Sunday night.
Topic: Poker
Sunday night didn't go exactly as planned. It started well enough. Dominic, Allan and I ate at Reuben's on Baker Street, but when we went down the road to the Barracuda with a view to having a few drinks, I was asked for ID (I had none). This rather surprised me, as I have been a member since the early 90s and didn't have a problem getting in when I took a girl there for a drink in late 2001. But obviously something has changed, as they wouldn't accept me in, despite admitting that they have my picture on file.

Thus inevitably we retired to the Victoria. I put my name on the #100 hold'em list and chatted with Allan until my name was called. It was to be the start of a roller-coaster night. Quite simply, Sunday's game was the best I've ever played. I encountered the craziest player I've ever come across in my life. It got off to a bad start when my AA was cracked by QQ in the must-move game. Then when I got into the main game, this happened. I was dealt 44 and called in late position. Dominic raised on the button and three others called. I called. The flop brought A-Q-4 with two spades. It was checked to Dominic (I thought he would follow through on this flop) and he bet #75. Two others in the middle called and I raised all-in for a further #220. Dominic and one in-between player folded. The other called me without too much deliberation. The last two cards were two spades, non-pairing. My opponent turned over KK with the K of spades. I was stunned that he'd called with so little. As I got up from the table to get more money (I was now down #600) he matter of factly said 'Well, I had to call, didn't I?'

He didn't mean this as a rub-down and I knew he was serious. He didn't see anything wrong with calling #300 with KK even though there was an ace on the flop and the bettor was betting into three or four opponents. He had kings and that was as far as the analysis went. It often amuses me that people who don't go to the Victoria think that it's full of rocks. Some nights it is, but often there are visiting stars who drop in with very large sums of money and no idea how to play. They are rich and they don't care.

What was more amazing than the above was the reaction of one of the regular players - a man who is there almost every day. After I returned to the table with another grand, he told me: 'David, if you had just called the #75 on the flop and then bet all-in when the spade came, he would have passed'. I'm not making this up.

I would love to claim that I didn't say anything sarcastic, but that would be lying. I just said 'Sure, 'cause you've just watched him call on the flop with absolutely nothing. He sure to pass if he's got the nut-flush draw as well'. Still in a daze, I lost #400 on virtually the next hand when I had AQ, flopped an ace and walked into a set. I could have cut my loss to half that if my head had been a bit clearer. Shortly afterwards, I managed to get about #400 back when I hit set-over-set and started to feel better about life.

Did I mention that there was a crazy player in the game? Well he appeared at about 3.30am. I can honestly say that the last 90 minutes of action were like nothing I have ever seen. This man's strategy, put simply, was that he would never raise preflop, but he would always re-raise. The first time I realised this was in this hand: Holding AKo I raise under the gun to #12. He re-raises to #25. A third party ('the South-African') calls. The man who called me with the KK before, now reraised another #93. A fourth player went all-in for about #53. I folded and the other two called. The flop was Q-5-3 with two spades. The crazy player bet and the other two called, with the South-African all-in. The turn was a small club and the two players left both checked. The last card was another spade and the crazy player now bet. The preflop-reraiser called with his KK. The South African now showed 89 of spades. But that wasn't enough. For the winning hand, held by the man who reraised me to #25 and who called #93 preflop out of position against an obvious premium pair, step forward 10-2 of spades. He got the lot.

This went on hand after hand, with him winning huge pots having stuck his money in on the flop with next to nothing and then getting lucky. On one notable occasion, he check raised into three people with K9 on a flop of Q-10-4 with no flush draw (he had clubs, the flop had diamonds). He was called by all three, the last of whom was very short-stacked could only cover a small proportion of the raise. All the money went in and the last two cards were both small non-diamonds. He lost the main pot to a ten, but won a #450 side pot against the other two, both of whom had J-9; one of them had J-9 of diamonds! Luckily I managed not to do any damage while this went on, though I did get caught for a bit in this hand: holding 78s, our hero has flat called and I'm looking forward to seeing a flop cheap when someone raises about #10, fearing the worst I called it, only to find that the crazy then re-raised #57 more. I was quite prepared to fold, except that almost the entire table called before it got back to me. I was getting about six to one or more so I had to call. The flop was 5 4 .....3.

