Lil Dave's Life

GoodBye Blog...

2013-02-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

We're Moving!!!

Yes people, the time has finally come, after years of wasting away scrounging off our parents here at blogspot, my humble little blog, is upping sticks, moving on and getting its very own little swanky bachelor blog-pad. The time has come to announce, this will be the last blog you read here at lildaveslife.blogspot.com.... After 18 months of planning (mostly procastinating), and lots of hard work (admittedly from other people) my very own shiny site is FINALLY ready to go. From next week, you'll find me at www.lildaveslife.com (link wont work until the weekend).

And I can happily tell you you'll have way more to enjoy than just my idle ramblings, some of the biggest names, the livliest characters and the funniest writers UK poker has to offer have excitedly agreed to write for me, on a regular/semi-regular or just here and there basis, either way every week you'll have a bundle of great poker content to enjoy! My main partner in crime will be 2007 WSOP Main event finalist Jon "Skalie" Kalmer - Skalie's hilarious views on life and gambling are 100% to be a hugely entertaining and bracelet winners, old school gambling legends, main event finalists even the odd "professional journalist" on hand to provide material for you all t enjoy, I think the site is going to be a great place to read about poker, gambling and just have a fucking laugh!!

That's all we're trying to do at the end of the day :)

Really can't contain how excited I am, and massive thanks to my friends at Carrot Juice Creative who are behind me in every venture I enter into these days for all their hard work and for making the site look sick! I'm really happy and can't wait for you all to enjoy it :)

So. Whats been going on? Well a rather rummy thing happened the other day, I decided to take a stroll down to DTD with the objective of playing a 5/5/10 DC game that Stu had told me would be running later. It'd had been a while since I played live poker and was getting very depressed with relentlessly losing online so was quite pumped for it, HOWEVER, I got there ridiculously early (as did Stu) and we both decided well what the hell, the £300 tourney is running lets give it a spin!

You started with 30,000 chips and a total of 15,800,000 were handed out - here's where its gets totally bizarre, I managed to acquire EVERY single one of them, every chip anyone had been given in exchange for their £336 entry fee ended up in front of me!! Along with a handsome prize of £37,000 for collecting them all. A really great day!

And here I am, with poker's sharpest man Simon Trumper after taking it down!! Hilarious good fun winning tournaments it seems! I final tabled with my friend Ben Vinson as well who was pretty UL to run into some horrible walls on the final, was rooting for me to beat him HU but sigh didn't go to plan :(

I got joke lucky prior to the final, had one of the most mental orbits you can have...

It began with me having about 1.2m chips (20% over average) when i lost a big pot with AQ vs 78 on A56, next hand I found AK on th button and got all in vs the BB's AA, I had 4 big blinds...

very next hand I went all in with A7hh getting called by AK, and finding a 7xxhh 7 runout (!) then the EXACT next hand I got KK in vs A2s and held, putting me back up to 1.4m chips!!

I got moved tables and my first hand at the new table I open AKcc and get all in against KK, spike an ACE....VERY next hand i get AK again, all in BvB vs Skalie's Q5s and won that, took the very next pot down as well raising 68s Bvb, flopping a striaght draw and betting twice...

Now i have 3m chips and the chip lead!!! - It's a skill game tournament poker haha!!!

Such is the way in tournaments that a huge amount of good fortune is needed, was one of those days where everything i did just went right. This being said I think i played pretty good on the final, I was fortunate that I got zero resistance from anyone early on, no1 ever got a spot/the cards to play back at me so I could play just aggressively enough to pick up plenty of chips and my stack just slowly increased whilst never being at any risk whatsoever until we were 4 handed. Matt (the guy who came second) really came out of his shell 4 handed and started to ramp up the pressure, by the time we got to heads up he had the momentum, the chip lead and we were playing 100% to his tempo. I was pretty certain going into HU that if things continued as they were 3 handed then he'd very likely beat me.

I came up with a strategy going into the HU (mostly because I saw Trickett do this once against Franky HU on the partypoker $125k last year and it seemed to work, and he does ok at poker doesn't he!?) of limping every button and 3betting very aggressively from the big blind. I had two reasons for this, first one is I had to take the tempo down a level, Matt was playing very intense fast poker and it was working for him. He'd already shown plenty of moves so I figured a small ball, really quite stop/start, tempo-less heads up would hopefully knock him off his momentum...

It worked out very well, I 3bet his first 2 opens, and limped every button heads up, he started to limp buttons as well and I felt strongly once he started doing that the momentum had swung in my favor. What he really needed to do was keep the match as fast as possible, but he didnt get the right cards and before long we slipped into my pace and I felt very in control. 1 lucky hand where I limped the Jake Cody (T4o) and flopped TT5 vs his Q5 and got a big river overbet paid off sealed the game for me. Matt played great and will be one to watch over the next 18 months for sure, seems like a smart kid as well so he might even have a chance of keeping hold of those 20 lumps (I'd have had no chance lol)

Big shout to his mates as well who were railing him, Chris Adrian, Merrissa and Raymond, he tells me he's given them all a bit of a drink as well which is good to hear! Hey guys :)

If you wanna follow Matt's dive into pro poker then follow his diary on blonde "from drinking to binking" should be a good read!

I would just like to compliment DTD, this months DTD £300 featured 3 day 1's, one of which was played ONLINE, 30k stack, same blind structure and a 20min clock, it's a really fantastic idea and I'd love to see it work out. A no-brainer as far as I'm concerned, saves people travel, gives a much wider audience a chance to play and it just guarantees to boost the numbers, meaning bigger prizepools and better value comp's for everyone. DTD have shown time and time again they are prepared to match their ambition with big guarantees but it really isn't enough for us to sit back and let them risk tens of thousands every tournament trying to tempt players in with big prizepools, lets get behind everything they're trying to try and genuinely boost numbers for tournaments, as this is where the longevity in mid-stakes UK tournament poker is.

Sad day the other day, one of my best mates and someone who I started out in poker with ASH MASON has left the UK and is heading to live in Australia with his beautiful girlfriend Soph mony de something or other for up to 5 years!!! Me, Ash and Jamie started out playing poker together in 2007, we had no money ever but had so much fun, no question I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am without those guys and I've no doubt we'll be best mates forever now. Very sad to see him leave but he's off to follow happiness and grow up, and you can never begrudge your friends that :)

My first blog for the new site is going to be called "where it all began" and will feature some stories from the early days of poker with those two scoundrels and there are some amazing memories there I've really enjoyed sifting back through them :D

Thanks for all the kind msg's since my victory at DTD, unfortunately it didn't QUITE get me out of the hole for 2013 (ffs lol) but since then I've had a great week online and we've sailed into profit for the year now! Wiiiii just need to hold till December haha.

IF any budding poker journalists have an idea for an article they'd like to write for my new site please get in touch on twitter(@lildavefish)/FB/Blonde(Suuprlim) or wherever possible I'd love to potentially put it on the site!

Final piece of spam from me :D 20th February, exclusively on Black Belt Poker is the quarterly "Samurai" tournament, its a $250 6-max tournament with $10k gte. It's a superb value tournament and black belt is a great site. I'm going to run a competition starting from 6pm tonight. Tweet the hastag #lildavesamurai at me @lildavefish and @senseichanning and you'll be entered into a draw where the winner will win a free ticket to play this competition!

Starts tonight at 6pm and finishes next Monday 18th at 6pm - Get tweeting!

There are also daily satellites running from all buyin levels, GET INVOLVED!

Gl everybody

lilD

Failing to Plan is...

2013-01-23T04:46:00.004-08:00

Planning to Stay in Bed, Cos it's Easier.

The other day I had a meeting with an accountant, not what you would describe as a particulally "dynamic" man. I've met a few accountants in my days and for the most part they have all stood up to their stereo-type, however that wouldn't be fair to say, cos a couple of legends spring to mind as a type this :D

Anyways, my accountant fits the stereo-type about as perfectly as you can imagine, so you can imagine the lack of humor he received my "that's good, less taxes" comment with after he showed me the rather hefty red figure at the bottom of last years P&L. Apparently, even with the tax relief dong your brains can afford you, it's not good to lose money over a12 month period? Who knew hey! Good job I have an accountant isn't it?

Next question he has for me, What's my plan?! WHAT. IS. MY. PLAN ?

What is my plan? I looked at him, slightly confused (i'm not the brightest after all) well, I was going to get a subway and pick my dry-cleaning off, but always tempted to go white-water rafting it is a Tuesday...

No, No, NO! My Plan, what is it?

Well - I'm not sure I have a plan?

YOU DON'T HAVE A PLAN?

(ever wondered what it would be like if you mother grew a moustache and started charging you £60 an hour?)

Plan for what?

You lost money, you need to revise your financial plan?

So here's where the meeting gets interesting - APPARENTLY, whenever you lose money you should revise your financial plan. Oh gooodddddddddd this is pretty serious...

So, basically I'm going to be spending my entire life revising my financial plan! I shook my head in worry at the gravity of this new information, every time? Yep, he confirmed it, EVERY TIME. Ok then I said lets make a plan...he gets his pen and paper out and is lookking extremely officious, I'm very confident right now that we're about to come up with a superb plan.

After 15 minutes of pretty intense discussion it becomes readily obvious to all parties that I'm going to do fuck all different the frequent question of "what are you going to change" is met with me saying "I'm gonna crush!" The final question of this loborious meeting is how I plan to better manage my money next year....

MMM I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE I'LL BE THE MAVERICK YOU ALL WANT ME TO BE AND

ASK MY FUCKING ACCOUNTANT

We shook hands, I neglected to take a copy of my P&L on the ground of it being "bad for morale" prompting more bewildering headshakes, and off I went, to get myself a subway, feeling remarkably up-beat for a man with no money, and no plan.

As I was tucking into my subway, and trying to decide between picking my laundry up (which is heavy) or just buying some new T-Shirts (which isn't) I got to thinking about my meeting, need a new plan, PAH, I have a plan, and a great plan it is too. I'm going to ring my Dad, my Dad is a lovely man - he's like me, very diplomatic and re-assuring, he can sense when you want actual advice or when you just want to be told you're right. I explained the details of my meeting to him and he said

"Oh, well, what is your plan?"

"Well, I'm going to....

SIGH DAD wtf is that? Absolutely killed morale and I still have 1/4 of my subway left.

I'm going to get really fucking rich"

"Well (chuckling) Sounds like a good plan, that sounds like a great plan. How you going to do that?"

Alrite, what is with this guy? I have to restrain myself from just hanging up on him, great, so apparently I don't have a plan, and the man in the Asda suit was right. I'm Fucked!

This set me off on about 4 days of minor panic, I realised I needed some better plans. So I set about making some. I bought an A5 notepad (to write things down as the came to me) a selection of different colored gel pens, so I could write them all down in different colors as I saw fit (an excellent step that Mr. Maths prolly didn't think me even capable off) I got a pack of 6, 2 were black and one was blue (I'm not completely insane) but also had a red, green and for those really crazy moments, PINK!

As my week went on I started to get all sorts of aamazing plans, I realised that poker is good to make some money, but you can't get RICH RICH, like buying a house in south-beach and ballin' around on your own boat rich. Then I thought about it, people who have software companies, are often pretty rich and have big houses near the sea.

Plan 1. - Get a Software company

Just green for that one, no need to go crazy just yet.

Next I thought about my businesses, and what went wrong last year. Well someone stole £15k off me, that wasn't good, and one of them burnt down and cost me another £10k. So, google things that cost £25k and see what's on offer....

Hardly the most inspiring research I ever did, turns out if I don't get stolen from and nothing burns down I'll be able to have an 8yr takeaway binge, or a Boris Johnson style trade mission to India. Well, every little helps.

Plan 2 - Don't get stolen from or have anything burn down.

Reflecting on plan 2, and the liklihood of an 8yr take-away binge I though I better get fit. My friend Faye is very fit, not only is she very fit she's extremely enthusiastic about being fit. Now I admire her enthusiasm greatly but find it serves as more of an indication of how un-motovated I am, than as a driving motivator to get me working out. However her infectious love for exercise is beginning to wear off on me and on two occasions already this year I have NEARLY been to the gym and/or running. The girl's done well.

Plan 3 - Get Fit.

Record keeping has never really been a strong suit of mine, the problem with record keeping is it's NO FUN unless you're winning, so what always happens Is I start off keeping records, start losing, refuse to record the losses, now when I start winning again my records have no credibility, and I am completely over them, Un-credible records are the worst, because the only reason I wanted to keep them was so I could brag, but I can't even do that If I know deep down they aren't right :( I didn't share these views with my accountant, feel like he'd have had some sort of seizure.

Plan 4 - Keep accurate records.

So far, my account was right! Planning is fun! 4 Great plans I've made so far, soon I'm gonna be a rich, fit, owner of a successful software company, with up to date records and no thieving employee's or burning shops. Who wouldn't wanna be THAT GUY :) I'm GREAT!

Excited to get to work with my new plans, 2 and a half weeks later I've lost every single day I've played poker, been kinda of ill, broken nearly everything I've touched AND my prized possession my racing greyhound shattered her pelvis and had to be put down :( Literally the worst month ever January.

Best e-mail my accountant.

FUCK YOU AND YOU'RE FUCKING PLANS. I'm GOING TO BED.

I think people tough I was miserable/down/complaining after my last blog, I really wasn't/aren't - or at least I wasn't meaning to be, I really want to show people more than one side to my life, everyone loves big nights out in Vegas, extravagant lifestyles and degen adventures but it's not just like that. Pro gambling for me has been a string of extremely aggressive emotional swings, and you have to learn to deal with them all by yourself. People tilt off, develop and totally unjustified sense on entitlement and destroy both their motivation to succeed and their ability to actually achieve what they want. You feel like the most hard done by person on the planet, and that everyone else is blessed and you're the one that just unluckier than everyone else.

Harsh reality, gambling owes no-body anything, you don't have long to learn or accept that, before you just need to get a job. I'm surprised how many "proffessional gamblers" don't seem to understand the basics.

The purpose of my last blog was to try and explain a shift in perspective I've had over the last 2 or 3 months. I'm starting to find validation in things that aren't money/lifestyle/extravagance, I'm starting to see future David enjoying "real things" people, places, relationships - stuff that matters a lot more than how much money you make or whether the river card is the 7 of diamonds of the Queen of spades.

I'm 23 years old and I've had the most amazing life so far, I'm very lucky with so many things but at the end of the day I didn't sit home and wait for it, I went out and got everything I wanted from my life. I really do believe anyone can achieve anything if they REALLY want it, are prepared to risk something for it and are ready to fight to the death for it.

So Mr. Accountant, no I don't have an actual plan - but luckily for me - I don't need one.

Put that in your abacus and subtract it from 57 :P

GL Everyone

lilD

Less Soul On a Roll

2013-01-21T06:54:00.001-08:00

Died A Little Inside Did Ya?

January has gone very badly so far. By Very badly I mean literally nothing has gone right so far, poker has been a total disaster, I've lost 20 consecutive sessions as I write this blog and I feel kind of disillusioned with it. Things in the real world have been rough as well, with all sorts of challenges presenting themselves to me and in general I've not been dealing with them well. In essence everything I've done so far has not been good enough.

As I did the sums and realised I was officially in my biggest ever downswing I got to thinking about how I'd been reacting to it, actually I'd been reacting pretty well! I remember the first time I lost a lot of money and how it made me feel, my stomach churned, I got sweaty, paniced, my breathing went frantic and I couldn't sleep. Filled with regret I dwelled on what had happened for days and days (maybe even months lol.) I remember clearly back then as well that the money (was a significant sum) wasn't on the forethought of my mind either, I'd lost, at a time when I never lost, and it hurt me, it really hurt me. I was embarrassed and felt like I could no longer validate my decision to play poker because of what I'd done. The fact that at the age of 20 i'd lost more money than most people my age would earn in 12 months was an nothing more than a pure annoyance.

Fast forward to now, having won and lost that amount many times since I am reflecting on the biggest losses of my life and I feel totally different. All That upsets me is the money, I don't care that I didn't win, that other people beat me, I just wanted to make money and I didn't. My pride isn't damaged, my ego isn't upset, I'm just disappointed that I didn't win.

Can I feel it? Nope, I really can't.

It's strange feeling, it shows me that the reasons I play poker + do what I do in life have changed. My objectives in life have shifted as I've grown up and seen and experienced new things. I used to have so much more heart and soul for gambling but these days it just doesn't make me feel anything. Losing is just annoying and winning is just a fucking relief!

I guess I must be a little dead inside to feel nothing anymore in the midst of these huge emotional swings. Stuff that makes me happy is stuff outside of poker, people I care about and like spending time with, and luckily for me right now my life has never been fuller of people who I want to spend my time with.

WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

So despite moaning all blog, Life is good, I'm running out of money, but who gives a fuck about money? Like the saying goes....

A refreshing and very adult change in perspective for me! I do miss the days where I just went for glory everyday, because it didn't matter, but one of the harsh things about growing up is that the rewards of glory as much less appealing and the pitfall's of failure are far more daunting :P

I'm still not exactly sure on this years goals, as I don't know exactly what I want to achieve right now, one thing for sure though, having plenty of fun is going to be #1.

Rooting for my oldest friend in poker Jamie Sykes on the final of UKIPT Edinburgh with a cool one hundred thousand pounds for the first place winner! Cmmmmonnnn Jammmiiie!!

GL Everyone, lets smash this February up yo!

lilD

Year 2012!

2013-01-01T04:07:00.002-08:00

2012! What went down??!!

2012 has been an interesting year. As with every year there has been a lot of ups, and a lot of downs, the downs are always pretty tough and the ups are usually amazing, that's one of the best, yet most tiring things about gambling - the swings of your emotions far outweigh the gravity of the financial swings (usually lol depends how much you lose) the readily interchangeable feelings of pure joy, like a man who rules the world - to gut-wrenching disappointment are what makes it great - but also so hard.

I wrote a blog in Jan - http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/happy-2012-lets-go.html outlining what I hoped to achieve this year, interesting to read back! How did I do...?

Well, I'll tell you :D

1. Online Poker

Goals were i) Play 300,000 hands, ii) winrate of 8bb/1000 at 5/10 and under, iii) 25hrs per month "extra work", iv) Play all Scoop/Wcoop/ftops PLO events.

Seems reasonable right?

Play 300,000 hands. I played 170,000~ I changed PC's so can't put together an accurate graph (and I love graphs) I know at one point in the year I was up £100k (after a monster £75k month of unrelenting run-good) but lost overall in the last 6 months of the year. I lost mostly at high stakes in the last half of the year, still putting in really strong results in mid-stakes, which is the one pleasing aspect of what is basically, doing my nuts :P. I'm pretty sure my winrate at mid-stakes was over 8bb/100.

Thinking about it though I think that is unrealistic for me. Firstly everyone is getting much much better, I think 8bb/100 in 6max PLO games is now a level of winning for the very, very top players. Secondly, I don't play full time online due to my travels and live poker commitments, so I am falling out of "the loop" with internet poker quickly, and I'm not up to speed where the games are, how the general "style" of play is adapting so I sacrifice a lot of win-rate catching myself up with the latest trends. Everytime i take a month off and come back even average regs have the upper hand on me for at least a week of solid play. With that as a disadvantage i'll never realistically expect to win at 8bb/100 over any meaningful sample of play. I didn't play all he scoop/wcoop plo's mostly cos i couldn't be bothered and i did plenty of work on my game when I was playing.

So all in all, not too bad!

Online poker - 6.2/10

Live Poker

i) 3 America trips (La/LV march, WSOP LV, December LV) ii) Work really hard on mixed games iii) Play 25 live tourneys

I did all three america trips as planned, and I played some high stakes games. I've kept almost perfect records of all my america trips and I looked back over them recently, makes for interesting reading! Basically the bottom line is I lost $500,000 at $50-$100+ in america this year and won $530,000 at stakes lower than that, truly frightening figures when you think about it.

So, I have to take a step back and think, why have I lost so much at high stakes, this isn't just true to live poker, my online results have shown the same thing. You can easily brush this over and say "I'm just unlucky in big games" but there is too much money at stake to do this, I've looked and looked, thought and thought, talked to people who know me, who play in these games with me, who play these stakes and I'm conducting a serious post mortem, the jury is still out but I believe deep down I belong playing those games and that I have the temperament and the composure to succeed in them. It fucking sucks though!

Work really hard on mixed games.

I've worked really hard on mixed games, and I've thought a LOT about these different games this year - I dont really wanna go into deep detail about my thouhts on all the games here but I'd like to think I've improved dramatically, and that I've started to reach a level where I put my own "slants" and "stylistic adaptations" to how i'm playing these games. That for me is how you realise you're starting to grasp a game, when you develop a "personality" that allows you to move away from the standard plays profitably. This is something I'm very happy with this year!

Play 25 Live tourneys.

Well, this was always a tentative one, 25 is a lot! It nearly started very well, with a 12th place in WPT Dublin in early January, I somehow managed to turn up and actually play well in a tournament, and the first time I've ever gone deep in a serious tournament I absolutely loved it! Alas, wasn't meant to be as my good friend Dave Shallow flipped me out in 12th and went onto win the thing, it was a lot of fun. I then played GUKPT Manc (no good) WPT Venice (no good) 3 comps in the LAPC and was pure bubble/8th/2 off the money in those 3, next one I played was a $500 PLO tourney at the wynn which I came 9th (6 paid!!) in. Next up was the $5k Wynn Classic Main Event, where I came 17th (14 paid - even though I blew up near the money in that comp :( ) and by the time this is all done I've played 8, and I'm fucking fed up with tournaments already!

Next tourney for me was UKIPT £1m gtd (played terribly) then Vegas $3k HU (CASHED! for $3,195) $3k 6max (no good) $3k PLO (No good) $5k PLO (no good) $10k Main (busted on my birthday!) came home played the £500 £500k GTD (40th for £1500! but had a horse final!) and after that I decided I was done with tournaments, it was a great aim, but I had to knuckle down and try actually make money, not chasing rainbows!

So buyins of ~ £34,000 and Cashes of ~£13,000, so a nice idea and a tidy £20k dusted off alongside it - managed to play 15 though, which is ok!!

Has to be said though, I've run really, really good in most live games this year (except the highest ones) I even managed a session which will live long in the memory where I won £9,400 at £2/£2 PLO at dtd, 4,700 big blinds, and I payed for 4 hours! So Live poker HAS gone very well this year!

LIVE POKER - 9.2/10

Poker overall, there is a lot of good and bad points from this year. I lost Money in February, March, June, July, August, and November this year (and would have lost in December bar for a late run into a 3figure profit for the month!) I did however have my two biggest months of my Career £95,000 and £85,000 (so closely missing the £100k month!) I've won quite a bit staking this year as well which is nice and even took on my first "serious" horse (and a serious horse he is too!!)

I think I've gotten better this year as well, which is pleasing, mostly due to the help and support of JP, Dave Burn and Rob who are my three closest friends for discussing poker and strategy. Sides of my game i'm extremely pleased with now is the mental aspect, I think over the last 18 months I've "grown" up a lot and I really do think my mental approach to the game is at a very high standard now, so I'm pleased overall professionally this year :)

Business

It's been a trying year for me with my external ventures, I've been put to decisions and situations I haven't been in before and I have made mistakes, I still don't know if I made big mistakes and have been punished accordingly, or if I have made some marginal mis-judgements and gotten very unluckly, either way the biggest lesson of the year is that it's an irrelevant question. There's only one thing that matters and that's the figure on the balance sheet, I've lost about £40k from the value of my businesses this year. I've started no new projects despite having worked on one very exciting one for the majority of the year. Kinda gutting to be honest but I am not beaten! I have idea's for 2013 don't you all worry!! The launch of my own website to host this blog is imminent with a few last minute teething problems which will be out of the way shortly and this, is very exciting :)

Business - 4.1/10

Personal Life

I'm just going to rattle through these as it's been a really really rough few months and I'm not really up for discussing it all just yet on here (I will at some point I think) but safice to say it has not been easy!

i) Get a Hobby

Did not do this, or even threaten to do this, in fact I'd be lying if i said I even remembered I was planning on doing this more than 2 or 3 times this year (quite surprised reading it back actually lol)

ii) Go out less

Lol. Not even going to dignify this with any analysis - I went out a lot. Sub-plans were to focus on more business things, try meet more women in non-bar situations and focus on fitness and I did none of those either!

iii) Set Gambling limit of £50 per wager (excluding genuine +EV gamble)

I didn't do this in the slightest, I started out the year admirably but prolly lost £50,000 this year gambling on stupid stuff.

Personal Life - 0.5/10

#1 Aim of 2012 though....

HAVE FUN, AND SURVIVE

Wake up every day, and want to get up, enjoy spending time with the people I care about, enjoy my youth because I won't have it forever and live life without regret.

#1 Aim - 10/10

Overall 2012 Ranking....

31/50 - 62%

(but...)

IT'S BEEN A FUCKING LOT OF FUN!

So truth be told, I went mental this year, in a year where I turned 23 I had set out in my mind to travel lots, to put myself out there and to really try and "go for it" this year, not just make money, but get some experiences that I can keep forever regardless of what the magic digits on the bank statements say. Some of the times I've had with some of my friends this year has been truly incredible. I really, really wish I could blog even half of them but I fear I could bring team Leeds down if I did that!

I've taken the liberty of assembling (in no specific order) my favorite blog updates of this year, free for you to browse in an idle hour :) ENJOY, and thanks for reading and for the continued nice comments! Next Blog will be the goals and aims for 2013!!

An Idiot Abroad - lilDave in Venice

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/idiot-abroad-lildave-in-venice.html

This is one of my all time favorite blog posts, my trip to Venice was utterly ridiculous, with my co-star in the form of James Dempsey and stellar performances from Jack and Adele this was one of my all time favorite trips abroad, just brilliant!

Wise Words From Gigolo Brace

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/wise-words-from-gigolo-brace.html

One of my personal favorite moments ever in Vegas was my night out with Matt, Justin and reality TV star "Gigolo Brace" - Just remember guys, whatever you do MAKE SURE YOU'RE THE FUCKING KING AT IT.

Tab's On Pab!

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/tabs-on-pab.html

In what has become a somewhat legendary story this year, this blog details prolly my most hilarious and degenerate 3 day bender in history, culminating in one of the most incredible things I thin we've ever done. This is my #1 and it's not even close!!

Swings, Sulking and Sheffield

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/swings-sulking-and-sheffield.html

After my longest ever period without blogging I came back with a full report of what i'd been doing - was a very funny period!

There's been too many great moments, there really has

Love and peace to everyone, have a wonderful New Years!!!

lilD

Merry Christmas!!!

2012-12-27T10:12:00.002-08:00

HO HO HO !!!

Merry Christmas Everybody!! It's been about 10 days now since me and JP returned from our travels, I've gotta say as well, it's amazing to be home! I always feel like a bit of a dick even tempting to complain about this but it's been such an intense year of traveling by the end of this trip I was so tired and just wanted to be home - obviously I've loved all the travel and all the time I've had to spend in Vegas is obviously amazing, but like the saying goes...

