My convoluted route had me stop by LAX for an overnight which lent well to a visit of the nearby Hollywood Park Casino. It was busy, and the $1/2 game there certainly soft. They have bizarre buyin rules meaning I was only allowed to do off $100 at a time, but fortunately I found a way to do off 3 bullets worth.

I landed in Vegas where I was greeted with their toned down but still incorrect slogan of “What happens in Vegas, only happens in Vegas”. My primary purpose of the trip was attending BetBash (a conference on sports betting) in order to accost people into handing over their accounts in exchange for attempting to make them a small fortune. However, by design, I had arrived a week prior to ensure the appropriate tithe had been paid to the local $1/3 economy.

The first game was at the Venetian – a friendly $1/2 game that quite literally culminated in the closure of the entire poker room forever. As somewhat of a cupcake connoisseur myself I was pretty dismayed by the sugar drowned lump I was given to celebrate such an event, but they did also produce what I presume was Lambrini to wash it down with.

The new poker room at the Venetian, or rather the shopping mall linking the Palazzo and The Venetian is lovely. There are three Caesar’s sports betting kiosks in spitting distance for those wanting to lose at two forms of gambling at once. Sadly for fellow nicotine addicts who need to be within 5ft of a vaping area at all times, the room is useless. So I didn’t play there despite it being genuinely really quite pleasant.

The rest of my $1/3 volume on the Strip came at The Encore where the games seemed to be juicy at all times of the day, there was no pissing rake up the wall with absurd high hand, hand of the hour, bad beat jackpot, or other such nonsense, and the bottled water appeared to not be recycled swimming pool water. The Encore remains one of a handful of venues in my database (of recreational play) where I am winning, that is if I had managed to walk past their restaurants and buffet.

The conference started off with a poker tournament at the Golden Nugget – $200+50 with it being unclear where the rake was going. I immediately got roped into a $500 last longer with a group of fellow hasbeens, fish, and no doubt some sharks. It was fairly irrelevant as I busted un-triumphantly in the early levels. It was a good excuse to mingle around the bar and the tournament was the perfect ice breaker for myself and my team before the effective main event of speed networking the next day.

For those that haven’t done one of these before, you get 6 minutes to talk to 15 people back to back to back. It is extremely intense and taking a notebook would have been a fantastic idea. What essentially happened was I got a general gist for what the person did, and added their phone number if it sounded vaguely useful and if I remembered to ask. The next couple of days were a mixture of seminars (I went to 4 or 5 but found they weren’t targeted at me) and meeting partners old and new.

I managed to fit a few more sessions in at the Golden Nugget in the downtime, including losing my biggest pot in Vegas where I somehow find 250BB each in the middle with 55 on 2346 against 33.

The final event was a black tie dinner and drinks which was great fun – a special shout out to our waitress who had no qualms in exchanging the left over bottles of wine on other tables for $10 and duly enabled myself and chums to go and do their proverbials on the dice table.

Prior to my absurd routing home (LAS-SFO-SEA-CLT-DUB…-EDI) I had the foresight of booking the Mandalay Bay hotel just opposite the airport. The hangover was substantial and I was absolutely delighted at the check in staff offering me up a room at 11am. I had fully intended to play the $300 Encore weekly as a last hurrah but the prospect of negotiating strip traffic on a day where the vice president is in town soon put paid to that and I settled for the $60 daily. My colleague ended up finishing 3rd, I got a good nap in, then won the nightly $100 myself for $1600 [1].

After a bit of a sweat with the first flight being delayed, I did manage to get into Seattle around 5:30pm, perfect for the Sunday nightly at (checks notes) Silver Dollar Casino Renton. It’s a relatively tired room – the staff were very friendly and the regulars too albeit quiet. The Mariners were up 12-1 and no one at all seemed to care, but they did come to life a bit when I jested how good the DJ was when N*Sync came blurring over the tannoy system. I declined paying 5th when the structure paid four, and held out on a heads up chop much to the dismay of the staff and my opponent. I gave in eventually though after he very accurately pointed out how many more chips he had than me and that we could all get on with our lives.

I felt relatively comfortable making the 10pm 0.3 mile walk across to the neighbouring Fortune Poker Room but an additional couple of grand more in my pocket and I may not have risked it. These rooms are quite strange – seemingly in the middle of no where and people had clearly travelled to play. This reflected in the reg-fest I faced at the Fortune $3/5 table where people seemed to be making a good portion of their living from hitting high hand jackpots. I am a bit salty because having refused to straddle I did agree to an orbit of bomb pots – something that seems to have seeped into the modern game as they look for new ways to put robots out of their comfort zone. I did my absolute bollocks on them and lost back all the tournament winnings and more – the two main gems being getting in 95 on J95ss vs J5 and then not getting in JT on 789 before then getting it in on the 8 and A turn against AA and an alleged 77. It’s an interesting game because the maximum bet/raise cap is $300 so by the time the river comes down there’s a lot of betting 25% of pot for $300 despite stacks being considerably deeper.

