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Sleepless in Fulham: Rambling and gambling by David Young
Wednesday, 20 April 2005
Experience.
Topic: Politics
A week ago I was berated on a poker forum for expressing views on politics and religion that showed I have no experience of life. Of course no example was provided and the argument went no deeper than that, so I didn't feel any need to provide a proper rebuttal, but it got me to wondering what was meant by experience.

When I was in sixth form at school I did history A level. One of my teachers was a kindly old man called Mr Jones. I don't know his real first name but we all called him Benny. I hope he's alive now but it's less than likely. He seemed frail even then. He must have been quite efficient because we finished the syllabus a few days early in the summer of 1987 and so he asked us whether there were any topics of a wider nature that we wanted to discuss. The first question that was asked was 'Will there be a united Germany? Here is his answer based on fifty years of studying history: "Not in your lifetime!"

It took three years. I'm not saying that Benny Jones wasn't a great teacher. He probably was. But somehow he managed to get it spectacularly wrong. Experience didn't help him.

Want a more up to date example? Check out what the Independent's Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, said about the impending war against Afghanistan (not Iraq). This is a man who prides himself on thirty years of experience in Middle East affairs.

'Bush is walking into a trap'

He might have been right in diagnosing some of America's faults, but his opening statement 'Retaliation is a trap' is utterly ridiculous. Should the US have done nothing after Pearl Harbour? A quick read of Osama bin Laden's 1996 Declaration of War against the United States reveals that it was American weakness and not strength that inspired Al Qaeda. Fisk's article suggests that the invasion of Afghanistan would make matters worse. In fact it was a remarkable success and you barely hear a word about it now, as there is no anti-US angle to squeeze out of it. Hundreds of thousands of people who had fled the Taliban have returned. The election went well. The best that the anti-US press could muster up was that the ink used to validate voting was too easily washable. Pathetic.

A lot of people's forecasts on the big political issues of recent years have been utterly and completely wrong and the forecasts of those with 'experience' have been among the worst.

Later this year I intend to go through all the various forecasts I have made on this site to see how accurate they have been. The Pope bet (see yesterday) doesn't count as it was a value bet at seven to one. I have certainly got some things wrong but I don't think I've fared any worse than people who have far more experience than I.

_ DY at 12:52 AM BST
Updated: Wednesday, 20 April 2005 1:05 AM BST
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Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Tournament Reporting, Part Two
Topic: Poker
This is part two of the very long post I started yesterday. This part concerns the Gutshot comp that David wanted me to write about.

Friday, 8rd April #100 PL hold?em Rebuys

And so on to Gutshot, where I draw a starting seat next to Mad Yank Fanelli and decide to catch up on matters arising. Two seats to my left was Andrew Georgiou. Opposite me was Julian Thew, whom I had never seen before that day. Looking around I didn?t see many rebuy maniacs and began to wonder whether I had had my first bad beat of the night. Ron was applying some Thai ?Tiger Balm? to his head, telling me that it was calming. I decided to try some out and learned the hard way the dangers of rubbing your eyes with the same fingers afterwards, as I struggled to keep my eyes open long enough to see my cards without them stinging. I also started wondering just how effective the stuff could be, if it?s supposed to be keeping Ron calm. I had initially assumed (don?t know why) that Thew was a rock, but the reality hit home when I got all-in with AA against him on a re-raise and found calling me with Q-9 offsuit! But otherwise it was still not a great starting table.

From outside the Salon Prive I could hear the sound of Jac Arama screaming and I began to fear that I was in a no-hope situation in terms of building a stack. At the break, tales abounded of people with 11,000 stacks. I had ended with my starting stack of 2,000 and bought another 3,000 in the add-on. On returning to the table, I learned that we were to be moved upstairs. That meant that I would probably not have to move again, which was good. It was only then that I realised that the comp only had about 78 runners. I had expected this to be another sell out and it occurred to me that perhaps I had underestimated the aversion some people have to playing pot-limit as opposed to no-limit hold?em. Come on people! It?s not that different. For some of you it?s a benefit, as it prevents you making silly all-in moves when there?s no need for it.

Ron started cracking away and raised on the button when I had AJs in the big blind. I moved all-in and he called like a bullet with J-7o. I knocked him out. He seemed genuinely outraged that I had shown him no respect by backraising with the AJs. Some people thought that he was cracked up, but I actually don?t think he?s done much wrong here. He needed to steal some blinds and when he was reraised there was a decent chance that I had something like AQ or AK where he wouldn?t be dominated.