The trip itself, a mixed bag of successes and failures, the most important thing to consider i think is that I had a trip to Barbados, a week with all the DTD hero's in St.Kitts, 3 days rocking about in Miami and 2 weeks in Vegas (staying in the Encore) and the whole trip cost me nothing - i literally broke almost bang even after expenses. I mean there is no way this could ever be interpreted as a failure, and with all the fun I had, I'm pretty happy with it...

However i'm kinda disappointed, and the reason i'm a touch gutted is that the last 6 months I've been playing as well as I've ever played - and I played great for nearly the entire trip - there's no entitlement in poker, but if I'd have won big this trip, with how hard and well I played I think it'd would have been reasonable. Typical case alas, the big moments went against me, most of the big moments going against me, which without wanting to sound whingy is how it's gone all year in vegas. Still...a lot of fun was had, and I'm nicely placed to spur on and go on a nice run in the early stages of 2013 - last January was the biggest of my poker career so i will be aiming to re-produce!

Listen to this prick moaning about his free holiday! Lets move onto some more exciting matters, and lets talk about Christmas, or more importantly, the best day of our calender year...

The Office Christmas Party!

Every year the "office" of Leeds poker - I think we can refer to it as the best poker community in the UK (as it's my blog and I'm typing it) leaves the comfort of our various offices, don some smart clothes, eat some michelin starred food and celebrate our years achievements - followed of course by a night out trying to get some good gossip for the water cooler next year.

This year we decided we should up the ante and the dress code was set as suit and tie! I decided after a half decent year I could treat myself to a new suit and decided to bring back some British heritage and go for some tweed! Here I am!

Looking like a slightly eccentric head of humanities, the whole team (Me, Jp, Middy, Rob, Jamie, Ash, Tommy C, Jack Ellwood, Pez and Jake) were looking incredibly sharp! The meal (at Anthonys) was amazing, the banter was flying about, office jokes a plenty and a pretty degenerate night out followed! After leaving the casino at 8am, and arriving back at the flat with Rob, JP and Tommy C me and Middy decided we'd had such a sick party we wanted another drink, so off we headed BACK out to find some more action - struggling for too much "action" at 9am we found ourselves drinking in the train station Weatherspoons till 1pm! Everyone heading to work in there suits we fitted right in, we even managed to share our displeasure at having to go to halifax for our end of year regional sales meeting so close to christmas! Pah, what a farce eh!?

The night out finally ended at midnight on the following day when we were worried me might kill ourselves and we hit the hay! All in all a great Xmas party! I've done these silly multi-day benders with no sleep quite a bit in my life, I think this one might be the final one I ever do though!

Hilarious story from the Xmas party...

The previous year, on the night before the party there was a night out (I wasn't on this night out thoguh) with the usual suspects, and a visiting Toby Lewis, on the way home from this night worried about not having a secret santa gift one of the group (we wont name names!) decided to steal (YES - STEAL!) a headrest from the taxi on the way home (I know, shocking!) his secret santa was JP so the following night at the part he proudly presenting JP with his headrest! Jp, not overly impressed but he wan't as unimpressed as Pez was with his pink dildo from Jake! That night on the way home me, tommy c (who was present for the headrest theft) Rob and maybe someone else (?) were unlucky enough to get the SAME taxi driver, with his missing headrest! Feeling guilty Tommy (who was not the theif) felt obligated to re-inburse the taxi driver for the stolen headrest!

Anyways I'd imagine that was the last any of us had thought about the headrest until the end of the meal our waiter (the same one who'd had to navigate the cheese board around the dildo and the my little pony bedsheets last year) said he had something of ours we left last year... What does he come back with...

You can't write this stuff can you!!

Had another fun day out since being back, my friends Jenna and Faye, Faye's daughter Pagie were hitting Magna, a science day out in sheffield for a family day out! I remember when i was ~12 I was sposed to go on a school trip to Magna, but was ill and couldnt go :( I assumed my chance might have gone (not really the place you can go by yourself as an adult!) so I said to myself when I have kids, and they're 8-12 I'm gonna take them there!! So when an oppurtuity came up to go I was loving it! Along with Ben, a friend of Jenna and Dave's I'd never met before (v nice guy) we set of for an adventure day!

Was a grrreeeaat day out, I think I can tell you the story in pictures better!

Me and Ben inside the "wind-tunnel" I was told you got "blown really hard" in there, was a little dissappointed with the outcome to be brutally honest :D

Now, I can't remember exactly what this little pissing man was demonstrating, BUT it took Faye the best of 10minutes and 6 or 7 photo attempts to capture him "in action" so feel duty bound to include this picture!

This would be Faye being extremely brave and daring climbing to the top of a childrens climbing frame - eat your heart out David Blaine.

This is a big "fire tornado" was sick in real life - reminds me of Andy Moseley.

A hilariously big, fishy looking pink fish!

The team getting hard to work moving some rocks around the quarry!

CHEERS!

So, a great day out, Paige had a great day and the "grown ups" had a laugh as well, we even learnt about how steel was made in the 1970's! Pretty dangerous stuff, props to anyone who made steel need some balls for that! Im going to stick to clicking buttons and throwing chips about seems a lot safer :)

Christmas! Christmas isn't exactly a time of year I get overly excited about, sure it's fun and the whole country gets a big buzz but Christmas is a time for kids, and family. I get on great with my family now but it's not really a christmassy big family days type of family, which tbh suits me down to the ground! These last couple of years are very fast, high paced and intense stuff is always happening, christmas rolls around and you can do nothing, absolutley nothing - I don't really LIKE doing nothing, but every so often you get forced into it, because, like on Xmas there is nothing to do, and it's nice and peaceful!

So my Xmas day I spent lounging on my sofa, listening to Xmas songs, watching TV, drinking Midori and Lemonade/Orange Baileys and eating lebonese food! I had a great day :)

Played some poker (sad) won some money (great) and boxing day was spent much in the same light, getitng back (slowly) into online poker, played the first cash session since very early November and enjoyed it, going to start very slowly again $1/$2 - $3/$6 as last time i jumped in I started to lose and it wasn't a good idea. Everytime I leave online poker and come back I feel like I'm "re-discovering" my game a little and it's a great way to FORCE yourself to really think about your game because there's new people about and older players have changed and gotten better, so YOU have to work hard and get better or you'll get left behind.

Next blog I will re-vise my goals from the start of the year, see how I got on, and set myself some goals for 2013, Iv learnt a lot about myself in 2012 and had a lot of experiences, will be fun to look book and think about how I've done, how I've conducted myself and how much fun Ive had! (lots!)

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday time, and thanks for reading this year!

Much Holiday Spirits to you all!

lilD

Where's He Been!?

2012-12-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

I'm Back!

I'm still here! I know I've been unbelievably terrible lately, with no blogs for nearly 5 weeks! I've been travelling around, had lousy internet connections and been a bit Ill - Low morale will never equal good blog material!

The good news is though, we have plenty of things to report! So let's get cracking!

LONDON

So I recently found myself in our great capital, where the streets are paved with gold (they aren't Dick Wittington wasted his time) I had a few reasons for this visit, the first was my friend Matt had gotten hold of some tickets to a wine tasting evening, so myself, Matt, Angela, Dubai and co. all hit this super posh little wine tasting do in a top floor on Marylebone Road - we were stood outside the building 40minutes before the thing started but our decision to hit a hotel bar for a couple of cocktails lead to us still being late - in I strolled wearing my hoody, a little tipsy into a room full of very serious wine enthusiasts staring intensely at 8 glasses of wine.

We had the owners of the vineyard there and despite their unpenetrable french accents I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even found myself learning a thing or two (although the most prominent lesson was certainly that 10 glasses of wine before a night out will do you no good whatsoever the next day!) Seems I committed somewhat a social crime on this night, in my world, when presented with 8 glasses of wine, the only option for a good mannered young man for myself would be to drink all 8 glasses, apparently this isn't how it's done in these very posh wine tasting evenings - you're supposed to taste, not drink the wine! Biggest load of nonsense I ever heard, I polished all my wine off and had a most pleasant time :)

Me and Demps were extremely proud of ourselves - we quickly identified a man on the table in front of us as a massive wine sicko, so when it came to picking your favorite we felt like monster sharks when we went for the same wine :)

Next few days in London were spent sat on Flushy's sofa blindly punting on everything and anything - we started off on the darts and results dependent moved onto baseball, NFL and if the situation got desperate we would head to the late night US and AUS racing :D I love how those markets have £613 liquid, until 3 mins before the race starts on TV then all of a sudden £60k comes crushing in :D Punters gonna punt hey :D

Final two pieces of business for my London trip were Lunch with Mr Channing where we did our usual system of having business to discuss but ending up ordering a bottle of wine and hearing stories of the old days! Then a night out celebrating James Dempsey's assault into old-age, and home for lil dave, home to discover that Tom "hitthehole" Middleton has moved in! So the flat's lineup of Me, JP and Middy now fully completed and what a high morale team it is!!

POKER

Poker leading up to my trip away was going pretty well - made a VERY small recovery online (very small) decided to leave it for November as morale was being adversely affected by playing online and there was plenty of live action about - enjoyed some nice rungood all over the place and a fun trip to DTD where I went to play 10/10 DC, the game broke up very quickly so i jumped into a £2/£2 PLO game instantly made a striaght flush 3betting a complete bag of spanners in 5 card PLO and tilted the whole table, ended up running ridiculous and winning over £9k! Got it in 3ways in 6card PLO with AA**** and held on 56J8J (three hearts) lol was running just like that :D

This lead me to have high hopes for the upcoming trip!

THE TRIP!

So, Monday 19th November me and JP set out from Manchester Airport bound for leg one of our trip - Barbados, despite having the option of going (somewhat) direct from Gatwick to St.Kitts we decided it might make for a fun adventure to go a day earlier and check out a bit of Barbados! Arriving in Barbados was amazing, such a beautiful place - we thought we'd make the most of it so went for a nice dinner (Lobster ofc!) and see what sort of trouble we could get ourselves into, as it turns out quite a lot was the answer!!

I'd love more than anything else to tell you what we did in Barbados but I have literally no idea, the last memory we have is of chatting to a lovely British couple at the hotel bar, I have brief memories of being in a taxi with a dangerous looking man who wanted us to give him money for drugs and boom we're waking up in our hotel the next day - feeling the best part of pretty ropey! We then retired to the beach to grind a bit of chinese poker and have a few drinks. I suffered one of the greatest injustices you've ever seen in chinese poker. I was up 109 points @$20 p/point against JP and had just gotten the Fantasy land bonus (for those of you not swept into the wave of open-face chinese poker this is the bonus you get for having QQ or better at the front of your hand, you receive a 20 point bonus and the next hand you get to set your hand in the traditional 13 card manner)

There I was looking out over a tropical beach and beautiful clear waters, in fantasy land, absolutely LOVING IT.

Then, somehow, and I'm still trying to work out how the fuck this could possibly have happened 6 more hands have passed and I'm now losing 14 points?! I got into fantasy land on the coast of Barbados and it somehow cost me 2 and a half grand - what even is that?

It got even more tilting as before the hour was out I was losing 70 points! Luckily I managed to ninja out of it by the end of the holiday and lost 6 points ($120) so that was ok :S

We then went to St.Kitts but had to endure a lot of needless hassle at the hands of the Carribean locals, don't get me wrong they all seemed like great people, but fuck me were they slow - as an example I went to the cage in St.K to get some money out, i was watching the clock and it was 5 minutes into the process before she asked me how much i wanted, 5 minutes of typing stuff into a computer, what info could she possibly be typing which is more important than how much money I want? (anyways lol)

So our first hassle is in the airport in Barbados, my ticket is fine but JP has a $30 fee to pay, he gives them a $100 bill and it takes 3 people 20 minutes to organise his change - in the meanwhile we're both passing some nervous comments that his bag is still there but mine has already gone...these initial concerns ended up quite valid when sure enough in St.Kitts my case was there, and there was no sign of JP's - it's ok though it'll be there the next delivered to out hotel, annoying, but not the end of the world. Goes almost without saying that case showed up 5 days later, 1 full day before we were due to leave :D

St.KITTS

St.Kitts was awesome, on arrival it became apparant the place was bursting to the rafters with hero's, first thing was down to the club "Tiger" where I see Jp, Dempsey, Rob Yong, Kev O'Connell, Simon Trumper (surrounded by good looking women as usual) Julian Gardner, Skalie, Simon Zach, Ben Vinson, Jack Ellwood, Dave Shallow, Devilfish amoungst many others!

Weather was amazing, we had two great cash games (which ended up not running for the rest of the week as all the players went deep in the bloody tournament!) the banter was tip top and just a load of fun. IDK if Rob will be planning to do this again next year but I will be doing my utmost to attend, him and all the DTD guys really did put on a great week can't possibly thank them all enough :)

Oh and huge congrats to Wadey for shipping YET ANOTHER DTD tournament, and a tidy one to ship as well, $85k and free week in the sun, some life hey :D

MIAMI

Next up on the adventure was a trip to Miami, we were forced to spend a night in Miami anyways and never having been before me and JP thought we might hang around for a few days, we had our friend Alex there to help us around and take us to cool places and it's a really really amazing city. Demps had booked us dinner on the first night at a restaurant called Barton G (or something like that) the waiter, who was a pretty quirky chap, described everything as "outstanding" and told us the restaurant was famed for it's presentation - seems he wasn't lying!

The cocktails came with frozen ice, although it wasn't ice, it was frozen ALCOHOL, so s it melted it made your drink stronger! Genius!!!!

This was the "Lobster Pop-Tarts" started, came served in a toaster! Yes, you're all seeing this correctly, A TOASTER!!!

Then, perhaps the most staggering piece of the whole meal, the steak came out served with a 5ft metal fork stuck into the board! It took the guy nearly 5 minutes to get all the plates onto the table, haha OUTSTANDING :)

Was a really great evening!

Not sure wtf is wrong with my neck here, and my face looks like it doesn't really fit on my body for some reason :D

Next day in Miami me and JP headed for a sports bar near our hotel to watch the end of the football and grab some lunch, we met and started chatting to a nice Biritsh guy called James then discovered ShuffleBoard! Neither of us had ever played it before but thought we'd give it a go, 5 hours later, constant debates over the best strategy for spreading the sawdust and slowing bumping up the stakes as we got a little more drunk and slightly more degen and Alex strolls up to meet us and finds us really hammered and locked into fierce competition!

THE COMPETITORS!

Next up we went for a really nice Sushi meal somewhere, I span the $500 I'd won at shuffleboard into a night out fund and we went to an incredible bar called Mango's Tropical Cafe! And Tropical it was too! A little taste of the tropicalness (is that a word, dam well should be if it isn't)

I found myself somewhat in love with a waitress, who we immediately found out was engaged, and didn't speak English, so I did what any respectable gentleman would do and set myself up by the bar and stared creepily at her for the majority of the night, literally the best legs you've ever seen, I let myself and all of you down by not getting a picture of those legs, I'm sorry :(

Needless to say, we had a great night! Great company, a big bottle of grey goose and plenty of hot latino thighs to stare at (most of which were belly dancing) Latin Belly dancing, very much a fan of that.

We got to Miami Airport and bid Alex farewell, then ran into a problem, there was no record of our tickets on the system, I insisted I had booked them, and showed them my e-mail confirmation, confirming that I had indeed bought tickets from Miami Int'l to Las Vegas...on Thursday the 29th of December...for fuck sake. siggghhhhhhhhhhh.

We then had to go through a total rigmarole where JP was told he might not be able to fly because his passport is a little scruffy and a huge tilt at the check in desk with those stupid machines and we got onto a flight 3 hours later and arrived in LV at 10.30 that night!

VEGGGGGGAAASSSS

This takes me up to the final part of the trip, going to disappoint you all now with no tales of Vegas degeneracy, since arriving I've played literally non-stop at mostly $25/$50 PLO and have had an extremely frustrating time of it, in fact Vegas this time round has been a little bit aggravating for me, I've no idea why but have literally not managed to sleep a wink since i been here, I've played amazingly good all trip and find myslef very slightly above even for the trip, lost a lot of very big pots - top set vs middle set vs bottom set on K84r in a limped pot lol somehow turns into a $40k pot I announced casually I have KK and everyone is staggered "WHAT! You're kidding me?!?" ermmm, there was $500 in there and I decided to put another $16,000 in - wtf do you think I have lol K467? Anyways 44 had a gutshot as well and made it so that was a bit tilting. Made a sort of nitty fold in a big pot vs Phralard Friedman and Brian Rast where I could have done anything and decided to make an uncharacteristic hero fold of 2nd set on KJ8ss67 only to be told that he had it and shown KJ** would have been a $25k pot and I never really fold there either, in fact it's BAD to fold, I was just so sure in the read I had at the time - I played the hand badly actually on two streets.

I think that's really the only stand out mistake I've made in the last few weeks so overall I'm delighted with my play, I honestly think I've run quite poorly not to be winning very nicely.

There has been no real nights out (just one, XS for Steve Aoki with JP Sly and Sam) just all work work work, hoping to end the year with a bit of a bang and maybe take a little holiday over Xmas somewhere, but it's not looking like i'm going to end with any real sort of bang. Hopefully I can win a few thousand bucks over the next couple of days and that'll be a nice way to end the year, with a great trip!

OH MANGOS :D

So that's really what we've been up to lately, my next blog (which i'll be finishing when I get back on Monday) will be my Years review, here was the 2012 "Goals" I set myself, described aptly as blinded optimism :D so we'll see how I did!!

Reading back makes me lol a little haha !

Thanks for reading everybody, people who enjoyed this might also enjoy my column in PokerPlayer :P

Gl

lilD

Swings, Sulking and Sheffield

2012-10-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

It's All Been Kicking Off!

Once again I have taken a horribly long amount of between blogs, can only apologise but it's all been going mental recently, it's weird how I have no real commitments or appointments yet I seem to NEVER have any time! This last three weeks has been ruined even more by the most horrible illness anyone has ever had! Being ill sucks, firstly it sucks because I'm ill which limits my ability to do things, I'm not really the type of guy who can continue to function reasonably during illness, when I'm ill the only place I can bear to be is in bed, making silly noises and moaning, whinging and complaining to whoever will listen to me. The other reason it sucks is because I feel very lonely, all i want is a string of beautiful women wearing tight latex nurses outfits tending for me, cooking me soup and telling me how god damn brave I am solidering on through this horrible time.

Needless to say I had no such women tending for me during my illness, and this wasn't through lack of trying either, virtually everyone I know was asked and all came up with some stupid excuse, where's Jamie when I need him eh?

So I had a week of watching crime documentaries and Criminal Minds on the sofa, whining and complaining, but on top of that I had to finish some real world business which has FINALLY been resolved after over 4 months hanging over my head making my life difficult.

During my illness I had time to reflect over this whole thing, the simple version of the story is I was planning to sell one of my businesses, just before Vegas I got put into a very complicated decision, and I needed to make a fast decision as I was flying to Vegas in 3 days and every hour that goes by ups the legal bill. I asked for advice from several people whose opinions I trust and value very highly and still was none the wiser, in the end I went with my Dad's advice which was to follow my instincts.

Interesting thing about life, espcially the way I chose to operate my business and conduct myself, is that very important to remember that the process is the key, and the results are the long term by-product of good decisions and well handled operation. The thing is though, as much as we are all trying to live on our processes and decisions, we all have to live WITH the results, every thing that happens to us happens in unison with everything that has happened and is about to happen.

When you think about it, it's actually quite obvious, but when you're really forced to live with a result you didn't want it really hurts, you feel like YOU'VE failed, like YOU'VE brought this on yourself and you go to sleep at night wishing you could go back in time and change the smallest thing. That's what happened to me that day, I either made a bad decision, or a my decision lead to bad results - I guess I'll never know which it is! The consequences have been 5 figure £ losses, and ridiculous amount of wasted time and stress and it even cost me a really important part of my private life, for the last 3 months I've shut my eyes at night and felt regret. It's a horrible way to feel and something I never felt before, despite all the stupid things I've done in my life.

This is life though, and we must move on! Mistakes are really just outcomes we don't like, or to quote one of my literature hero's George Bernard Shaw

Ok, so that's been going on, and it's been time consuming and really tilting, true enough to say that over the past three weeks only 60% of my brain has actually been focused on what I doing.

The rest of my time has been split between poker, working on my new site, a few HILARIOUS night's out and trip to London to see the queen, and go where the streets are paved with gold! FYI they aren't paved with gold, for the most part they seemed to be paved with pigeon shit.

POKER

Poker, it's actually been fun. I've rather curiosly found myself LOVING online poker, despite my full on inability to beat the games I've been giving it a really good go! Living with JP has been a wonderful thing as during inactive periods for him he swings his head over and rails my games. I generally hate it when people rail me in person because I feel like it puts me off my rhythm somewhat, however JP is a great guy to have on the rail as he doesn't really comment on specific hands (would bet $200 here, or check that etc) he does what I always try to do when I rail people which is offer my thoughts and opinions on there overall gameplay and strategy (you're betting too big there, not 3betting that enough and so on) so it's been really good. Rob Woodcock is back from traveling the world and is back to internet poker so having him around to talk to about poker has been brilliant as me and him used to discuss hands all the time.

I don't really ever post graphs but I'm going to post a token sympathy "look how bad I run" graph just to TRY and balance all the moaning I do about how I never win!

Since returning home from Vegas in late July :(

However let's not get too carried away, I've been running very good in live poker games and that run seems to be continuing nicely, I seem to be completely incapable of losing whenever i decide to play at Gala, and god knows there has been a session or two where I've tried!! I also have also been running well in staking and my mini-stable of hero's are continuing to do well, so as far as work goes it's all been just about fine!

My New Site

Without wanting to cause too much hype I'm very excited about this, I've been working on it for ages (I say working, I've actually been doing very little) should probably say I've been TALKING about it for ages, having teamed up with my friends at Carrot Juice Creative, Tom, Matt, Steve, Nick and Helen earlier in the year to get this project running I've been so looking forward to it being ready, these guys are super brainy and creative and it's been a lot of fun, working on a few other projects in and out of poker with them which is such a great oppurtunity for me! If anyone looking for any creative/brand/design work these are your guys!

I'd really like to promote "grass roots" poker some more, and I'm hoping to get the opportunity to do this with my site, for me the real "essence" of the game still comes from "The Nutz" poker club, on the top floor of a snooker hall in Harrogate, it was super small stakes and the standard of play not the sort to excite the forum wizards, but the energy, the banter, the atmosphere was just brilliant! For me, this is poker at it's purest. It really sucks for me that I don't get time to go play these games more but I would LOVE to hear stories of the antics/characters from these games. If anyone has a very fun local game they play in and would like to write me a report/blog entry of what happened at the game, stories of the characters etc then (If I like it :P) I will put it up on my new site!

As an added bonus, I will send anyone who's post I put on my site a free token into the IPoker $200,000 ($215 buyin) tournament on a sunday!

NIGHTS OUT!

My friend Matt, infamous on this blog (insert shameless Wildcats plug here!) who opened a new club in Sheffield suggested to me and JP we should join him for another night out there, but this time in a rival club! We're not really the types of people who need a huge amount of persuasion to head off on a night out and by 10.30pm we were in the Wildcats wagon heading down to Sheffield for another night out (was getting pretty heavy at this point!) we arrive at a club where we have hired out the VIP section, Matt had claimed the club were advertising a "Vegas at Student prices" style evening and to kick off the Vegas experience to a tee we ended up waiting for an unnecessary amount of time queuing outside, I got ridiculously mugged off by the bouncer, who in the pouring rain made me stand there whilst he pissed about doing something pointless, when I tried to hurry along inside he shouted at me, and when I explained that I was just trying not be completely soaked his reply was

"You don't think I'm getting wet?"

I was trying to formulate a reply but couldn't think of anyway to point out that his job was to stand outside and there was nothing he could do about being wet, whereas I was about to pay for the privilege of being inside, and that he had no hair so it shouldn't matter without portraying how little I gave a fuck about him being dry, so chose, sensibly I think, to say nothing.

Was now however, tiltingly wet.

Bouncers can really annoy me, I know a lot of really nice bouncers, and sympathise with all the drunken morons they must have to deal with, but I have never been rude to a doorman in my life, yet have received some horribly rude and abusive words back from them on many occasions. I would still classify that as a customer service job, but seems most people don't. Having said all that a lot more really cool doorman than nasty ones for sure.

We get in and to the "VIP" section. Now there is a problem, two entrances to the section and only one piece of rope to cordon it off...

Luckily we were in Yorkshire, where savvy Yorkshire ingenuity had a rare chance to shine through, three large bouncers strolled off and returned within a few minutes with a large white sofa, which they placed in front of the VIP entrance! They stood there, looking extremely pleased with this quite stunning piece of problem solving and returned to their work. I took the opportunity to get into a fight in the toilets over £1 with the toilet assistant (as we do) and came back to see a LOT of glasses, stacked on top of each other (can only see that ending badly) and no drinnkkkkks!

Matt had ordered 3 bottles of champagne, a bottle of Jaeger (substitute) and a SIX, yes, SIX litre bottle of grey goose! Our "guests" for the evening showed up in the form of 20 freshers girls and we polished through some grey goose and smashed the standard amount of glasses for a 23 person group.

Then something I wasn't expecting to happen happened...

Opening one of the bottles of champagne one of the girls decided to send the cork flying into the people below us, next thing I see is a girl in a white dress climbing over the sofa, I approached her as the host and offered her a drink before I was basically shoulder barged into the wall, some words were exchanged, more girls joined the white girl and before I knew next there a full scale bar brawl going on!

So, maybe it didn't look EXACTLY like this, but you get the idea!

Some people might think myself duty bound to step in and difuse the situation, speshly as the three bouncers were struggling to get over the sofa to come break it up, but the girls looked so aggro I felt it safer to keep my distance and guard the Grey Goose. Eventually the bouncers managed to get past their cunning entry VIP system, I'm sure at least one of them took a moment from breaking up the filming of Bad Girls to take another proud look at the sofa, and congratulate himself on how difficult it had been to break through. Matt made the very valid point of why they hadn't used the other exit, only cordoned off with a bit a rope! The fight was broken out and the girls, all pumped to the eyeballs with adrenilin set about getting completely wrecked.

One girl had gotten herself into a situation where the only way she WASN'T falling over was by holding onto my shoulders, as shivelrous and noble as I am it got to a point where I had to insist she sat down, as happy as I was to keep her upright I had come out to enjoy myself and not for the purposes of propping up drunk people. She INSISTED that she was fine, and that far from her holding onto me, it was ME holding onto her. I offered to help her to the sofa/VIP rope we have but she was insistent it was not nessercary and she was fine...

"Ok, If you're 100% sure I'm going to let you go."

"Yes, YES I'm fine let me go"

"Ok..."

Just like a drawbridge and without even seeming to bend her hips she fell striaght sideways and into a stool with three trays of glasses on it! Taking our broken glass haul to what has to be somewhere near mid-thirties! Poor girl lying there in a pool of broken glass with literally no chance of being able to stand up. Should really have got that one on film, and just think, there was a sofa for her only 4 feet away :D

We finished the vodka, smashed a few more glasses for good measure paid the ~£500 bill, thanked the lord we weren't ACTUALLY in Vegas purchasing the same items and headed home via a greasy takeaway. All in all, a great night out!