Bah!! Mithani went all in for #25 and I called for the middle-pin, even though I thought there was a serious chance that it would be reraised on my left. Remarkably it wasn't, as the crazy just called. The button called. The turn was a 7. I checked. The crazy bet #200 and the button raised #230 more all-in. The crazy called. It's obvious that the button holds a six. But if I gave you a year, I'm not sure you'd figure out the other hand. So I'll just tell you that it was AQ and let you figure it out for yourself, as I can't.

I could have played this game all-night quite happily, but alas time was running out. With less than five minutes to go, I got my shot. In the big blind, I found Q8 of clubs. There was no raise and the flop was K-5-J, with the king and five of clubs. I was checked around to a player at the back who bet #15. I hated this, as I knew what would follow, but I was playing very deep and therefore called. Obviously, it got reraised another #65 on my left and the South African called, along with the original bettor. I called. The turn was the J of clubs. Initially I was elated, until I realised that it had paired the board. Nevertheless, I was prepared to treat it as winning. I checked and the crazy bet #200. The South African called all-in for about #120. The other player folded and I re-raised all-in for another #750. After a long delay, the man on my left folded and the South-African asked me whether I had a house. I showed him my second-nut flush and he slumped. He had 63 of clubs.

I have to say I really hate his play in this hand. Unlike me, he has no excuse for seeing the flop with suited filth. He had been losing to the crazy all night and his judgement had gone out the window. When I counted out my money, I saw that I had gone #60 in front on the day, making me a #10 per hour winner! Always nice to make a profit, but I suspect that Pete Birks might have a few words to say about my standard deviation.

10 years ago today!
Topic: Poker
It's the tenth anniversary of the first day I ever played poker in a public card room. On 26th June 1995, I played a #20 pot-limit rebuy comp at the Barracuda and finished second. I had no idea what I was doing. On the way home I laughed about it in the taxi. "It's supposed to be a game of skill" I told the cab driver, before realising I had just committed myself to a more generous tip.

I wish I could remember more about that night. I do recall that when I got heads up with Ray Martin, he leant forward and offered to split the money with me. I assumed that the prize money was set in stone and had no idea that this was allowed, so I got closer and said 'I think they can hear you'. I didn't want him to get into trouble!

Mark Patrick was there (now with Corals) and he started talking about the game using words I'd never heard before, like 'offsuit'. Mick Curran was giving me advice. Ray told me not to play cash games as "they'll murder you". It was another three weeks before I played again, but in the meantime I had read Big Deal by Tony Holden and read a few of the books in its bibliography. Knowing how badly most people play Blackjack in this country (standing on soft 15, splitting sevens against a nine etc), I reasoned that probably the same applied to poker and that I should therefore know the 'basic strategy'.

People might find this hard to believe, but there were very few young people coming into poker back then. I was quite unusual. A few weeks after that first night, I turned up to the Victoria to play its Wednesday night #25 comp and scanned my eyes around the room. I saw a young man dressed very like me (we had both come straight from work and wore pinstriped suits and striped shirts). I recall mentally saying to myself 'please don't draw his table, please don't draw his table'. I was gutted to draw a seat two spaces away from him. I was afraid that placed together we would be the subject of much ridicule because of our youth (26 & 25!) and occupation. We stood out like sore thumbs. To defuse the tension, I said to him:

'What bank do you work for?'. He replied: 'Barclays'.

And that was how I came to meet Dominic Bourke. Read what Negreanu has to say about him:

Card Player article

Tonight we'll be going back to the Barracuda for a drink, along with Allan 'Fred Titmus' Engel. It's a nice casino, but I haven't set foot in it for years. It broke my heart when it closed its card room in 1996.

Two leading contenders for poker forum post of the year.
Topic: Poker
I know it's only half-way through 2005, but if there are to be awards for the best post on a poker forum this year then they are going to have a hard job beating these -

1) From Corinna Silk on Gutshot:

"Jamie. Don't try to call my mobile 'cos I've accidentally flushed it down the loo. Sorry for sharing this with everyone but I couldn't figure out how to send a personal message. Not my day"


The mind truly boggles.