All said and done I managed to lose in three cities, so I suppose it doesn’t only happen in Vegas after all. A fantastic trip and a shout out to my girlfriend for convincing me to sit by the pool some days, and my colleagues for making the conference considerably more manageable.

If you are a serious sports bettor, get in touch and maybe we can do something together.

[1] What, you thought I was going to blog when I didn’t win?

The post “Only Happens In Vegas” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

Segment breakdowns for Party were a bit hard to dissect having just been taken over by GVC (SportingBet to the layman).

In 2016, NGR from partypoker increased 14% in constant currency. This much improved performance was the result of a change in management, increased investment and a more focused approach.

A pretty remarkable increase and undoubtedly a market share gain from Stars (-4.6%) and perhaps some from 888 too (-2.7%) although I’d suggest the market has likely declined 2-3% just looking at these numbers.

Amaya give pretty nice geographical breakdowns – the Malta/IOM/Other numbers I don’t think are comparable on a LFL basis but looking at UK (-12.1%), France (-8.6%), Spain (-5.0%), and Italy (-4.5%) is useful. In particular Italy where (I don’t think?) 888 or Party compete – Stars have about 50% of the market – seems like a good indicator of where the market is currently headed.

Hello darkness my old friend

Amaya have managed to turn an operational profit this year by way of almost doubling their sports book offering (wow, their cross selling is actually working!) more than compensating for declining poker revenues. Interestingly, Party are doing the exact opposite:

We also took the decision to restructure partycasino and separate the brand from partypoker, repositioning the offering under a new management team.

It’s great to see a competitive market in action – it looks to me a few things are happening in the industry:

Barriers to entry are getting bigger with more regulation

Naturally there has been a fair bit of consolidation in what was a fragmented industry with historically 2-3 big players (perhaps more to come – PokerScout still lists 71 sites internationally)

In the change of management, Amaya have cannibalised their poker offering for the sake of sports book revenues and a variety of quick gains. I make out a blended operational margin expansion of around 7pp (to 25%) backed up by revenue increases – sadly they throw all the expenses into one bucket so hard to get an optic into how poker specifically is doing but there are undoubtedly synergies between the poker and sports so perhaps it is appropriate. Interestingly one could make some argument that the synergies are accretive to earnings and margin.

Party are really ramping up their investment in both their poker and casino offerings. I actually met the old management in Vegas and found them all to be extremely arrogant and it was very apparent they were on the gravy train (this was pre-Black Friday). A buyout and new management seems like a great idea for them to properly catch up (obviously helped by #3).

888 are still on the cross-sell model as well with sports/casino being sold to poker players. Is this just archaic? Or has Party got it wrong and poker can’t survive on its own? FWIW, I tend to side with Party on this: PokerStars ran with no casino, no sportsbook, in an increasingly regulatory environment and presumably did very well from it.

Two very different business models – I look forward to seeing how it plays out and if Party manage to become the number one site they were when I first started playing.

888 Annual Results (21st March 2017)

GVC Annual Results (23rd March 2017)

Amaya Annual Results (22nd March 2017)
The post “March Poker Results – not that kind” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

Before ending up at the University of Warwick in 2009, I did a brief half year stint at Imperial College London. At the freshers fair, David came and played the tournament and after busting ended up playing a bunch of heads up sit and go’s against all comers. I didn’t get to play him but I did get him to pose for a photo with my then favourite hand 97. He thought it was some sort of set up, hence his look of somewhat dismay, but I was absolutely chuffed.

Rup and ElBlondie

I was an early signup to his poker forum Blonde Poker and for the last 11 years have spent more time than I care to think reading and posting on it. I still read it pretty much every single day despite playing less and less poker myself.

Down the years I ended up seeing David on the scene, in particular around the Midlands casinos (Birmingham Broadway and Walsall usually) always in seemingly soft games. I played with him in a few tournaments, even busting him from a couple. I chronicled him owning me in a couple of pots here (lol 2010 poker).