Since then we've been back to Sheff for a repeat performance, I've been working on another fun real world project and I headed down to London for a little break and to celebrate James Dempsey becoming ludicrously old!

Will have to wait till next blog for these stories though!

Here's a little picture to wet your appetites :P

Putting the "bomb" into SHOE BOMB oioiiiii

GL Everyone

lilD

Channing Wins!

2012-09-25T07:02:00.001-07:00

The "BLOGfather" II

Over the past month, I've had a lot of messages from people saying that i) they enjoy reading my blog, and ii) they have voted for me in the "Best Blogger/Social Media" section on the Bluff British Poker awards. This was all very nice, so thank you to everyone who did that :) as the big day rocked around I decided to be a "propa diva" and not show up :) well this isn't strictly true, I'd had a weekend of spending time with Matt which is a sure fire way to completely write Monday off! As it happened I was pipped by our very own "Godfather" Neil Channing, who shipped the award whilst very graciously mentioning me in his acceptance speech. I responded in of course the only appropriate manner, i called him a c**t on twitter and have since challenged him to a dual, we're meeting in New Street, Birmingham at sundown on the 1st of October and will be throwing laptops/keyboards/monitors at each other until one of us has a concussion, spectators welcome, and think Neil is running a book on it.

Haha ^^^ Hilarious picture!! Only joking of course, Neil's a great guy, funny writer and as discussed on blonde in terms of the actual criteria of the award undoubtedly a worthy winner, if you don't read it then you must - .

Vicky Coren also very funny/entertaining to read, follow on twitter/read her guardian articles if you don't already - I was a big fan way before I even really knew about her and Poker, now she's engaged to David Mitchell, who I worry I might actually be in love with I like her even more!

OK, so been frantically busy lately, mostly moving into the new place, am officially in now and its a massive weight of my mind. I've been playing a lot of live poker and continuing to run relatively golden and have been grinding away in the inbetween hours with some online poker, which has, ofc been going decently poorly. That's enough of poker for this blog, I will however show you a pot I lost at $2/$4 the other day, as it's fkn hilarious.

and another one just for comedy brags!

Had a lot of fun stuff happen lately, mostly in the form of a night out with Matt in Sheffield, Matt's re-opening a club in Shef called "The Steelhouse" for the grand re-opening (craftily lining up with the start of Freshers' week) he invited us all down for the full VIP works etc limo there back/bottles of Goose, like a true Vegas in Yorkshire! The day started for me playing online in the morning waiting for something to happen, Dave Burn rolled into Leeds at about 3.30pm (I taxi'd him in I was so bored) and we celebrated what was destined to be a great day with an afternoon "Cele-Cider." Me and Dave hatched the tradition earlier in the year of "Cele-Cider's" the concept being that whenever we achieved something we were rewarded with a flavored Cider, by way of celebration!

Rekorderling's Strawberry and Lime being the favored "Cele-Cider"

What happened with this system, as happens with all rewards systems that are policed by the people receiving the rewards is that the criteria for Cele-Ciders become less and less, until, ultimately we were just drinking loads of cider in the daytime. Still though, this was an EXCELLENT spot for a cele-ciders, so 3.30pm and the first drink was opened...

Next step was to Napa a local bar to meet Matt for a few drinks, we were 10 minutes late and after literally 45 seconds past the time we'd agreed to meet Matt he'd rung me up asking what we were drinking, upon arrival we were greeted by a hilarious older women who'd already had too much wine, a raspberry caiprinha and a bottle of red. 45 minutes later as Matt was ordering bottle of wine #2 me and Dave we both anxious that it was not even 6pm and we were already feeling a little drunk. Then the women (who's name I forget) came steaming in with the suggestion of curly fries, these were ordered, eaten and bottle of Red #3 was ordered!

Next stage of the night out was to collect a huge box full of umbrella's (still no idea why) then head to Chino Latino (a Leeds asain restaurant) for dinner, where we were met by JP , Jake, Mitchell, Rob, a load of different girls doing various promo stuff for the club, and rather randomly two members of the "Desperate Scousewives" reality TV show. I, kind of arkwardly didn't know they were "scousewives" I just thought they were some random slutty scouse girls! In the limo on the way there I soon realised these girls were my type of people, very uptight and extremely boring, so I turned my attentions to the rest of the team, which was jam-packed with superstars! One female team member, Abi, devised a pretty hilarious game where you find movie titles that you can substitute the word "prawn" in at some point...

some examples...

Prawn of the Dead

The Prawnshank Redemption

Prawn With the Wind

Prawn in 60 Seconds

Prawncohontus (thin here Mitchell)

and so on! Provided about 3 days of entertainment, try it, it's fun - if you think of any good ones tweet me them @lildavefish :D

We arrived at the club and first thing we see is bottle of grey goose being shipped over to us (good start :) ) the next thing is our barmaid for the evening Cheryl, who despite me trying my best to sell it does NOT want to marry me (her loss) and Bash heading over to the grey goose, pouring himself a full glass and refusing to believe any of us telling him it was pure vodka! Bash, you might have heard me mention before once or twice, Bash is a middle-aged middle eastern guy, who's accent you'd swear was geordie (lol) I've been playing poker in Leeds with Bash as long as I've been playing, he was most likely there the first time I played the Naps game, not the best poker player in the world, but an absolute fucking legend!

As can only be expected the rest of the night de-generated into a series of shots, randomly bumbling around talking to mostly disinterested female parties and taking the time to look as important as possible whilst stood in the VIP section :P We also managed to, as a group, totally mug the DJ off! A group of girls approached us mostly on an individual basis and asked us to introduce us to the DJ's, none of us knew wtf they were talking about but each hatched the idea to introduce them to another one of the group as the DJ! As cunning and devious a plan as it doubtless was, this group of girls knew what the DJ looked like, and that he was inside the VIP area stood ~10feet away. Still, top marks for trying right?

We alll had a great night, the club is great and if anyone is in or will be in Sheffield and wants to go check it out then msg me on FB/Blonde/Twitter or @MattHaycox on twitter and I'm sure Matt will do you a lil deal :P

About 3/4 of the way through the night I got made aware of something I'd somehow managed to totally miss up to this point of the night, and that was a huge polar bear (not a real one ofc, had it been real I think it would have found a mention earlier in the blog) the polar bear came to my attention when I looked over and saw JP Kelly whipping it, in what I can only describe as a pretty sadistic manner! Next thing I knew of the polar bear was next day when I was shown a picture of me in Wildcats (Matt's Leeds stripclub) with the polar bear's head on my head! Matt claimed that he woke up spooning it! Each to their own and all :D

Had a really good time with a hilarious bunch of people, in a different place, one of the better nights out I've had since Vegas for defo! Cheers Matt!

Next day I naturally felt horrible and started to pick myself up at about 7.30pm before agreeing, stupidly, to go for dinner with the boys. It's a Saturday, it's past 8pm dinner with the boys will always = a night out! Step forward to late afternoon sunday I've had 8 hours sleep and a billion units of alcohol in the past 48 hours and me and Matt are driving to Manchester to play poker, I finally got home and to bed at about 5am. So, as I said, Monday, was a total write off!

I was planning on heading to Cannes but have skipped that plan for chilling in Leeds instead, I'm having a great time in Leeds right now with all my friends and actually managing to be SOMEWHAT productive, a few businessey thingys going on, a new project I'm wanting to get going, the launch of my new site (eeek!!!) and decent poker action everywhere has me with plenty to be doing right now! On the subject of my new blog I'm currently looking for additional content for it, if anyone has any idea's or would like to do something then get in touch! Also will be running a pretty cool competition to celebrate it's release! Hopefully it's as good as I think it is :D the things we do for needless ego inflation hey!! :D

My latest column in Poker Player has provoked some interesting messages from some people, thanks so much to anyone who msg's me about stuff I've written btw, I love hearing people opinions and there have been some great response to this last one - I'll ask permission and share one of them it was excellent!

That's about all from me, I got a car full of depressed MTT players waiting to go for lunch and sulk about WCOOP, looks like a surge in Morale is needed!!

George Bernard Shaw

You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?

That's all I have!

GL everyone

lilD

ACTION! I'll take it all!

2012-09-11T10:53:00.003-07:00

Fade the 7 YO!

September is (well, certainly was) shaping up to be a great month! I prolly told you all how hard I was dominating the real world in my last blog (Shucks, I know!) I continued my forceful and aggressive decision making into the following weeks, as real world jobs died down. First decision I made was to give online poker a break for 10/12 days. I like online poker (I don't love it, it's fun but the same way jumping a fence is fun, provides some tiny amount of adrenaline and is usually moderately useful in the grand scheme of whatever you're attempting to achieve, but still a fairly futile and dull endevour) but I was finding that, firstly and without wanting to brag, I was on a decent enough live poker heater and with some IRL money expected to roll in I was under no real financial pressure, but secondly and most importantly it was straight up terrible for morale. Winning £2,000 in a day online was providing nothing for me in the way of increasing my general mood, but losing £1,000 was tilting the fuck out of me. So I found myself inthe pleasing situation where sitting on Jake's sofa with Pez watching episode after episode of criminal minds was actually better than doing any work. Goodo!

WARNING- BORING POKER TALK AHEAD! Won't be much, I promise!

The results of this were my good streak at live poker continued, and I watched 4 striaght series of Criminal Minds, my poker game is sharp, my bankroll was increasing and despite being utterly paranoid that an attack from a serial killer was imminent morale was solid.

My live poker results since Vegas have been nothing short of brilliant, I've played 20 times and have lost on 3 occasions. One of those losses came in my favorite friendly game over the Pennines and was decently heavy, but luckily that came in the only venue where I losing is only marginally worse than winning. The other two losses came in the shape of a £160 and a £600 loss in the Gala £2/£2/£4 game. I've been running, amazingly well in that game really, I'm playing pretty good I think, but winning way way more than I should be.

I mentioned last time I was through to day 2 of the DTD£500 £500,000 gtd tournament - which got an amazing £110,000 for 1st place. I started the day with 224,000 which was almost exactly average. I doubled up eliminating Michelle Bennett with AKs vs her JJ early doors, then some run good came from 3betting Queen/Ten of hearts from the small blind, getting called by a gentleman with 88 and flopping 3(hearts)8(hearts)9(hearts) going allin for many many chips and holding. Soon got moved to another table where I was gifted an almost perfect seat and capitalized on this, building a 1.6m stack at 8k/16k with 450k average.

It soon all went wrong though and I lost a lot of big pots eventually busting 50th~ for like £1,600. Luckily I had a bit of staking run good, ran well in the cash games (5/10 and 10/25 plo) and booked a nice 5fig win for the weekend! :)

I know, I know.....

GET IT QUIETLY!
Don't you have some public transport variant, or bank to complain about??

So, that's it for poker for this blog, sorry to all who had to read that braggy nonsense - if it makes you feel any better I've since started playing online again and dusted about £10k off!

So what else has been going on. Well, as I type this I'm sat in my new apartment, has taken a while but finally moved in, Sky installed, internet up and running Tesco home delivery here and bar the slight frustration that I can't figure out how to switch the bloody dishwasher on it's all looking really good! Over 100 days since I last had a UK address, feels great! I feel very strongly that a lot of run goods are going to occur in this flat, seems like a pretty run-good sort of place.

**Sidenote**

Just switched E4 on in the background and Big Bang Theory is on, what a great show, but more importantly how FUCKING HOT is Kayley Cuoco...

Unlike most I'm not drawn to KC cos of her role as Penny in the BBT, although that's not damaged her cause :) I remember watchign 8 Simple Rules when I was a kid before school, and she was Bridget Hennessy...

On this note, Mila Kunis ladies and gentlemen...

My only real motivation for wanting to see Ted is her involvement, she does this really hot hot girl thing that a lot of hot american girls do when they bite there lower lips and stare up.... !

Going to try bring this back now. I've literally completely forgotten what I was about to type before Big Bang Theory came on.

Been falling into bad habbits lately and punting pretty big on blackjack/sports. We decided as a group Saturday's were to be "degen day" from now on. In theory, this was a great idea, it allows us to blow of degenerate steam massively on one day of the week without guilt, and it would discourage needless gambling in the middle of the week. Unfortunatley, it's not worked out like that, whats happened is every day has turned into silly degenerate days and me and Jake are terrible terrible influences on each other and results have been mad punting on pretty much everything, we've prolly ran well and not even losing (might even be winning!) so I've decided to try rain it back!

Don't normally throw this out, but I'm considering acting on an impulsion I've had since childhood, which is to wright a book, I've had a great idea for a long time but not really had the true drive to put it into practice. I never felt like my writing was good enough, I mean I think I write well but there is spewy blog good writing and then book-good writing, however Alun and Keir who I've been working with at PokerPlayer have made me feel pretty confident about my written style and helped me be a little more "proper" so thanks to those two I think I might try get it going!

Gratz to Keir who's just got a new job for a BIG poker company, well deserved.

Oh, more congratulations in order, Paul "Pab" Folyton one of my favorite peoples in poker shipping the 4th spot in the $10k WCOOP high roller for a tidy $250,000! Go on Pab!

Gotta say a lil bit about the day it is today, September the 11th. I think it's crucial that every year on this day we stop and think about what happened that day 11 years ago, and what it means. Just like most times in life when the worst of mankind comes out, the very best is always close behind it. One of the most tragic and horrible things the world has ever seen, but it also says something great about the world we live in, that there must be so much good in the world when this amount of evil can only break it once a lifetime. It's perhaps unrealistic to want a world with no bad in it, but it's the next thing to have a world with just about enough goodness to fight it.

That's all from me!

GL everyone

lilD

That's MORE LIKE IT!

2012-09-01T10:36:00.001-07:00

On The UP!

So, after a month of feeling brutally sorry for myself I decided I was becoming such a Miser I was going to set about sorting shit out. I don't get into this type of mood very often, where I'm determined to crush life, but when I do, only ever one outcome, life get's crushed.

First problem was some business stuff that was going horribly, can't go into details for actual legal reasons, but a coupe of people were causing me some problems. Secondly, the living situation, last blog's revelation that a house had all but been sorted was indeed a total bok as less than 3 days after posting YET ANOTHER landlord decided that we weren't fit for rental, it's totally counter-logic this thing that guys in there 20's cant be trusted to look after a house. I can't bothered to explain why, but I asked my friend who manages property and he instantly said "oh well Landlords won't rent houses to guys in their 20s, makes sense" I asked why, his response was lol.

"Well, they have raves and smash things"

Really? How much of a nitty landlord do you have to be to think this is enough of a reason not to rent a house, speshly when we paying 50% more on the deposit and 6 months upfront. I asked him, who manages over 150 rentals how many cases of 20something guys smashing things and having parties he has had in the past two years (students excluded obv) he said actually come to think about it, none....

Next question, what's the most difficult thing that can go wrong with a rental?

"When they don't pay rent, chasing it off them, often not worth the time/cost and they get away with it"

Next Question, how often do kids break stuff in houses?

"Actually quite a bit"

So, yeah, makes perfect sense, 4 guys in their 20's who spend 40% of the time traveling and are paying extra deposit and rent up front, defo not worth the risk.

Haha, seems I could be bothered to explain why! lol, needless rant, felt good though.

So yeah - life crushing...

Buinsess

Flat

Financial Organisation/Bank Problem

These were the things that were wrong in my world, so I set myself a 1 week deadline to get everything sorted. First thing I did was spend about 2 days solid getting business life sorted, then I set about a new flat, found a sick new place and will be moving in shortly, I have also organised nut utility providers, got sky booked to be installed and internet will be ready for a week on tuesday, we are READY TO rock! gtfo homelessness.

Finances in a bit of a mess since vegas, dread to think how fucked up it would all be if i hadn't done heavies out there :P I had money in silly places and owed and was owed X and Y to people I'd forgotten about, managed to get it all decently organised! Before i knew where I was Friday had become Wednesday and I was totally organised! Total organisation can ofc only lead to one thing, and that one thing is a nice celebratory dinner. So myself, Pez and Jake headed off to Chino Latino (asain restaurant in leeds) for a nice dinner. What comes with dinner at this place is cocktails, really good cocktails as well! A few Dragonfly's and Coconut Daquiri's later and now we're in town, we're drinking and it's 10.30pm...without even meaning to we've ended up on a night out! Dammit, how does this always happen! Que the 5am hometime, needless subway purchase and ofc horrible feeling next day.

As I surfaced feeling pretty grim next day about 1pm I was looking forward to my doing doing nothing, after all, I've earnt it right? All this hard work! Drifitng back to sleep was brutally interupted by jake banging on the door telling me we're setting off to DTD (nottingham) for the £500 tournament in 20-30 minutes. Fucking brilliant, a trip to DTD where I never win feeling horrible, just what I need! Ever the pro though, I rallied myself and set off enthusiastically to the home of UK poker!

So, despite feeling like I was drawing stone dead as I walked out of the house on the journey down having a nice little chat with Pez I started to feel incredibly optimistic about the whole thing, true enough I started quite well, was on a good seat on a decent table and found myself with plenty of chips late on. A few bad hands and i was left with ~35big blinds and a good spin late levels got me up to 235k going back to day two! Potential to win a tournament! Stranger things have happened.

It's an incredible tournament this one, £500, £500,000 gt'd the one thing DTD does and keeps doing, that no-one else has ever done in Live poker is constantly giving every player, regardless of ability/bankroll/experience the chance to play big, well structureed poker tournaments and win big money. It's great for poker and it's great for poker players, lots of people MSG me on Facebook saying "how to I get to the level where I can play X, and T tournament" well, thanks to Rob and the DTD team it's now way easier!

Played a fun 10/25 PLO game after I finished for the day and ran nicely in the all-in situations to book a cool win, hopefully play again tonight - nothing, nothing gets the blood pumping quite like some high stakes PLO :)

The other day we had a pretty hilarious saturday, which has sparked a new tradition "Degen Saturdays" Basically we don't gamble during the week, but on Saturday's we're allowed to go completely ballistic, starting with football betting and most likely a casino visit! It got way out of hand last Saturday as we ended up playing "blackjack live" on Poker Encore where you get to watch these latvian girls deal the cards, we got overly carried away and pretty drunk which led to some questionable chat to these girls, we even got one to record a "happy Birthday" clip for Sammy Grafton! After tons of gambling, landing a total miracle to ship a Goals Galore bet for ~£1500 live balckjack a full night out and two casino visits we ended slightly in profit for the day! Guess I'll take that every saturday!!

Made plans yesterday to hit the "DTD Carribean Party" a $3k tournament held in st.Kitts and Nevis, sounds like it's going to be incredible fun, with a whole range of satelites available from all levels of buyin! Defo check it out on http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/. It's going to be a week of gambling, drinking, sun and what looks like a great value poker tournament! Get involved everyone!!!

So that's all for me this blog, just going to leave yo all with a quick story of what happened to me earlier today...

So I'm in the shower, in my hotel, I'm washing my hair (seems stnd so far right?) obviously I have my eyes closed because I don't want to get soap in them, in a foreign enviroment (a shower im not used to) I turned round quite quickly and knocked the holder for the shampoo off its bracket, this caused a loud noise which really startled me...

...No idea what's happening, temporarily blinded and completely out of composure I swung round, slipping as I did it, instinctively grabbing out for something to hold onto to Iended up grabbing the shower head and ripping it squarely off the wall falling into the bath bruising my shoulder and taking the shower curtain with me. Now I'm sat there covered in shampoo holding the shower head and wrapped up in the shower curtain...

So I had to get myself sorted, ring down to reception and sheepishly explain what had happened. The Hotel manager was pretty tilted at me, but after hearing my explanation he went from angry and ready to charge me a million pounds in damages to laughing his head off at the situation, I ended up not being charged anything, despite doing a decent amount of damage to the room, so I guess some run-good there!

I'm now off to meet Keith and Keys for dinner in Notts before taking to the tables at DTD and hopefully make some monies! Looking forward to day2 of the £500 tomorrow, and GL to all hero's still in and ofc the start of WCOOP tomorrow!

Also, shouts for my new Welsh friend Dionne who was hilariously fun company on the start of our DTD table, and WP's to Adam who got a second in the BBP Samurai on Thursday night! Great tournament this one, held 1/4ly on Black Belt and gtd at $10,000 it's a $275 6max NLHE tournament with what seemed like a really good structure, a great value tourney defo going to play it every time if I can!

Gl Everyone!

lilD

Too Much Thinking.

2012-08-21T10:13:00.001-07:00

Bad For The Brain

I hate to say it, because it's not strictly true (I've done some really fun stuff, which I will tell you about later) but August has been a bad month. I've been lucky, as I so often am in life, that it should have been way way worse, if it weren't for the presence of my great friends. Sadly though, despite everyone's best efforts I've been a little miserable this month. The reason why is pretty simple, and a sure-fire way to make myself really unhappy, I've been thinking too much, way too much. I'm not sure if this has ever been scientifically proven but I'm pretty sure thinking is really bad for the brain. See the diagram of the brain above? How much of it did God or Darwin or whoever invented it actually want us to use for thinking? I'd say like hardly any.

(Gotta warn you all in advance, this blog is going to be all over the place! See the bottom for cliffs...)

I like to divide by brain's functions into the following activity distribution, 6-8% thinking about stuff, inevitable this, need to remember to eat so I don't die, crossing roads so I don't get run over, what day it is (although less important i think for me!) and other generic boring stuff. Then obviously there is all the whole controlling my nervous system thing, I can;t confess to having a particularly good understanding of how that all works, all I do know is that my brain seems to be doing a fine job of it, so I'd hate to meddle with that, happy to give 50/60/70% brain function over to that. Whatever is spare i like to spend on my to favored activities - dreaming and creativity.

Always been a huge one for daydreams, I've always thought the biggest problem most people have is that they don't daydream enough. Some people may know but when I was at school my dream in life was to be an actor, in fact I still tell myself on a daily basis that I would love to be an actor, the truth is though that I don't REALLY want to be an actor, and I learnt (early enough luckily) that being an actor is one of those things, you either REALLY want to do it, or you don't.

(horrible tangent approaching)

When i was 17 and still holding my acting dreams tight I got the opportunity to go to London and spend a few days with some budding actors, they were insane, up at 5am learning lines strolling round their living room doing various dramatic things, off to rehearsals till 7pm, striaght to work where they all had some terrible jobs doing something menial on minimum wage and then home at 2.30am, 2 hours sleep and up at 5am to repeat. As I watched this happen I learnt a few important things, one thing was that there was nothing on the earth at this time in my life I wanted to go through this back-breaking amount of work for, literally NOTHING. Secondly and obviously I defo DIDN'T want to be an actor and thirdly this explains the rampant existence of drugs in acting circles!

I remember leaving London that weekend being really depressed, I'd had a dream for nearly all my life of being in drama and now, here I was realizing that I just didn't want it enough, if I wasn't prepared to work my arse off my my childhood dream then what was I prepared to work for? All my life people had been saying to me "you'll go far you" "I know you have a big future ahead" but now it seemed like I prolly wouldn't just because deep down I didn't have the drive for it.

This weekend was pretty much the end of school for me, I was totally over it at this point, kinda punted off my A-Levels, was literally locked on sick grades and just ended up with decent/good ones, but I was. Pretty down for a decent amount of time about it - it was this point where I started to relentlessly day-dream, it's so good. I've always felt like it's a simple way of asking yourself "What would make me happy" and drifting off away from everything else and focusing on that one question. I remember from the drama days being taught about a practical concept called "Public Solitude" (this was why I mentioned Drama in the first place lol) in method acting, where to act the character you must "BE" the character, requires a lot of focus, you need to delve into the inner thoughts and feelings of the character, feel as he feels etc. That way every subtle reaction and action on stage will be from the character, not the actor (bla bla bla get to the point DAVID!) anyways Public Solitude was taught as a focus method, where you imagine being somewhere very crowded looking down on yourself, and as it gets dark around you 1 single spotlight remains on you, which gets brighter and brighter as everyone around you is covered by darkness. You still know that they are there but you're 100% isolated form everyone, now you can just focus! That's how I like to feel when I'm daydreaming/thinking (I call it thinking!)

It's not a method of delusion, as has been suggested to me, it's how I like to search my soul for what I really want, it doesn't even make me unhappy when i realize some stuff is currently unattainable, it makes me focus on ways to achieve these things. All my best ideas/thoughts have come from sat down with my eyes closed and dreaming...

Constantin Stanislavski - One of the original Pioneers of "method acting" and the concept of "public solitude"

Right. So that's another damaging insight into my early adolescence. Maybe it's interesting maybe it isn't but I'm always fascinated by what puts people on the paths they take in life, often it's such small moments that can change people's lives for ever.

Let's get back on track, so August, has made me a little miserable, the reason for this is that my creative and dreaming times have been slashed by about 2/3s, and what;s it been replaced with? Yep, thinking. Thinking is so bad for me, when you're daydreaming you're thinking "what would make life great, what do i want" when you're thinking you're more often than not either reflecting on why something isn't as good as it should be, worrying about something or regretting something that has happened. These are all terrible for overall morale and take away valuable time which the brain could be using for something else.

For me it's always the same thing that brings it on, and that's when life balance is off and uncertainty is existent without at least some direction to it. Sparked by my housing situation my thinking has spiraled way out of control, I'm contemplating all the decisions I've made in the last 2-3 years and hating every one of them, now I have no-where to live and feel like I'm going nowhere. It's widened even further than that, why don't I have a girlfriend, is it because I'm just simply in a lifestyle that won't allow for a relationship, perhaps I've been in the shady and sleazy world of gambling for long enough now that I've ruined my perception of real world relationships, perhaps the path I'm on right now is gtd to be one leading me away from any sense of a regular life. Maybe I'm too fussy, Maybe I'm just a dick (lol) Why do I really play poker, is it because, as I claim, I "love the game" or is it a way of hiding behind all these flaws and problems in my personality, perhaps I'm just too scared to have a regular life so cling to "well i'm a gambler" as an excuse to just never need to try and actually be happy?

TOO MUCH THINKING!

Luckily my mental spew had soon calmed down, as we are all but sorted on the housing front, with a superstar line-up which will be announced shortly!

As the house thing was sorted, I could relax a bit more, and with relaxing came some more dreaming, thinking about chilling by myself in my new room, sat by the TV chatting to my mates, going on more trips with the team. Asking myself "what would make me happy" drifting off for an hour then coming back round and realizing I actually already have so much of it. A healthy body, lots of freedom, something I love to do as a job and great friends. Defo one of the luckiest people out there. Seems like no matter how much you love your life, you're going to have mental fuck-ups where logic and calmness is replaced by frenzy and ill-reason. The cause of all this, as I hope I have established, is too much thinking!

On the poker front, there has been a decent amount, lots of grind online, mostly at smaller stakes and for the most part that's gone pretty badly, playing more tables than I can at stakes that are a little too small for me, finding it hard and boring, completely un-engaged with it. The other day I got 1-outed for a 400 big blind pot and I didn't even notice cos I was playing too many tables, just checking to fold every other flop because I've completely forgotten what happened pre-flop. So I've quit that and will be returning to 3-6 tales of slightly bigger stakes shortly :) - The game at Gala has been fun and I've continued to run well, winning most of the times that I play aided primarily by being able to show the winning hand most of the time in a showdown - long may that continue!

