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Sleepless in Fulham: Rambling and gambling by David Young
Friday, 30 September 2005
Overheard at the Vic.
Topic: Poker
Dealer A: 'Why didn't you make this game ten-handed?'

Dealer B: 'Cause Jeff's not here'.

Everything that is wrong with British casino management is encapsulated in that two line exchange.

_ DY at 3:17 AM BST
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Monday, 26 September 2005
Congratulations to Bill and Alice!
Topic: Misc.
Congratulations to Bill and Alice on their marriage this weekend. I was privileged to be present to witness their union and tooks some pictures of the occasion. The ceremony took place in a church near Chicester and I was seated near the back with the other gambling scene reprobates. The Camel asked for a price on Alice promising to 'obey'. Action Dave said it was 10 to 1 but declined to lay me anything (he should work for Stan James). Neil said Alice was definitely an obeyer, "except when she's smashing up his Pokerstars account".

In the event, Alice did not offer to obey, but both parties did declare that 'all that I have is yours', so expect lots of FPP transfers in the years to come.

The reception took place in a marquee near Alice's family home. Everyone agreed that Bill's speech had been extremely funny, but hardly anyone could remember much of it. The same applied to Alex who had a hard act to follow after Bill's speech.

Everyone was their usual selves, except for Action Dave, who insists that his action days are behind him. This makes it all the more sad that he got stuck between two single ladies, while I sat next to Neil and Chris Huxtable.

Great weather, great company and a great day. I wish the newlyweds all the happiness in the world.

_ DY at 11:11 PM BST
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The Happy Couple
Topic: Misc.

_ DY at 10:55 PM BST
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The Camel, with Lady Camel
Topic: Misc.

_ DY at 10:55 PM BST
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The best man, the groom and yours truly
Topic: Misc.

Andy Ward with the Ace of hearts.
Topic: Misc.

_ DY at 10:52 PM BST
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Action Dave in his natural habitat.
Topic: Misc.

_ DY at 10:50 PM BST
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Alex and Jimmy
Topic: Misc.

_ DY at 10:48 PM BST
Updated: Monday, 26 September 2005 10:49 PM BST
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The Fab Four: Oakley, Gryko, Robjent, Channing
Topic: Misc.

Friday, 23 September 2005
Kate Moss could have been a good example to others.
Topic: Misc.
A model has one job: to look pretty. That's it. She's not there to raise your kids or highlight issues of broad social concern. That's my view anyway.

But Kate Moss could have been a good example, especially to the young and impressionable, if we had let her. The recent exposure of her cocaine habit may now cause her to go into rehab and stay clean. That would be a great shame in my opinion. It would be far better for her to carry on with her habit until it destroyed her looks, like Daniella Westbrook:



And Yasmin Bleeth, ex-Baywatch actress seen before and after cocaine use:



As they say at Despair.com, 'It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others'.

_ DY at 2:29 PM BST
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Thursday, 22 September 2005
The Top Nine UK tournament players.
Topic: Poker
I was at a loose end last week, during the filming of some Speed Poker heats for the Poker Channel and so decided to compose a 'Top Nine' list of British tournament players. I know it's the sort of thing that I have dismissed on forums like the Hendon Mob, but bear with me for a moment longer. The point isn't who the people are, but how I came to select them.

Having made my list, I got Neil Channing and Tony 'Tikay' Kendall to compose their lists without having seen mine or each others first. Here they are (in no particular order):

David Young's list:

Ben Roberts
Surinder Sunar
Julian Gardner
David Ulliott
Gary Jones
Jeff Duvall
Ram Vaswani
David Colclough
Paul Maxfield

Neil Channing's list:

Ram Vaswani
Willie Tann
Surinder Sunar
David Ulliott
David Colclough
Garry Bush
John Kabbaj
Lucy Rokach
Paul Maxfield

Tikay's list:

John Shipley
Ali Mallou
John Gale
Lawrence Gosney
David Colclough
Jeff Duvall
Keith Hawkins
Willie Tann
Surinder Sunar

NB:

1) Two people appear on all three lists: Sunar & Colclough.