I grind away and get up to 19k before raising AKss UTG at 75/150 to 475, something like 3 callers and i’m first to act. Flop is A23 two tone, I bet 1125 and David Colclough is the only caller on the button. The turn is 4d giving me a flush draw. I think checking and betting are close, I think he might even fold a flop FD if I bet and even hands like AQ AJ he’s not loving so might only continue with two pairs/sets/straights/sometimes FD. He checks behind and river is a 7. Pots about 4k I think and I bet 2825 which is pretty big bet and obv for value. He raises to 5825 and I make a massively spewy call and get shown 85ss. Pretty awful call but nevermind.

The last time I saw David at a tournament was the APT Philippines in Manilla. I’d won some sort of joke package on iPoker which involved me spending $1k to play a $2k tournament. After I busted I jumped in one of the softest $10/20 games I’ve ever played. Across the room in the $25/50 was David surrounded by Phillipino and Chinese business men [1].

Along with Daniel Negreanu, David was my original poker hero from his Bet 365 articles, playing with him the The Hendon Mob League, watching him on Late Night Poker, and of course, Blonde Poker. I have always found him to have time for people, be easy to talk to (albeit often quiet), and pleasant at the table. Rest in peace, David.

[1] Incidentally, this is where I played with Elton Tsang and a month later after winning San Remo I sent him a message offering to stake him. He declined, which is good for him, he just won the €1m one drop for €11m.

The post “David Colclough” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

This is Christmas

Avocado, prawns, and smoked salmon for Christmas brunch

Ham, leeks, and mash

Christmas day pudding, raspberry roulade

Koopa must have sniffed out the cheeseboard

Had a day in Shanghai on my way to Australia – the bullet train wasn’t quite as fast as Japan

Stopped off in Fu He Hui, ranked 76 in the worlds top restaurants. No idea what this is

Or this

Some banana ice cream and mixed fruits dessert

Landed in Melbourne, first port of call is Hunky Dory obvs

My view to welcome in 2016

Taking a phone call in paradise

There are many fish in Australia

Had to climb a wee bit to get this view but my word the Whitsundays are amazing

Another boring sunset

I tried to take a video of this turtle but accidentally didn’t press the button and it had left when I found out. Fortunately did get this snap

The highest point in the Whitsundays. 45 minute 5km hike I think.

Last known sighting of me playing live poker

Australia vs India ODI. Australia won after I left at half time because I was bored

Max very much enjoying the prospect of buying a watermelon

This is Gin and OJ I believe, consumed via syringe. Straight into the veins, of course.

The fountain outside the Melbourne Museum

Andy Murray presumably about to lose

First stop in Sydney was a Korean restaurant. Bibimbap + Mandu <3

Bondi Beach, Sydney

Got invited to Noma, couldn’t say no. Was very very good, but Copenhagen was better.

Went on an epic 15km hike with a couple of friends and it was absolutely worth the leeches and dead legs for this view

Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge

I saw “Beethoven Alive” in the Sydney Opera House. I had a nasty bout of what is colloquially known as the shits, ironically during movement number 2.

After Sydney I went to Agonda in India. This is my view of the beach. Every day there were lads playing cricket of football.

Lit a lantern and watched it float away. I can reveal that my wish has not come true.

Just like Kings Cross on a rainy day

Don’t be a pussy, this seems legit

Grabbing the low hanging fruit in Kochin, India.

Chinese fishing nets in Kochin. There is an absolutely incredible amount of litter.

Some cannon, no significance to me but looks cool and good content filler not that anyone is reading this

Went on a boat for a night and ate these bad boys

There was a street parade for what I can only assume was for my arrival. These elephants they’d manage to tame down nicely with several huge footcuffs and no doubt a bit of heavy beating in their youth.

The post “Photos: Christmas, Whitsundays, Melbourne, Sydney, Agonda, Kochin” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

Anyway, I’m not just here to brag (the boasting is not even mildly related, it was just completely shameless). I’ve been faced with a conundrum lately that Sauce touched on in a video of his WCOOP final table. To illustrate it, here is a hand a friend sent me:

UTG 191k
UTG+1 100k
MP1 139k
MP2 156k
MP3 113k
CO (hero) 275k
BU 161k
SB 123k
BB 349k

The blinds are 3250/6500/800 and the payouts are typical for a site which includes this dumb level (that’s if you don’t get disconnected through the entire level [1].

So hero has AKo and we minraise. In a “Nash equilibrium” [2], here are the BB jamming ranges if hero has these two different opening ranges[3]:
1) Hero opens 100% of hands, BB jams 100% of hands, hero calls 77+ AJs AKo (5.4%)
2) Hero opens 44+ Axs A9o+ K9s+ KJo+ Q9s+ JTs T9s 98s [4] (17.9%), the BB jams 20.3%, JJ+ 88-33 A2s+ AJo+ A5o-A2o K2s+ KQo QJs. Hero calls with QQ+ AKs (2.1%).