2) From 'Ironside' in response to the question "Party Gaming - Would YOU buy these shares?":

it depends on the price of the shares and the amount of the company they are selling

if they are pricing the company at #1 million of course i would buy shares

if they were pricing it at #100 billion then of course i wouldnt

as i dont know the actual price or havent seen there books i cant really say if i would or not


For sheer pointlessness, this one is hard to beat.

Can a Guardian reader please explain?
Topic: Politics
When I was a teenager, I could never understand Bananarama. Three girls dressed as punks sang syrupy songs with simple, repetitive lyrics that appeared to be aimed at kids in their early teens. I was convinced that I was missing something. They were written about as though they were a serious band and the punk look hinted at something more menacing. Yet as hard as I tried, I could never figure out anything remotely subversive in their songs. I sat through their videos thinking 'I know this just looks like meaningless shit, but there's something clever or ironic about it. Isn't there?' Twenty years later I still can't get it.

I have a similar problem with the Guardian's Steve Bell. I heard about his cartoons from someone whose intellect I respected. But when I came across them for myself, all I could see was a load of childish and frequently illogical crap. But it's in the Guardian, so it must be high satire.

So can someone explain the wit and wisdom of this please?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1512668,00.html

Anyone?

The Evening Standard used to have a one frame cartoon strip about a large dog named Marmaduke, whose only notable feature was that he never did anything remotely funny or interesting. The Standard must have known it was rubbish, because they ran it in the property classified section instead of on the funnies page with all the other cartoons. After many years, he was put down and flat-hunters were finally put out of their misery.

I have never once seen a Bell strip that offered a single intelligent insight or made me laugh. Is there a vet in the house?

What's wrong with the UN.
Topic: Politics
I've been meaning for some time to write about why I hate the concept of international law and I said when I started this blog that I would elaborate on the failings of the UN. Today someone has done the latter for me quite brilliantly. Rarely has anyone ever expressed so crisply what I feel. I refer to the letter to the Wall Street Journal Opinion section from Erskine Fincher of Crawfordville, Florida. It comes in response to an article about the need for reform of the UN. Every line is pure gold dust. The comments in italics underneath are mine.

What are the U.N.'s better ambitions?

It has none. It supports the fiction that the government of a dictatorship can rightly claim sovereignty over the people it oppresses; it provides the dictators of the world with a forum and status that they would not otherwise have; it serves as a funnel for pouring the dollars of US taxpayers down a giant toilet; and it acts as a restraint on the self-defense of free countries against tyrannical governments.

These are not corruptions that are susceptible to reforms such as Rep. Hyde envisions. They are built into the very concept of the UN as a body in which dictatorships and free countries talk about their differences, in which good searches for some way to compromise with evil. There is nothing to talk about. We know what the differences are, and we have no business compromising on them. We also know that the best way to resolve them is to maintain moral clarity and never seek anyone's permission to defend ourselves. For that reason, it is long past time that we remove ourselves from the moral and diplomatic morass of the U.N.

Erskine Fincher of Crawfordville, Florida

=======================================================================================================

It's long overdue that people in Britain started to express this too. For far too long we have treated the UN as though it were the political equivalent of the Starship Enterprise, with well meaning people from all around the work pulling together to solve humanity's problems. The reality is that it's an institution based on yesterday's fear: war between nations. Yet by acknowledging that dictatorships have sovereignty over the people they oppress, it preserves brutal repression within nations. If you lived in the 20th Century, you were twice as likely to be murdered by your own government as killed in a war between nations.

Sovereignty should only be respected when it has been earned. We live in an age when disfunctional states export their problems to others: via terrorism or the refugees. It's a lesson that we in Britain should have learned after the Falklands War. A democratic Argentina would never have attacked us.