So pages of total drivel about the inner working of my brain and some glimpses of my childhood can be put to bed now! Onto what we really wanna hear about, some nights out!

Well, there is really just one, but what a great night it was! For those of you who aren't aware earlier in the year Jake went completely bonkers and bought a ridiculous hot-tub, and it is ridiculous, literally one of the best things I've ever seen, can comfortably fit 12 people, 3 massage bits, built in sound system, TV etc it's a pretty impressive thing. Obviously it got a lot of use and then shortly before vegas one night, a hot-tub party occurred at the early hours of the morning. Names/what happened can't be divulged but it wasn't pleasant, and the lid of the hot-tub remained off for an extended period of time, leaving the water in drastic need of a clean. Vegas happened and everyone goes off leaving the hot-tub to itself, and the risk of developing some sort of venereal disease from getting in it increasing by the day.

I was having a little think to myself about how I should properly say thank you to Jake and co. for allowing me to stay the whole time, I could (and prolly should) pay them for my use of electricity/water and general use of space. This isn't very thoughtful though, anyone can hand a couple of hundred quid over, and it's not exactly a household where money is a desirable commodity. I decided I would clean the hot-tub for them, it would take quite a bit of effort so would demonstrate my appreciation aptly, it's something everyone will notice and enjoy and more importantly it's one thing everyone really DOESN'T want to do. So with no clue whatsoever about hot-tub maintenance here I went to clean the hot-tub!

First thing I did, naturally was see if there was anyone I could pay to do this for me. Seems not. Then I ordered a lot of cleaning supplies including a tablet for the existing water that was so strong i split some on my hand as I was dissolving it and I still have a red mark now! After I'd cleaned the water I then had to drain and re-fill it. This was pretty difficult in itself, firstly I had no idea how to drain it, after an hour and a couple of helpful you tube clips from Joe and "San Juan Spa's" I got it figured it, only to then encounter ANOTHER problem, where the hell am I going to drain it to? I never really found an answer to this problem and just sort of, left it? Where the water went I have no idea, but no-one has complained about being flooded and no-where inside Jakes appears to have flooded either, so somehow it seems like I've gotten away with it!

Then I got my hot soapy water and scrubbed the hot-tub down till it was spotless! Next job was to re-fil it, I had a tap, I had a hose-pipe surely this was going to be easy? Well, no. For the life of me, I literally couldn't figure out how the HELL to attach the hosepipe to the tap, I asked everyone to try help me but all they could say was "Sort your own hosepipe problems out" or "where you put your hosepipe is only your business" etc (making crude penis/sex jokes basically) after hours of struggling I FINALLY realized you're just sposed to uncrew the end of the tap and screw it on! I did this, but NOW, for some reason, water just isn't coming out of the end?!

Just wouldn't COME OUT! Arghrgekjfhjklhefjkhfjh

So, back inside the house, asking the guys and all I could get was more jokes referring to my perceived impotence and faulty genitals. Finally Pez came out to give me a hand (oh please.) and we were stumped for about 1 hour, we managed to get one small piece of hosepipe working, nit enough to stetch to the hot-tub, so we took to trying to find ways to elevate the pipe to it would pour into the tub, experimented with all sorts of idea's, most desperate was trying to use plasters to hold it to the window ledge! I eventually gave up and tackled the problem the next day. This time, with Ash on board he tried to remove the end from the hosepipe (the metal bit in the picture above) this instantly caused water to come out of the edge, and 3 hours later the tub was full!

This obviously meant for a celebration, and it's coincided quite excellently with Ash's birthday, so it was planned we would have a BBQ/hot-tub party to celebrate Ash being 1 yr older, and the Hot-Tub's triumphant return to form! After managing to rock up the casual £400 Morrisons tab on BBQ suuplies what we had created was nothing short of a feast! Lots of drinks, lots of food, the two girls Soph and Soph inside making salads whilst all the men gathered round the BBQ's figuring out how to light them and handling lots of big bits of meat!

After a casual visit from the police to tell us the music was too loud for even 10.30pm on Thursday we decided to take the party into town, the team at this point was Ash, Jamie, the two Sophs, Jake, Pez, Middy, Me, JP and Si M and we decided, as it was A-Level results night to re-live the late teenage years and head to Space!! IDK who of those reading this have been to space in leeds, but let me set the scene, a super dingy, downstairs night club, with two rooms that look identical, both playing super grungy techno music. 6/10 people in there will be underage and it's perfectly possible to buy drugs in the unisex (yes, UNISEX) toilets by mistake!

Low ceilings, loud music, lots of smoke ad lighting effects, drinks come in plastic glasses and are like £1 each, I used to LOVE IT here when i was 18 :D

It even shot into the headlines a few years back when (then Man City) player Robinho was accused of sexually assaulting a girl in this club! He used to love it in there :D

After some pretty wild dancing and way too much drinking, followed by the inevitable strip club visit we were back from a terrific night celebrating!

Big shout out to all the guys I met at the PKR meet-up this weekend, me, Jake and JP went down to play and have a drink (not realizing it was a 2day event!) and had lots to drink, met some great and hilarious guys and just had a total fucking laugh. That's how most poker played in the world should be, a group of people just having some banter and a load of fun! Great evening, thoroughly enjoyed myself!

That's been about it all really, It's been a super rambly, disjointed, prolly over-personal blog but that's kind of how it's been for me the last 3 weeks.

CLIFFS FOR THE PURPOSES OF THOSE WHO SKIPPED

1. I'm mental

2. I like to drink

3. I Cleaned a hot-tub

4. We had a BBQ

5. We all got pissed.

GL Everyone!

lilD

Back To Blighty!

2012-08-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

Leaving Las Vegas, The Olympics and Homeless Again!

Exactly 66 days after I headed off on my 4th Vegas trip (second summer) I arrived back in England again. The flight home was unusually awesome, readers of this blog will know I frequently have serious gripes with all things public transport! This time however, I woke up in the Encore at about 11.30, was packed, organised, checked out and sat in La Cave enjoying an incredible brunch by 1.30, and at the airport sat in the bar enjoying a complimentary drink courtesy of Virgin by 3, lovely :)

The whole journey is something of a bundle of run good, the first but of run-good came in the queue for the first security, the bit where you have to stand with your hands behind your head whilst a 16 stone, miserable looking mn in his late 40's undresses you with his multi-million dollar scanning machine. The queue was looking pretty long, this was until a small section of the queue, starting almost exactly from me was invited to form a new queue for the new security booth which has opened! So 20 minutes of rage inducing queuing already eliminated from the journey!

Next thing I do (way ahead of schedule at this point) is what anyone would do in my spot, and that's go and hunt down a bar. I remember in the old terminal there was a bar almost directly outside of the gate, in this new terminal however I can see nothing which instantly strikes me as a bar.

I mean, it's going to be physically impossible for there not to be a bar, as in, I think I'm more likely to find a bar in a deserted part of Chinoble, than I am NOT to find a bar in this airport. 10 minutes, and 2 frantic paces up and down the terminal and still no bar. I ask a women outside one of the restaurants, apparently there ARE no bars in this terminal. Dazed, confused, and thoroughly craving SOME sort of alcoholic drink I staggered around for what seems like about 3 hours (was actually less than 25 seconds i think) and walked straight into a poor stewardess. Asking me if I'm ok I replied saying I was fine but wanted a drink and was mortified that there didn't seem to be one in a Vegas airport of all places, she quickly escorts me to the First Class Lounge I had no idea existed and got me some complimentary drinks, a bottle of red wine later I'm boarded and within 1hr20 of the flight starting I'm fast asleep! I was woken up by the stewardess at 9.30am UK time telling me that we'd be starting to land in 45 mins and would I like a bacon sandwich! We landed fine I was straight off, one of the first through border control, my bag was one of the first out and as I rocked up to the train station my train was there waiting for me! So from landing, to stepping foot back into my beloved home city took 1hr and 25 minutes! Back in Leeds, and it really felt like it was welcoming me home and looking after me!

First problem I had was that I had nowhere to live, I'd spent hours and hours trying to sort places and viewings out from Vegas, and had all but locked up a place in Horsforth - as is ALWAYS the case I had some more housing tilt, and the perspective landlord spazzed out about my job, he didn't seem convinced by the poker-player story and basically told me to gtfo. I even understand his questions it's just really tilting that people can't be reasonable, but then his house and he should rent it to whoever he see's fit. At the end of the day this isn't a time when people are struggling to rent property out (sigh.)

Finally feel like I MIGHT have found a good place and am going for a second viewing next week, sigh though that I won't be able to move in until September, which is roughly 3.5 weeks, luckily Jake/Pez/Ash/Jamie have made me totally at home here in Cookridge and I've been loving the house banter and grinding with the guys, so what should be a ridiculously tilting situation has been made pretty easily bearable. Thanks guys! :)

The best thing to have happened recently is the Olympic's in London, as far as I'm concerned this is one of the best things that could ever have happened to the UK, it's going amazing, the whole country is loving it and supporting team GB and amazingly enough we're crushing! It's amazing to get to watch all the obscure but hilarious sports that you can never see most of the time. Whats's more amazing though is the endless betting opportunities it provides you with, check out my latest "lil dave thinks" in PokerPlayer UK for details of the many many bets I've been placing on London '12!

I started off great with some sick coup's on the Archery and some sharky bets on the badminton and road cycling, before doing the lot back to Dempsey on the swimming, got some sicko insider knowledge on the equestrian so piled on needlessly huge, I should have crushed Jake on our Archery betting but somehow my 21yr old Dutchman really choked it and I ended up doing £100, its actually pretty sick we agreed to double stake in the event of a 1 arrow shoot off and it started off hilariously well as my pick for the round had lost the whole match before being awarded an extra point over a contentious arrow. We then went to an arrow off where Jake tiltedly wanted to triple stakes and subsequently lost (wiiii) typically enough though he ran good deep at higher stakes in the semi's and finals and booked a win. Luckily though I grinding it all back + small profit (£10!!) on the swimming and womens 200m vs JP, Jake and Pez before losing it all gambling on the night out! Sick swings on a day with no poker in it!!!

Here's the team on said night out, enjoying one of the rare rounds I didn't have to pay for! We got a pitcher of something stomach-burningly fruity served in a giant tea-cup!
TEEEEEEEA!

As far as poker has been going I can report somewhat of a small, but well needed heater! The last week in Vegas was a good week pokerwise, playing mostly $5/$10 PLO at the Wynn (running most nights) one big session at $5/$10/$20 4 handed with a deaf guy on raging tilt (quite a miserable man tbh) and two really nitty young guys where I turned a $9k loss into a decent win by winning near on EVERY hand for 5 hours, I made a few $ buying pieces of people in some online games and got to leave Vegas with pretty high morale for a change!!

On coming home my friend Ben who plays around Leeds and Manchester a ton told me that there had been great PLO games at Gala almost nightly, £2/£2 with a almost mandatory £4 button straddle, quite a bit smaller than I was playing in Vegas and smaller than I'd like to play live ideally, but now having to deal with a somewhat depleted bankroll post Vegas I really feel it's time to come down to earth a little bit and get some work in! The first time I went to play I kinda felt like it might be somewhat of a boring grind, however I've played so far 5 times in the game and every time I have loved it, it's been so much fun. The games have been really good and fun, lots of gambling, and a great bunch of guys playing! The involvement of Lawrence Gosney in the games has made them 13x better for me, Everyone knows I'm a pretty solid Gosney fan anyways, but there is barely any player on the planet who is more of a pleasure to play poker against than Lawrence, he is hilarious just has me in total stitches half the time. Recent games have seen half of the table with me, Lawrence, Hammid and Gabriel and the table banter has been superb, can honestly say I've been loving playing poker live recently!!

I've been winning a lot of all-in pots and making quite a lot of full houses, quads, nut flushes etc :D which is always going to help you're enjoyment of the experience! honestly though i'd still have loved it if I was losing! One night we had a really sick 3 handed game with me Los and George, where we were playing £2/£5 £10 on the button 4card plo/13card plo/padooki great banter and lots of gambling.

Online poker has been going great as well, grinding mostly $1/$2 and $2/$4 with some $3/$6 thrown in (andd a quick $10/$20 session to satisfy my degeneracy during a spell of the olympics when there was precious little to gamble on) current poker performance equating to one of these very small air heaters, have taken the last 2 days off and will be going out again tonight with my friends Faye and Jenna who I haven't seen for ages, but back on it tomorrow and hard all next week hoping to upgrade to one of these!!!

That's an industrial steam heater, used primarily to power a steam plant!

I managed to win this hand the other day...

Whereas it's impressive enough that anyone manages to win with my hand, the hand was going down just as Tom Mac, Jake and Pez walked into the room! So I had those three, Jamie and Rhys all chanting for a 4, and when the 4 of spades hits the river everyone went ballistic shouting and starting chanting "Coffers, Coffers!" which was an expression that had grown in favor during Pez's Super Tuesday 2nd place the evening before, for a cool $58k (wiiiiiiiiiiiii) the money had literally been in the stars account for 11 minutes before thoughts of renting a Lambo were aired! Complete lunatic :D

PLans for the next week are to continue work on my new site! Yes that's right, lildaveslife is going posh! I've been working on it with a terrific couple of guys for the last few months, plans are to house this blog (with more frequent entries than the last two months!) and bringing some more cool features as well! Watch this space....

Following that I am going to hopefully get this flat tied up, me and Dan Morgan will be running the house, with room for a few more hero's as well, need to whittle the list down :D could be a superstar lineup, again keep watching!!!

More live poker on the cards as well, anyone fancying some great PLO action for not silly stakes should come down to Gala Leeds on Mondays/Tuesdays/Sundays for deffo (been running other days also) £2/£2 often £4 BTN straddle, games have been good and you get to try take my monies! Warning though, the way I've been running you might need to make some good hands :D Will be cramping up the volume online so if anyone wants me in the next 4 weeks you'll find me either in Gala trying to flop straight draws, on iPoker trying to rack the bonuses up or in Jake's Living room degening my face of on Olympic's betting, sweating in the equestrian harder than anyone else in the UK, haha.

Hello to Dan Spooner who searched me out in Gala the other day to buy me a Jager bomb at 4am, after I'd been awake for less than 2 hours! Just what I needed! Thanks for that Mate, nice to meet you ;)

Gl Everyone

lilD

Vegas Report, Pt2 STILL HERE!!!

2012-07-21T13:44:00.001-07:00

Hanging In There!

So, the adventures of the summer are OFFICIALLY coming to an end soon, sat here on my 58th day in Vegas, more time to reflect on what has been a truly mental summer. I've spoken to quite a few people over the last week and the common question I'm asked is, you must be desperate to come home? Well you know what, I'm really not! I love it here, IDK even why I love it so much, it's just my kind of place, and here in the summer when all your friends are here and everyone is together it's just the best! It's weird that so many people I consider great friends I barely get to see on English soil. In fact, I guess I kinda like that as well! One thing I am looking forward to though, is getting back to Leeds, this is the best thing about having a home you love as much as I love Leeds, no matter where I go, I always get to go home to Leeds! I don't actually have a home in Leeds mind, but going to sort that ASAP!

So Back onto the Vegas report, and I think it's the one we've all been waiting for!!!

Nights Out!

I'd say of my entire lifetime night out experiences, at least 7 of the top 10 have been in vegas, and prolly about 80% of the expenditure has been here as well! It started off with a big bang, mostly down to the involvement of Dave "Dubai" Shallow, who's influence on nights out can be only described as destructive! The good kind of destructive though, like the feeling of smashing a plate for no reason, or that amazing feeling when you manage to smash something made of glass! The first night of the trip saw me and Ash check into the Encore at roughly 6.30pm, we got organised and then went to Flushy/Dubai's room where they were getting ready to go to out with JP Kelly, the three of them had been on a bit of a bender recently. Me and Ash agreed it would be a good/fun idea to go out for a few hours try power through until ~1-1.30am and try get the sleep pattern of to a good start. As we headed over to gillleys at Treasure Island (I know, lol) Ash realises he has left his passport at the hotel, accepting he is a million against to actually make it back out, we bid him farewell and I agree to hang out with the boys for a FEW more hours...

...It's 11.30am, Ash has woken up and is wondering why I am yet to return, I stroll in 5 minutes later, the night has gotten badly out of hand, we've managed to run up a $5800 Rhino's bill and I've found myself in some random ghetto part of LV walking someones dog! First thing we have to do is to get packed up and leave the hotel - I haven't spent even 1 minute in the bed as of yet, and go meet Eames/Dan/Tommy and get sorted in the new house, I'm trying desperately to stay awake as not to destroy my sleeping pattern completely and the whole day was a massive massive drag! This night pretty much set the tone for nights out!!

The next big night out ahead was perhaps the most aggressive of the whole trip, unfortunatley to protect the images of those involved, names and specific details might have to be withdrawn! During this spell, which last approx 70 hours, we had two hospital visits (one with a team membe, one with a hooker!) 2 hotel rooms, 4 seperate Rhino's visits, railed John Eames on the final table of the Pot Limit Holdem $1,500 event (8th for ~18k sigh) went bowling twice, three meals which I paid for none off, 2 members of the team (who shall remain completely nameless) nearly had a threesome with a women in her 50's, and we culminated this marathon session with the story, since become somewhat legendary which has been titled "The Tab's On Pab" the cliffs of the story are we were all smashed and bowling, and Jake set the challenge of us all finding "+1's" I tamed up with Chris Moorman, Ash and Middy teamed up, Trigg and Sammy G and Jake and TayPaur. The result was nothing short of genius, read the full story, and see the pictures here!

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/tabs-on-pab.html

The next most memorable night of the summer was the night, Me, Sophie, Fluushy, Laura, Rich and Angela decided to go to the "Tournament of Kings" at The Excaliber. the premise of this show is a medieval dinner show, you buy tickets, $69, and you get sat in a section as one of the nations, Norway, France, Russia, Hungary, and some others I forget - no England though wtf! ONce you're sat down you get a tankard full of whatever you want, the point of which is to bang on the table, "cheers" with other people over-agressively whilst shouting "HAZAR!" all the time friendly, slightly portly, middle aged women (covered in soup for the most part) bring you drinks and a plate of food looking like this! ...

A full roast chicken, some potatoes, broccoli and a very doughy bit of bread! The plate feels like it's made out of stone and you're generally encouraged to bang the plate as aggressively as is possible. You are given no cutlery so you need to eat with your hands.

Whilst this post-democractic feast is served in the middle of the arena a medieval show is going on, King Author, King of ALL THE WORLD (!!!) is presenting the kings of the various nations, who will compete in jousting, hand held combat and a host of skillful endevours in a bid to win the hand of a fair maiden (queue ~7 "fair maidens" to appear in corsets and long dresses dancing and swilling around provocatively, these maidens were also doubling up as the "wenches" where I thought they were much hotter!) We were sat i the French section and were thus encouraged to cheer for the King of France!

Here are the KINGS in action! Our boy "le King" is 5 across I think, with the blue and white flag!
So jump for him though, sucks to be King.

The biggest surprise of the evening for me was turning round after about 5 minutes and seeing Angela, who I only ever really see dressed and looking emaculate in sick nightclubs, ripping this chicken apart, screaming insults at the Noway King and banging her plate on the table so hard I thought it might break! Was a hilarious show everyone got well carried away screaming for the King, and OFC our King of France won the whole competition and the heart of the fair maiden! When she went over to him, all he got was a kiss on the hand, wtf, defeating the kings of 7 other nations and all you get is to kiss some girls hand, would have thought a blowjob at abso minimum. Guess times were different back then :(

Angela getting abso SUCK IN to her chicken! I actually enjoyed the chicken, despite people 's claims it was too dry, they didn't have gravy in medieval times did they!?

Here we have Sophie, Laura and Angela with the newly crowned King Christopher, KING OF ALL THE WORLD! His Dad, King Author had been savagely murdered by the forces of Evil Dragon Lord not 30 minutes earlier, throw three pretty girls his way and he's smiling and grinning like nothing ever happened! Typical!

After this we headed to the chandelier bar in the Comso for some drinks - if you've never been you're prolly picturing a bar with a huge chandelier inside, nopppppe, this is Vegas people, it's a bar INSIDE a chandelier!! Sophie and Flushy ordered a cocktail which was served with a glass full of raspberries covered in dry ice, (sorry guys this picture doesn't look as good as it did in real life!!)

Plans to go to Marque were soon abandoned in favor of "bar-hopping" around the cosmo, they are loads of really cool bars in there all with slightly different themes and vibes, first bar we went too Laura became obbsessed with photographing this guy who looked like a pimp (fwiw he was defo a pimp) After some very sly attempts to take a picture of him, he was super on the ball and kept walking away before the picture could be taken, about 5 minutes later the two girls he was with came up to Laura and asked my they were taking pictures, on the pretence that this girl thought Laura was a girl she'd had a fight with over a handbag the night before and she was photographing as a plot to "collect evidence" - LOL, only in Vegas! Laura dusted the situation of well and we were left alone, our pimp friend walked off never to be photographed for the amusement of my blog readers, shame :(

Oh Wait.....Who's this guy?!!

Here he is! Our Boy, trying his very hardest not to look like a pimp, silver chain sunglasses indoors, stood authoritatively with two girls who are 75s on to be hookers! Hilarious if they somehow read this lol - FOR LEGAL REASONS I WOULD LIKE TO STATE THAT I AM NOT IN ANY WAY CLAIMING ANY OF THE PEOPLE ARE INVOLVED IN THE SEX INDUSTRY, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW.

Rich, went off to feed his PaiGow habbit whilst we spent the rest of the evening following the girls round as the found new things to take pictures in front of, then our efforts moved to trying to control Sophies drunken thirst for gymnastics. In a strange situation, 5am, unable to properly walk or talk Sophie seemed to still have the balance and composure to perform pretty adventurous gymnastic maneuvers! The highlights of which came on this night when she managed to pull off a one handed cartwheel, in a pretty short dress and stiletto heels WHILST (!) holding a pint glass half full of water, managing to do this TWICE, without once spilling a drop!!! Pretty impressive, what was less impressive was her celebration which was to throw the glass over her head, landing on a blackjack table and falling off without spilling on the table or attracting any attention, just wtf lol.

She was eventually escorted out by a friendly security man in a wheelchair, which was for the best I imagine!!!

That's not quite it for the best nights out of the tip! Will finish this off in next weeks blog! Right now I'm sat in my room at the Encore, looking out over the strip, remembering why I love Vegas so much, optimism and possibility are endless here, like Padraig said to me on one of the first days of my trip, "If you're still in this town then it means you've still got an out" haha.

Hopefully you all clicked play on the above youtibe clip and enjoyed "Wynnie" the frog singing a nice bit of Louis Armstrong for you! A huge mechanical frog that appears over the top of a waterfall 3 times a night to sing for our pleasure in the Carasol Down Bar at the Wynn! Had many a great moment watching that frog! Go on Wynnie!!

Plans for me now are to head down and play one more session of poker for the trip, pack my things up and prepare to put 2 more incredible months of my life to rest! I honestly can't even consider how lucky I am that I get to do the things I do in the style I get to do them in, honestly as bad as anything ever gets I can't remember the last time I didn't wake up with a fucking huge smile on my face! :)

Actually that's not true, only yesterday ago I woke up wondering why it felt like an impatient beaver was attempting to bury through the side of my head, I sat up, looked down at the stoneys stamp on my arm, checked my phone, saw it was Friday, and it all made sense! I went out for a "quietish" one with Matt my friend from Vegas, James Keys and Jesse, my friend who just final tabled the main event 1/9! Was a pretty messy night ofc, details of which I genuinely can't remember lol. So sick that two of my friends from Bellagio have made the final, my long lost cousin Jeremy Ausmus (Nicholson) is going in 9/9 - Jeremy is without doubt one of the best players you've never heard of, and one of the nicest guys - rooting hard for both of them!! GoGoGo!!!

That's all from me, gotta head down to the pool and catch the last of the 40degree heat, just heard it's been a bit rainy in England? That sucks :(

Catch up next week for the final report of Vegas nights out, and the rest of the trip!

Some more pictures :D

POOOOOL PAAARRRRRRTY!

Dinner in the MGM with Alex, Jake, Sophie and Me, after dinner we asked for 8 Slippery nipples, I instructed the guy very clearly on how to make them, but wasn't too speicific with regards to quantities, as a result we had the strongest most vomit inducing drinks ever. As predicted, that evening ended messily as well! In the Rhino If I remember correctly!

Perhaps my favorite of the couples, it's Adelwood!

Flushy modeling the outfit Vickey Coren paid him $500 to wear for day 1 of the main event, I still have the cap!

The House!! Where We've been living all summer :)

Me! With my Birthday Fortune Cookie, I believe mine said "Someone is thinking kinky thoughts about you"
HAHA, oh Shakira, you naughty girl...

Gl Everyone!

lilD

I'm Back! Vegas Report, Prt1

2012-07-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

Survived!

Yes, I'm still alive, thank you to so much for everyone sending me msgs on twitter making sure I've not died out here!!! I'm not going to lie, we've had a few close shaves... I love writing my blog, but I've felt like in the last 3 weeks there has been nothing interesting to write about, just tales of a broken man drinking himself to an early grave here in Las Vegas! Luckily, I've pulled myself together and have had some bloggable adventures/experiences. Becuase it's all been a bit of a blur recently I'm going to try to organize a summary of my Vegas trip over the next few posts, which will be a lot closer than the last one! Last years Vegas report, if you didn't read it was here...

http://lildaveslife.blogspot.com/2011/07/vegas-report-this-is-long.html

Be good to compare the two trips!!!

So lets start off with some music, a classic and somewhat fitting backing for the first part of the Report!

Poker + Gambling

So, lets not get too caught up on the poker this trip, safice to say it's been a huge disaster! Poker for me personally hasn't been all that bad, but i was big winner early on then some run-bads and a little bad play in some big games cost me and I ended up small loser. The real damage was done piece taking in big games at the bellagio/rio, I ran awfully as did the people I was buying %'s in, this alone was enough to make June personally my worst ever month in terms of financial performance, losing about 75% of my liquid net worth. I also had a few big explosions in the pits and didn't play anywhere near enough to try edge out the variance i was taking on. In truth I wasn't shrewd this summer, I was punting and the problem with punting, regardless of how +EV you think it might be, a lot of the time you could lose, and when you're gambling too high you can't handle too much negative variance and unfortunately that's what happened this summer. Not too tilted by it at all, I am at the end of the day a gambler and I gambled, I just didn't win.

Having said this...I am still in the Main Event! (at time of typing) so a masterful summer get out is still on the cards! I don't have all my action though so it needs to be a decently big get out! Good thing about the main is that, if you have 1 ante, you can still have the dream! The dream of poker immortality, the dream of worldwide acclaim, to be cemented forever into the grain of poker's heritage. But more importantly than any of that nonsense, a dream of fucking shitloads of cash, LOADS!

DIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMES!

