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So I know I’m a bit slow with this one, because whilst Sky+ is diligently taping tonight’s NFL games for me, I’m still watching last week’s Monday Night Football from the DVD I made to watch on the train. Once I’m actually used to travelling at 7am I’ll probably be able to watch things, but I’m not sure whether that will be before the football season is over or not.
Anyway, I was actually not paying much attention whilst I was playing a fixed limit Hold’em tournament on Empire Poker that I’d started by accident (but actually ended up finishing 20th from over 1300) and ordering myself a new cellphone all at the same time. But somehow I was drawn to this caption which flashed up for all of about half a second.
I’m not sure what information the caption guy hadn’t been bothered to type yet, but the game was effectively over so he could well have gone home early leaving someone else to fill in the gaps. Jacksonville were kneeling on the 1 yard line to run out the clock giving a final score of PIT 0 – 9 JAX. Apparently the first time a Monday Night Football game had ever seen a single figure total score, and only the 5th time in history a defending championship team had failed to score at all.
I know I really wasn’t paying much attention so why do these really quite useless facts stick with me even now?
I am such a big shot!
Four days since my last blog post. If anyone actually read this they might have missed me…
I don’t know the result of the Pittsburgh game yet so please don’t tell me. It’s waiting for me on Sky+ and I’ve seen about half of the first quarter. Nobody has scored yet. However I did get an email from Mansion – as yet unopened – with the subject "Your MANSION NFL Winnings". Which kind of implies that the Steelers nailed it. I’m trying to pretend that it could still go either way. I realy don’t like sportsbooks that send you an email when you win and give the game away, and considering they’re risking $5.5m on this promotion (it was capped at 5000 bets x $1100 refund) they might consider asking their customers in a timezone where the game starts at 2am if they’d actually like to watch the game before they see the result.
I’ve been in London for a couple of days this week. Played Wednesday night at Gutshot (£30 + 1 rebuy) and I got lucky at the right times and made it to the final table and finished 7th for £155. I played this tournament once before and don’t remember it being quite so shooty, but it was a complete gamble. With 25 left it looked like I was one of the top stacks with 24k but blinds of 1k/2k meant this was almost irrelevant. Twelve big blinds was the most I’d had for about 2 hours, and I’d kept up with the pack pretty well. I’d got to that giddy height after raising from the button with QQ. The big blind called and we both checked the AQx flop. He couldn’t resist moving in on the turn with king high to try and push me off my supposed button steal. I lost with JJ against AK, calling all in for 9000 more on top of my big blind of 4000. I thought for a moment about playing chicken, and waiting for two short stacks forced all in before the blinds came round to me again to get eliminated to try to lock in another £50, but did the right thing in the end.
Realised I can’t play the EPT Dublin satellite tomorrow so I’ve taken the W$ and will try again next week, or maybe look at a WCOOP event. We’re going to see some friends who we haven’t seen since before they had their baby. Years ago. Probably turn up and find them with a teenager.
The award for best sports betting promotion ever goes to Mansion, who have set up this little gem for the start of the NFL season.
Place a bet of $1100 on Pittsburgh to beat Miami on Thursday and they will refund your stake if you don’t win.
You can’t bet less than $1100, and if you bet any more the maximum refund is still $1100. And you have to back the Steelers. But if you can bankroll this bet a, it has a huge risk free return. The bet you have to make is a point spread handicap at -110, therefore paying $1000 for the $1100 wager. That’s a free shot at a grand. Or, as I’ve done, you can hedge it (as long as you use a different site) and lock in nearly $500 profit guaranteed!
The point spread was actually zero when I placed the bet, so I backed PIT with $1100 to win $1000 and then hedged betting MIA using their promotional -107 line at CanBet, risking $535 to win $500. Except really there’s no risk:
If PIT win, I win $1000 and lose $535, net profit $465.
If MIA win, I win $500 but do not lose on the other bet.
So I guess I’ll be cheering for Miami on Thursday, to try to win the extra $35. That’s about as much as I’d normally put on a game…!
As if the word (?) spork wasn’t funny enough… this gem is courtesy of Tesco.
After four weeks in the desert you forget just how green England is. And how poor the weather is. Walking along the jetty from the plane you miss the dry heat immediately. It’s not dry, and it’s not hot in Manchester. Typical English summer. But England is home, at least for the time being 🙂
Of course the correct thing to do when returning to England is to go to sleep until it’s late enough to order some good old British food. You know you eat too many takeaways when the local curry house notices you’ve been away, but it’s always kinda nice that someone missed you…
“HSBC’s international network comprises over 9,500 offices in 76 countries and territories across the world”.
However it turns out that nobody actually knows how their online payment processing service works.
Their system uses a local client program to encode the credit card information before it is sent to their payment server. The programs are sent as precompiled binaries, however I could not get the Linux versions to run properly on any of our servers.
Here’s the response to my request for assistance.
“Our system is not tested on Fedora Core version of Linux. So, I am not sure whether it would work or not.