DY

Portuguese beach rampage.
Topic: Politics
Of all the things I could mention to illustrate the decadence of Western Europe, few could match the story of the mass rampage that took place on a beach near Lisbon last Friday. If the story has slipped under your radar, the facts are these: a group of 500 young people from the city invaded the beach, robbing and attacking people in packs of thirty. The police were woefully outnumbered and only made three arrests. They fired shots into the air but could do little else. Victims later described the attackers as 'gangs', a word which in Portugal has come to refer to African immigrants.

While that's shocking enough, the truly sickening part is the spin that has been attached to the story by the BBC's Alison Roberts in her video report from the scene. Check out the story here:

Portugal youths in beach rampage

Then click on this video link:

and feel your jaw hang when she says 'Portuguese holidaymakers can only hope a fashion for it does not develop', before stressing that the authorities 'may worry about racial tensions worsening'.

How insulated from reality is the elite that controls our media! In the world of Alison Roberts, Portugese citizens, who pay tax to their authorities in return for the maintenance of order, should hope that such attacks don't become a fashion.

Hope?!

As for the idea that the authorities are supposed to worry about future racial tensions, I can guarantee Miss Roberts that the damage has already been done. To state the facts again: 500 adolescents swarmed the beach and attacked innocent people; 497 returned home free.

When I used the word 'decadence' in the first paragraph, I did not use it in any pejorative sense. I was being entirely literal. Such attacks take place because a criminal underclass feels that the willingness to maintain order has decayed and that everything is up for grabs.

Haven't these people heard of Dry Ice?
Topic: Misc.
If there is one thing that makes me sick, it's when people like Tom Chappelow in Leeds say this: There's no smoke without fire. I'm disinclined to believe that these charges are entirely fictional.

source: BBC's Have your say regarding the Michael Jackson verdict.

It's perfectly possible to have smoke without fire, Mr Chappelow. Innocent people are smeared all the time. That's why we have court cases and juries. Shame on you.

Two years old today!
Topic: Misc.
It's two years since I started "Sleepless in Fulham". Hope you've found it interesting. I've enjoyed getting your feedback (most of the time). Lots of ideas for the next fortnight, so watch this space.

All the best.

DY

Tying up loose ends - Part one (continuing 'The Hendon Mob and the Unsung Heros, part one')
Topic: Poker
I'm aware that I've left several loose ends lying around this year. I intend to tie them up over the next few weeks. In 'The Hendon Mob and the Unsung Heros, part one', I said: "In a subsequent post, I want to talk about some of the unsung heroes of the UK poker scene." So consider this to be Part Two.

I want to write about two people you've never heard of today. The first is Paul Blunt. He was the manager of the Russell Square casino when it opened in the summer of 1997. He supported poker, even though he knew that it didn't deliver a lot of direct revenue to the bottom line. Obviously he expected some poker players to lose money on the roulette and blackjack tables. But he also knew that the players who didn't do that nevertheless gave the place atmosphere. On otherwise quiet nights for the casino, the presence of lots of poker players excitedly discussing their triumphs and near misses created a buzz that most casinos lack.

After he went, management support and interest in the card room declined and it closed in December 2002. Although it was sad, it was for the best, as the club had created a sufficient nucleus of players to get the Gutshot club launched. I've only been back to Russell Square once since it shut. The man at reception told me that the place was really boring since the poker players left. Roy Houghton tells me that the hardest job in running a UK casino is getting new customers through the door. So think about this - Gutshot got 5,000 members in the first year of opening its doors in Clerkenwell.

The other person I think deserves praise is Steve Howell. If you've ever played at the Victoria, you'l know him as 'Ginger Steve'. He's the Villa fan with the Midlands accent. In my opinion, he gave the card room a massive shot in the arm by coming up with the idea of giving the #100 Hold'em game blinds of #3/#3. It's a structure that I would never have thought of. But it works brilliantly.

The Vic desperately needed an entry level hold'em game. A few years ago, omaha reigned supreme and hold'em was non-existent. People would turn up in dribs and drabs wanting to play hold'em and they would phone up asking about the game they had seen on the television, but they were always told that there was only omaha to play.