The obvious conclusion here is that when we are the big stack, we are going to pummel the second biggest stack at every opportunity and there’s not a lot they can do about it other than fold nearly all the time. The other conclusion is that AKo isn’t a very good hand when ICM is involved against us.

But what about if hero opens, then tells the BB they are going to call with 88+ AJs+ AQo+ even though they know it’s bad because they don’t give a damn about ICM. Well, assuming their threat is credible, the BB can now only jam JJ+ AK (3%) and so we steal the blinds a lot more (or at least get rejammed on a lot less).

So if we play with these guys often, should we make intentionally bad plays (of calling rejams wider than Nash) so that they never mess around with us at future final tables, or should we do something else, like just open jamming our entire range so we don’t have to worry about getting done over by the big stacks? [5]

I don’t know the answer. At the moment it seems like there’s enough bad players about that I can just plod along trying to ladder up at final tables and if I happen to have a big stack then be pretty aggressive. But this sort of meta shit must go down often in SNGs so there must be some conclusion out there. It does seem bad to spend a few hundred final tables spewing equity to the other players just so that in future “no one will push you around”, but it does have the benefit of sending a direct message at the final table you are at that you are willing to get it in lighter than perhaps game theory suggests. Would be interested in comments from everyone! [6]

[1] If the blind level weren’t indication enough of what site I am talking about.

[2] The usage of the inverted commas becomes evident later

[3] Nash rejamming ranges with or without ICM effects are a function of opening ranges

[4] My idea of a reasonable opening range, yes I’m a nit

[5] The Nash jamming range for hero would be 22.8%, 33+ A2s+ ATo+ A5o-A3o K4s+ KTo+ QTs+ QJo JTs, the BB calling range is 3.5%, TT+ AKs AKo – in practice this calling range might be accurate or a fair bit wider

[6] Probably sit out the comments section for this one, mum
The post “The ICM Paradox” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

I was mildly tipsy off the champagne swilled mince pies and decided to call Jonny on Christmas day to arrange a holiday with my copious amounts of airmiles. A couple of hours later and I’d forked over £375 and a lot of airmiles to ship us over first class to Tokyo. A bargain by all accounts and I thoroughly recommend people hoard some form of airmiles even if you aren’t a frequent traveller. Contact me by all the normal means for tips on the best credit cards or just go to Head for Points where they do a good job of outlining the most of it for us Brits.

Oh look, a tree in season!

The Imperial Palace East Gardens in Tokyo were stunning and there was almost no one there.

Another friend, lets call him Jamie, as that’s his name, decided to join us. For those of you that know Jonny, the trip was almost a given to be full of culinary delights and moaning about the lack of English spoken.

We started off in Tokyo and arrived at a rather unsavoury 9:35am. After negotiating our way onto a bus for a meagre £16 each, we eventually got to the hotel ready to embrace the city. After a 4 hour nap. The first night we concentrated on adjusting to the relevant time-zone. The important thing when doing this is to drink as much as possible to ensure the longest nights sleep possible. A thorough tour of Roppongi, including a stop at a lovely piano bar, a frightful place called Geronimos where heroes of the night get a plaque of their name on the wall if they manage to neck 15 unique shots (we decided this wouldn’t be a fruitful challenge), and a brief encounter with a non-local lad trying to entice us into later night entertainment, resulted in a solid 7am wake up after almost a full four hours sleep and ready to crack on with all things Japan.

We liked this place because a Japanese guy sang Piano Man

We are not on this wall

The world famous Tsukiji fish market, which we showed up to drunk at 6am and went straight into the no-entry area. Worth it.

After a bit of day-time strolling, we went to our first restaurant of the trip, A511. So called because it is a steak restaurant, and when you’re in Japan you have Kobe steak. Kobe steak is graded from one to five on quality, and zero to twelve on marbling. So 512 would be the “best” you could get. Which they served, and we had. It was very very good but more on steak later as we did have better. I had the Japanese style menu which was a bit of a convoluted mashup of ways to reduce the quality of the steak at hand.

Just the steak will be fine, thanks.

We headed to the Studio Ghibli museum which I was pretty excited about, but predictably J&J had never heard of. It was somewhat disappointing other than the giant Totoro outside, and was very much directed towards the younger audience. There were some really cool animation things in the first room we went in, but the rest was all about kids jumping on a life-size Catbus structure. We did do the recommended stop off in Inokashira park where myself and Jamie peddled round on somewhat inefficient swans while Jonny tested the ice cream vending machines and inspected the opposite zoo for potential mates.