Looking around the other tables, it seemed as though they all had more chips in play than ours. Notably Joe Grech seemed to have a very big stack, but he wasn?t the only one. David Colclough arrived at the table. He mostly seemed to raise with decent hands and he got unlucky against me when I raised with A-T needing a confrontation and called his raise with JJ to catch two aces on the board. The person who was giving me the biggest headaches however, was Gutshot?s own webmaster Dan Smyth. Anytime he raised he seemed to have a strong hand and I only ever once saw him fold to a reraise (from Colclough in the blinds). Consequently when he raised on my big blind from the button I folded A-T, which I would have called most others with very quickly.

I kept myself in play with some more aggressive raises. In once case, raising with T-6 suited and being called for a third of my stack. On a flop of A 6 x, I checked and when the opponent checked behind me, I moved all in on the turn and was relieved to seem him pass. I don?t often make this sort of play, but it has to be done sometimes. Thew got himself knocked out in the oddest way I think I?ve ever seen. On a flop of 5d 6c 3d, he called with 8c 2c after a bet from Dan (!!) and a call in between. That?s not a misprint by the way. On the turn of the K of clubs, he faced a bet and a checkraise and called all in after a long dwell. The turn had given him a flush draw as well as the dubious middle-pin 4. The river was the 10 of hearts and Dan knocked him out with trip fives, along with a rather more unlucky player holding Kd Qd.

I didn?t get many good hands when we were down to two tables, I was lucky that my left hand opponent would often indicate boredom. On one occasion it encouraged me to lose half my stack with a failed steal-raise when someone behind him called. But on every other occasion it helped. I never got called by him in any case. My luck finally ran out when I called all-in with Ad Jd against a raise from As 7s, only to see my opponent make the spade flush. I was about 16th. I went straight to the internet cafe and logged onto Coral. I have no idea what took place next and you?ll have to ask the winner, Neil Channing to write about the rest some other time.

That?s it folks. I hope you didn?t enjoy this and that I?ll never get asked to write one of these again. Good luck!

_ DY at 11:26 AM BST
Updated: Wednesday, 13 April 2005 11:29 AM BST
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Tuesday, 12 April 2005
Tournament Reporting, Part One
Topic: Poker
David Lloyd asked me to write a tournament report for Gutshot on the #100 Pot Limit comp on Friday. I didn't really want to do it, as I mostly dislike tournament reports and rarely read them. I also played in the comp itself and was in no mood to carry on watching once I got bounced out in the last two tables.

Later I wrote something very long. But it's no longer topical and David doesn't like the negativity of the opening paragraphs, which I feel are essential to the whole thing. He's got far more experience of these things than I, so I'll accept his judgement on it and run it here. Now read on.


I?ve never been a fan of tournament reporting. It seems such a limited format. Surely there?s only so much that can be said about a poker game? Doesn?t a simple formula suffice for most readers? Get a snappy title and away you go. A pun on the winner?s name isn?t a bad start, though I don?t suppose anyone will ever surpass ?German conquers Omaha? (Consult a WW2 history book if you don?t get this one) after Matthias Ronacher won a PLO comp in the 1997 WSOP.

Having had a job writing business reports, I know how easy it is to let a template take over. After a while, the hardest part is finding new ways to say the same thing. Listen out for those football reports on SKY where they do their best to avoid repeating the names of the teams. ?It was a vital fixture for Leeds at home today ? the Elland Road squad had their work cut out ? Blackwell?s boys were tired after a two-nil deficit at half time, but it was good news for fans of The Whites when they came back to equalise ?zzzz.?

So think how much harder it is when you?re writing about a game where the options are check, bet, fold, call or raise! Anyone who can make that interesting deserves a knighthood in my opinion. Full marks are due to Tikay for entertaining so many people. Meanwhile, I?ve been asked by David Lloyd to write about Friday?s Pot Limit hold?em comp.

I stated my objections and I crossed my fingers as I left the club that night thinking I had made a clean getaway. But that was then and this is now, and I?m feeling guilty that I haven?t taken the burden off his shoulders, even though I would rather that the job wasn?t done at all. So I?ve decided to give ?two for the price of one? today and hopefully he?ll never ask me to write another one of these wretched things again. I will cover my experiences of the #300 freezeout from the Victoria festival and the #100 PL hold?em comp on Friday, though I?ll have to warn you that I totally lost interest in the latter once I was knocked out in the last two tables and didn?t watch a single hand of the final.

Sunday, 3rd April #300 NL hold?em freezeout.

