR: It's locked up in the guv'nor's office. It's in his desk and it's locked up.

Me: What is?

OR: The website. It's in the guv'nor's desk drawer. He's got the key and the door's locked anyway.

Me: I get it. Thank you for your time.

It was genuinely chilling to encounter so much ignorance. I recall talking to a woman who managed a small auctioneers business. She said 'We've looked into this business of websites and don't think there is any need for it'. I tried to work out the market cap of EBAY to the nearest billion while she said this. It's hard to think of a business that is better suited to the internet than an auctioneers but she knew best.

There were an enourmous number of people who told me that their nephew, son, daughter etc was going to do it for #30 when they had the time - truly incredible when you consider that we were talking about the front end of their business in the future!

After two weeks I realised that it was a total waste of time. I left and the company went broke about three weeks later.

Sterling cheques at Pokerstars: an update
Pokerstars have issued sterling denominated cheques on a beta-testing basis to those who have written to ask for them. A friend of mine did so and received his within 8-10 days. It was sent from overseas and was drawn on Lloyds-TSB bank.

There was one problem with it. The date was computer printed in the US format of month/date/year. That didn't matter as it was drawn on 16th July, so there was no possible ambiguity, but there would have been if it had been drawn on 1st July. That would have appeared to most British bank tellers as the 7th January and the cheque would therefore be over six months old and considered 'stale'.

Once this problem is fixed, sterling withdrawal will be made a built-in option. If anyone else has had experience of sterling cheque withdrawal from Pokerstars, could you please let me know how it went by writing to: sleeplessyoung@aol.com

No Limit: Poker imitates Boxing
I must recommend Andy Ward's diary. Ward and I don't share much in terms of our political viewpoints, but we think on similar lines about poker. You can read his wisdom at: http://www.pokersoft.co.uk/diary.htm

In his 18th July entry, he says that he doesn't believe that No Limit hold'em is the most skillful game and that the average strong tournament player would be better off to invest his time in other games, such as seven-card stud and pot-limit omaha.

He's not the only person to say that No Limit isn't the most skillful format. The same is said by David Ulliott, who thinks pot-limit is the truer test, Daniel Negreanu (pot limit), Mason Malmuth (limit) and David Sklansky (mixed games).

I was thinking about this today when I watched a boxing match on TV. In boxing, there are weight categories. Every category has an upper limit except for one: Heavyweights. Who earns the most money? The heavyweights. But are they the best boxers?

Comparisons are subjective, but boxing commentators often talk about whom they consider to be the best 'pound-for-pound' boxer. This is to overlook the obvious fact that the heavyweights can defeat the other boxers simply by hitting harder. The best pound-for-pound boxers are nearly always in the middle divisions (middleweights, welterweights etc).

So it's been known for ages that if you want to see the most skillful fighters at work, you shouldn't be watching the heavyweights. But does that change the commercial realities of the business? Not one iota! The public still pays more money to watch the biggest guys, where it can all be ended in one blow.

Rather like No Limit Hold'em and Television!

Sales jobs
Earlier I wrote about the 'interview' I had with La Maison d'Essence. I left the meeting at the earliest opportunity and never followed up what would have happened if I had stayed. I suspect that I would have been made to sell copycat perfumes to friends and family for a few weeks before being told that I hadn't hit target and then dumped.

I haven't always been so shrewd. After I got made redundant from Sanwa Bank in late 1996, I was interested in getting some sales experience for when I might start a business of my own. I saw an advert for a sales job in East Finchley and went along to it. The company had in the past published a reference book called 'The Parliamentary Yearbook'. This year, the idea was to publish it as a CD-Rom for the first time. The job was just to sell advertising space. It involved making cold calls to managing directors.