What a riot

Pictured: Not my neighbour

Top of the Park Hyatt, Tokyo. No Scarlett, sadly.

Our first major sushi experience came from Sushi Mizutani. He is the protégé of the a-lot-more-famous Jiro. Jiro was a) fully booked and seemingly impossible to get into, b) had considerably worse reviews from a number of sources, and c) was said to be about double the price (although we certainly didn’t find that to be the case). The sushi was nothing short of amazing, and the company fantastic too. We were a bit nervous at first, and Jonny voiced his opinion on the lack of menu and not knowing what on Earth we were being served. It was ok though, as the chap (who turned out to be the head of Japan for a large IB) across the counter spoke perfect English and did a lot of translation for us. You know a nights going well when the otherwise t-total Jonny saw off the Japanese Whiskey the gentleman kindly bought for us, and myself and Jamie retired to Hooters for a quiet gin or ten.

The man-giant himself, Mizutani. He wouldn’t let us take snaps of the delicious food he was producing, the wee bugger.

The rain poured down the next day and it was pretty miserable all round. Fortunately I had the foresight to book tickets to Disneyland that day, so we could enjoy thorough misery surrounded by Toy Story characters. Jonny had a pretty good vision of how the day was going to go once we tried to queue for the first ride and left pretty sharpish. Jamie and I were more stubborn, and regrettably only managed to go on two rides all day. Despite the rain, and it being a Tuesday, the park was RAMMED with kids and every single queue was over two hours. The two rides we went on were shit.

Lets all watch a parade of people dressed as Disney characters in the rain for 15 minutes.

A Teppenyaki place called Hama. A huge mis-communication in the order resulted in us doubling the size of both of our order and the bill.

Our first non-sushi non-steak Japanese fine dining experience came at the hands of Koju. This is a three michelin starred restaurant and similar to Mizutani’s was a sit-at-the-counter affair. I thought the food was great, the others not so much, some of the courses were certainly questionable to the Western palette. The chef/owner was a very nice chap though, as well as what I presume was the manager. They answered all our questions about their big knife selection, the chef posed for photos and showed us around the pretty small kitchen, and the manager came out for a drink with us (where I was shocked to learn that he was a) straight b) married c) over 40) to the frankly amazing High Five cocktail bar. One website lists it as number nine in the world, which was unsurprising. It was on the top floor of what seemed like an apartment building, much like a lot of the restaurants and bars. It’s a small building and we met three Yanks who were on some sort of work pissup for AutoCAD. You describe what you like to the bartender (who’s name is escaping me) and he makes you a drink. And it’s always really good.

And this is for fish, and this is for fish, and this is for fish…

This was some X-games thing with some famous Yank. I don’t know how to use my camera.

We headed over to Kobe, because no fine food tour of Japan would feel complete without at least checking out the city. Despite having three times the population of Manchester, by comparison to Tokyo, Kobe felt small. We were booked in for restaurant Aragawa and there was obviously some miscommunication between them and the hotel (who had made our reservation on our behalf) because they weren’t expecting us. Frankly, we thought we were in the wrong place as the décor is pretty awful. The owner must have realised our concerns because he brought out the Michelin guide to show that we were good to go. It became more apparent when the food came out. I had smoked salmon to start which was incredible in itself. But my word, when I ate the steak that came out of this restaurant… Well, look at it.

Could have ordered three. Didn’t. Full of regret.

Next on the tour was Osaka to watch Sumo Wrestling. There was one street we walked down in Osaka that was really cool, loads of giant fish awnings, and tons of people. The sumo was fun, I got some prop bets in with Jonny to ensure a losing trip. It was surprising that it definitely wasn’t a contest of the biggest guy winning, and also surprising to see a Russian guy in full sumo gear. We went to a supposedly nice restaurant (Taian) but it’s not worth writing about.

But can it do it on a rainy day in Stoke

Christ, not in public mate.

Kyoto was the final stop. We went to Kinkaku-ji “Golden” temple, Kiyomizu-dera temple, saw a bunch of geishas and even more kimonos. Maybe it was the trip to the Zen garden, but I found Kyoto super chilled. We had a great night out in a club called WORLD Kyoto where the strict no-dancing law in Japan isn’t upheld to the highest standards (although one enthusiastic Westerner did get called out by the bouncer for having too much fun). The final restaurant we went to was Nakamura. It’s a traditional Japanese tea-house setting (basically a private room) and I thought the food was fantastic. It was a bit less social in that there are no other people around, so I made vague attempts to chat up the lass serving us who claimed to “not be on Facebook”. C’est la vie.