When did everyone go freezeout mad? Once upon a time you could trust people to be lying when they said that they wanted to play freezeouts instead of rebuy comps. They would prattle about the unfair edge that the maniacs enjoyed (Jac Arama?s name seemed to come up a lot) and then when finally offered the chance to play one would stay at home. Then a funny thing happened. Luton offered a #100 freezeout on Friday nights and in contrast to the unimpressive turnout when Russell Square did the same thing, people actually turned up in large numbers. Where did it all go right?

I decided to see what the appeal was on Sunday and thus paid up for it three days early just to ensure myself a place. It was almost sold out (146 I believe) and first prize was roughly #16k. I was given a tag for my seat and noticed that ?R10? looked eerily like ?RIO?. Could this be a sign of things to come? Was I to be given a boost this day that would get me into the WSOP? I?ll be all right! Looking around the table, I failed to recognise most of the people. I knew the man on my right and Keith ?the camel? Hawkins, who was three seats to my left, but that was about it. Play started with 3,000 points and blinds of 25/25. The first four intervals were to be 30 minutes long and thereafter it would be a 45 minute clock. While waiting for it to start I noticed that the cards to be used were the ?A+? brand. I?m quite fond of this brand, as they are thicker than some of the ones used elsewhere and they seem to have better quality control on the paintwork. I would love to see them used at Gutshot, but I know that if Roy finds out that the Vic are using them then there is absolutely no chance of this, due to his pathological desire to be different to the er ? er. ? Edgeware Road crew. So don?t tell him! OK, now on to the action.

On the first hand I called with 45 suited and folded on the turn. I was shocked to see on the showdown that one of the unknowns had called in early position with Q6 in the same suit. In that kind of loose play, I think that paradoxically the small suited connectors go down in value, as the chance of someone beating your flush with suited filth goes up. Nice to get a cheap warning early on! Later I did call with a 56 suited, wary of getting involved on a small flush for too much action and was relieved to make a nut straight on the turn with it. I was a bit surprised that I didn?t get called. On the flop there was a bet and a call. On the turn the original bettor made the same bet as before and the player in between made a raise to three times the bet. I reraised to 15 times the bet fully expecting to get called or raised by the other raiser and was stunned when he passed. The same player managed to go all in on a nine-high flop with T9 about half an hour later, so I can?t think what he laid down against me.

As a general strategy, I decided to observe how Keith played the comp, as he?s played far more of this kind of event than I. In the very early stages, he was getting involved more than I would have done. It looked to me like he was frittering his chips away but then came a hand from the twilight zone. Keith raised preflop and got called by the player on my right. The flop brought A J x with two spades. The man on the right checked and Keith bet. The other man called. The turn was a spade. Keith?s opponent checked and Keith made a big bet. The man on my right instantly called all in, as though defeat were unthinkable. Keith looked utterly crestfallen. So imagine our surprise when the caller showed A2 of clubs!! Keith had AJ and caught an irrelevant J on the river to fill up. It was one of the most extraordinary gifts I have ever seen.

Every tournament switches from a point where it goes from being risky to play hands to being risky not to play hands. When the blinds reach a certain level they become worth nicking. If you haven?t already worked out what that level is in the standard Gutshot weekly comp, then you are either a beginner or should give up now. I was curious what Keith thought the ?blinds-worth-nicking? point was in this comp. To my astonishment, he seemed to get his boots on at the 100/200 level. I was hoping to capitalise on this by raising over the top of him, especially if he got a weak caller but the opportunity didn?t arise.

Now for some specific hands:

I hold AA under the gun and decide to limp. This was provoked by the arrival of Mr X who loves to raise in the blinds and was small blind this hand. I?m not exaggerating when I say that he raises more in the blinds than on the button, which I always find extraordinary. I also had the camel as a likely suspect of course and was thus doubly gutted when neither of them raised. The flop brought J 5 6 rainbow and I decided to check. I was planning to check-raise or possibly check-call here but was annoyed to see that after the camel bet, Mr X check-raised. I folded. Keith called and then folded when X bet the pot on the turn card Q. I think I got away from disaster here. I put X on two pairs and although I can?t be 100 per cent sure he was beating me, I know that I don?t want to go broke on one pair in an unraised pot. I am sure I had Keith beat though.

Later in the comp, after I?d doubled up with AA over KK, I limp in early position for 200 of my 4900 stack with 66. Keith has the button and raises to 900 and a player in the small blind goes all in for 1200. It?s 1,000 to me and I know that Keith can?t reraise because the all-in is an under-raise. I also know that he is not likely to bluff into a dry side-pot, so it?s tempting to play. But I refuse to call for a quarter of my stack with a small pair when there is a decent chance that I am beaten by one of the opponents, so I fold. Yuk! Keith shows A7o and the other bloke shows AJo. Neither hits a pair and I forgo the chance to win a big pot. Still think it was the right play however.