I have imposed a 2012 ban on table games/sports betting or even any neutral EV gambling - sick big loser from completely =EV gambling round the house this trip, our most stnd form of gambling has been $100 a point 5 card PLO flips with 2 jokers and a ton of silly rules. First rule was if you lose with a joker in your hand you lose 2 points ($200) we also had cards where the flip was "reversed" where the winner of the hand had to pay out $100 to everyone as opposed to collecting $100 from each person and lots of other hilarious rules. Flushy was the big winner barely booking a winning session and is prolly decent 5figure winner! One heads up session vs Eames will be looked back on fondly (except by eames lol)

Me and Flushy also been gambling stupid big on everything, we were playing odd/even on the minutes of notable incidents in the Euro final, $500 p/goal/ $250 p/yellow and $1k p/red, I was up $500 till Spain go and score in minutes 84 and 88, thanks for that spain, absolutely no need. We'r in encore beach club and Flushy running round the cobana shouting "Spain! Thanks for the monkey Spain!!" Wonderful.

$20 a point Chinese with Me, Flushy and Ash has seen us all be somewhere near level - although typically enough I managed to win something like 67 points when we played $5 a point, sigh. I managed to win $300 betting on the jousting at tournament of kings - had the best sweat ever in that! It was Hungary vs Russia and I had Russia, Hungary manages to knock Russia of his horse, but he falls of as well! So they start fighting on the ground with swords/sheilds, after about 90 seconds my Russian is on the floor without a sword or a shield!!! I'm steaming absoultley done my money Flushy is on his feet cheering before somehow the resilient rusky gets himself up and somehow manages to ship it! Boooooooom!!!!!! Flushy completely steaming because the jousting mathc before his man had won but got disqualified for cheating!!! Tournament of kings was amazing - more on that later!

GET OUT HUNGARY!

The best day of gambling I had by a mile though was after a day rofl'ing around the house gambling with Ash and Flushy me and Demps went to the Palms to play $1/$3 with the hero's, was me, flushy, JaKoon, Liv, A-mak, Moorman, Katie (moorman's girlfriend, who I absolutely LOVE btw - Hey Katie!) Angela and Mario Ho. Not only did I manage to god-mode the game and stack everyone but me and Flushy were playing some pretty big props. I take 4s and my banker card is the 4 of clubs, he has 2's and the 2 of hearts as the banker. $200 per card, $500 for the banker then $800 if you mange to get it in the middle card on the flop. Some hilarious hands...

First one I have the 4c in my hand and Flushy has straddled the button, Katie raises and Demps 3bets I'm in the SB and ask Katie how much i need to pay her to fold, she says $100, we negotiate and settle on $40! I pay, she folds we rabbit hunt and Flushy would have hit a 2, so he's kind of steaming. Then later after I've been running sick he get's all in vs JaKoon for like $65 with his AK vs AJ and the flop comes (no word of a lie) J 4 of clubs in the middle, 4 of spades!! so he loses the all-in and does a grand to me in the prop betting!!! Wiiiiiii, he's abso raging at this point then a few hands later I have the 4c again and Jakoon is wanting to go all-in vs Flushy I'm trying to find a price to make him fold, Flushy over-rules and says we have to go to the flop and I find the 4 of clubs for another $500! Incred! Then I went to the Pallazzo and won another $4k playing Blackjack :) a very solid day!

Thinking about that day makes we wanna go gamble on stuff, but NO! Rules are rules, no more gambling for the whole of the year, unless it's like a super sicko sports betting tip or w/e. I recently imposed a max bet of $50 p/gamble which worked nicely for about 3 months, going to be cold turkey!

Hopefully this summer will have re-taught me some lessons I have learnt a few hundred times already in my career, problem is you can't change who you are and what you think/how you feel, but the really successful people in life manage to control or exploit their flaws and make them work, or at the very least make them not a problem. I am not there yet, the degenerate side of me still has a little too much control over my emotions and actions, it's not a problem for me, it's something that if I was 100% focused wouldn't be a problem, but I've been largely uncomposed and un-focused all summer, which is the root of all my problems over the last two months.

Vegas 2012 Gambling/Poker Summary;

E - Must Do Better.

The House

Lets Introduce to you who I've been living with the whole summer!

John Eames

The Same as last year, Eames took the role of "house captain" organising everything for everyone! One of the best circuit tournament regulars in the world and abso one of the good guys in poker. Gained the nickname "Norman" for his ability to make nearly every situation into a pessimistic scenario! Was photographed in an extremely compromising position one night after a night out, am trying to find a figure we could raise for charity that would make him allow us to publish the picture! £25,000 was dismissed instantly! Let's get pledging people!! Once again though huge thanks to John, without whom our trip just wouldn't ever happen!

James "Flushy" Dempsey

Been my gambling partner for most of the summer, we've been punting on almost everything and anything for the whole trip! One of the most recognizable and successful faces in UK poker, has had a rough time of it all summer at the tables, the lowpoint was a 11the place finish in the mixed holdem event losing QQ vs A7 to go 1/10, defo one of my best mates in poker and the summer has been massively enhanced by his presence in the house! Famous for his summer-long over indulgence in the Rhino, check out his ghost Twitter account @nearlyflushy for a true insight into this man's thoughts! He is the one in possession of the mythical Eames picture, so maybe bribing him will be our best chance to get that one published!!! Taking 75k to day2 of the main event so it's not done and dusted yet, can still get ouuuuuut!!!

Ash Mason

Back nearly 5 years ago when all this poker business started, who was there scraping round for £20 buyins with me but my boy Ash, been there together since the start and still one of my absolute best mates in the world, as good as his poker is that's really not what having Ash around is about, the most ridiculous sense of humour of anyone I've ever met, you'll either wonder wtf he's going on about or you'll be cracking up. As expected we've had joke amount of fun messing around this summer, and his girlfriend Soph has been amazing good fun as well! My favorite Ash moment of the summer was when we got home at 7am, Ash and Soph having left about 45 minutes before us, all the doors are locked so I have to break in through a kitchen window, we discover Ash (who's had a few) walking aimlessly round the pool by himself, seems Soph had gotten so tilted with him for not coming inside she locked him out! When we got back in Ash sits down, looking very crestfallen, all of a sudden he stands up, shouts "Pockets!" and produces a pool ball, 6 dominoes and a shuttlecock from his pocket and sits back down!

The Lovely Mrs Ash!

Dan Carter

Usually a creature of extreme discipline we saw a new amazing side to Dan C this trip, about 1/3 of the way through it he decided he was totally over it and went on a secret multi-week bender! No-one even really noticed how relentlessly smashed he was for about a week, inducing John Eames to even describe him as an alcoholic! His antics one night in Pure were the trip's highlight, leading him to be slapped by a stranger! Been one of the driving forces of hilarity for the whole summer! A*

Mat "Franky" Frankland

Another one of my abso best mates in poker, had some improvements to make following his behavior last year where he went home after 10 days! Leading Stu Rutter to nickname him "The Chancellor" because of the budget decisions he was making! Been on incred form all summer, and managed to last the whole trip without tilt flying home to the UK! Go on Franky, unfortunatly busting the main event on day 1, so as I'm writing this will be landing back home in the UK! House banter captain for defo!

The Guests!

Now, we've had a few "guest" in the house this summer and each one of them has been a particulally incredible addition, firstly the girlfriends Soph, Kat an Ilona (Ash/Franky/Dan) Jon Spinks, UK's GIQ merchant who's stay in the house was sposed to be 5 weeks but has ended up as 9 days (sigh) then we've had...

Laura Barrett and Rich Dempsey (Flushy's cousin and brother) came here for 10 fun-packed days and they were brilliant, one of my favorite moments of the summer was a night out in the Cosmo, Rich was chatting to a girl at the bar, a few things to note about this girl;

1) It was 4am

2) She was dressed very well/slightly slutty

3) She was BY HERSELF

4) She is a bar next to the room elevators in a top VEGAS hotel

5) She conveniently shared the same interests as Rich

About 12-15 minutes into this conversation whilst we were all asking "why is Rich talking to that hooker?" A horrified Rich comes bombing over completely torn up by the fact this girl had asked him to go his hotel room for $X! Un-consolable he claimed he could never trust women again and was even starting to doubt if she actually had any real interests in literature at all! Rich then went on a vegas rampage, forming a degenerate lust for Pai Gow and event completing every man's dream of a random holiday menage a trois! ALways working though on his way away from that spot he stole one of their room keys, so he and Laura could sneak into the encore pool from now on for free!! Complete Hero!!

Laura revealed herself as a complete closet balla, dissapearing for hours at the encore beach club to "chill out with Calvin Harris!" responsible for a collection of hilarious antic's during her 10 days! Both of them were utterly brilliant!

The Crab! Dave Shallow's presence in vegas at the start of the trip was like putting a hurricane into a antiques shop, the damage was huge and the costs were high! Literally the most fun person to have around EVER, not going to lie though, as much as I love the guy, was quite relieved when he went because I was legitimately worried I might die! He's back tomorrow, so lets let hope the glue has dried on all those china vases!!!

Special mentions to the whole of the UK ofc, Sammy G, Dave Jones, Trigg, JP, James Akenhead, Moorman, and manny mannnnnny more hero's, this is the greatest thing about poker right now, the group of people we have in the team atm is stunning! Lets go TEAM GB!!!

Next Blog, out in the next two or three days will be documenting the recent nights out, a trip to tournament of champions, the Craig/Brammer Rails, and some pretty jjjuuuuiiiicy gosssip :D in the meanwhile it's BBQ time here at the house, a few drinks, lots of grilled meat and an early night preparing for day two of the main!

Thanks for reading everyone! Check out my next collum in Poker Player magazine, where Ishare my reaction to the public comments on our behavior on the rail of WSOP final tables! I promise to return to more regular blogging as soon as I'm back on British Soil!!!!

Some pictures!! To wet the appetite!

Dan Edler, the centre of the controversy on the Chris Brammer final table rail!

Me, Rich and Flushy with the King of ALL THE LAND! That's right, ALL the land, pretty sick.

After the tournament of kings in Chandelier bar...This night will be making the blog next week don't you all worry, chickens, jousting, cartwheels and cucumbers!

Poool Parrrttttty - Went to a few of these, very good!!!

Me looking VERY orange playing the main event yesterday! I was sure I was the most orange person playing, but I got sat next to someone in equally as orange a hoody, what are the odds!
One Timmmmmmmmme that tournament pls !

Your guesses as to specifically what is happening in this picture are about as good as mine, I seem to remember this being either before or after some very aggro dancing in the party bus en-route to the Rhino lead to a seriously painful testicle related injury.

Also, did a cool interview with Lee Davy on the break yesterday, check that out here!!

http://www.partypoker.com/blog/wsop/wsop-day-1b-news-reviews-and-videos.html

To be continued....

Gl Everyone

lilD

Tab's On Pab!

2012-06-06T13:36:00.001-07:00

Off The Rails!

As I am writing this blog, I'm enjoying my 8th day in Las Vegas. Surely, there can't possibly be enough antics to fill an entire blog in those 8 days? Well, pretty sure we'll be getting 2 or 3 out of these last few days! Where to start...

So firstly, lets start with some poker! Now my non poker readers please bear with me, it's going to get epic later, but the first piece of business is to celebrate my first EVER WSOP Hendon Mob Flag! For the non poker readers - whenever you make the money in a live poker tournament, that is ranked and tracked on the HendonMob database, you recieve a "Flag" for it, and it goes on your profile. Some people have very impressive profiles, Our very own John Eames for example,

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=92618

Myself? Not so much :(

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=142463

But it's a start! Lets gogogo get some flags! Problem is, I rarely play tournaments...so actually the flag collection prolly isn't getting boosted anytime soon...

So, after busting my HU match in the round of 64 (kind of gutting, but tbf I played quite badly throughout the tournament, getitng pretty lucky vs Brynn Kenney, and Scott Montgomery's strategy was just too poor to over-power even me on 40% of my game) we went bowling at the Gold Coast, the keenest members of the group, Jake, JP, Akenhead etc elected to get some custom bowling balls made for themselves and we did some random teams for a small gamble. I was, as expected, dreadful and as the drinks flowed i got even worse. After bowling wee headed to a chinese restaurant in the Gold Coast called PingPangPow (or something like that - sigh that this makes me look a little racist but that is ACTUALLY what it's called!) The most entertaining thing initially was the spinning serving plate in the middle of the table, this isn't a new concept to any of us, but this particular spinning plate was stimulating lots of amusement, things soon got out of hand though as our poor naive waiter, under-estimating our juvinile spirits thought putting the beers on the spinning plate and spinning them round to us was a good idea.

Yep, not really a question of IF, but WHO. Ash Mason, in hour #36 of a pretty impressive bender which had come close to getting a bit out of hand not 12 hours earlier stood up and attempted to add some speeeeed to the waiter's grand plan! The result, inevitablyy

We had assembled a real team by this point, and were joined by Mario Ho, Vanessa Selbst and Tiffany Michelle who I THINK, are responsible for the decision to go to Stoney's...This should have theoretically been a terrible decision as there was actually NOBODY there, however we managed to make it work and with enough enthusiasm and drinks we ended up having a really fun night. I have never met Vanessa before but I liked her instantly, IDK why but I always assumed she'd be a little uptight and disinterested socially but I couldn't have been more wrong, really really nice, and sick good at poker also. Congrats to her, and JP for making the first event final table. JP sigh-busting out in 8th for a shade under $50k, still a decent enough start to the series, Vanessa came 4th for ~$160k I think, so wpwp. So that night ended reasonably tamely despite two un-named members of the team trying to grab some headlines with some pretty sleazy behavior :D finishing off in Surrender for what was all in all a really good night.

The next night rolled around and we were heading back to Stoneys for AllinStevies birthday, until midway through the day he realised he'd made a small error and his birthday wasn't actually till next week! Might wanna lay off the Jack and Coke's for a few days Stevie :D...

Not to be deterred from our plans to go out though we headed down anyways, Stoney's is always great fun on a thursday and whereas it was a ghost town the previous night, it was packed to the point where you could barely move tonight. IDK what happened in Stoney's but everyone went completely mental, drinking dancing, banter was top quality - all in all the brits were in top, top form! Video footage of Ash Mason, here about 30 hours into his 60 hour session riding the bucking bronco, whilst Dubai feeds the operator $100 bills in a bid to make it faster and harsher will be uploaded soon! (when I figure out how!)

Where the night went after this is kind of a haze, a few un-blogable incidents occurred (to say the very least) After having to help someone to hospital I was briefly passed out outside the Wynn at 7am before walking (yes WALKING) to the Rhino to try find Dubai and JP Kelly, after finding them in their customary VIP booth I almost instantly passed out where I was left to my own! Eventually getting back to the house at 11.30am. What did we do from here? Yup, quick shower, freshen up, then striaght back out to the Rio to rail John Eames on the final on the $1,500 PLHE event! Shoeeeees OFFFFFFFFFF! This was particulally exciting for me as I had previously created a special John Eames t-shirt to wear for just this occasion! I had also made a John Eames thong, but felt it somehow not appropiate for this occasion, pictures of a young lady modeling the thong WILL be on this blog soon though. THEY WILL!

After Eames guttingly busts in 8th (ran pretty poorly) Me and Ash headed back to the gold coast to meet the team for some more bowling, we were both concerned about our inevitable hangovers so got straight back on the source! We waited for the others to arrive for about 45minutes and had a lovely chat whilst kids on school trip were running around excitedly (I prolly looked right at home!)

Soon we had a top bowling team in place and after a couple of games (I continue to perform terribly and am pretty smashed again by this point) Jake hatches a cool drinking game where after each bowl, you can turn around and celebrate, if you get a strike you force everyone else to do a shot and if if misses you yourself have to take a shot. Not wanting to miss out on the heroic-ness of nailing a strike whilst celebrating I attempted several times but failed on each one, resulting in me being completely mashed up by the end of bowling. All very much in the need of food we elected to head to TGI Fridays, when Jake came up with yet another hilarious idea...

"Everyone has 20minutes to find a "date" to dinner, or you have to pick the bill up"

Boom, everyone (besides Pab who seemed realistically disinterested in the idea, prolly because we were in the gold coast) was bang up for it, and split off into teams, I teamed up with prolific womaniser Chris Moorman and feeling somewhat unbeatable we hit the casino floor searching for talent....

And without breaking a sweat me picked these two lovely ladies up playing $2 blackjack just outside the entrance to TGI's! Only took a splattering of british charms and they were on board, well within the 20minute time-frame!

Ok, so actually, this isn't at all what happened. Me and Chris set of high in the hopes of finding some 20-something young american girls to fall wildly into our strong (well his strong, mine not so much) English arms, what we found after about 5 minutes was a distinct lack of people, not just lack of pornstars and actresses, but actual PEOPLE! Reality of us being in the Gold Coast and not in the Palms or the Encore soon hit home so we decided to approach a wider spectrum of people, till we struck the jackpot and found the two best girls in the building, Phylis and her Mother Dolly!

Dolly, who is 85, was superb! Telling stories, drinking, eating ribs and being a genuine all round hero! Me and Chris were comfirmed winners of the challenge being the only team to complete the task within the 20minute timeframe. Sammy G and Trigg came up short until Phylis offered to go wing-man for the two of them, before coming up with these two ladies, who's names I just can't quite remember, this picture is currently my most favorite picture EVER!

Trigg - "I just met you, and this is crazy, so here's my number AND GET IN THE FUCKING VAN LOVE"

Ash and Middy arriving shortly afterwards with Kelly and Shawna, who have since requested to opportunity to come join the next final table rail! Wiiiiiiii

Jake and Taylor were the only ones to find anyone even close to our own age, and I'm really sorry but I just can't remember these guys names either!

All the people we had at the meal we're brilliant and no doubt dinner with a smashed group of 20-something brits will go down as a fun experience for them as well! Pab arrived 15minutes later with Mitchell, Dubai and JP having spent his time grinding blackjack instead of scouring the Gold Coast for women, morale was high having shipped a couple of grand so merrily flicked the $800 bill in to chants of "Tab's on Pab" and "Pab, Pab, pick up the tab!" (my favorite chants ever!) We parted company with our hilarious +1's and headed off to Vannesa Rousso's where some sort of poker-party was going down...

Unfortunatly after near on 65 hours without being asleep I had to tap out, Ash put me in a taxi and I was heading home, barely able to walk or talk, FINALLY to bed... Unfortunatley though the evening's adventures didn't stop here, I arrived back to the house only to find all the doors locked and I couldn't get in... There was no way I was in the mood to wait outside for hours for Tommy/Franky or Flushy to get home so I had to do something I've not done in about 16 months, Climb a fence...

Scene we've all seen before, completely smashed and impeaded on his route home! Does he dare face his foes head on? Will lightening strike twice on the same hand? Will he live to tell the story the second time around?

Well, yes. Seems that my fence climbing skills have improved and I bobbed over with very little fuss. What I hadn't countered for though, was what I was going to do ONCE I got over the fence... Luckily by criminal instincts prevailed and I found an open window to climb through, so equally as smashed as the last time I was here, in a foriegn country, attempted to climb for the SECOND time in 10minutes... For those of you who need a reminder of what happened last time I attempted this...

Oh Fuck.

Luckily, despite a bit of a shock not expecting the sink to be directly under where I was climbing I made it inside pretty easily and was in bed within the next 20minutes, where I stayed for a very, very long time!

I swore next day I wasn't going to go out drinking again until I had won $50k. The David that woke up the following day was a new David, revitalised, rejuvenated and ready to crush! I have since played about 45 hours of poker in 4 days peaking at +$30k at one point...until some run-bads and potential play bads at 50/100nl brought the profit crashing back about level. Looks like the not going out till 50 target will either have to be taken for what it was, an ambitious target designed to boost my productivity, or keep me away from going out for a few more weeks yet! We shall see!

So yh, that was the 3day Vegas bender!

More to follow? I would imagine so yes :)

GL EVERYONE

lilD

Bright Light City Gonna Set My Soul...

2012-05-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Gonna Set My Soul On Firrrrrrrre!

So. It's been a month and a half this May has! Can only apologise for lack of blog updates, I am so happy everyone is pestering me to get it sorted as I love the fact people like reading it, and I love to write them, but, as I said last time...

MAN HAVE I BEEN BUSY! SO, SO BUSY!!!

SO what's my excuse? Well I've had to move flats, store all my things, had several meetings with various people in various places, put HOURS of work into a business deal that fell through (guttingly - is guttingly a word? Defo should be) and ofc, ahead of the BIG LV I've been trying to play lots online as regardless of how much fun vegas is, it can put quite the strain on your financials - as is proving the case already ~80 hours in (more on this later!) So a legitimately busy month, blog volume been poor, but life sucess has been prettttttty high and this makes me happy! The thing about the real world for me is, it's all a bit of a hassle, but when I get it done, I LIKE TO GET IT DONE. Small, but dominating bursts of productivity is my ideal method !

So Vegas. Well I am here, the journey was far from easy, despite some good plans from me. After going out drinking with Matt on Wednesday evening, I woke up nice and early, ~8am on Thursday and packed for Vegas, my flat was completely empty, kind of souless, flats were made to be lived in and this poor little flat looked a bit unloved. Never really felt homely to me this flat, I guess I treated like a bit on the side, never fully settled, never fully unpacked, just dipping in and out as I fancy, spending a bit of time to make it happy but my thoughts always elsewhere on other places. The next place I get I'd like to try make a home and stay there for a bit, problem is I just don't like settled! It actually unsettles me, travelling around, by myself does genuinely make me happy - as odd as it sounds!

Ok, so we were....(sigh can never remember) Oh yh, up at 8am, packed, checked out of my flat, went for some lunch with Ben young and Selina, then we thought it was time to make the most of the beautiful weather and enjoy some sort of beer garden! We strolled past Call Landings and managed to ping the abso stone nut table overlooking the river! literally the ONLY outside table free as well! When it's your month, it's your month! Several strawberry cider's later and joined by Rob, Jamie and Sophie (lost Selina die to an exam, yawwwwn) we decide to hit The Blackhouse (really good steakhouse in leeds) for dinner! We chatted, drank some wine enjoyed the sun and kept morale at an un-matchable level before bidding 2 of my best mates goodbye for the summer and jumping on a train to Gatwick!

Despite being a bit drunk, and stumbling into the quiet coaches and somehow NOT being thrown out for just relentlessly talking on skype, I got to the hotel in GWick at ~2am (obviously managed to miss several connecting trains in the process and wonder aimlessly around North Terminal 45 minutes - 6 fuckign premier inn's in Gwick hey? why, JUST WHY WHY WHY?) Watched Apprentice, then fell aslep about 3.30am (deliberatly trying to stay awake - a decision I would come to regret later!) Up at 8am, showered (the worst shower EVER btw) checked out, checked in and drinking a pint with Jones/Middy/Moorman/Shrewdie/Ash/Pab and Stevie by 9.15! The day was just shaping up to be brilliant!

Time to board was at 10.50, and at 10.40 we were still in the bar drinking. This cuased our group leader and appointed adult Dave Jones to be somewhat concerned we MIGHT miss boarding, a little anal, but as Jones sensibly puts it "why risk it?"

So we get out skates on and have a brisk jog to the terminal, to see boarding yet to even start! 25 mins later we're on the plane, and ready for VEGGGGGGGGGGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, been a little while here on the runway, but these things often delayed 20-25 minutes, morale is high, we're readddddddddddy for the OFF! SummertimeRICHEShereWEgoooooooo!

Really? 4 hours later? Still not going? WTF. Apparently, there was a problem with one of the doors(?) and they needed to fix it. I found it hilarious how everyone on the plane was tilting at the staff...

"Cmon FFS, lets just get going, been sat here ages"

I'm there saying "NO! FOR CHRISTS SAKES LETS HAVE THEM FIX THE FUCKING DOORS BEFORE WE SET OFF!!!!"

Strange some people! Anyways, after 3.5 hours thwy announced 15 people would have to leave the flight and fly tomorrow - because apparently with 430 people on board the doors are under it, but 415 people, well that's abso fine innit may as well leave them open!

Sat next to me and Chris was an American girl who had fallen asleep near on as soon as we sat down, it was really sunny outside and after ~3 hours I was so so so tempted to wake her up and say "we're here!" Luckily I wasn't AS bored as was needed to make me do something that mean. In the other boat was Stevie who slept from around 15mins into the waiting until ~75mins before we landed. Waking up just in time for a pizza slice and to rail the landing, which was really quite bumpy. Sounds like a flight like this could be bad for morale, but the thing is, when the destination is VEGAS, morale is always high!

Now, as solid as my not sleeping too much plan was (and it was) here is where it backfired on me. First thing, I run badly by not being able to sleep on the plane, and no idea why. Secondly when I get to Vegas it's 6.30pm and we decide me and Ash on checking into the encore to go see Dubai/Flushy/JP and get persuaded to join in on a night out. Here is where things started to go wrong, with the following ingredients;

1. Fatigue - always leads to questionable decision making

2. High Vegas Morale - always leads to getting super giddy

3. Dave Shallow - always leads to SOME SORT OF CARNAGE.

Combine all these things and what do you have? A big bill at the Rhino, far to much to drink and a return to my hotel room at 11.45am, so Ash asking me whatTHEfuck and me feeling really rather ropey. Plans to adjust sleeping pattern have now been super reversed, as I HAVE to now TRY and stay awake till ~midnight, despite having only slept 5 hours in the last 60. We check out, we move into the new house, play some card games and I just try to hang in! I eventually make it till ~11.30 then tap out, and had maybe the best sleep anyone has ever had, EVER!

So that was my first 48 hours in VEGAS! As expected, I got Vegas'd, and quickly :)

Whats happened since? Well Marvin won the WPT 25k for $1.2m (nice life) I've already queued up for what feels like 35 hours at the Rio, and done it in playing chinese and dominoes with the boys by the pool. Everything is, as expected! Nice Thai meal last night with Lee and Liza andd todays plans ACTUALLY INCLUDE SOME POKER! going to be great!

Going to upload some VIDEOS(!) on the upcoming blogs and keep updated about once every 5 days! I'm really feeling a great great summer ahead!

LESSSSSSSSSSSGO!!!!

GL everyone

lilD

A Little Less Conversation A Little More Action

2012-05-12T02:41:00.001-07:00

Moving On (Again!)

In the 2 weeks previous to the last blog, I had fallen into a pretty bad cycle, what I was doing was spending 12 hours of every day on the phone, on skype, on facebook etc telling everybody how busy I was, "Oh My God!" I was telling people, "you wouldn't BELIEVE how busy I am, you just wouldn't believe!" This was met, largely by a caring, affectionate disinterest, with a couple of people just plainly not caring. After 10 days of this I realized that for all my relentless complaining I'd somehow managed to be LESS productive than usual, so I decided that it was time...

First thing I did was make a list, listing all the things that needed doing, inform council tax I'm leaving, pay my final electricity bill (I swear to god i'll reach a point one day where no-one will supply me with electricity) start packing, move things to storage, organize $'s, re-direct my mail, buy some new clothes for Vegas, get my new drivers license, throw that fucking shower mat out before I break my spine, go through post I still have un-opened since February, and so on. So this was about 10 days since I compiled my list, would anyone care do guess how many things have been done? Yup, you guessed it

I couldn't even bring myself to ring the council, hose number I have in my phone and say, "From June I won't be living in my flat X" prolly a three minute job! I do however an excuse, which no doubt you'll all see coming, "My GOD! You just wouldn't believe it, I've been....