This guy seems to have life pretty figured out.

Some really old (but renovated) structure. And me.

You made this? I made this.

No one would take the freeroll of running across the perfectly raked gravel, much to the non-amusement of the nearby Yanks.

UK Health and Safety would have a field day with the fire regulations here.

They’re everywhere in Kyoto

Presumably checking my Twitter feed.

Making friends.

Then we went to Thailand and sat by the pool for a week. Highlight was seeing my old pal and runner up to David Gorr, James Keys and his offspring.

The post “Konichiwa” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

Due to having a variety of domains as well as being a somewhat early adopter to Gmail, I often get emails that are not intended for me. For example, I have been receiving an Indian companies phone bill for months (they don’t respond), I received some sensitive documents about an engineering company, I received someone’s password for an online travel portal, among a variety of other things. Here is a typical one:

Rog,

Dont mean to get on your back again but with the testing is the any chance you can do it by thursday afternoon just then I can run the copy over on thursday night so that on friday if it has run ok I can crack on with making the currnet redn05 my backup server. We are swapping the disks on the server so you can keep the current ones as a backup for a week or 2 incase any thing f’s up.

Cheers mate

A couple of weeks ago I received an inadvertent email meant for another Rupert who obviously has a similar email address to me. It was an invitation to a 31st birthday party in London, right near where I used to live. I politely pointed out the error, we had some mild back and forth, and presumably my self-deprecating humour and stunning charm got me an actual invitation which I curiously accepted.

I did some mild Facebook vetting to make sure I wasn’t going to die and headed down with a friend last Saturday.

The party was decent albeit certainly at London prices. There were amazing cupcakes on offer from Hummingbird Bakery. The host and all the guests were extremely welcoming and very nice to us and it ended up being a really fun night. I don’t know why this surprises me, because I sort of presumed something crazy would happen where I’d end up in a ditch, but it was just a relatively normal 31st birthday party with a cool bunch of people. The host was extremely nice to us and even cooked brunch for us and a few of her other travelling friends the next day.

So there you go: an honest error and some out of the ordinary spontaneity resulted in making some new friends and having some mildly interesting content for this blog.
The post “Something Strange Happened” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

With varying amounts of discipline I managed to find time to bubble both the £1k re-entry and the £2k side events as well as losing in a couple of others. All in all not a very lucrative trip financially. It was great to catch up with old friends from my university days though who I haven’t seen in a while.

Earlier in November I went to play the “Battle of Malta” which is a €500 re-entry. I played a satellite to it online and won it, but it was a bit presumptuous of me to assume that the majority of the €1500 package would be going to the buyin so I was somewhat disappointed to learn that I had 6 hours of travelling for a €500 tourney. Nevertheless, I managed to fight my way through the 2pm start all the way to 3:20am before deciding to lose a flip. I’m not a huge fan of a) starts later than midday b) finishes later than midnight. So a 2pm start 4am finish was right up my alley.

Malta itself was alright. I’d never been before and it absolutely pissed it down for 3 of the days. So much so, in fact, that as my flight was landing, around 1000ft above the runway the pilots decided to take off again and circle around the island for an hour. Before going to Rome. Marvellous. Fortunately I did make it in that night otherwise the weather could have been more costly than frustrating.

Back home I’ve been participating in two activities: poker and Prismata. The poker has been going fantastically – after much whining to Mickey, and the obligatory (pretending to) “talk strategy”, my results in my minuscule sample of 1200 tournaments have FINALLY turned around and I won the big 162 last week and the 100r on Tuesday to keep the bailiffs away for another month.

Prismata (for those that don’t follow me on Twitter), is a turn-based strategy game where you build armies and try and kill your opponents. One comment described it as “this is basically plants vs zombies PvP” which is a fairly accurate description, although others have drawn parallels to StarCraft/Hearthstone/Chess etc. In short, it’s really addictive, and really fun. I think the developers are doing a great job in ensuring it’s not one of those scammy Candy Crush ®© pay-to-win or grind-to-win type games. When it’s released (it’s in alpha testing) it will be free-to-play with no grind/pay incentives that detract from the quality of the game (purely cosmetic). It’s a model that Valve is employing to great success with DoTa 2/TF2 as well as LoL in the big games category. I really love the game and if you’d like to try it out you can buy an early beta key (as well as other incentives) from the Prismata Kickstarter which launched yesterday. There’s already a decent collection of poker players playing it – Timex is currently #1 in the world, SirWatts #9 (I’m #99 as of writing… Likely a remark on our relative poker abilities too).