I played tight for a while and lost more chips, not getting the chances I wanted until I made my one clear blunder. In a hand where there was a no small blind, I found KQo. I can never understand people limping in early position in this spot, as they are only getting evens against the random hand and all the other people in the pot, so I stupidly decided to raise to 1,100 of my 3,100. Keith said ?I?ll give you a spin? and called me. Then someone else moved all-in, covering my remaining 2,000. I folded in dismay. What the hell was I doing in this pot?

Now down to a very small stack when the blinds were 200/400, I decided to do something rather odd. I found JT suited under the gun and called. This seems like a bad play, but I thought I was so low that my equity in the comp was close to zero and the best way back in would be to give myself this shot at winning a decent pot with a multi-way hand. To my surprise all the players behind me folded and I found myself facing the two blinds. On a flop of A 9 4 (no flush draw for me), I decided to bet out after they checked and won easily. I had recovered 800 of the 1,100 I had squandered before, but this wasn?t what I had in mind when I played the hand in the first place!

I let the blinds go through me and on the following few rounds moved all-in with A7s, QTo, ATo and finally KTo. The first three merely got me back my blinds, but the last was done with the intention of picking up more chips. I was called by Paul Testud who had AK for what seemed like the 4th time in about 15 minutes. No help. Me gone. Ho hum. Looking back on it, I should have taken notice of the fact that the 100/200 level was followed by 200/400. Gutshot comps have a 150/300 level in between, which means that you aren?t put to the crunch so early and I?ve grown used to that. I?m not sure I will ever again pay that much for a comp with such a leap after 2 hours of play. I found it unsatisfactory frankly, though I understand the need to make it finish in one day. I went into a cash game and two hours later Hugo Martin told me he had been knocked out 16th. It must have been absolute carnage.

Incidentally, Neil Channing had a disaster. During the break he went down to McDonalds to get some food and rushed back to find that when play resumed, two of the players behind him were missing. Since this made it easier to steal the blinds and he was short-stacked, he moved all in with some rubbish he wouldn?t otherwise have touched and promptly got called and bumped out of the comp. Next time Neil, GO LARGE!

_ DY at 2:55 PM BST
Updated: Tuesday, 12 April 2005 3:15 PM BST
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Monday, 11 April 2005
Rover.
Topic: Politics
The story of the collapse of Rover, five years after being given a new lease of life, illustrates many of the failings of 'New Labour'. In 2000 Rover reached the end of the road. BMW could not make money out of it and in fact was losing a fortune - an average of #39m a month for the previous six years. Think about that the next time you hear a union leader attack the German company. Alchemy Partners had a realistic plan for cutting the company down to profit, focusing on the MG brand. Then came the Phoenix offer, which promised everything to everyone. The government went with the fantasy rather than the reality. So too did the unions.

As Pete Birks says on his blog:

"Phoenix inherited #427m from BMW to fund redundancy settlements, plus #350m worth of unsold stock. It also got land and other businesses that it sold off for #1bn, If all this had been used to pay off the Longbridge workers in 2000, then the workers would have got an average of (wait for it), more than #150,000 apiece. Instead those workers got the satisfaction of working another four years and being thrown on the scrapheap, four years older, with only statutory redundancy pay. Oh, and there is STILL a hole in the Rover pension fund.

But the buyers of Phoenix managed the following; There is a #16.5m directors' pension pot. They have personal control of a (profitable) financing business which might (I am not absolutely sure of this) have been bought via a #10m loan note from, yes, Rover. What might be equally staggering, more than 30 years after Edward Heath called Robert Maxwell* "the unacceptable face of capitalism", is that none of this was illegal. Rover was kept alive solely by burning money, week in, week out. And it wasn't the directors' money. This was a brilliant financial mugging. Immoral, but quite within the law. Depending on your attitude, the directors of Phoenix were brilliant, or amoral gits."


* It was actually Tiny Rowland.

This BBC news article covers it well. Note the unions' attitude at the time: "We are fighting for jobs and Alchemy did not give us that option, so with Alchemy out of it at the moment the mood is ecstatic," said union official Carl Chinn at Longbridge."

Interestingly, the youngest person interviewed was the most clear-headed: "Sammy Singh, 18, said: "Our futures are still unclear. Alchemy had a long term strategy and whoever takes over we could be faced with the same problem in three months' time."

The whole affair has been a gigantic waste of money for taxpayers and a squandered opportunity for the workers, who could have retrained for something else when they were five years younger than they are now. It reveals that New Labour, as well as the trade unions, are breathtakingly ignorant about commerce. It is poetic justice that this has blown up in their faces at the start of a general election campaign.