Unfortunately, we do not have any technical contact who can help you with this. ”
So I guess that’s that.
I saw an advert on the tube for an investment company, which included the peculiar phrase:
“A simplified and full prospectus are available on request”.
The phrase sounds so awkward that I have to think that it’s could well be correct, even though it just sounds wrong. Surely someone in the marketing department would have said “hang on, are you sure about that, it doesn’t quite read right” before it went to print, and they would get it checked out. Either they’d use correct grammar even if it’s a bit unusual, or they’re going to word it in such a way that makes it easy to read, even if not quite correct.
Or, behind door three, this could be just a cunning advertising ploy to get their branding to stick in my head. I’ve considered this, and of course it’s worked because I can remember clearly which company’s advert it was. However this is highly cynical, and just a little paranoid, so let’s move on.
I think we can rule out this being one prospectus that is both simple and full. As well as the use of the verb are being mostly what makes it sound clunky, the concept of a prospectus being both of these things makes little sense. It sounds like they have two versions – either you’re smart enough to read the full prospectus, or you’re a fool and just want a quick overview written in words of one syllable (I hope it’s illustrated too) before handing over your money.
So should it be using the word “both” to clarify things? This might help, if they insist on not pluralising prospectus. However it’s an ideal opportunity to use the comedy plural prospecti and that would stick in my head just as much because everyone loves cacti and octopi.
I don’t know. And this is a pretty pointless entry. But it’s still stuck in my head and I had to get out.
Sorry.
First non-poker entry in my blog for, well, almost ever. Because today I actually left the house and, for brief moments, enjoyed the glorious sunshine.
Somehow Claire managed to wake me up and get me to the station in plenty of time for my 7:24 – in the morning – train. I strolled out of Euston station before 9am thanks to a tilting train that only once threatened to spill my coffee, and didn’t. In the brief walk to Euston Square (I actually remembered this time that it was quicker walking a few hundred yards down the road to catch the Circle line than trying to change at Kings Cross) I basked in the glorious sunshine and fresh air. Apparently it’s been summer for a while now. Well, I’d suspected it as I’ve had to open my window a few times lately.
I was working at Gutshot today putting the last few features into their new online poker software. Ended up staying in the office until after 10pm, which at least answered the question of whether I was going to the card club tonight. It seems not. In any case, I’d been advised that Tuesday was “numpty night”. They have a similar amount of respect for their five quid rebuy tournaments to what I do for, well, almost any rebuy tournament.
I am staying here a couple of nights to also try to start sorting out what’s happening with my disasterous server relocation. I was told last week that “oh, we’re not quite ready for you yet” but this only came on the day we were actually meant to move in and after nearly two weeks of daily prodding. Fortunately, I really hadn’t put that much faith in everything going to plan, and I was sadly proven right. With Vegas at just T-5, it’s not going to happen until September so we’ve got to do some housekeeping meantime.
My usual cheapo hotel in Picadilly Circus was all booked up and I couldn’t even get in a Travelodge anywhere sensible, so I’ve ended up at the Belsize Park Hotel, thanks to some major Googling. On the plus side, there’s a fridge in the room. On the other hand, that’s about it.
It took about half an hour to check in, with just one group in front of us who looked like they’d already lost the will to live. Mother argued that she wanted to pay by American Express or cheque, it turned out that just because those options were listed on the registration form didn’t necessarily mean they accepted them. Meantime teenage son loudly asked his mum whether whether she’d found the place on stigofthedump dot com. I chuckled, but also wondered whether he could possibly be old enough to remember Stig of the Dump, as I was at primary school when it was on TV, or if there’d been a remake.
I finally got my key and was sent off on a bizarre adventure to find the room. Every door in the place is a fire door, and you just can’t tell whether you’re walking through into another part of the hotel or about to step out comedy style onto a sheer drop fire escape, requiring you to grab onto a ladder and flail about a bit.
My room, 305, is on the third floor, which is logically located somewhere above the second floor. Although it’s not directly above it seems, and the floor is also split into two, with the second staircase is hidden behind yet another fire door on level 2. There should be a prize for getting to level 3, because it’s tough.
Add to that the fact that one stairwell was pitch black – and of course the fire door swings shut quickly removing any light from the corridor below – and I was in big trouble. I found rooms 301-304 plus another room also labelled 301 (which was open, but had no bed) then after some more searching I found 306-312 up the second set of stairs. I had to go back and ask whether it actually existed because I sure as hell couldn’t find it and I thought that I’d probably already jumped through two Silent Hill dimensions, and that the stairs were probably only dark in one of them.
He pootled off for a while and came back to tell me sorry there’s no light but he’d gone and opened the room door and turned the light on and if I went back up the dark staircase I’d see it, tucked away in a very dark corner. He’d also propped open one of the fire doors – with a fire extinguisher of course – which was helpful but I couldn’t help being a little afraid when I’m stuck at the top of this building on the eve of one of the hottest days on record and the fire doors are wedged open. I’d never find my way out anyway.
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