Anyway, so that’s what’s going on. Next week I have my grade 1 piano exam and then I’m heading to Prague to play the EUREKA (but not the EPT, conflicts with Christmas jumper pub crawl). After that it’s back home for the festivities before deciding what to do in the New Year. I’ll probably fire out another update before the year ends, but if I can’t be arsed then hope everyone has a great Christmas and a messy New Year!
The post “London/Malta/Poker/Prismata” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

To the point. The article makes some good points and some I disagree with so I’ll go through it.

Statistics show that most folks have never written a will. And even if you’re not a millionaire, it’s totally crazy to walk around without one.

This is completely true. Having witnessed my father deal with the pain of being one of six children and having to sort my grandfathers estate, I made it a priority to sort my will as soon as possible. It’s going to happen eventually, don’t leave people close to you with either a bill for solicitors/lawyers or even worse, nothing at all. It costs about £100-£150 to get it done in the UK and pretty much every high street solicitor can do it in under 30 minutes. So do it!

Almost every country offers 100% tax breaks on money donated to charity. So if your marginal tax rate is something like 35%, then giving to charity is actually 35% better than it otherwise seems to be (before taking this consideration into account).

I didn’t consider this as I fall under the tax bracket for the UK where we have the cushy lifestyle of having gambling be tax free. If you plan to give at some point in your life or death, and tax deductions are applicable to you, then you absolutely should take advantage of this. It effectively means the government donates to the charity as well and it’s hard to beat a matching bonus.

The example you set could easily be worth more than everything you give

To the mass population I’d say this is either inapplicable or has a negligible effect.

Consider what would happen if you backtested the idea of giving to charity 100 years in the future. So you’re transported 100 years into the past but you still want to “raise the quality of living for the most amount of people as much as possible per dollar spent”. What would happen? Should you save all your 1914 money and invest it in a massively clever and prescient scheme to help improve the lives of people living in the distant future of 2014?

If you took this from time dot when charities first started to exist then I would suggest that the amount raised by donating in wills (as long as people followed through – big if and more on that later) would be substantially higher.

Take this example:

• Charity starts at time zero
• People who have capital dependent jobs and want to donate have option between 2% gross earnings a year or 2% net assets at death

As people are dying all the time, to this population, assuming they are sound investors of their own money, I believe the 2% net assets would come out on top. Why? Because their wealth has compounded over their entire lifetime. Compounding 100% of their gross income over 98% with a 2% annuity amounts to a helluva lot more.

Now my assumptions here are broad and assuming perhaps a bit too much rationality that may only exist in Warren Buffet.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to compare modern day 2014 as straight back to 1914 as all those years prior to 1914 people would have been donating (and were).

“Non-profit organizations can have endowments and those endowments can invest in securities just like individuals. So if long term-investment in the stock market were really a superior strategy, the charity you’re intending to give your money to could do the exact same thing. They could tuck all your annual contributions away in a big fat, tax-free fund to earn market returns until they were ready to unleash a massive bundle of money just like you would have. If they aren’t doing this already, it’s probably because the problem they’re trying to solve is compounding faster than the stock market compounds interest. Diseases spread, poverty is passed down, existential risk increases.” – Louie Helm

While this is true, their human capital lies in effective giving, not playing poker or investing in securities. So while they can invest in other securities, I think it would be a poor use of their time to spend several years becoming a winning poker player. Good poker players have a financially valuable skill that can make a lot of money and don’t run in to diminishing returns for quite a while. Good investors probably won’t run into diminishing returns in their lifetime, unless they’re as good as Buffet and made too much money to efficiently invest.

I should make it clear that I think for the vast majority of the population, and even most poker players, I believe it is better to donate now rather than later. But under the circumstances where someone has a) a capital dependent job b) a high return on that capital c) strong growth potential for that capital (little diminishing returns) c) has a credible will then I think later is better than now. Lots of big ifs of course. It would be foolish of me to not recommend donating 2% of your gross winnings to REG, you’re all fish anyway

Thanks for the reply REG and I’ll consider putting you in my will if I ever get around to updating it!

The post “RE: RE: Should I Give Now or Give Later?” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.

[Edit: All my pretty nested lists didn’t work so you’ll have to make do with this ugly layout. Maybe it looks better in some RSS readers. Doubtful.]