Saturday, 9 April 2005
It is finished.
The death of Pope John Paul II has been covered exhaustively in the newspapers, so I haven't rushed to write about it. I know that he was one of the most significant popes of recent centuries and I'm glad, as others are, that he helped to defeat communism in Eastern Europe. I'm even told by a friend that he was responsible for ending Catholic opposition to capitalism, though I don't know what he meant by that.

As an atheist, I can really only judge him by how his life affected others in terms of human freedoms and prosperity, rather than on 'spiritual matters'. His opposition to abortion I can understand, without agreeing with, but his opposition to birth control makes no sense at all to me, especially when considering the benefits of condoms in preventing the spread of AIDS. That's one reason why I felt uncomfortable watching the crowds in Rome. The first on the scene were the Italians. Italy has a fertility rate of 1.26 (see previous post). I cannot believe that none of those people used birth control. The whole thing seems so hypocritical to me.

But that isn't my main problem with the Pope. What irks me more about him is that like other Christians and Christ himself, he believed in hell. I will never understand how anyone can be considered moral who accepts the idea of eternal damnation as a punishment for crimes of finite duration. The very concept of hell is utterly immoral. The idea that you can avoid it by believing in something is absurd. What can an act of belief mean, when it's made under duress? And how can an act of belief be a moral matter in any case? No religion can answer that for me.

Thursday, 7 April 2005
Demographics
Topic: Politics
Take a look at the future:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph-T/peo_tot_fer_rat&int=-1

It's a table of national fertility rates ranging from Somalia at the top, 6.98, to Bulgaria at the bottom, 1.13. The figure represents: "The average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their child-bearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age.

Put crudely, it tells us how the world will look in future. I have looked at this table many times and it still holds surprises for me. For instance, I always assumed that Central and South American countries had high birth rates, but it's not the case. Brazil is ranked only 144th with 2.01, below the US, Chile is 136th with 2.09 and Columbia is 104th with 2.61.

The truly dramatic population explosion is in the Middle-East and Africa, though there are exceptions in the former, as Algeria and Tunisia are quite low. It's one reason why the US (with a replacement rate of 2.08) needs to square up its relationship with the Arab world (mostly in the 5 to 7 range) and should do so without reference to Europe (EU average, 1.48). Europeans wonder why Americans don't consult them about world affairs. It's because they know that we will barely exist by the end of the century.

The data shows us clearly that Europe is dying (or aging, as the media prefers to put it). I will suggest my reasons for why this is on another occasion, but note that low fertility rates must mean the death of the welfare state model. Without future taxpayers, where will the earnings come from to support the old? In fact it's more basic than that. I have visited Chelsea and Westminster hospital a few times recently and it's clear that without immigrant nursing staff from places like the Philippines and Africa, the whole service would come to a grinding halt immediately. I doubt that other London hospitals are different.

If there is to be anyone left to push us around in our wheelchairs in 40 years time, governments will have to either reverse the trend to small families or accept more immigrants. If they intend to do the latter, they should at least be honest about it and tell the public how much we need immigration. And if we are going to do the former, let's get on with it now, as it will take time.

There are many things that follow from an examination of the statistics. I haven't thought of them all. Over to you.

_ DY at 2:38 AM BST
Updated: Thursday, 7 April 2005 2:43 AM BST
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Saturday, 2 April 2005
George Galloway on Question Time.
Topic: Politics
I don't often watch 'Question Time' but I caught a few minutes of it the other day and saw George Galloway make a classic rabble-rousing non-sequitur. As you can imagine, I share actor John Malkovich's view of him, but on Thursday I would have settled for seeing his argument shot down, rather than the man himself.

In response to a question about crime, he managed to steer his answer to 'daylight robbery' and related how he'd returned from visiting poor factory workers somewhere in the far east who manufacture jeans for a pittance. The same jeans are then sold in Tesco for about #30. Shock horror! Something should be done about it!

Funnily enough, I agree that something should be done. But the solution doesn't require any government interference and Galloway himself could implement it immediately. All he has to do is set up his own business importing jeans from the same workers, pay them more for their work and sell them through his own website for less than Tesco. The beauty of the private enterprise system is that if anyone is making a big profit out of something, others can enter the market and do the same thing for less. Galloway is in a better position to start this up than I. He knows the workers and has the money to start the importing business with his win from the Telegraph. Off you go, George!