SO here we, are stuck in a cycle of too many jobs and not enough direction to do any of them! Chances of getting everything done by the next blog? mmmm, If I were a gambling man, I think I'd take the unders on EVER ;) !

However, don't think my frantic and dramatically productive fortnight has stopped us getting up to a bit of mischief, I was recently offered a job, not a job I was all that interested in, but when asked how much I'd want per year I thought I'd hard-ball the negotiations and went in for £500,000 per year....(after tax, and a company Bentley) seems my technique was a little over-ambitious, as the talks broke down soon after my request and alas, I remain job-less! Oh well, at least the bar has been set, you want lil Dave, you gotta pay the premium ;) Like my Mum always said to me, if you don't ask, you don't get!

I've also had some really fun meet-ups with a bunch of cool guys, not sure how much I am allowed to say about some of them (mmmm) but i will tell you all about a terrific afternoon I had in London, as I was in the vicinity Mr. Neil Channing of Blackbelt Poker invited me lunch, which was at Langan's Brasserie, a very popular and well known restaurant in Mayfair, however as has been proven time and time again wherever I've been in any country I am utterly useless at getting anywhere, so whilst Neil waits patiently for me in Langan's, 15 minutes after we are supposed to meet I am at the Langham Hotel wondering what the hell is going on! I wish I could half the time I'd spent being lost in my life back, could rattle that to-do list off about 30 times over. Anyways, as he picked up the lunch bill, here is a Blackbelt plug! www.blackbeltpoker.com/ on the iPoker network, if you're an aspiring player wanting to improve in a really fun community spirit, with help from some excellent and experienced pro players and get into some big buy-in live event, then Blackbelt is 100% something to look at!

As for my poker form of late, been pretty hit and miss, having some great HU games online and doing well, but losing in the 6max games, I THINK I'm playing good, I am attributing the losing mostly to running and playing excellently at £1/£2 - $3/$6 and running badly and not playing my best at £3/£6 - $10/$20 so that's why, overall I'm winning small and I guess that's fine lol given that I am only a few hands at higher stakes away from being decent winner. Whatever really, online poker is pretty meh, I like it, it's fun, but in terms of being worried about it or getting upset with results ever I'm pretty much over it! I've had a few decent live poker sessions of late so we're keeping the wolves from the door, as they say !

Get away Wolf! GET AWWWAAAAAY!
They look really cute wolves, but don't be fooled - they are ridic aggro, I'd hate for anyone to have read my blog, seen this picture and thought Wolves were friendly or approachable! Pretty sure they'd rip your head if you tilted them. Very loyal as well so if you have beef with one Wolf you got beef with several Wolves. Defo try steer clear.

Still slipping on my shower mat about 33% of the time I take a shower, getting to the point now where If I kill myself on it I'll literally have only myself to blame. This is two shower mats that cause me trouble, I guess maybe a fault with my bath? Can't figure it out, but as we area all aware I am just FAR FAR TOO BUSY to be sorting it out :D

Jake Cody, who recently made us all quite jealous by purchasing a house, has gone and done it again with the acquisition of a new hot-tub. You all thinking of one of those stnd 8 seater Jacuzzi's you see for sale, well, don't think of them, this is perhaps one of the sickest hot-tubs ever, with a TV screen, built in sound system and different massage options it's out of this world. The other night after everyone has chunked it off playing internet poker (Jake's IP started running horrifically of late, could spell problems for us all) we went for a chill in the hot-tub, as the beers started to flow plans for how to fully utilize the hot-tub were being formulated, if we pull them off I WOULD HIGHLY recommend reading the next blog!

In between buying hot-tub's Jake has been up to all sorts of calamity's and has even picked up some lil-Dave esque transport problems! (To be fair, when it comes to flights I actually have a great track record! although near on gtd to miss my flight to Vegas now I've said this :D) Read all about what he's been up to in his latest blog! http://www.jakecodypoker.com/?p=81

Similar to Jake I've decided to put my trip to LV back ~10days, the games are good online, I'm having so much fun in Leeds and with everything going on in England atm I don't quite feel "ready" for Vegas yet. I'll be there though, and it'll be awesome, and this mean I'll have someone to fly over with!!!

Going to have a small rant now.

Yes. Trains. I've always quite liked trains, good way to get about, nice and comfortable decently priced and all in all a good experience (not to mention convenient) however out of the last 15 train journeys I've taken, I'd say 13 of them have been horrific, I'll tell you about one journey....

Off to Manchester to play poker, I deliberately fade the 5.30-6pm trains so I jump on at 6.45pm first thing is it takes me 10minutes to even get on it's so busy, I've got a first class ticket so I'm happy to just wait and get on after, so I head to FC and they've de-classified it! So now I have to stand for the whole journey, completely cramped, barely 5inches from a person either side. I've never been good in tight spaces or crowded environments so I'm hating this so much. I made a, pretty valid, point that I did have a FC ticket. The conductor looked at me like I was a complete troublemaker and begrudgingly refunded me the difference between STND and FC. "So the fact I waited for everyone to get on thinking I had a seat in FC and that cost me sitting down for the whole trip is irrelevant?" I asked,

"Well that's your fault, FC is always de-classified at these times." he tells me.

"Oh it is it? Well you didn't think NOT selling me a FC ticket was the way to go if there was no FC for me to buy a ticket in?"

"Well it's not my problem mate, I don't make the decisions."

So I left it at that and stood for the whole journey, this is exactly what is wrong with the world these days, everyone is happy in "Not my problem, ask the gaffer" roles, I think if a customer is unhappy with something it's EVERYONE's problem and anyone who doesn't actively try to ease the discomfort is not doing their job. Any business I've been involved in has always had the same ethos, Objective 1 = Customer leaves Happy, Objective = Money in the till. I guess there is no other train options for me so I have to suck up the shitty service. SHAME ON YOU FIRST EXPRESS. SHAME

I wasn't even bothered about the sitting, although it was joke tilting, I just wanted some GOOD SERVICE .

The other day, as I mentioned I was in London, on the way down at 2.30pm the train was so crowded again it was unbearably hot, on the return leg it was sposed to take 2hr.45m, It actually took near on 4hours because of three long stops, the most annoying was outside Leeds station "waiting for a space" at 3am - 3am! What the fuck is happening! Is this a time for bustling train activity? 3am ffs! If they are moving trains around that are dorment then it's WAY out of line because they KNEW that train was due in at that time. But then, what do they care - it's just a trainload of people who've made money to be transported from X to Y in a certain time, we can make them wait - WHY DO WE CARE? That's right, you don't do you. £165 train ticket - and why should you?

Taxi's.

This has happened a few times to me lately, but the most ridiculous case was recently. I was with my solicitor and I rang a local Taxi company I use a LOT, I got into the taxi and the guy asked where I was going (despite me having told the person on the phone, not that it matters) I told him - I live in a really stnd place - he didn't know, so he asked me for my post-code, fair enough I gave it to him. He cant enter the post-code properly, despite me giving it to him 3 or 4 times, so I say I live near the Etap which he knows. I then get a phone-call and un-able to direct him round every bend. He takes two obviously wrong turnings then has to interrupt me to ask where he should be going, I don't know where he's taken me so he has to try his satnav again and we end up driving round a pointless piece of Leeds for 5 minutes before we find somewhere I recognize. After all this a 5 minute journey has taken 15 and a £4-5 fare is now £8, I wanna say wtf but I cba arguing over £3 so give him £10, now he doesn't have any change. So he gives me it back and says he doesn't have change for a £10 note.

"And this is my problem why?"

"Well I just started, no £ coins"

"And again, my problem why? Your job is drive people places and take their money, you've taken 3x the time to take me to a place EVERYONE in Leeds knows, pretty impossible to be a taxi driver and not know it and now you're telling me you can't accept my money?!"

"Listen don't you have £3 and I give you a fiver?"

"No I don't. Because in my day to day life I don't need to provide people with change, if I did then i would almost certainly have some £ coins."

Then another taxi driver turns up and he changes my £10 for me, but seriously what is wrong with people - every taxi I book these days takes 15minutes longer than they say to turn up and half the drivers don't know where anything is. The other day I even got into a taxi at 5pm who insisted I paid upfront £10 for a £5 journey and he'd refund me the difference at the end - then it came to £4.60 and he just gave me a fiver back. Oh NO. Pretty sure I'm owed £5.40, and the fact that you've not got any 20p's is not my problem, he ended up having to give me a 50p! Justice. No-one care about their customers anymore. Very sad

Had a fun night out the other day, myself, Ben Martin, Dave Burn, Luke Fields and Dan Morgan went over to York to see Jenna our new best friend, started off with a really nice meal at a restaurant called the Biltimore Bar and Grill will give it a plug as it was great! http://www.thebiltmorebarandgrill.com/ Food was excellent, service great and a great cocktail list! This makes the team very happy :) after ballin on a budget in rev's ordering champagne for no good reason >>> LFMagic losing his mind! We then went to some completely empty bar (maybe 4 or 5 other people) we had this incredible idea that we should round everyone in the club up to same part to create a party atmosphere! However the charms of myself and Luke, nor the dance-aster Ben Martin was creating was enough to persuade the others to join in our plans :( Shameeee !

Said "Dance-Aster" mid-creation.

Next leg of the journey took us to a Chinese restaurant/converted evening club called "The Willow" where we took to the dance-floor, several bottles of Desperado and mayhem duly followed! Exactly what the mayhem was no-one can quite remember, but we're all pretty sure we caused it :)

What we do have, courtesy of my new phone and enjoyment for photo-taking some fun pictures of the night! I've also gotten into this very professional habit of taking 3/4 shots of each picture, in case any of them are blurred!!

Luke, Dan and Dave posing for a picture with a guy they were calling "Shrillex" I don't know who or what that is! Dave Burn looking dashing albeit ever so slightly simple and my good self posing next to a sign in the Chinese place that at the time I found hilarious! I think it would make a great novel..."Theft at the Willow".... Has Occurred MANY times.

That is about all from me, apologies for the lack of degenerate Incidents! Anyone who read my last blog will have seen I romped home on the Snooker betting! Backed the two finalists pre-tourney and laid the guy who lost i the semi, that is how we DO IT! I was loving watching the snooker all day every day, when you have some decent bets on it becomes SUCH a good sweat! I promise next blog will have some adventures in it :D

IDK if anyone say this news story, the video footage is both frightening and hilarious, 2 complete lunatic Irish men are racing on horse and cart on a busy main road in cork! Swerving in and out of the police car trying to stop them! Mayhem....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/9259261/Illegal-horse-race-blocks-Irish-dual-carriage-way.html

Some people really are completely fucking mental, and most of the time these people seem to come from Ireland!!

Going to leave you with this, which made me laugh!

Haha! Gl Everyone

lilD

Back to Blog!

2012-04-30T08:23:00.001-07:00

It's All Been Going On!

Once again it's been a bit of time between blogs, I've quite genuinely been really, really busy, in the last two weeks I can't think of a single day (bar one particularly hungover day) where I wasn't up before 10.30am and still working on something at 11pm. It's been great! Felt really good, really productive and as far as getting stuff done is concerned I've been crushing :) !

First thing I've done is start Vegas preparation. If I've learnt anything about travelling away to play poker it's that preparation is key, especially when you're dealing with Vegas. Money needs to be organised, you need to be feeling healthy, in good shape, sleeping well and in a great frame of mind to play poker, if any of these things AREN'T in order, then what's going to happen is that you is Vegas is going to get you, in someway or another. So step one of my Vegas preparation is to sort my flat out, I've already begun packing stuff up and over the next two weeks I am planning on moving everything to various locations ready for when I get back, I don't want to be frantically rushing around the two days before I leave trying to organize all my stuff, as I plan to adjust my sleeping pattern a wee before I go - luckily this will work nicely with playing online, so with any luck will be able to get a decent chunk of online hours in those 2 weeks before I leave.

Second thing I've done for Vegas prep is to get into good shape, it's so easy to fall into bad habbits, eating badly and being generally unhealthy that I've decided to spend the whole month before with very few nights out, cooking my own, healthy meals and trying to a LITTLE bit of exercise (mostly just runs in the morning) don't get me wrong, still pretty anti-exercise for the most part, but have to say I'm feeling good, and seriously ready to out in a big summer :)

Here is some are the two of my favorite culinary creations over the past week !

Nice Salmon fillet in a lemon drizzle with a rocket salad with low fat french dressing and a small potato salad.
I re-did this today and added 2 scallops and a few bits of asparagus and it was delicious!

Grilled Chicken in a homemade tomato sauce on a bed of onions with roasted red peppers, asparagus, fine beans and tenderstem brocoli! Not as appealing to look at as the one above, but really tasty and aside from the Mayo in my homemade potato salad (delicious to eat with the broccoli btw) pretty much all completely good for you!

I also decided to completely eliminate bread from the diet pre-vegas, despite my reservations over bread being bad for you, still seems like rubbish to me, I've decided to give it a go! I think it would be naive to think that I wouldn't be slipping back into eating kind of questionably in Vegas but if I set off feeling great, then hopefully I'll start off well and i'll be inspired to live somewhat better than I usually do out there. Having Ash with me will be amazing as he's turned into a complete health nutter so he'll be able to keep me on the straight and narrow! The eggs benedicts though, are going nowhere!

Finally my Vegas preparation has involved lots of boring poker work, I've decided that this year, as I decided last year as well, my focus is going to be on PLO games. Really happy with my live NL game right now, and have been playing great in 6max games online, but live PLO is a different animal so lots of work on 9handed plo has gone on, very boring and culminating in an article in this month's Poker Player! Availble at all good newsagents - do pick a copy up and hear my thoughts on 9handed PLO!

Snooker! Yes, the other thing has been taking my time up lately, and much to my delight, is the Snooker World Championship! Always been a great fan of the snooker, watching, and most particularly BETTING on it! Everyday there is 2 or 3 terrific snooker matches on so every afternoon is gtd to be fun. My initial instinct was to bet on the being a 147 in the forst 3 days, available somewhere at 24-1, however we received some seemingly reliable information from none other than Steve Davis, claiming the coup of round one was backing Stuart Bingham vs Hendry at 10/11 (Hendry delayed en route back form china with virtually no snooker match-play experience) and Bingham in decent form, a 3-1 on shot at absolute worst. I was also advised that the clothes were not going to make for big scoring initially. So I lumped on Bingham and watched as Stephen Hendry made a phenomenal 147 to romp to a pretty straight forward victory :). Just goes to show, never a sure thing in gambling, no matter has renowned and respected the tipstar may be.

Always been a big Hendry fan, delighted to see him back to great form at the crucible, I feel pretty damn certain he won't be winning the title, but seeing him playing great snooker again is terrific for a fan of the game! I got some shrewd bets on, 13/2 on Ronnie early doors and Ali Carter @72/1 on betdaq and managed to top it up when he was 7-1 up in round one with some money still unmatched at 66/1. Tempted to lay it off 5-3 up vs Trump, but my new gambling tag-line...Hedging is for Gardners :D

Also taken the liberty of laying a pretty large bet on Maguire when offered a decent vig to share exposure on someone elses bet, so will really be pulling for Hendry next round!!! Trump (as I expected) seems likely to beat Ali Carter 9-7 ahead but Carter more than capable of nicking it, and should he win, he's more than capable of winning the thing. Maguire I don't like and didn't look too great in either game, so right now, LOVING watching the snooker, and loving the bets I've made. Lets gogogogo, what a great championship it's looking to be!!

The main thing I've been up to is some real life work and with a sale of one of my shops almost imminent, looks like we'll have a nice lil cash flow boost pre-Vegas! Won't be taking business money out to Vegas to gamble with ofc, but it does mean the chances of me being genuinely homeless on my return is reduced dramatically! Producing some actual profit as a result of enterprise has been fantastic, I'd love to have kept it as I was proud of it, but the time is right so here we go!

So all in all, it's been a very busy couple of weeks, lots of work, lots of gambling and lots of poker. Poker has been going ok, I've played quite a lot of poker recently, a couple of live sessions in a friendly private game (I know some of the guys there have been reading so Hello to the team!) I can't even really remember how I'v done in that game either, I have so much fun gambling, joking and messing around that I forget I'm even playing for money half the time! I hate poker when it's too serious, who can be bothered? I like having a good think about the game, but I LOVE all the banter and (basically) pissing around that goes on in a friendly live game! So as far as results have gone I can't remember, I can still afford to go play so I guess I can't be losing too much!

As far as online is going, been pretty boring, the games been up and down and my results have been pretty mixed but ultimately somewhere near break-even and prolly small winner after rakeback. I'm defo not at 100% of my game online, but certainly showing some periods of what I would consider my best. It's really hard to stay objective with online poker because results affect your mood so drastically it's easy to just lose your perspective mid-session, but I've felt, throughout the times I have been playing, I've been playing somewhere between "Not-Bad" and "pretty good." This obviously isn't quite good enough for the long term, but it's been getting me by and all-in-all the results I've had are prolly only just a little below where I "deserve" to be. So I can't complain, but certainly can improve.

I guess the good thing is, I'm enjoying playing right now, and I feel really good for vegas, roll on VEGAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSS

So this is the theme of the blog, and the theme of the previous few weeks! Getting ready for VEGGGGASSSS!

Had a quite hilarious yet ironic moment the other week. My shower, which as you know I have considered changing recently, is a bath/shower type arrangement, for the last 5 months I've been showering (which you'll all be pleased to hear!) but without a mat for grip on the floor. I've never slipped, because whenever I get into the shower I always think "Wow, I should buy a shower mat, otherwise I might slip" as a result of this, I am always veering towards caution whenever I enter the shower. The other day though I was in wilkinsons, and I saw a shower mat! So I picked it up, proudly put in in my shower and as I was about to step into the shower the next morning I looked proudly at my new shower mat, excited about my new life, a life free from daily worry, removed from the constant fear for my spine and where the chances of my dying alone in a bathub of my own blood significantly decreased...

What's the first thing that happens? Obviously, I trip on my new bath mat, an injure my spine quite badly. Since then I've slipped twice more and have have subsequently purchased a new bath mat, which I have yet to slip on. Could have been nasty, but luckily, I AM OK!

Right! That's all from me, plans for today are going to evolve solely around sweating the Man U/Man City game, I've actually got a small interest on Man U so will be grudingly cheering them on, I also hold a pretty high dislike for Mancini so don't really want to see him with the trophy in his hands. Either way should be a great game, and a potentially messy night out to follow with the hero lineup, Dave Jones/Geeforce/Shrewdie/Brent and co, going to be a goooooood night!

GL Everyone!

lilD

Great News for online Poker!

2012-04-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

Finally!

Rare that I would post 2 blogs in the same 48 hours, but I just read this news and was so excited I thought I would do a blog, explaining why. Firstly, the news itself!

After a legal battle for ages PokerStars has finally been able to prevent sites such as Poker Table Ratings, from data-mining on it's site. For those of you who don't know, PTR is a "data-mining" site, they mine hand histories from the tables as they are being played and on their site they can display a frightening amount of statistics on a person's play. It can tell a savy internet user the amount of hands he plays, how aggressive he is, how often he raises/calls etc and it can go even more in-depth than this. Also, and more upsetting it displays the total profit and loss for each person, and a graph detailing the individual wins and losses. Even WORSE than this, they then give people the option to BUY hand histories so they can further analyse the play of their opponents.

Data-mining sites have been around forever, and there existence has constantly baffled me - how they are allowed operate is simply unbelievable. They cause nothing but damage to the online poker world and bring with them no tangible benefits whatsoever. One thing for sure data-mining DOES NOT #lovethegame.

They allow really sensitive information to be readily available to people cleverer enough to know that it is there, and what's so unfair about these sites is that often, the weaker players have no idea that this level of information is available to their opponents. People they have never ever seen play before have already had the opportunity to look through hundreds or possibly thousands of hands of their play, they will have a good idea of how often they raise/fold/how aggressive they are etc before the victim has even had change to figure out how to pronounce the screen name.

This lends even more of an edge to the stronger players, and gives weaker players even less of a chance. Is this what "gambling" is about? Is it about have such a monstrous edge over another person that they barely have a chance? Such an unfair system, and so in-line with the gambling industry of today that we don't do more to further the enjoyment of recreational gamblers and keep the playing field fair. Call me old fashioned, but my principle has always been that of a "fair gamble." Sure it might not be fair that I might be a better poker player (or vica versa) than my opponent, but the gamble is fair - everyone has the same information, plays with the same cards, the same money - EVERYONE, regardless of poker ability, has a chance to win, this is gambling and how it should work.

This is why poker is such a great sport, because regardless of your ability or experience, you can sit against someone who is a fantastic player and you can play, but more importantly, YOU CAN WIN! Far too many "professional" gamblers just want to have every edge possible and it's going to kill the game, seriously damage the gambling industry by ruining what poker is ACTUALLY about, and that's having fun, it's a game at the end of the day.

Sites like PTR also encourage mocking at the tables, I myself was victim to this on stars the other day, playing HU vs someone who started to mock me for being -$8,000 on my Pokerstars PTR. Now I didn't care about this, I know I'm actually losing a lot more than that (it misses a lot of hands thank god!) I can see how someone less experienced would feel very humiliated by this and also be very wary of how the person has come by this information. Not only would it ruin the experience of playing, but put them off from playing again in the future, further damaging the future and integrity of the game.

PokerStars victory against PTR here is a fantastic step forward for online poker and hopefully this will encourage other sites to follow suit, and then these sites that provide such harm to our industry will have no way to operate, and to profit. I sincerely hope this is the first nail in the coffin for data-mining sites and I urge the sites and the players to work together on this and we can all reap the benefits of a better online poker world.

Well played PokerStars. Very Well Played.

Sorry for the rare 100% poker blog, but I genuinely believe this is a very important step for online poker, and gambling as a whole. Lets stop #usingthegame and start #lovingthegame

lilD

The Worst Thing For British People...

2012-04-18T05:35:00.003-07:00

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions....

I remember when I used to work in a sports shop, it was just whilst I was in school and after i left for a bit whilst my Mum was shouting at me everyday for not having a job - thankfully only recently has she stopped this! I used to think how terrible Brits were with decision making, for example this shop during busy times would have the best part of 40 styles of running shoe available, is there ANYTHING worse for the British community than 40 types of show to chose from, people used to spend all day everyday selecting running shoes and it was my job to try steer then towards the "right" choice for themselves. I know, it's a fucking running shoe, JUST PICK A SHOE YOU LIKE FFS, but that's not how we operate here in dear old blighty is it? It's important to us that of all 40 shoes on offer we're picking the perfect shoe for us.

In America for example they are very powerful shoppers they need shoes, they buy shoes, they need a t-shirt they buy a t-shirt, seems like a much better way of doing things, but to be honest I find it a bit soul-less. I love it how here we pile so much mental anguish into making decisions, a friend of mine is SO BAD at making decisions that a simple decision of whether to go to Leeds or York will require her to make 2 or 3 phone-calls, use the phrase "owwww I don't know" in a really whiny tone and result in frantic pacing around. It's a more rewarding and intense experience than a cold hearted, foreign approach.

So I, myself have found myself victim of a similar type of decision recently, mostly once more revolving around my living arrangements. I've made plans to go to Las Vegas on May 10th, my flat expires on June 1st, I'm not planning on being home until July 17th, so this would mean paying outright for 7 weeks of living that I'm not going to be living. It's a horrible waste of money, coupled with the fact that I don't LOVE my flat (I don't hate it, it's a perfectly nice flat) and I really dislike my letting agents, I want to just tell them to stick it and just leave for Vegas homeless, with just a dream and a bag full of money :)

You may recall, when I went to Vegas in October I did the same thing, and it worked out pretty well!

Problem with this however, is that returning from Vegas with no home to go to was one of the most tilting things I went through last time, EVER. Also I don't have many places to put my stuff, plus there is ALWAYS the worry that I might do all my money in Vegas and not be able to afford somewhere to live when I get home. I know what you're thinking, how could anyone lose their rent money in Vegas? Surely that would be really irresponsible and there is no way David would do that. Well if you're thinking that, let me just say...

And, of course possibly the biggest vice we all have out there in the summer....

So you see what I mean, to not factor in the possibility of being broke when I come home would be in itself irresponsible. My main financial vice's in the world are table games (specifically craps) partying and good food, so - I'm pretty under it! There is however, the glass being half full and all, the chance I come home with significantly more money than I set off, so in that situation I might wanna ball out and get a swanky penthouse at Bridgewater place!

A little slice of elegant 28th storey heaven for you sir?
Don't mind if I do :)

So understandably I've been in somewhat of a dilemma. After getting some advice from some people who are cleverer than me I have decided I am going to LEAVE FOR VEGAS HOMELESS! Like my no-madic forefathers I shall venture into the future with nothing but my dreams and my friendships to carry me... (there will of course be a plane to carry me too, as strong as Rob's shoulders are I don't fancy him having the power to take me across the atlantic, Jamie Sykes' arms on the other hand....)

So there we go, another exciting chapter will begin (admittedly not exactly much different to the previous few chapters!) but for my life, and my world, which revolves solely around me and gambling it is exciting, next stop, 77b Future Street, Lovingthegame Avenue, Happy Toan, G3TT 1NG, The Lot.

Here we go!

So I guess the previous driveling wall of text and images could have been summed up by saying "I've decided to leave my flat, not get anywhere else before Vegas, and sort it when I get back." <<< This is basically what I'm going to do!

Poker, poker, poker. Guess I should cover some poker in this blog as this is apparently the theme. Poker has been going ok - certainly better than when I last mentioned it. Online has picked up and I have recovered from a £10,000 hole nicely to be winning somewhere in the region of £200-300 pounds, which whereas it won't take me to the moon it will however buy some small items, items such as these...

A ridic ballin' remote control motorbike!

A Lego set of the Tokyo international race circuit!

This 12ft Stuffed Giraffe!

Or if you insist on being frightfully dull....

It would pay my electricity bill (lol you'll be alright Scottish Power)

What this means is that whereas results have been poor, I can sit back and commend myself for being able to have generated, through my own abilities enough money to purchase all these extremely cool items. If I were to pick a winner it would have to be the Giraffe. Last year whilst living with Jamie I had a lot of space in my bedroom, I hatched the genius plan of turning it into a zoo for stuffed animals! However me and Jamie spent far too much time drinking Gin, trying to set fire to Gin and calculating how much it would cost to fill various containers with Gin - the most astonishing was an 8person hot-tub which you could fill with Hendricks Gin for a little over £45,000! So as you could see we were far too busy wasting time to get along with anything serious, like building our stuffed animal Zoo.

Such a wasted potential we are.