As is the easiest way nowadays, I document my life with a series of iPhone photos. Unfortunately this is part of the reason why my blogging has been so lacklustre, because they go immediately on Twitter. [2]

So here’s a summary:

• Went to Copenhagen on a fact finding bubble tea/rice pudding/late January holiday mission
  • + Went to a restaurant called AOC. Very good.
  • + MadHatter Bubble Tea Emporium – Very helpful and friendly lady working there and of course some great bubble tea!
  • + The pub/karaoke bar we spent every day at until 6am. Good craic.
  • – Noma was full and Herman has shut down (!!!).
  • – Cold. Snow everywhere. Shock horror.
• Had a knee operation to remove pins from knee and ankle. The big metal rod remains but I think I’m recovered. Still have some issues around the break point. Also at some point I finally settled the hospital bill for $18k (was originally $73k). There was lots of back and forth between the hospital and was a pretty interesting/enlightening process in the end. Not one I’d particularly like to repeat though.

• Went to the Musselburgh races a few times and won/lost money.

Rahrahrahrah

• Went to Alton Towers including going on The Smiler which is a 2m30s rollercoaster with 14 inversions or something silly. It was very good and we didn’t have to queue at all, but it did take 20 minutes to walk through the queueing area. I can’t imagine waiting two hours to go on it. Nope.

It had its ups and downs.

• TheLipoFund came to visit a couple of times and we hung out and went up Arthurs Seat and drank etc.
• Went to Budapest in June. Had never been before.
  • + Attractive people everywhere
  • + Bumped into MonsterDong by complete chance (Aussie MTT player).
  • + Lots of good drinking.
  • + Did some sight seeing stuff but I can’t really remember what. Funicular was a bit of a buzzword.

Funicular bants. Banticular.

• + Onyx Restaurant. Very good.

Wasn’t Onyx a Pokémon? Are they allowed to call a restaurant that?

Care, they do not.

• + Had a Hello Kitty bubble tea.

Yep.

• – Had some really shitty rice pudding in a place called Sugar! I was really excited for this but unfortunately their rice tasted really funny and the flavours weren’t very good.

Nope.

• – Taxi drivers are mostly scammers (unsurprising). One good one was when we were pretty pissed and it was apparent to them, as we were going around a corner the meter jumped from 500 to 5000. We sarcastically made jokes about the magic button.
• A few summer BBQs and all day drinking affairs in the pub.
• Went to the Highland Show which had lots of animals.

Baa.

Moo.

• Vegas for two weeks.
  • – Five hours on runway followed by cancellation of flight leading to us missing a full day in Vegas.
  • + Texting the lads at 11am enquiring about where to watch whatever football was on that day. Getting a reply saying they are watching it at the Craps table. Going down and finding out they haven’t slept (I went to bed at 3am pretty hammered) and had continued drinking. Amazing scenes.
  • + Getting kicked out of NYNY piano bar.
  • + Getting let back into NYNY piano bar.
  • – Getting kicked out again.

This just about sums up my Vegas experience.

• – Playing tournies all day then busting.
• – Playing main event for four hours then busting.
• – Losing money/general homesickness.
• + Cabanas, Stoneys, Encore piano bar, restaurants, world cup mayhem, USA USA USA

Actually this sums it up better

• – USA losing to Belgium
• Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond. Very decent.

I dunno, some sort of avocado thing? It’s Wishart!

This wasn’t something I thought it was. So I don’t think it’s pork. Can’t remember.

Bloody Wishart.

• Saw this table tennis rally live at Commonwealth Games. Left after first set of English tosser fist pumping after EVERY SINGLE SHOT he won.
• Done lots of sailing. Completed RYA Keelboat levels 1, 2, 3. Ready to take on some bigger boats if I get a chance!
• Went to Max Silver’s stag do just outside of Dublin (and wedding coming up soon!). Had an awesome time, especially at bubble football (and drinking obviously).

It’s harder than it looks. And more cramped. Max has a gagging order on any of the other photos.

• Had a brief jaunt to Swansea for a pissup and visited the third best beach in Europe. The article is a lie. To construct an accurate list, simply go down to the Côte d’Azur, start at Menton and finish at St Tropez. There’s your list. Be careful not to stray too far initially into Italy.

YOU’RE A WIZARD NOW HARRY!

• Missed most of the festival fever in Edinburgh sadly. Had a couple of cracking nights out that made up for it though.

So that’s you up to date. If you made it through that you might want to just follow me on Twitter instead.

[1] Excluding a vague rant/observation about charities

[2] Yet to get my head around the follies of Instagram
The post “This, that, everything in between.” was first posted on Rupert Elder’s Blog.