If he were to do this, he would do more good for the poor of both the third world and the UK than any number of pointless town hall speeches ranting about a war that finished two years ago. The tragedy of Thursday's show is that nobody pointed this out at the time. Conservative Party panellists should do more to extol the virtues of the private enterprise system when they get the chance.

_ DY at 10:31 AM GMT
Updated: Tuesday, 5 April 2005 3:11 PM BST
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Friday, 1 April 2005
Nightmare scenario.
Topic: Misc.
No April fools story this year. My mind has already played tricks on me today. This morning, after being woken up at 9am by Fedex bringing me a long awaited cheque from Pokerstars, I went back to sleep and dreamed that I had started a new job. Talk about waking up in a cold sweat!

_ DY at 2:26 PM GMT
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Monday, 28 March 2005
Where are the human shields when they are needed most?
Topic: Politics
A new contributor is writing for Gutshot. His name is Roger and you can read his poker wisdom here:

http://www.gutshot.co.uk/authors/roger-kirkham

A few days ago I noticed that Roger has his own blog and decided to check it out. Like me, Roger mixes poker observations with political comment. That may be where the similarities end, as his views on politics seem pretty different to mine. I was particularly enraged by his piece on March 16th about Rachel Corrie. Most of you won't know who she is, so I shall have to explain. It's difficult to do this impartially, as the facts of her death are disputed, but the essence is that Corrie was a young American who went to the Israel/Palestine area to protest against the Israeli demolition policy and was killed by a bulldozer.

According to her supporters, she was protesting against the demolition of a house. According to her critics, she was trying to prevent the demolition of a tunnel that was used to smuggle arms into Israel. In the course of doing one of the above she was killed. Whether her death was an accident or murder is also disputed. She tried to prevent the demolition by lying down in the path of the bulldozer that killed her.

I have told Roger that I'm inclined to agree with Corrie's critics on the facts concerning her death, because I've heard so many lies from anti-Israel fanatics that I'm no longer prepared to take their claims at face value. They know the power of appearing to be the victim. They know that claiming martyr status can prevent rational examination of a cause and they exploit the widespread and normally admirable support for the underdog that is prevalent in Western societies. In short, they are expert manipulators. I should know, because I fell for some of their claims hook, line and sinker before I started spending so much time reading deeper about the subject.

Some examples should suffice:

1) The so-called 'Jenin massacre' of 2002 when claims were made that the Israelis had killed thousands of innocent civilians. Later it was claimed that hundreds had died. The final figure was 56 - most of them armed combatants, not civilians. In the meantime, western newspapers were duped into reporting huge death figures.

2) The "death" of Mohammed Al Dura. This one made my blood boil when it happened in 2000. However, nobody in the mainstream press has ever since brought it to my attention that it was completely faked. One reason I'm grateful for the creation of the internet is that it facilities the exposure of lies like this one.

3) Fake Palestinian funerals. Click the link to see a dead body fall off a stretcher, dust himself down and climb back on again! A pathetic attempt to inflate the death figures at Jenin and to solicit sympathy for the cause.

Leaving aside exactly what happened to Corrie on that day two years ago, there is something that has always irritated me about people like Corrie and it's only lately that I've been able to articulate what it is. It's that her whole protest strategy is predicated on the moral superiority of the people she's attacking. Corrie lay down in the path of a bulldozer in the belief that if the bulldozer driver saw her, he would do the 'decent' thing and spare her life by stopping it. Never mind that doing this could extend the use of an alleged arms smuggling tunnel and lead to deaths of countless Israeli civilians. She expected her life would be treated as more important than theirs. After all, she was a middle-class white American. Of course she's more important than some Israeli bus passengers!

Now try to imagine this working the other way around. Imagine that she wanted to spare the lives of innocent Israelis and stood in front of Hamas rocket launchers or rode around Jerusalem on public transport wearing a bright orange jacket marked 'Human Shield'. It doesn't work, does it? Because those who kill Israeli civilians are utterly depraved, while those fighting back against Palestinian extremists are expected to observe a higher standard of behaviour.

All this reminds me of the human shields who made fools of themselves going to Baghdad before the 2003 war against Iraq. They went there with the intention of protecting hospitals and orphanages and were surprised to learn that the Iraqi goverment wanted them to go to military targets. The Iraqis understood better than the shields that the US would try to minimise civilian deaths and would focus on military targets. They knew that the hospitals already had 'human shields': the patients. Where were these people when they were needed in Israel during the peak years of the intifada depravity? Nowhere near the bloody streets of Tel Aviv, that's for sure. They may be stupid but they're not crazy.