The pitch was to insinuate, without ever stating it, that you were a civil servant. Instead of phoning up and saying 'I'm calling from XXX Ltd, publishers of the Parliamentary Yearbook', you were told to say that you were calling from the 'Parliamentary Information Office'. You started by saying 'As you know in your industry, it's of the utmost importance that [here you filled in something that was specific to the industry]. Well that and other key factors are going to be addressed in a forthcoming report by [the goverment minister for the industry]. In order that you can add your voice to the report, we are offering you the chance to comment on the issue and in addition there will be space for a full corporate profile. In order to underwrite our free distribution to X thousand goverment offices and businesses, there is a charge. It's X for the full page and Y for the half page. Would you like the full or the half?'

Of course you rarely ever got through the whole pitch without being interrupted, but it did happen sometimes. I lasted about 9 days without getting a single deal. It wasn't that I couldn't do it. I was given an impossible sector: translation bureaux. Most were small business with only a couple of translators and trying to get them to spend #500 when their Yellow Pages ad that brought them all their business cost about the same was a complete waste of time.

You were not expected to use your real name. Names were made up for everyone. Place names and product names are good as they are easier for people to spell. So there was a Mr Lancaster, Mr Wilkinson and so on.

Only one man in the whole office made any real sales. He was pitching the airlines, who had far more money to waste. He was younger than me (about 25 at the time) but his voice made him sound a lot older and he would pretend to be about 60. I heard him say things like 'Ha ha ha. Yes my grandaughter's tried explaining computers to me but I don't get it at all'. You have to imagine the slackness in the vocal cords to get the full flavour of it. It was hilarious to watch, espectially as he used to march up and down on the tables in the office wearing a furry hat with antlers sticking out of it while he was talking to the head of some airline. I'll never forget the time he was telling one of them which of the competitors had already booked (one of the most convincing arguments for any paid employee who isn't spending his own money) and he said 'I think we have Virgin. Let me check.' He then turned to nobody in particular and asked 'Have we got Richard? ... ... Yes! Richard's on board'.

I would recommend that anyone should try and spend a week in one of these 'boiler room' operations. You learn a lot about how people operate and how to isolate the actual decision maker in any organisation.

A friend of mine is far better at it than I was and has at times scratched a living out of it. The fact that he was fantastically talented at it and only made a small return should let you know what a waste of time it is to believe all those ads that tell you that someone in the office made #3,000 last week. He has pitched under a hundred false names. My favourite is 'Leroy Von Fame' - a subtle reference to the character of Leroy from "Fame" - a hit TV show from the early 1980s.

La Maison d'Essence
Has anyone else ever gone to an interview for a company that calls itself 'La Maison d'Essence'. I did a few years ago and it was a most strange affair.

I went to a first interview in a building in Wembley and was later that day told that I was accepted to come to a second interview at the end of the week. The latter wasn't so much an interview as a seminar. There were about fifty of us there. The first thing that we were told was that for every one of us there, another five had already been rejected. I found this hard to accept. My first interview had taken about 20 minutes and I saw no other candidates hanging around before I was there or after I left. Yet somehow they had seen about 250 other people, presumable between Monday and Thursday of that week, as the second 'interview' was on the Friday.

We were sat in rows and told about the amazing opportunities to be had in selling copycat perfumes and aftershaves, which they referred to as 'renditions'. They claimed it was totally legal.

The first few weeks were supposed to be spent on selling and it wasn't made entirely clear how we were supposed to get our sales leads, though the mention of friends and family made me suspicious. I looked around to see whether anyone was as untrusting as I, but instead I saw a sea of serious faces all writing down the nonsense being spouted by the speaker, who looked all of 19 years of age. In fact the company didn't seem to employ anyone older than 20.

When they asked us for personal information, I made my excuses and left. I can't find anything about the company on Google. This makes me more suspicious.

Has anyone else here ever come across this company?

DY

P.S. In case this looks familiar, it is a copy of a post I wrote on the Hendon Mob forum.

He's the real deal
There is a common argument, usually brought out by Bush-haters when they are losing an argument, that 'Bush isn't the real president. He lost in Florida'. It is used to undermine his authority.

It's nonsense.

The 2000 US election was certainly one of the closest of all time, but nevertheless Bush won it, regardless of what you hear.