2) There is a high degree of similarity between Neil's list and mine. Five people make both lists (Sunar, Ulliott, Vaswani, Colclough and Maxfield).

What's interesting to me is how we all arrived at our conclusions. My list includes Gary Jones and Ben Roberts, whom neither Neil nor Tikay mentioned. One thing that impresses me about them is that they don't play many comps, yet do well in the ones they do play. They are also very successful cash game winners and when I pause to consider whether someone is good or is has just had some good form, I will be more inclined to rate them if they are winning cash players.

Tikay's list includes two people who've won big events in the last 18 months whom neither Neil nor I have mentioned: John Gale and Lawrence Gosney. I wonder whether that's because he's a commentator about the game and thus has them in the forefront of his mind more than we do. (Neil does strongly rate Lawrence though, I should stress, just not in the top nine).

Neil is surprised that I don't rate Garry Bush and Willie Tann in the top nine. In Garry's case, I just think of him as being too tight. I can't say why I haven't rated Willie higher, except that perhaps he's done a very good job of getting me to underestimate him.

Tuesday, 20 September 2005
This news just in!
Topic: Poker
I am not in the majority.

Monday, 19 September 2005
Are psychopaths good at poker?
Topic: Poker
There's an interesting piece in today's Times:

Wanted: psychopaths to play the stock market

'a study by a group of eminent American academics suggests that star performers on the stock market ... could best be described as "functioning psychopaths".

The US team found that people with certain brain injuries which suppress their emotions could make the best stock market traders. They took a selection of 41 people of normal IQ, 15 of whom had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions, and made them play a simple investment game.

Those with brain damage significantly outperformed those without, the researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Iowa found. The key was the fear that stopped those with "normal" brains from taking even the most sensible of risks.'


I wonder whether there is some relevance to poker here. If so, I suspect it is more relevant to tournament play than cash play, since aggression is more important.

Discuss.

_ DY at 2:16 PM BST
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Thursday, 15 September 2005
Essential Reading
Topic: Misc.
I have added two more links to the Essential Reading section. Please check them out.

The first is 'Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States'. It's written by Ralph Peters, who also wrote the 'Stability, America's Enemy' piece that I mentioned last week. In 'Spotting the Losers', he says "National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable. Spotting the future losers among the world's states becomes so easy it loses its entertainment value". He then identifies seven predictors of national failure:

1) Restrictions on the free flow of information.
2) The subjugation of women.
3) Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
4) The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
5) Domination by a restrictive religion.
6) A low valuation of education.
7) Low prestige assigned to work.

The second piece, 'Inequality and Risk' by Paul Graham, explains why policies aimed at reducing economic inequality punish risk-taking and retard economic development, all of which harms the poor. If you really want to make the poor better off, it's better to accept that doing it successfully will involve increasing inequality.

Graham explains that the vital issue is not reducing inequality, but reducing the corruping effect of wealth in private hands. He concludes by expressing the need for greater transparency to prevent corruption.

_ DY at 5:22 PM BST
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Friday, 9 September 2005
Essential Reading - Stability, America's Enemy
Topic: Misc.
A few months ago I added a new category to the links section on the left of this page. It's called 'Essential Reading' and I'm going to use it to feature articles and essays that have influenced me a great deal and which go a long way to explaining how I arrive at the positions I hold. I will add other links later and mention them on the main page when I do.

So far I've only linked one piece, titled 'Stability, America's Enemy'. It was written by a retired American colonel two days after the Sept 11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. He argues that American foreign policy took a disastrous wrong course when it decided, decades ago, that it should aim at preserving 'stability' overseas. This has led to the widespread hatred of the US overseas and the radicalisation of oppressed people who hate the US because they see it as tainted by association with their own corrupt and brutal governments.

He explains:

"America's finest values are sacrificed to keep bad governments in place, dysfunctional borders intact, and oppressed human beings well-behaved. In one of the greatest acts of self-betrayal in history, the nation that long was the catalyst of global change and which remains the beneficiary of international upheaval has made stability its diplomatic god."

Please check it out.

_ DY at 5:23 PM BST
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