Corrie was young when she died and I wish she had lived longer to see the foolishness of her ways and the contradictions in her position. She no doubt thought of herself as fighting 'fascists' as many critics of Israel do, but she failed to realise that she was making common cause with people whose behaviour is entirely fascistic. Thus it was that a young idealist found herself flying over to the Middle-East to do this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=15078&only=yes

Setting fire to a mock US flag in front of a crowd of young children. What kind of person does that? I find it hard to be kind here. This picture perfectly embodies the contradiction of the modern anti-Israel protest movement - that strange mixture of supposedly anti-fascist westerners and Islamic fundamentalists that my friend Allan Engel calls the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of the 21st century.


_ DY at 8:19 PM GMT
Updated: Monday, 28 March 2005 8:50 PM GMT
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Thursday, 24 March 2005
The Hendon Mob ... and the unsung heroes. Part one.
Topic: Poker
I may have been a "bit harsh" on the Hendon Mob in some of my earlier postings. Not through what I said, so much as what I did not say. To explain properly, let me recap.

I stopped posting on the Hendon Mob in mid-November. I thought I was burning up too much mental energy on it for my own good and I was getting rather sick of some of the abuse that I and other frequent posters were receiving. Around this time I read a comment from Big Dave D on a blog that said I was partly responsible for making the forum worse and thought that both I and the forum might benefit from a period of silence on my part. Three weeks later, I mentioned to Derek at Gutshot that I had stopped posting on forums (I had virtually stopped posting on Gutshot too) and he mentioned that he and others had been thinking of getting me to write for the site. A deal was struck.

A month or two later, I mentioned on Andy Ward's site that having left the HM forum alone, I didn't feel that it had got any better. I wanted to refute the idea that I was to blame for what Big Dave saw as its demise. Within an hour of writing this, someone posted on the HM site a message titled 'David Young calls the mob cunts' or something similar. Funnily enough, it was exactly this kind of rubbish that caused me to stop posting in the first place.

More comment was made on this site to the effect that I was jealous (who wouldn't be jealous of anyone getting $250k of tournament entries per annum?) and someone said that the Mob had done more than most for British poker. At this point, I may have thrown the baby out with the bath water. I am so sick of reading praise for name tournament players that I overlooked some of the positives. The reason is that the things I admire about the Mob are not the things that others admire. Let me explain.

What many people admire about the boys is that they have carved out a big sponsorship deal, won many tournaments overseas and generated lots of publicity. Of these, I would say that only the latter is of any use to other people. Getting a big sponsorship deal doesn't benefit the broad mass of the poker playing population. I have heard it argued that their deal made it easier for others to get sponsored. Even if this is true, I still don't think it's of benefit to the broader poker public. Interesting, Keith 'the camel' Hawkins said something to the same effect on the Hendon Mob site. His precise words were:

"Taking on sponsored players and rich amateurs in big tournaments over a long period of time is finacially unadvisable. For sure, take the odd shot or try and qualify for a big tournament in a super satellite. But there are so many big events these days you can drain a fortune trying to beat players with bottomless pockets."

There is another debate to be held another time about whether it harms you to be playing against people who are not under the stress of committing their own money. I can see both sides of this one. So I shall leave it to one side.

So what do I admire about the Mob? Firstly, they built a forum that enabled me to get to know people like Pete Birks and countless others. Secondly, their site has a beginners' guide and a database that allows you to get to know a bit about your opponensts and lastly, they have always conducted themselves to the highest professional standards and given poker and British poker players in particular, an excellent image. For that we must all be grateful.

I am delighted to see that the Mob have reacted to the nastiness that was infecting the forum. It's a shame that it's necessary to change to a member's only format, but I do believe that the flamers were killing the site. Only a few weeks ago, a friend of mine named Simon Galloway advised players to book their flights to Vegas in advance for the WSOP and pointed out some good value deals that could be booked on Virgin. The first response he got said 'Fuck off, you spamming cunt'. To anyone with half a brain-cell, it's clear that his message wasn't spam. But that didn't hold back the sort of revolting petty-minded attack that has deterred not just me, but countless others from posting again.

I just wish that the Mob had done something about it sooner. The fact that they didn't is one reason that I felt so annoyed about the whole affair. The impression gained, by me at least, was that they didn't notice because they didn't read the forum. It has long amazed me that Ross and Ram never write on the site. I would love to hear the story of how the former won a hi-lo omaha comp at the Vic a couple of years ago and I would like to hear about the latter's ?100,000 heads-up matches in a hotel room in Monte Carlo, which was witnessed by 50 spectators, if my sources are correct.