Here's why: Florida is on two time-zones. The majority of the state is on EST (Eastern Standard Time). But there is a small area known as the 'panhandle' which is on Central Time and is thus one hour behind.

On the night of the election, after voting had ceased in the majority of Florida, the television networks, led by NBC, declared that the state had gone to Al Gore at 7.49 Eastern Time, which was 6.49 Central Time. Polls closed on both sides at 7pm. The effect was that many thousands of people in the Central Time Zone's 10 Florida counties didn't bother to vote at all, as they thought that it was a 'fait accompli'. There was still another 11 minutes for voters in the panhandle to reach the polls and those who were in line at 7pm as the doors closed had extra time to cast their votes.

The affected parts of the state are overwhelming Republican. The effect was that Bush lost an estimated 10,000 votes - far more than Gore ever claimed to have lost to the 'hanging chads' incidents.

So let's hear no more about 'Governor Bush'. He won. He's the president. That's it.

Back ... shortly.
As most people know, I'm a firm atheist and rather than apologising for not being able to believe in something that I find implausible and often immoral, I prefer to go on the attack. So from time to time, I like to follow the discussions on a newsgroup called 'alt.bible.errancy'. One day, just to stir things up, I wrote to ask:

In the first verse of Revelations, it talks about things that are due to happen 'shortly'. The things have not happened and 2000 years have passed. How do those who take the bible literally account for this? There is no definition of the word 'shortly' that means 'in 2000 years or more'.

First reply I got was from Tim S, who is on my side, but has studied the bible in far greater detail than I. He wrote:

After the turn of the first century CE, the expectation of an imminent return began to wane and around 120 CE the expectation of a quick return pretty much died. We see evidence of this in 2nd Peter where the author is answering those who understood the failed predictions of Jesus and is saying that Jesus will come but God doesn't want any to perish so God is holding off till more can be saved and the interesting thing to note here is the author doesn't try to argue that Jesus will come back soon.

That's why I date 2nd Peter well into the 2nd century, possibly around 115. The imminent return was just getting ready to die off completely but here the author still believes he's living in the last days so I wouldn't date it later than say 140 CE because only an idiot would continue to think the "last days" would last from the mid fifties to 150 or a hundred years. Even the author of 2nd Peter began to suspect something was up and offered this apology for Jesus' "lateness".

2nd Peter verses 3 to 9:
First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised?

Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Jason G., A christian who believes in the literal inerrancy of the bible, then appeared offering clarity ... for a price:

The answer to this question is quite simple. It's in my book. Link below.

JG

"The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained" Nearly 4,000 clarifications of the scriptures! Link: http://sab.jcsm.org

Which wasn't entirely generous of him. It is however very brave of him to offer to 'clarify' the scriptures, as the last page of Revelations contains a curse on those who add or subtract from it.

Specifically it says in Rev Ch22 Verse 18 to 19: 'For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.'

Tim came back with a very good point:

Jesus' followers, including the writer of Revelation believed Jesus was to return "soon". He didn't so Jason and the Bible are wrong. Anyway, Jason, can you provide another example in the Bible where "shortly" or "soon" is used and the referenced event occurred 2000 or more years later? For the anonymous writer of 2 Peter to be correct, you would have to find such an example. You won't.

And the discussion has faltered there. Nothing more has been heard from Jason, but somehow I feel confident that he'll be back .... shortly.

Men of his calibre are hard to replace
I went to an all-boys school. It's the tragedy of my life. The school was situated at the top of a hill in High Wycombe. At the bottom of the hill was an all-female public (ie. private) school called Wycombe Abbey.

When I was 15, we were informed that there was an opportunity to attend a debate to be staged between the two schools. I was keen to go. Just think: the chance to meet girls and get into an argument - a double whammy. Sadly the subject of the debate was totally uninspiring (something to do with the benefits of a classical education). I was keen for an education of a more practical kind: the opportunity to talk to girls of my own age. I had read 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie and was confident that I had a sufficient theoretical understanding of how to behave.