What was I talking about? Oh yh, Poker! Poker - online going ok, been playing a BIT live and doing pretty average, played at Gala the other night and have never received so much terrible table behavior in my life! It started out by one person accusing me of not being a gentleman on betting the river, announcing "YOU WIN" when he takes all of 2 minutes to show quads. The same player takes all off three minutes to call my river all-in a little later, waits for my to proudly reveal second set before triumphantly announcing "THE NUT STRAIGHT" (the best hand you could have) Everyone else made a fuss of it but I don't care about slowrolls at all, if someone wants to slow-roll they can slow-roll it isn't against the rules. It just means you don't #lovethegame which is your problem not mine! I actually very often find them pretty hilarious :D

As well as this, another ridiculously nitty regular player was berating me constantly throughout the game, kept saying that I was "betting to much" and he was going to "teach me how to play" I lost a pot where I bet £300 on the river and folded to a raise and he, not even involved in the pot, stood up, started waving in my face say "bye-bye, bye-bye" ! Very, very curious behavior! I provided the option of HU game to facilitate my learning, but he couldn't quite raise the mustard ;)

I actually enjoyed all the rubdowns and needles, was a fun game with Simon, George, Neil and Johnny - Johnny cleverly coheres me into gambling with him when he knows i'll play and he has the best hand lol. Neil is always loads of fun to play with cos he has so much gamble and I like to play big pots :) Neil is actually one of the most improved players I've played with regularly (ish) with over the last year or two, he's always been a big bucket of trouble to play vs as he can put you in all sorts of yucky situations, but nowadays he's combining this with pretty solid hand/board reading and the aggression is a little more controlled. I've not been playing the PLO game at Gala but the way he plays compared to everyone else (passive and weak for the most part - not a #lovethegame strategy) I'd be shocked if he wasn't one of or the biggest winner! WP Neil (who often reads these blogs I think, Hi Mate *wave*.)

I was tickled yesterday by reading the story of the Austrian Village "Fucking" (yes an actual place) who are partitioning to have the village re-named after "constant" ridicule and apparently they are losing close to £3,500 a year in stolen signs for the village! A local business women, claimed to be "exasperated" by the situation has pleaded for an additional G to be added, in an attempt to "deter thieves." Locals also claimed to be "insulted" that women posing naked next to the sign for sleazy calenders had become commonplace! I wonder if it attracts a lot of tourists, "where you and Mark going for easter Sandra?"

"Fucking"

"Oh, I see, slightly over-sharing I think...."

That's all from me, well played and unlucky badpadPaolo69leadboots(1) on his near miss in the .fr Scoop main event, narrowly missing out on the 202,000 euro top prize after some runbads on the final eventually finishing 6th for 47,000euro :( - I guess similar waves should be sent to Rupert who managed a 5th in the Sunday Million for $60,000 on Sunday. Strange thing is with these tournaments is it's such a nice win, but feels like money lost for a bit - still great prep for theses guys just ahead of the real SCOOP (spring championship of online poker) which brings with it in equal measure the opportunity to both accumulate and dust off frightening wads of cash! Luckily I'll be in Vegas away from the sillyness, pretty sure for me playing $5k a box Baccarat at the wynn is +$ on playing the scoop series :D

GL Everyone

lilD

Tough Stuff, Hard to Break...

2012-04-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

A Blog!

I'm here! So sorry I've been off the blogging radar for a week or so, It's really cool how people are genuinely sweating the next blog! I always try and keep em coming but this last 2 weeks has been particularly hectic! I've been running around working, playing a ton online, going out with the boys a bit and railing in some reasonably chunky sports bets!

First exciting news is Franky's terrific showing on the Party Poker Premier league, he managed to satellite his way into a $125,000 buy-in televised series for under $2,000 and despite a tough-ish group including Trickett, Katcholov, Siedel, FullFlush and Tony G he put in an amazing run and topped his group netting $80k, before a rough run in the final resulted in a 7th place finish for a further $65k. Pretty gutting, but in an alien format, in surroundings he's never been in before with talented experienced players who are used to this style of tournament, I think it was an amazing run, a great effort and will be amazing to watch it all back on TV when it airs!! Go on Franky!!! <3

I enjoyed railing the Master's in as well, not generally a huge fan of watching golf, it's a little tedious for me, however the Master's proves that age-old adage that anything slightly dull can become an intensely good sweat IF you're gambling on it :D I elected to get deep-ish onto Westwood with a couple of little savers none of whom were Bubba Watson although I was very tempted to purely because of the price. I know a couple of people who jumped on for decent money EW at 55/60-1 and anyone who DIDN'T lose their balls and green up (not naming names Spraggs :D) would have had an unbelievable sweat when he's in the bushes ready to hoof it over the tree's. I was rooting for him by the final 3 just because he has a cool name, Bubba - My Westwood bet was a lock EW and I made a small profit so was a nice day :)

He isn't a big guy, but fuck me he can't half hit the ball hard lol

Poker continues to go poorly. I'm reaching the point with online poker where it's becoming a bit of a disillusionment for me, when I play I feel like I'm playing well, when people sweat me playing they tell me I'm playing well, when I show people hands they often say that the hand was well played, so why is it I am consistently losing? I've been searching for leaks now and I've found a couple of things but changing them has influenced the results un-noticeably. I'm really really stuck for idea's, I guess just continue to play and see what happens is the best answer but I results have been so bad I'm not sure morale can take much more, Tuesday's session had me so tilted that I decided I was going to punt the UKIPT off, despite there being £250k for first. I'm just not sure what to do, and this upsets me slightly. Since returning from vegas I've gone 1/12 winning sessions and the winning session I did have was $230. I always get winning and end up losing it back, so perhaps I'm playing too long a sessions? Who knows!

Even the worst poker players win sometimes, this is the beauty of the game, so the fact I win NEVER is really disheartening for someone claiming to be a professional! The green sign is looming!

I think postman would suit me, what a lovely peaceful job, you wake up, drive around, deliver some letters say how-do to the locals, pop into the local store on your way home to pick up some cat food and boot polish and off home for a relaxing day! Sounds wonderful, Postman lilDave!

I bet this guy doesn't spend 3 hours on a Tuesday evening wondering if his VPIP is too high from early position, or if he's 3betitng too much from the blinds....

Morale, however, continues to be acceptable - had shaky moments this last week as I've found myself not enjoying my poker. Poker is, for me, the most fun thing I do regularly, which Is why I'm such a vocal exponent of the game being played in a good-spirited way because for me who plays the game every day, I LOVE to play poker. I'm not one of these guys who wants people to get into the game so they can lose money and keep the pro community eating well, I don't really give a fuck about the "pro-community" I care about the game and the people playing it, everyone who plays the game the way it should be played is helping poker, and everyone who doesn't is damaging it. I'll tell you what i witnessed online the other day as a good example of this...

I've said before tthat internet poker is in big trouble, and it's the regs who are ruining it, plain and simple. The other day I was playing online when I noticed higher stakes games filling up - on iPoker where nearly everyone is SHAMEFULLY nitty and bumhunts likes crazy this can mean only one thing, there is a perceived "weaker player" around. The guy in question was someone I recognized, I know his tendencies pretty well and the games that were starting looked good so i jumped on the list. I eventually got a seat (10.20) and very quickly lost two $1k stacks to this player, which is ofc a bit tilting but I'm reasonably happy to lose in these games as they tend to come with quite a lot of variance.

Having run a $1k stack up to $6k the player decides to quit (which is completely fine) I'm stuck, playing with a couple of regs who I would certainly fancy my chances vs and obviously well up for continuing. However this is iPoker where everyone is scared to play anyone who is remotely clued up, so ofc, the game breaks before the guy has been away from the table for 3 hands. These regs, the ones who quit like this will be the same guys complaining that there are never any games on iPoker - the reason there are never any games is because you guys break them up the minute they get slightly tough. If we play 3 handed for 15 minutes you never know who might come along and join. But no, far, far too scared.

The story about this day however gets worse, the player decides his spin was good enough at 10.20 he's off to 50/100, the same group of nitty regs soon fill the table and sure enough the guy spins up his 3k to ~$11k before heading to 100/200! The game breaks the minute he leaves and fills the minute he sits. He soon loses his $4k stack and it's back to 50/100, same thing. The first $3k buyin he busto's at 50/100 everyone snap sits out waiting for him to reload? I mean this is just fucking disgraceful, to have this much dis-respect for your opponent in a poker game is frankly shameful, a few orbits later I even saw one player (having to really stop myself just naming and shaming here) whilst the player was sitting out, tank down on posting his big blind! This is just the most horrible behavior possible and this is what's killing online poker.

How do these guys wake up, look themselves in the mirror and call themselves professional poker players? I'd be completely embarrassed if i were them acting like this. If you're reading, you'll know who you are and take it from me, you're NOT a poker player or a gambler, you're a disgrace to my industry. An industry that so many people try their hardest to make warm, welcoming and friendly - not so we can all make money, but so that everyone can enjoy the game for what it is, A GAME. Money will come as a bi-product for the better players but if it's all about the money then you don't love the game, you USE the game and you don't have a future in gambling, In My Opinion.

I know it's such a hard thing to change because the people who try to change this last will make more money which is unfair, but trust me, everyone IT'S worth it in the long run. I've always been happy to play vs just about anyone because I don't believe anyone has a huge edge of me in my games. Lets take HU PLO vs Ivey, who is prolly the best in the world- we play $5/$10 HU, how much of an edge does he really have? Bearing in mind I've played 250,000 hands of HU PLO? Maybe he's winning 1-1.5bb's per hour from me? That's fuck all and with that kind of edge I could easily beat him over a 20-30,000 hand sample, so if I'm willing to play Ivey HU should he ever sit me 5/10 or below, why the fuck is no-one on iPoker prepared to play tough 3handed games for 20minutes?

Simple, they want someone else, like me, to start the games and when they get "soft enough" jump in and profit. It won't take a genius to realise why ipoker games are struggling so much.

Basically, what I'm saying it - online players -

I would like to take this time to point out that throughout my online career I have bumped into a few people who have been willing to start games and play heads-up 3handed to keep games running - props to those guys!

So that's my online poker rant out of the way, I've developed a lot of passion for poker during my involvement in the gambling industry. It's really upsets me how as an industry as a whole there is so much negative stigma attached to it. Poker is an amazing game, and it should be enjoyed worldwide by people gambling for what they can afford to gamble with. We don't breed addicts or skin people, we should, as professional gamblers be instrumental in making poker and gambling MORE fun, not trying to suck it dry.

I'm going to keep banging this message through until either EVERYONE listens to me, or NO-ONE listen's to me!

The other day I went for dinner. Not too much of a massive surprise I guess, I go for dinner quite a bit, however this dinner was different, THIS DINNER was about just dinner, no getting drunk, no behaving rowdily and NO night out. I had a lovely dinner with Sophie at Loch Fyne where I decided to get my balla side out and flick the lobster out :D was so good, SO GOOD! Met guy for a quick catch up and headed to the bowling alley to meet Tommy/Rob/Jake/Pez and JP for a little bowling and one more drink. Obviously though as stated previously NO GOING OUT, NO GETTING DRUNK...

...Fast forward about 6.5 hours andd we're ordering bottle of GreyGoose #2 in the silks VIP area and the night has turned into a complete trainwreck! I'm out of the game I spend the next 4 days in a daze betting darts and golf and drinking cider in the dark listening to Katy Perry! You see how easily this stuff can degenerate, I WAS LITERALLY JUST GOING OUT FOR DINNER FFS!

I'm out of control.

I've been umming and arring for a while now over buying a new shower. The shower I want is one of these...

I've found one that can be re-attached to my existing showerhead but I'm in too minds, it looks amazing how it just pours water onto you, and they have them in the encore spa but how do they work practically for showering? MMM Will have to tank on this for a bit, anyone have one? Advice would be great, would be raging to get it installed only to find that it's actually shit and I want my old shower back!

Got lots of sweats of %'s in the UKIPT, hopefully everyone plays better than I did. I couldn't really have played worse if I tried was a dreadful showing, I was tilted before it started and got way more tilted as I went on. Dan, a nice guy from blonde bluffed me in a pot just before the first break and as soon as I got back fro that break I was determined I wasn't going to win. My table was really really slow as well but that's not too tilting, I guess I just need to be less of a moron for the next time I play.

Oh well, onwards and upwards we go! Got lots of excitements going o right now, which will be blogged about in good course! I'm over the moon to be offered a regular collum in UK PokerPlayer, Alun and Keir are great guys and I think the magazine is brilliant, so to be able to contribute regularly is absolutely amazing, hopefully I can bash out some good stuff! My hectic and non-directional writing style is slowly being crafted into something someone might want to read in a magazine. Lets all go and buy a copy of PokerPlayer!!!

I saw this the other day!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9197604/999-mix-up-sees-crews-rush-to-model-train-accident.html

Basically, somehow, and how this happened I have no idea, but a miniature train, which somehow threw 3 of it's passenger off, and the drivers felt that this was cause for a Ambulance to be called, lead to the 999 operator to believe it was a "MILITARY TRAIN" accident, not, in fact a "MINIATURE TRAIN" accident! The result was several ambulances and 2 police squads turning up to assist with giving Phil and Doris a hand getting up and brushing the dust of their polyester cardigans. Thank god!

Apparently we were only steps away from a rescue helicopter being launched!

People really are ridiculous :D

Even more ridiculous is Facebook buying Instagram or $1,000,000,000 - ONE BILLION? Zuckerberg buddy where are you? Have you seen how many zero's that is? Off your lid mate! I potentially have an old showerhead coming available, yours for a cool Milly!

Gl Everyone

lilD

To The Beer Garden!

2012-04-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

#lovingthesun

Yes, after 7 weeks in the desert, I've finally got some sunshine, I can't speak for everywhere but here in Leeds the weather has been truly AMAZING, and in a bid to really make the most of it (talk of rain coming soon) me, and the team, mostly made up of Jake, Perrins, Dan Morgan and two superb loan signings in the shape of JP Kelly and Dave Burn have been lapping it up in beer gardens and terraces all over Leeds! The highlight of the sunshine can on Thursday, a day which I will describe for you now :) ...

So it started at about 1pm, with lunch planned at Restaurant Bar +Grill, as is customary in these situations cocktails were soon flowing, plenty of food and ofc the bill ended up with Dan Morgan, I think he has run the worst of anyone I've ever seen in CCR, me and Dave were speculating that he's likely paid £3 for every £1's worth of food he's eaten! Hopefully he'll have a small upswing in Vegas as it's gotten pretty brutal now, poor Dan! Next step was to the Stew and Oyster for a for cider's over-looking the river, we lost Dan to a hangover and Pez had to head of as he was meeting a GIRL (I know, wtf) so me Dave, JP and Jake went to soak the last of the sunshine in the Original Oak beer garden in Headingly before we took to the lanes for some bowling!

Here's the thing about me and bowling, and the same with everything really, I am legitimately terrible at everything. No, seriously, I'm not being morbid here, I genuinely suck at everything, you name it, any sport, anything physical, anything technical, anything artistic I am completely useless at them all. My skills as personal and intellectual, which means I can think and talk about stuff well, when it comes to actually doing them, I'm seriously horrible. This causes a few issues, firstly, I hate losing (I'm not that competitive either tbh so losing itself doesn't bother me) but I hate not being able to put up a good fight, I'd happily lose EVERY time at bowling if after the game we could all say "wow, that was close at the end, if Dave had just hit a 1/2 strike in the last one it could all have been different." As it happens I'm always way out of the game by the 6th bowl and this is kinda boring.

The other problem with being terrible at everything is that I'm a pro gambler, and nearly all my friends are pro gamblers as well, so naturally we all like to gamble on stuff. So i always lose. This time however, I was given a pretty reasonable handicap, and managed to pull my best ever bowling score (115) out and shipped the best score and the team game in the same game! Then I binked being on Jake's team so shipped another team win and ended up incredibly winning money!

Punting your whole weeks pension against me on PaddyPower not looking like such a clever move now is it? You're just lucky you won't need your heating this week lady...

After bowling we went to Wasabi ( a tepanyaki place for dinner) and as is stnd for these places we ordered way too much food! I love tepanyaki such a fun way to eat and the food is often really really good as well. A nice bottle of wine, some sushi and a really nice Halibut dish (albeit a TAB overcooked as everything can be with this style of restaurant) and another fade in the dinner flip and it's turned into a truly brilliant day! I've been on a sick flip run, I've been looking to get out of the game for a while now, after I lost the Buddahani (or w/e it's called) flip in London for £700 I figured it was a perfect time to bow out, I'm like monster, monster winner lifetime from flipping for stuff so really wanna quit whilst I'm ahead, however I don't wanna hitNrun my mates so I feel obligated to continue to flip for stuff with the boys, since than I've been on a sick run and not paid for anything, so I guess I'm in for foreseeable future! As for big multi-way flips I'm defo out, part of pleasure of flipping is that if you win it's sick cos you eat for free, if you lose you've just bought your mates dinner, which I'd happily do any day of the week. So I'm out of flips if they are big and tilting to lose, or if I wouldn't happily buy everyone at the table dinner.

I guess I should stop being a bitch and moaning considering how good my Natwest Card has run in CCR's, feel like all this whining is going to lead to me buying Sunday Lunch today :)

After dinner, I was pretty tired, and home to bed was on the cards until JP put out a "feeler bet" and suggested a few drinks in town...

I guess honestly I'd rather have not gone out that night, however JP was kinda selling it and as I sipped the rest of my glass of wine and headed to Sky Lounge for a cocktail I was suddenly really really up for it, all it took was the sight of a couple of scantily clad women in Oporto and before I knew where we were, we were on a night out! It was kinda quiet out in Leeds tbh, not THAT many students so we decided that we would head to the ultimate chavvy hotspot, Space! I used to go to Space all the time when I was younger, it's a kind of scummy basement club in Leeds, which plays extremely heavy techno music, has uni-sex toilets (I know :S) and has a loose door policy making it a hotspot for drugs and underage girls....

Me and JP, both easily the two oldest people in there lol decided it was time to dominate and went completely BERSERK on the dance floor! We drank quite a bit, gave a few 18yr old girls a couple of minutes to shine then took our business to Matt's club for a nightcap before heading home at the respectable time of 5am. All in all, a great day out!

As far as poker has gone lately, it's been pretty swingy - I've been taking a few punts on stars on the 50bb HU tables and have had two guys try go off for decent money vs me (starting at 3/6 and trying to martingale out) but the big they've both won big 40/60's which took the momentum away from me and the steam away from them, I ended up small winner vs both, still stuck about $10k since my return from Vegas. I'm actually kind of frustrated right now, it's been like this for 16 months now, I just can't get any momentum online, I'm chunks and chunks under EV but my timing is really off, in big live games it's the same, the big moment where I need some luck comes and the compound affect of that will be massive, and it goes against me. I've had some good luck in Vegas I guess so I can't complain too much, and luckily I've gotten enough of a grind in at the lower stakes that I can keep my head above water. Maybe a little run good at the right time in the summer will be on the cards and I feel like I could book a seriously good 7 weeks if I get it. We'll see!!

I went for a few beers with Steve Bolton the other day, Steve's been a good friend for ages (I met him through the Nuts Poker Club back in the olden days) he's always a great laugh and has so many hilarious stories there aren't many better beer garden partners! He's currently working with a company called Carrot Juice, specializing in brand creation, marketing, and business development. I worked with this company when I did possibly my best ever piece of work 2.5 years ago. Me and Graham (my initial "mentor" in the business world) set about revamping a restaurant in Whitby, we took a 80-seater "cafe" style place on the Kyber Pass over-looking the sea and turned it into a restaurant that could rival Magpie and Trenchers, whats more we did it in about 5 months! Working with Nick (Carrot Juice himself) we completely transformed the place...(taken from their website http://www.carrotjuicecreative.com/ )

I think the work I did with this place (albeit less than 6months) was the best thing I've ever done, hopefully it won't be for long! If anyone has ANY branding/creative/development needs I hugely recommend checking these guys out, they are seriously good! Just don't waste too much time trying to get into Nick Lock's head, scary, scary things must go on in there, like leopard's playing chess with teapot's and seagull's doing backstroke in pools of Chablis.

Hopefully I'll get him on board for a few little plans I have of my own..watch this space...

So morale remains high, poker volume remains low, the sun continues to shine and optimism is growing! Looking forward to another sunny lunchtime in the centre of Leeds, a nice Sunday Lunch, then I might give a few tournaments a spin this evening. Been a while since I played a tournament on the internet and with Jamie, Jake, JP and Pez all on hand to help should i play any hands whatsoever I'm feeling I might even get a shot at winning some money!

Argh! Money, I remember winning money, was always particularly fun if I can recall correctly!

Let's go!

GL Everyone!

lilD

I'm Back!

2012-03-27T01:08:00.002-07:00

There's No Place Like Home!

So, after the best part of 7 weeks away from my beloved hometown, I finally got back yesterday - I actually got back into the UK early Wednesday morning, but not too much in the mood to travel another 3 hours from Gatwick I stopped in and caught up with Tom Mac, Godders and JP. Don't get to see too much of these guys, Tom Mac in particular as I used to see a LOT of him back before he moved to London so was great to catch up. Was also really cool after so long away to be able to spend some time with my friends. Planned on staying one night but morale was good and I was having fun so I elected to stick around a few more days, had a great time, also managed to catch up with Moorman, Toby, Craig, Sammy G and Mitchell which was amazing also. A great end to a good trip!

So, Vegas. I guess it's no secret if you read the blog that things went badly this time around. On my previous Vegas trips I've defo played very well, but had some pretty crucial things go my way. Last summer I started WOEFULLY, and was actually venreable to go off for a big chunk then giving how fragile my mentality was, luckily I ran VERY VERY well at the end of the trip and that gave me confidence and momentum and I motored on to finish up for the trip, whixch was great. Last winter, I started very well, I played exceptionally good all trip, got plenty of volume in at 10/20 and ran pretty good when I played higher, hard to book a nice win in those conditions.

This time however, everything went against me. The first 2.5 weeks were plagued from the offset, firstly, some huge tilt with the wire over there left with low on funds which is always tilting, and has a bad affect on your ability to select which games you wanna play. If I was going to play X game only, I'd stay in England, the main advantage of Vegas is, that whatever time of day, you have the option of various games to play. Taking this away for whatever reason means the EV of you being out there (at reasonable expense) drops. Then the main run bad came i the form of getting really ill in week one, and it taking the best part of 10 days to recover, this prolly lead to slightly >100% performance in the big games out in L.A and it had a big affect on Morale.

The main reason I lost though was because I won small-decent at 10/20 and lost heavies at 50/100, irrespective of anything else, this will result in you doing your nuts and over what are relatively small samples whoever you are, it could easily happen. I genuinely think the middle part of this trip was some of the best poker I've ever played, confident, assured, focused and was REALLY "In The Zone." Dissapointed to lose? Yh, of course, but it is what it is, poker is gambling and I've sat and played a poker game in my life I'm not prepared to lose in. There will be next time, and as Gigolo Brace told me, I'm gonna be the fucking king!

See you in the Summer VEGAS!

My first night back in Leeds me, Pez, Jp, Jake, Rob, Tommy and Joe assembled a truly first rate night out team and hit the mean streets of Leeds pretty hard, I can't remember where we even went, but it was a pretty sick night - oh yh I remember going to HiFi now actually and then wildcats for some stripclub banters but aside from that a mixture of a few too many rum and cokes and being kind of sleep deprived has made the whole evening a bit of a blur!

Still was amazing to see all of the team after ad leeds seems to have managed to hold it's awesomeness in my absence! You could tell it was pleased to see me as well, on the train from London I was doing 56 points to Jake and Jp and Chinese before hitting South Yorkshire and going on a sick 70 point upswing to even book a nice lil win :) After freerolling the train tickets as well it was a pretty nice journey home !

Since being back I've jumped straight back into the online grind, playing a bunch of 6max on iPoker, mainly the 2/4 and 3/6 euro table's. I'm a little reticent to play higher iPoker, 5/10 is cool but anything higher is so tilting, the games start and break so erratically that minor run-bads at 10/20 will all but destroy any chance you have of turning a winning month - I know it's not about winning and losing months but it starts to get extremely tedious when every graph shows a nice little upwards grind, followed by vertical drop. I'd much sooner just grind up to 3/6pounds and make a nice little stress-free crust then go through silly online swings. Feels so degenerate losing chunks in your kitchen by yourself lol.

Anyways, having said all this rather ironically my 2/4-3/6 grind has been terrible lol

Feel pretty happy with how I've been playing, been losing a lot of 3bet pots which usually does Mr. Green Line some damage, but actually enjoying it, and looking forward to getting properly back into the spin :) Recently bought HEM2, which has so far crashed more often than it's done anything else. It seems like it has some amazing features but I just cannot get into using any of them, from what I've seen so far it looks as if it is way better for NLHE than PLO. I honestly wish PTR/HEM/PT/Datamining and all these things would just go away and we can all play on our instincts. They are part of the game though, so shall they will and use them we all must if we don't wanna get crushed by some geeky Ukranian kid in his mum's basement who hasn't left the house in 9 weeks.

I seriously question if online poker is even worth the time these days, the regs are ruinging online poker, no-one has any heart, or any gamble any more. I will play near on anyone at any stake Im rolled for, but I am forced to game select because everyone else is game selecting, so I either spend my whole life playing 3handed with 2 guys who are 11 tabling rakeback whores or vs the top 5% of regs. I'm happy to do both, but I have to try make some decent money at some point! What online poker needs if for 25% of the mid-stakes community to go broke! I know I sound like a broken record but in the "Good Old Days" playing midstakes HU on FTP there were only about 10-14 regs and everyone was pretty respectful of each other, and when there was no action we played each other (usually a stake below) but we kept the games running and everyone got better as a result. Tilting, but its a wage and something to do in the day I guess, keeps me away from the big green sign (just about!)

I've been in a great routine since I got back of getting up early, between 9 and 10am! I'm loving it as well, you feel so productive! Yesterday, I got up at 9.20, had some breakfast and headed over to Osset to see my shop for the first time I got back. It's going splendidly well since the re-fit and it look's great (will post some pictures of my new kitchen shortly!) so that's a nice relief for me. I then had a meeting with my bank manager who I chatted away with for a 15minutes before he said ....

"David, how the hell are you not bankrupt?"

I'd really rather not breach this topic lol - we're going to attribute it to my tenacity and leave it at that.

Been looking at a new business venture recently, would be a VERY gutsy move by myself, would require a pretty ambitious "all-in" of my Net-Worth, however if it turns out to be as exciting as it looks (still in very early stages) then it'll be worth the risk tenfold! Also have a few other IRL things in the pipeline right now which is exciting, it's almost a shame Vegas is so close (although Vegas being close is NEVER a shame) because I'm going to be so busy! I'm actually loving getting a few teeth into the real world right now, makes a nice change of pace and when it comes to crunching deals out I'm in my element! I JUST LOVE THE DEAL :D

For all of you desperate to hear my thoughts on 9-handed PLO then you're in luck! Next month's pokerplayer will feature a nice little article by myself on adapting from 6-max to Full Ring PLO, I know, sounds fascinating right! Apparently people will be camping outside WHSmith's from 5am to make sure they get themselves a copy, and who can blame them!! I been doing a bit of work with PokerPlayer recently and I'm loving it. They are a great team of guys there, flexible, hard working and friendly - hopefully get to work more with them in the future!

Jake on the front of a magazine? Surely not :D

I guess the immediate plan will be to get some volume in online, a few nice little private games to donk some money off in and trying to cram all my real life stuff into the 7 weeks I have left before I head back to the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegggggggas! I quite like it out there, if you didn't know!