It utterly baffles me that they choose not to share this with their readers. Ross doesn't even tell us when he's going to be on TV! I find that bizarre. As someone who wrote a lot on the site for no reward and got a ton of abuse in return, it hurts to see the owners of the site on which you write do nothing with it. Perhaps you'll see why I found it so annoying.

In a subsequent post, I want to talk about some of the unsung heroes of the UK poker scene.

_ DY at 3:22 AM GMT
Updated: Friday, 25 March 2005 1:04 PM GMT
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Tuesday, 22 March 2005
The Poker Channel, coming soon.
Topic: Poker
The Poker Channel launches on Wednesday. As I wrote on Gutshot, I am a panellist on three out of seven episodes of 'Bar Beat'. Episode one will be shown on Wednesday. If the shows are shown in the order in which they were filmed then I won't be in it. However there is no guarantee that this will be the case. Whichever one they show, it's sure to be interesting. Enjoy!

See the schedule here!

_ DY at 4:48 PM GMT
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Monday, 21 March 2005
Is ignorance bliss?
Topic: Misc.
From time to time I torment myself by reading the views of the great British public on the BBC's 'Have your say' page. You can often find people talking total nonsense about the great issues of the day. Some of the greatest drivel comes from people in the church, as they are often utterly divorced from reality.

The latest topic is the issue of whether sex education should be compulsory in schools. It would be awful to find nobody prepared to talk drivel on this of all topics. Luckily, the Reverend JW Hughes of Somerset comes through for us with a classic. The italics are mine.

"Sex is not the be all and end all of life that media and politician types think. It is fundamentally proven that the ceaseless sexualisation of life that we see is a disaster. School should be a place where sex is never mentioned, taught, or thought about. Give the kids a place where sex is not forced down their throats the whole time."

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did! Do 'politician types', whatever they are, really think that sex is the be all and end all of life? Is it possible to imagine a school full of normal kids where sex is never 'thought about'? And don't get me started on the last sentence. Is this man for real? I do hope so.

_ DY at 1:47 AM GMT
Updated: Monday, 21 March 2005 1:49 AM GMT
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Sunday, 20 March 2005
The odd thing about Pokerstars.
Topic: Poker
There is something that always surprises me about Pokerstars. Despite its reputation as the best site for multi-table tournaments, it doesn't correctly handle the dead-blind/dead-button situation in them. Instead it moves the blinds forward, just as would happen in a cash game if someone got up. The curious result is that a player can be spared the need to post a blind if someone gets knocked out in front of them. This can be a life-saver for a small stack in the late stages.

Not only am I surprised that it doesn't get this right, I'm also astonished that I've never seen anyone point this out before. One site that handles this correctly is Victor Chandler, which is the object of a great deal of abuse. Funny old world!

_ DY at 4:38 PM GMT
Updated: Monday, 21 March 2005 12:09 AM GMT
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Thursday, 17 March 2005
A Lionel Hutz moment.
Topic: Misc.
I reached the end of a stick of deodorant today. Nothing remarkable about that, except that it's called 'Unlimited' (by Lynx). I can't help thinking that the Trades Description Act ought to be brought to bear on the manufacturers. I'm reminded of Lionel Hutz, the solicitor in The Simpsons, who takes out a law suit against the film 'The Never Ending Story'.

_ DY at 7:35 PM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 17 March 2005 7:37 PM GMT
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Evidence
Topic: Misc.
I've grown very fond of the television show 'CSI' recently and make a point of watching it on Tuesday nights, both the Vegas and Miami editions. For those who aren't familiar with the programme, it concerns the working lives of Crime Scene Investigators, usually referred to as 'Forensics' in British police drama.

It's certainly impressive what forensic science can do nowadays, especially when people are caught for crimes committed decades ago, due to progress in the use of DNA. Some have suggested to me that my opposition to the death penalty, which is solely based on concern about killing the wrong person, should therefore be dropped. The argument goes that advances in our understanding of science make it hard to happen now. Think of all the times a jury has been told that the DNA found at the scene had a 'million to one' chance of being from someone other than the defendent.

While it's reassuring on one level, it still disturbs me when the public are led to believe that evidence like that is infallible. I know that people can lie and cheat for an easy life and I worry about how easy it would be for a crooked or overpressed policeman to plant such evidence or interfere with it in the lab.

Even without deliberate tampering, problems exist. I said before that I thought Sion Jenkins was probably the victim of a miscarriage of justice and since then he's been released and will have a new trial. We have also seen women have convictions for infanticide overturned. The science that was used to convict them was later shown to be doubtful. Today's breakthrough discoveries can be tomorrow's 'Junk Science'. Cold Fusion anyone?

_ DY at 1:41 AM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 17 March 2005 1:50 AM GMT
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