At some point in December 2003, that all changed. The game started with a #3/3 structure and it's never stopped since. Previously Jeff had tried it with a #2/2/5 structure as a Wednesday special game, but it died out in a matter of weeks, as this was just too big. Steve's suggestion has brought countless thousands in revenue to the room and brought in hundreds and hundreds of new players. I should add that he says partial credit should go to Vicky Coren for this too.

When is it time to forgive France?
Topic: Politics
I've been boycotting France and French products for about two years now because I was appalled by the country's behaviour in the run up to the war against Iraq. At first I thought it was merely a commercial matter of the French being annoyed at losing a customer for their arms industry, but I later read about the philosophical differences between France and the US/UK and the desperate need the French have to believe that they are different and superior. I was sickened by the sight of French people presuming the worst about America and Britain's intentions in the Middle East. Remind me why they speak French instead of German or Russian, can you?

But I don't intend to hold this grudge forever and I've been wondering what would be the occasion to forgive them. The No vote against the constituion might be just such a moment. However it's clear that part of the reason for its rejection was the French people's fear that the EU might become too Anglo-Saxon and liberal free market. Oh that this worry were justified!

Nevertheless, the French have the right to stick to their ridiculous featherbedding if they wish, as long as it doesn't drag everyone else down too. I'm reminded of the film 'Angels with Dirty Faces', where James Cagney is a gangster who befriends some young tearaways. At the end of the film, he's taken to the electric chair and realising that his young fans are in earshot, he screams and blubs like a coward in order that they will change direction and be spared the same fate.

That is the role that I would like France to accept - to go downhill, screaming and blubbering all the way, so that young and impressionable nations see what the 'social market model' has in store for them and avoid going down the same path. If they do that and deter others from making the same mistakes, then all will be forgiven.

Amnesty International falls into a trap.
Topic: Politics
I would like to support Amnesty International. I really would. Human rights should concern us everyone and drawing attention to their abuse ought be a priority for all those who value freedom. But the organisation's recent claim that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba is "the gulag of our time" is ridiculous, insulting and ignorant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4598109.stm

The comparison is wrong in terms of both scale and intention. The Gulags killed millions. They held people who were thought a threat to the unelected Soviet regime. The Guantanamo Bay camp holds those who are thought a threat to civilians. While it is far from ideal to hold people without trial ever, Amnesty should attempt to understand the difficult position that the US finds itself in. In the past five years, civilians have been killed in the World Trade Centre in New York, a railway station in Madrid and an Irish bar in Bali. The men held in Guantanamo Bay are believed to be combatants in the same cause that killed those people. While it's possible that some are innocent, it's impossible to believe that they all are. I really would not like to make the judgement call on whether it's safe to release any of them. It's easy for people who don't hold executive power to heckle from the sidelines - much harder to live with the thought that you could be releasing someone who will kill a thousand people in a public place.

Amnesty has fallen into the trap of moral equivalence. Someone needs to point out that there is a vast difference between:

A) an unelected government protecting itself.
B) an elected government protecting its civilians.

Amnesty either doesn't understand the difference, or has a ulterior agenda. That makes it either stupid or wicked. Anything it says in future should be treated with a great deal of scepticism.

My first Neo-con thoughts.
Topic: Politics
Since I'm often called a 'neo-con', I thought I would write about how I was introduced to this way of thinking. Despite the fact that it's associated with Americans, Jews and American Jews in particular, the first person to push me in this direction was a Pakistani who writes under the alias of Ibn Warraq. He runs the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and wrote an excellent book titled 'Why I am not a Muslim' which I cannot recommend highly enough.

At the conclusion of the book he quotes Judith Miller, writing in Foreign Affairs:

'Liberalism tends not to teach its proponents to fight effectively. What is needed, rather, is almost a contradiction in terms: a liberal militancy, or a militant liberalism that is unapologetic and unabashed.'

The phrase 'militant liberalism' hit me in the face. It was the perfect expression of what is needed if the West is to survive. Below this excerpt, Warraq ends the book by saying:

"The West needs to be serious about democracy, and should eschew policies that compromise priniciples for short-term gains at home and abroad. The rise of fascism and racism in the West is proof that not everyone in the West is enamoured of democracy. Therefore the final battle will not necessarily be between Islam and the West, but between those who value freedom and those who do not."