I went to the debate and got thoroughly bored by it, as did most, before the highlight of the evening came: the chance to have dinner with girls who were more insulated from boys than I was from girls.

But disaster struck and it came in a way that I could not have possibly forseen. What could go wrong? The answer is that the debate took place on the same night that news emerged of the death of a minor celebrity. His name was Jon-Erik Hexum and he was the star of a show called 'Cover Up'. I doubt that many remember him or the show. He was a good looking man. Sadly, he wasn't too clever. His death came in a totally stupid way. On the set of the show, he decided, as a prank, to pick up a stunt gun and point it at his own forehead and pulled the trigger! It wasn't suicide. It was sheer stupidity.

I'd heard the rumour at school that day and the news reached the girl's school that night. The girls were all horrified, but to my friend Tony and myself, it was hilarious. It seemed the perfect revenge that someone so good looking and so obviously blessed with all the luck one could hope for lacked only the intelligence not to stick a loaded gun to his head and squeeze the trigger for a joke.

The more the girls at the dinner table wailed, the funnier Tony and I found it. Slowly we sensed that we were not winning any friends, but it was too late.

Many years later I briefly considered a career in HTML programming and studied the first few chapters of a book about it. While fiddling about on the PC, I typed in Hexum's name out of the blue to see whether anyone at all remembered him. To my surprise, I found that there were several memorial sites dedicated to the memory of his short life.

Like this one. Click here!

Right then and there, I knew that it was pointless to pursue a career in website development if there were people out there building sites for free to someone who had been dead since 1984.

So Jon-Erik, your career may have been short and may now be long forgotten, but you totally shredded my chances of pulling a posh bird when I was a teenager. You bastard.

P.S. Cover Up must have been one of those cursed shows like Superman and Diff'rent Stokes. Hexum was replaced by an Australian actor in a similar role. He died of AIDS in 1995.

Water finds its own level
Pot-limit players who play limit poker for the first time often come out shocked at some of the calls they see other players making and complain that you 'can't make a move'. They are usually told 'You were playing low limit. If you move up to the bigger games, it's not like that'.

Well I've spent several hours today and yesterday playing the $30/60 hold'em on Pokerstars and I have to say that it's complete crap. Perhaps it's partly because yesterday was the 4th July (US Independence Day) and the site has a 20 per cent deposit bonus, but I have seen some truly horrendous play. Certain players I have marked down as not to be bluffed under any circumstances.

As I write this, I've just seen someone win a $867 four-way pot with Queen-Seven. Oops. I've just won a $1,227 pot with Jack-Eight! What? I was in the small blind, it was multiway and it was suited.

There are people with more money than most willing to gamble it up in the big games just as much as those in the $4/8. The tightest games are those with the semi-pros who know how to play tight, but don't have the bankroll or the tolerance for large swings. By far the worst limit game I've ever been in was a $10/20 hold'em game that started one morning in the Mirage when I was there in 2002. It was not a game. It was a hostage situation! I was lucky that I got called out to a different game after 15 minutes as I could feel Stockholm Syndrome setting in.

The next tightest game I played was another morning game: $8/16 in the Bellagio. It was obvious that the game would be no good, as the players all knew each other (must be locals) and one of them was complaining about the rake he'd paid in Atlantic City (grousing about the rake is a clear tip-off that someone is playing for their rent money). But the casino soon started another game at the same limit and I transferred to that one. I expected the rest of the rocks to follow me and none of them did. They carried on talking about their cats and dogs, oblivious to the fact that the second game was clearly much better.

I never understand how so many strong players can ignore the importance of game selection. It's one of the most vital aspects of winning play - albeit one that you don't see on Late Night Poker! Imagine Jesse May commenting on that. 'Holy Cow. David's been offered the seat. He's not sure. He's asking Brian for more time to think about it. He paces up and down. Two faces he's not seen before. That's good, but one of them has only got #150 in front of him. That leaves three professionals and four strong non-pros. He's looking at the other names on the list to see who's coming next. Hmm. A few initials he doesn't like. That's it. He's passed. So Barny, do you think he was right to pass?'