Everyone of my friends is going on this ridiculous health drive, people wanna eat healthier which just boggles my mind, why would you not just eat nice things? Well as everyone has turned into a monster food nit I'm taking this oppurtunity to join them, not because I want to but because everyone is telling me I should and as I have no-one to go to dinner with I guess I may as well. So I've bought a bunch of salad stuff, some nice dressings and no sweets/chocolate or anything (not that I ate too much of that anyways) Moorman was telling me that I need to eat less bread? BREAD? How can bread possibly be bad for you? Then Nicky pops up on twitter to tell me that bread is bad at night? I mean who are these people, and what the fuck do any of them eat? I'm tilted just writing it, and after I publish this I'll be off to make myself some breakfast which I'm pretty sure wouldn't satisfy your average sparrow. I have a pack of English Muffins as well but I had one yesterday so I can't have one today.

I'm a free man, no responsibilities, no ties, privileged to be able to go where I want when I want yet here I am, at my desk 12 feet away from a pack of English Muffins but I'm not allowed to eat one because I had one yesterday? Pretty sure this is how Nazi Germany started, mis-guided oppression, I mean what's going to happen if I eat an English Muffin today? I'll tell you what, NOTHING, NOTHING! Nothing except i'll be way happier than i'm will be after I've eaten this bowl of rat-food everyone is telling me will make me live till I'm 80. What will I do when I'm 80? I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll spend every morning sat in a nursing home eating English Muffins that's what I'll do!

This means no Egg's Benedict's either :( but luckily they are budget anywhere but Vegas so I can live with that - DTD actually used to do a SICK Egg's Benedict, cant fathom why they would take that off the menu, Rob Yong? You reading this? GET THE EGG's BENEDICT BACK ON THE MENU!!!!!

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Whilst we're on the topic of DTD, I simply HAVE to plug the Nottingham leg of the UKIPT. I know Rob has spoken in the past about his dream to host to a tourney with a £1,000,000 prize pool! It's a great ambition, and one I've never doubted he'd achieve, however I never pictured him attempted it in a 700 event! I also didn't think he'd GUARENTEE it for a million, ONE MILLION! To put this into perspective, Rob has dug 1 million pounds out of his own pocket and put it up to guarantee a 700 tournament! It's a phenomenally ballsy move and one major piece of credit I will give DTD is that they always put their money where their mouth is. Lots of people could say "I'd love to host a tourney with a 1m prizepool" but few would actually force it to happen!

Will they do it? Who knows, I'm confident they will get close, I will be supporting it and I urge everyone to do the same, this tournament is fantastic for UK poker and an amazing opportunity to bring good structures and big prize-pools to people for affordable buyins. Lets be honest as well, if you enjoy playing tournament poker, why wouldn't you play? We're looking at a top prize of around 200,000! Sats available on the DTD online site starting at under a tenner, and ofc great value sats running nearly all the time on PokerStars. Let's get behind this, support Rob, Simon and the guys and with any luck we'l have tournaments like this running twice a year, and that would be fantastic!

If I win, I'll be lifetime winner at DTD! Pretty sure this is one of the only tournaments they host where this is possible!

That's about all from me guys! Congrats to Paul "Pab" Foltyn on his new deal with Bet24, defo one of the best, most under-rated and nicest players in the UK - needs a bracelet this year IMO :)

GL Everyone

lilD

Wise Words From Gigolo Brace...

2012-03-20T04:09:00.001-07:00

"Whatever You Do In You're Life,

Just Make Sure You're The Fucking King at it!

The other night, well last night actually, so much happens over here and my sleeping is so bad that I've lost complete perspective of what happened when, what day it is and for the most part what time it is, Justin brought a new partner in crime out for a night out, in the shape of Gigolo Brace! The star of a US reality show called "Gigolo's", the concept of which follows 5 Vegas Gigolo's, the best in the business, throughout there lives as working escorts in LV. If you've never seen the show it's fricking hilarious, I've watched every episode today, and Brace told me that they will be filming a series 3! So sick. Anyway, he kinda comes across initially (to someone like me anyway) as a bit of a ego-driven reality moron, the type of person these American reality shows breed, where there are put in a completely unique, false reality where they thrive, but because nothing else around them is like that, they can't possibly function reaosnably in regular life... (Jersey Shore cast would be a pretty good example, Big Brother another one!)

However, this was a bit harsh on Brace, despite his spine chilling over confidence, in particular with women, that always makes conservative brits like instinctively suspicious and skeptical over their character, I actually grew a pretty rapid liking to the man, once I'd had a few little chats to him I found myself genuinely enjoying his company! As he got drunker as well, he got way more hilarious with funny stories (almost all regarding sex) I think this goes to prove my theory of open-mindedness towards new people - because I love new experiences I meet loads of new and different people, and my ability to welcome all sorts of crazy characters and experiences into my life has gotten me to know some great, great, completely different people!

I think the standard people have is the prime time to make friends is at school, then as you get a little older it's much harder to make friends as you grow a little less dependent on big groups of friends, coupled with the fact that you find yourself in less situations to make new friends. Oppurtunity and desire for new relationships made a little and solid lifelong friendships have already been established. This is kind of the opposite for me, when I was at school I kinda didn't really have any friends - this isn't actually true, speshly towards the end of my school days, I think there were loads of people who happily say that I was their friend and they liked me, but they weren't really friendships. I guess I always felt a little bit like I didn't anything to offer to anyone, I was bad at sport, looked really young, bad with girls, not the best looking, didnt have any money, wasn't "good" at anything. My default to this was to spend as little time as possible and avoid scrutiny.

As I got a little older and started to mature, I was kinda gutted because I realised I had prolly lost the best oppurtunity to meet new people at school by being late to develop to an "adult" Luckily for me at this point in my life I'd narrowed my school friends down to about two people (who remain fantastic mates to this day) and was forging friendships with Jamie and Ash, and we've grown up and taken the same "journey" to this point together and as I got into poker I realised I actually had a platform to meet new people and make new friends 20x that of school, and I've been lucky to meet some amazing guys who really have become great, great friends. for the first time ever I had an actual "Group" of friends - something I thought I wouldn't ever have. Some of the guys I call my best mates now I have absolute faith I'll still consider ourselves the best of friends the day i die.

SO I decided I was going to go out, and meet everyone I could, and enjoy having some value to offer new people, I've made a ton of new friends in loads of different places, and even just had some crazy nights out with people I don't even know! Grab every opportunity you can, and really go for it and you have no idea what someone can offer you until you've accepted it!

Enough babbling for me on this! Here is me with my new best mate, Gigolo Brace! Check his show out, it's genuinely comic viewing, although the amount of people that are happy to appear on film hiring a male escort, and then allow the actual sex to be filmed and aired on national television is shocking to me! But then, hey ho this is Vegas Bitches!

Sporting my usual "Sober" look for Vegas - sipping one too many of the Brace signature drink "Patron and Pineapple"

So, my friend Sophie often tells me about her spiritual beliefs, she's super into this kind of stuff and swears but some of the "Psychic" readings she has had in the past, and always tells me I should try it...

...Quick comedy story, my Mum apparently went for a Psychic reading when she was in her early thirties (before she met my Dad) she was told, she would meet a handsome Scottish man, whilst she was doing something she loved, and he would make an instant impression. She then went onto say that within 2 or 3 years she'd be married and starting a family with him. About 9 months later she is at a horse show of some sorts (she has always been EXTREMELY into horse riding, and used to compete at an extremely high level) when she met Dad (Who is Scottish btw), the way Dad tells the story of the time they met was he was so awestruck by her beauty that he dropped his coffee on the floor and caused a moderate scene! If this is how it went down then it's a lovely story, the skeptics amoungst us will most like think the chances are he just dropped his coffee! Dad refers to the moment as being "Twittipated" In reference to the Disney film Bambi, when during spring all the animals become completely useless, running into stuff and dropping things because they are so in love with there partners, I have ofc since grown up to learn this IS NOT accurately what happens to animals in spring time, but to avoid any un-wanted mental images we'll stick with it!

So within a year they are planning to marry and Mum is pregnant with me (all very close, but hey I'm no priest - no judgements here!) so far the Psychic's predictions have been starltlingly accurate, the final prediction was, that the child would be a girl. Both Mum and Dad were so adamently confident in this women's mystic power's that they refused the medical advice on my gender and went out and bought a whole host of baby girls clothes, kitted my room out with My Little Pony curtains and flowerly wallpaper. The great day (July 10th) arrived and they were shocked to see that I was in fact, a boy, and have remained one even till this day! My Mum has always been an extremely resourceful women, and never one to endure any sort of waste, I was displayed proudly in my girls clothes for the first few weeks, the My Little Pony curtains finally got replaced by moby dick (much more manly) when I was about 10, and the flowery wallpaper remains there as I type! And you all wonder why it took me 18 years to get laid!...

One thing I will say, the ORIGINAL My Little Pony logo (the one I had on my curtains) was much nicer

See What I mean, miles nicer, not the worst thing to have on your curtains? I remember they had this all over and then little pony's randomly dotted about, I also remember being terrified on one of the images in the corner and was so scared my dad had to buy a nightlight to go next to it!

Anyway's this has become something of an outrageous sidetrack even by standards, we were yapping on about my friend Sophie and her trying to convince me to go to a Psychic. I has said yes but mostly to keep her happy, then today I woke up randomly having had a dream that me and her went to a Psychic together (I know it's so devastating when you have a dream involving your female friends and it's NOT a sex dream sigh) so I though you know what, I pride myself on having an open mind for nearly everything, so I should go see a Psychic. I don't really believe in this stuff, I'm a creature of logic, I like to analyse the evidence and the facts and make rational decisions, so I can't bring myself to believe in God, spirits, ghosts or any of this stuff - however I'm not a jerk, I realise that so many people do believe, and I think with this stuff as well, it isn't what's right and wrong, it's what satisfies you - what fulfills your soul and makes you happy. If believing in God makes you a happier and better person then surely god does exist for you.

So off I go, open minded and ready to hear about my future. The women, Claire, was about 45 years old, had a very soft voice and an incredibly comfortable ora, I felt instantly that she was a nice person. She started by reading my palm and commented firstly on how long my lifeline was, indicating she expects me to lie well into my 80's! She did not tho that there was a break in my lifeline, which sounds like a minor concern! I'm going to have three children and be a great Dad! She said there were two women in my life, and they are both going to play a big part, one is a calm influence and one is a wild influence, she said I might not have met them both, but the calm one is the women i'll be with forever and the wild one is just for fun - and I need to enjoy her before I settle down, as these will prolly be the only two women I'm intimate with the rest of my life!

She looked at my palm and said "You're a very bad driver, there is a problem with you and cars - you need to be so careful" Hilarious, as I am actually a terrible driver, and only just released from another ban, 15 points, 1 write off and 2 bans leads some decent credibility to here "powers" there!

She said I was a likable person, and people who don't know me are always interested in me - then hilariously she told me I was involved in RISK, and I love it, but it causes me lots of conflict! I then told her about poker and she instantly said "Oh! You've been losing a lot lately, haven't you?" She then delivered some great news! She says she see's money and success in my future, that I'm going to get it sooner rather than later (HI DERR WORLD SERIES OF POKER 2012!) Apparently poker is not going to be my forte, that she see's success for me elsewhere!

She said I had a huge emotional unbalance, and a negative spirit around me, I won't be happy in myself until I've faced and dealt with the negativity around me, she said she thinks it comes from frustration and anger and that it was blocking the angelic spirits from helping me! Her final deliverance was that she saw danger for me this December!

So, I'm a likable, dangerous driver, only gonna sleep with 2 more women before I die at 80, destined for success and family, if only I can survive this December!

Am I still skeptical about psychic's? Yes, defo, but whereas I didn't really believe in the process she was using (the tarrot cards + such) I really didn't feel like she was lying, I though she was telling me the truth, that she really did see and feel the things she was saying, ofc she could just be a great hustler, but could someone trained to be intuitive and connected to people's subconscious pick things up from me I don't myself know and make educated predictions based on my feelings? Sure, why not? If advice she gives me leads me to make positive and better decisions in my future, then it'll be $75 well spent! All in all I'm going to say it was a very good experience, I would recommend!

Poker continues to be completely frustrating, I'm sure you know by now I'm not one to moan too much about coolers and bad beats - I give em out and receive them in equal measure and would rather spend my limited stock of brain power trying to concentrate on more complicated decisions than how I played my second set on AK7dd in a 3bet pot. However, this trip has been ridic brutal, I've played 8 pots $40k+ and lost all of them, included in these are 2 flush>flush and set>set hands, AAJJsingle vs AAT3 aipf, thats ~$350,000 in pots right there, which makes a huge dent in profit. I actually feel like I've played better this trip than last time, but the problems have been that a) I've been playing more bigger games which = less 10/20 hours - I won $45k at 10/20 last trip, with decent volume, and that makes such a difference, slip a bit of run good in the bigger games and you've gotten a great trip, that easy! Less 10/20 volume means I couldn't iron out the variance that the high stakes bring, also I played a lot less (again same thing) due to not having funds for a few days, food poisoning, playing more tourneys, and me taking a 5-6 day break to restore morale! All this really has made for a terrible trip pokerwise. This being said, I'm having a truly great time over here, man i've been staying in the best hotel, been eating the best food, partying in the best clubs - anyone who cant enjoy himself regardless of other circumstances needs to get the fuck out of Vegas, this is not for you!

I'm trying to write a PLO article for PP atm, but struggling so hard for inspiration, I write one on betsizing, deleted it by mistake, re-did it and abso hated it. I really wanna write well as I wanna make a great impression but don't wanna get a shit article, think I might do "Adapting to 9handed PLO for live games" or something like that. We'll see!

The internet was buzzing today, TULISA SEX TAPE! Wowza, I swiftly drop everything I'm doing and get searching for it, I found it, I watched it and I have to say I'm so disappointed in her.

I mean, WTF - not even naked, for like even a minute, you call this a sex tape? Even Paris Hilton (who looks about as sexually engaging in that video as a cricket pitch) manages to keep the fans watching with a little peek of the good stuff! She's just giving some guy, whose penis was an alarming shade of purple, what's looks like a fairly lacklustre and dis-interested blowjob. To be quite honest, this isn't even remotely porn, I mean lets be honest which would you rather look at?

You wanna get freaky with yourself looking at Tulisa, you can have a hazy picture of her looking bored with a purple bellend slapping her face, or just google image search her and find some charming shots with plenty of cleverage!

My advice to Tulisa would be this,

1) If you don't ever want anyone to watch you engaging in sexual activity, then don't allow anyone to film it,

2) Don't waste money on lawyers, just wait three days when everyone will realise it's a terrible video and stop caring,

3) Next time someone offers you 500,000 pounds to air a 6minute video no-one should give a fuck about just take the money as you're 23 and from Camden, we all know you're prolly fucking love it and 500k is a lot of mobnies for releasing something that will NEVER not find its way online eventually,

4) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be naked in your next one, and try be a bit more enthusiastic next time you go down on a guy - you're giving south london slags a bad rep here!

So, that's really all I have going on, been going to the Spa a lot, partying with Matt quite a bit and sweating paying my hotel bill so hard, 23 days into my encore stay could well be GG by the time it comes to pay that!

It's been a somewhat rambly and disjointed blog but I just type as I think! The spike in hits has been amazing, We're approaching 100,000 hits - I'd love to be able to get there by the end of the month, If I do, I'll donate 200 to charity of you guys' suggestion, post in the comments to suggest! I might have to try engineer some hilarious spots for myself, or woe forbid try win a hand of poker if I'm to pop some sick posts out! Might just fufill my lifelong dream of hiring a midget and walk round with him see what kind of hilarity I can muster with him on the team!

Gl Everyone!

lilD

It's All About Making Good Decisions....

2012-03-16T01:42:00.001-07:00

GIVE ME SOME PAIIIIIIIIN!

When you gamble for a ton of money all the time you start to get a bizarre blankness for winning/losing, it's worrying as well, when you lose $20k and don't feel anything for it you worry that's you've basically ruined yourself, what happens when poker goes tits up for me how the fuck am I going to do a regular job when I can lose 3/4 of an average salary for someone my age in 1 hour and not be gutted about it? Same thing when you win, you think, fuck I just won $20,000 and I'm not even that fussed, what the fuck is wrong with me? It's a double edged sword, it makes you way better at card games and way worse at life.

This is one of the reasons I love Vegas so much, Vegas moves my emotions when I'm gambling more than anywhere else, it matters a little more out here because it's so money driven, losing big in Vegas is almost more fun than winning small, you get that deep churning in your stomach you can only get when you lose! I actually like that feeling, it's not a good feeling, but at least your feeling something, you forget how good winning ever was and your mind spirals into a frenzy of panic and regret - sometimes it even damages your breathing - I only had that in Vegas! Winning feels amazing, but not as raw and aggressive of an emotion as losing though, it's more of a relief than anything else. Like I said in loads of blogs before, what separates someone like me from a dangerous degenerate gambling addict? I think it's 100% just run-good and temperament.

So throughout the losing, morale remains high! Although I do worry about my mental well being, feel like I live far far close to the edge to remain healthy for too long !

"We don't stop, until one of us has it all"

So the other day I went into the Bellagio and sat in a 10-20-40 game, how much I buy in to these games for really does just depend, firstly how much money I actually have on me, secondly, who's at the table - if the table is 6 sicko's all playing $20k I'm not going to buy in for $20k, I'm going to play a shorter stack and have a much easier time than everyone else :) If there is a ton of lose action with deep stacks I'll buy in deep and jump into the fun! Today it was short handed and I as going to have position on some Asian man who was sitting with about $40k, so I decided I was in the mood for it and bought in for $25k and was ready to play!

Talk of starting $25/$50 started so I tried to get it going, $25/$50 plays way better than $10/$20/$40 mainly due to the chips I think, using $25 and $100 chips primarily over $20 chips defo makes the game better imo, then the asain man offered to play me HU $100/$200, I said I'd happily play and we thrashed out a deal where we both buy in for $20k and play till one of us is bust.

Now before you think it was some ego filled grudge match it really wasn't, I liked this guy a lot and he was a very nice man, polite, charming and gracious, he likes to play HU and because i'd given him action previously he offered it to me! We had a great game and he was extremely complimentary about my game, he even said that he'd played online vs Isildur HU and was equal to him at heads up NL! Obviously he isn't right but great to be told that anyways :) Was the biggest HU (blinds) I ever played, was a ton of fun! and We ended up breaking even oveer two games but was a great game, he played very well too.

They Wynn classic, a series of poker tournaments held here at the Wynn, culminating in the $5,000 main event. Good structure and a decent field lead me to decide to play it - I prepared in usually good spirits, welcoming Matt to Vegas with a table at the Rhino which lead to an irresponsible 6.30am exit after a few hours in the "VIP ROOM" lol/sigh...

Don't normally blog about this stuff - being a gentleman and all, but this is too big of a brag too miss out lol, when we got back to the Wynn Matt wanted to play poker so I went to my room to get money, I get into the lift and there is a girl in there just as smashed as me, we start a hilarious conversation and then the lift stops at her floor she either ignores it or doesnt notice, then she just randomly follows me back to my hotel room! Bizarre, I love america!

Anyway the Wynn Classic, $5,000 and a dream! THe field was considered "soft" and my friends were telling me how good there tables were. SO it seems fair that the three people to my direct left were, Tom Marchese, Annette, Kyle Julius! So I couldn't open many hands but luckily I was pretty card dead so waited patiently all day bagging up 31,075 (starting stack 30k!) Day two I had the same problem, no hands at all with an arkward stack, was SO SO card dead it was unreal. I waited patiently and eventually got my double up with JJ vs AK, before dribbling some chips back, doubled again with JJ vs AT shortly afterwards then got a miracle hand when the CO opens and I flat 55, flops 7TJdd he checks I check, turn is an offsuit 5! he bets I raise he goes all in I call he has QQ! wiii then I moved to a good table and managed to motor on to finish the day wth a decent stack.

Bust shortly into day3 in 29th place with 21 paid, gutting to miss out yet again and still pretty dissappointed with my exit hand, but thought I defo played great days 1 + 2 and really confident in my tourney game right now, my quest to play 25 this year and have one big cash is looking promising!

I had a very tilting experience after busting, I somehow, and still yet to figure out exactly how I did this managed to drop my iPod down the elevator shaft at the encore, its a tiny, tiny gap and the ipod had to drop at exactly the right angle at exactly the same time to fall down, I honestly think if I was trying to drop it I would do it 1/1000 times. Not wanting to cause damage to the lift I went and told the concierge who told me to wait by the lift for an engineer. Before I sound like a spoilt kid I am well aware this situation is entirely my fault, I think I got horribly unlucky, but ultimately we're here because of my carelessness, I get it.

However, this doesn't detract from the fact that this wait got me so tilted that I must have appeared a complete dick to the maintenance man, there is literally nothing worse than being tilted and being forced to stay in one public place against your will. I was steammmming. My iPod was retrieved but very broken, so I tilt stormed off to buy a new one. My iPod was one of the old skool nano's, it's the only apple product I own, so never had the luxury of all these "apps" and games and things, omg it's AMAZING! I've bought fruit ninja, angry birds, temple run and whale trail and loving it! gg every playing poker in a session ever again! Like a whole new world has opened up to me, all at the cost of $320 and about $18,000 in tournament equity. A small price to pay imo.

The Ashtray Story

Had a kind of bad experience last night, and I'll be honest, whether i dealt with it the right way or not is certainly questionable. I'll let you be the judge...

After playing fruit ninja for 4 hours I went to "Blondies" in PH to play beer-pong, it the excitement of my new toy I quickly realised I'd not eaten all day, and as a result I got very drunk very quickly. The night remains a total blur although I do remember going to Gallery at PHand some extremely tilting stripper being at our table. She kept asking me to buy her drinks, which I did cos I was drunk even though we already had 2 bottles of vodka, then telling me how she doesn't need anyone to pay for cos she has her own money?! At least, I think that's what she said, I honestly don't really remember but I do remember her saying lots of really tilting stuff, anyways Gallery was a nightmare I was so drunk I was prolly a complete liability, shame I got so ridiculously hammered because we had a team of Matt, his friend Justin and my Vegas friend Matt which was a superstar lineup! The night ended up in its standard spot, the rhino, and here, predictably enough, is where it got messy....

I've been in the rhino less than 5 minutes and managed to lose my ID and wallet, sighhhh. I then pay way over the odds to get them back, but got them, so thank god lol. I head out of the club after more drunken nonsensical behavior and now I really am way way way too drunk to be safely out by myself, I get into a taxi and the fucking taxi driver takes me to a massage parlour....

Not saying there aren't times where I'd have been up for this, but this is not one of them, that alarm was going off in my brain telling me that if I encountered danger in the next 20minutes I'd be in no shape to deal with it, so I wanted nothing more than to get the fuck back to my hotel room! I said the driver take me to the encore, he takes me to ANOTHER massage parlour. I get really tilted and say take me to the encore RIGHT NOW, he takes me to yet another massage parlor and this time I get so fucking irate that I started to shout at the women behind the desk. I was shouting at this point to order me another taxi because this one was an idiot, the taxi driver was demanding i pay his fare and the women responded by telling me I couldn't afford her beautiful girls, and I was embarrassed! This flipped me over the edge and I reached into my pocket, took all the notes I had, about $60 and threw them at her demanding she order me a taxi, to which she replied "Why should I?" Whilst telling me to leave. On reflection I don't actually think her behavior was all that bad.

The taxi driver, Rick, was stood in front of the door saying he wouldn't let me leave until I paid him, I was formulating a response which should have been here is $20 now please let me leave, but was a near on lock to be something like "PAY YOU FOR WHAT YOU FUCKING PRICK" when I felt a huge pain in my stomach as the security guard had grabbed my by the stomach to throw me out. The next 25seconds were complete red mist, I'm sure I saw Rick going for me and was certain the security guard was going to hit me, so I grabbed a glass ashtray from the table and threw it on the floor next to Rick. It made a huge smash and Rick was ready to kill me...

I obviously didn't want to hurt anyone, and so very glad I didn't was I was angry, drunk and really pretty scared about the situation so just lashed out to try stop anyone fucking with me, hoping they might think, "yo this dog's throwing ashtrays best leave him alone" or some such ghetto analysis of the situation. If I'd have been thinking a bit clearer, I think I'd have picked a different method, than using my entire stock of ashtrays for one very aggressive, impossible to back up or repeat moment of violence, but anyway that is what I did.

Here is where I run really good, turns out the security guard wasn't coming to hit me, his plan from the offset was to pick me up, and using some part of my body no doubt, to barge through Rick and get me out of his shop. Now that I've lost my head, he grabs me, grabs rick and calms the situation down. what I remember as being 5 seconds but was certainly longer, the police, called by the women, arrive and it's looking grim for lil dave....

PUT THE ASHTRAY DOWN SLOWLY, AND COME OUT WITH YOU'RE HANDS IN THE AIR

Rick is hell bent on getting me fucked here, He tells them i threw an ashtray at him, after refusing to pay my fare, they ask me if it's true, and I try to explain, they just say "Sir, did you throw an ashtray at this gentleman after refusing to pay your fare?" I had to admit that I had done that, as it was near on word for word exactly what I did lol. They gave me the speech and were about to take me away, when in a moment of pure genuine regret I turned to the women and the security guard to apologise for smashing the ashtray when the security guard tells me to report to taxi driver for taking me here against my will. The two police guys then ask what exactly happens and with the help of the security guard I explain the whole thing and they turn to Rick and explain that if he reports this, he will 100% lose his job, and after a minute or two Rick leaves without even collecting the $40 I apparently owe him. The policemen give me a lift to the Encore and I escaped a very dangerous situation with a free taxi ride home!

Unsurpassable amount of run-goods, I have since found out the name of the two police guys and have left them msg's of thanks for their help, without them being nice and reasonable I would have 100% been completely fucked!

Defo a wake up call to watch this type of behavior, it's a dngerous world out there and I'm not to good with self-defence, I'm already thousands of pounds, two finger and severe "life EV" down from stupidity in night out surroundings, I think I need to try be a bit more grown up in the future!

Or Blame Matt entirely for the whole thing!

Yeah, I'm gonna blame Matt....

SO that is all about we have this time! Just your standard day in the life really, $100/$200 heads up no limit, clumsily breaking expensive electronic items, bubbling a tournament and a ridiculous night out scenario....

Really chuffed to me mentioned in this http://spadesocial.com/blog/?p=1781 The "Top 10" blogs to follow! I assume they going in descending order? So I come second yh? wiiiiiiiii thanks so much to those guys at spade social, because of them and the pokerplayer feature "Sin City Kid" - find it in the Media section if you missed it - the blog has been getting a TON of new traffic so thank you so much for that it's really a great feeling to have 16,000 people reading every month :) although I think 12,500 of them might be Jason Herbet sat at home alternating between the fold button and the refresh key :D in the last 30 days I've had 17,100 hits which is amazing! So chuffed!

If you enjoy this blog, I think you'll like this new site Matt my friend from Vegas has just put out!

http://www.anotherkidanotherdream.com/ Whereas I opt for a fast -paced messy style of writing Matt writes really well and clearly and his antics are hilarious as well (plus he even WINS at poker) defo worth a read and the site looks truly brilliant as well.

GL everyone, going to try actually play some poker now! $5/$10 PLO been running at the Wynn and I'm really in the mood to grind a little lower and book a few winning sessions to boost morale

lilD