Get it from Amazon.

Cringe and learn.
Topic: Poker
A hat tip to Paul Phillips for introducing me to Antonio Esfandiari's website:

http://www.magicantonio.com

It contains some of the most cringe-making material I've ever read about a poker player. In the Rocks and Rings section, we are told of the exploits of his 'posse' - guys who really know how to party -- and seem determined to teach the world this skill, one nightclub at a time. I'm not making this up.

One gang member is descibed as 'Executive Vice President of Female Affairs'. What a pratt! I suggest you check the section titled 'How do they talk'. If you think that Neil Kinnock shouting 'We're all right!' in 1992 was the high point of cringe, be prepared for a shock.

It's a shame really as he gives some quite useful advice in other sections and even informs readers about the history of some of the places where he's played.

What little I know about football.
Topic: Misc.
I never really got into football as a child. Growing up in the home counties, there was no local team worth caring about. At my secondary school, the games teachers made us play rugby and refused to discuss football. But that is not the only reason why I don't follow it now. Apart from the World Cup, I never felt that there was anything at stake. Who cares whether a bunch of foreigners nominally attached to Derby beats another bunch of foreigners nominally attached to Birmingham? In a few years time they will be somewhere else. What difference does it make to your life?

I do enjoy the big international tournaments, but it's painful to support England. Of course I don't really understand the finer points of the game. To illustrate how little I know, I'll tell you what I think is wrong with our national squad: We don't pass the ball. I'm so ignorant that I can't see past the fact that our players have a tendancy to boot the ball all the way to the front in the hope that our forwards get it. Since we have some of the shortest forwards in the international game (Owen, Rooney) and our tallest one (Heskey) is about as useful as a plank of wood, this seems rather dim. But there must be something I don't know about the game, as booting the ball up the field seems to be the default setting even when we are against 10 men! I could swear that the Brazilians, who seem to win almost everything, play the game with lots of low short passes, but copying them seems to be out of the question. As Blackadder learned in series four, if your plan has failed 18 times, the enemy won't expect you to try it a 19th time. You have the element of surprise in your favour!

But I digress. What has caught my attention recently is the tale of the Manchester United takeover by Malcolm Glazer. Glazer is an American who took over the Tampa Bay Bucanneers and turned them from also-rans to Super Bowl winners. He also forced the town to buy him a new stadium at no cost to the team. Naturally with a distinguished track record like that, he is totally unfit to buy a team whose best years seem to be behind them.

What makes this story so ugly though is what it reveals about the the greedy selfish side of the game. I mean the greedy selfish fans, that is. I have been dumbstruck at the whinging I've had to listen to on radio and TV. And the sheer stupidity, too. What's with all these banners saying 'Not for sale'? It is for sale. It's a public limited company on the stock market. Here's a hint. When the price of something is quoted in the FT every day, then it's for sale. Got that?

For decades now, football fans have been spoiled. They have come to take it as normal that bored millionaires take over their clubs and pour in millions with, in some cases, little hope of getting it back. That's fine with the fans, but when someone comes along who actually expects to see a return on his investment once he's done some hard work and taken some risks, all of a sudden their world has come to an end. If it was so bloody important to them that no American ever owned a 75 per cent stake in the club, then they should have used their OWN money to buy a 25.1 per cent stake. They didn't and now they act like a child who's thrown his dummy out of the pram. To hear some of them talk about their years of support you would think that they had never got anything in return for it. Well that's nonsense. For years they had the 'bragging rights' and boy did they brag. They got to sing about their team's latest victories and puff about like peacocks when the trophies were dished out. I can feel no sympathy for them and the hollow talk of boycotts merely makes me laugh. They were happy to see the club make money out of selling shirts in China before last week, how can they now complain when someone wants to buy their club for that income stream?

Gutshot domain change.
Topic: Poker
Gutshot has bought the domain name www.gutshot.com (as opposed to www.gutshot.co.uk). I have been asked to inform readers. Change your links.