A sign in my hotel room this weekend:
Surely they don’t mean these?
I think they’d melt.
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Worst £300 tournament ever? 3000 chips, 30 minute clock and skipping just about every other blind level. They got me all excited to start with by giving out 5000 chips, then cruely taking them back. When this happened one of the know-it-all regulars was saying how he’d prefer the larger stack but would want a faster clock, maybe 20 minutes. Yeah, that would be swell. Now fuck off and go play blackjack if you just want to take two cards and let somebody tell you if you won. I didn’t really get going, then when I had to push – after just an hour and a half – my QT was called by another QT (fantastic) and then my pocket 3s ran into a bigger pair and I was done. The board showed JJ99Q and the dealer tried to convince everyone that it was a split (I tip handsomely for this btw) but obviously the other guy’s tens played. Hey, at least he was reading the hands and not just assuming that no 3 on board means I didn’t improve. Even with just 40 people, this structure was too fast. Yet, off I go again shortly to give it another go. I had considered waiting until Monday evening after I discovered they had scheduled a 200-max satellite, but if it’s going to be a push fest the smaller field is less likely to be heartbreaking. So, here’s the live update graph for today’s satellite (and I have set it up with the correct phone number for text updates now!). Blink and you’ll miss it, probably.
I’ve had to set this all up in advance in case I can’t get online while I’m in London. Haven’t even decided if I’m taking my laptop yet, because I can’t check into my hotel until after 1pm and the tournament starts at – obviously – 1pm. So I think I’ll have to travel light. So here is the live update graph for the benefit of the new and improved 11-man Team Donut: Darren, David, Geoff, Jill, Kevin, Larry, Matt, Paul, Rich, Vicky and Vij. I should get some football shirts made up or something. Who wants to be goalie?
As things stand, I didn’t quite raise enough stake to play both satellites although it’s close (24% sold, I would need at least 30%) so there’s a chance that I will get more and still be able to play them both anyway. But unless I post here otherwise before kick off, or use one of the first text messages to my chip count graph to announce that I’ll be playing on both Saturday and Sunday, it’s just the one satellite this time. I realised that it would be unfair to wait until after I’ve played the first tournament to see if I could convince myself to make up the shortfall, so I have to make this decision before things get going. I have to draw a line somewhere, and I did originally say that it was 30%. As promised, I’ll refund your stake if you only wanted to be involved with the two chances of qualification, rather than the larger share from one satellite. Just make sure a message lands in my mailbox or post a comment here before 1pm Saturday. I had no joy trying to book a free train this Saturday so I’ll end up travelling on an open ticket, which makes me pretty flexible and so I’ll take donations right up until the last minute. It could still happen! 🙂 The chap I spoke to at Virgin Trains said he had no idea why every single West Coast train to and from London on Saturday was restricted (Friday and Sunday were just fine) but agreed with me that it was very strange. Something must be going on, but I don’t know what. Usually you can book a ticket right up to 6pm the night before; the seaside trains tend to have limited availability for comp tickets but I’ve not had to pay to get to London at the weekend in a long time! EDIT @ 9am: I’ve made the 30% so it’s two satellites as planned. Team list above updated 🙂 T minus 95, 186 and 305! Yes really. I have my next three Las Vegas trips booked up, and it feels great. Christmas and New Year 2007/08 I’ve known about for quite a while. It won’t be long now. Being there for Christmas day like last year, although this time it won’t be a Station Casinos buffet for Christmas dinner. Sure, they had a turkey carving station, but otherwise it was exactly the same. We’ve booked the Gold Coast for the entire stay, based on them only charging an excessive premium for one night, on New Year’s Eve itself. Every other hotel I checked bumped up their rate for at least two nights, some of them three. Total: $827 for 11 nights. I could care less about staying off-Strip, but as Gold Coast is right next to our likely new home Palms, it’s actually a great choice. Then just last week I dropped on a flight from Las Vegas to Manchester using BMI Diamond Club miles. Seemed too good to be true: a direct flight in business class falling perfectly in the last week of Claire’s school holiday. Instabooked – seats in row 1 baby! All I needed was an outbound flight to go with it… Thanks to the guys on flyertalk I’ve learned how to check what flights are available on other Star Alliance airlines using, obscurely, All Nippon Airways mileage club. I’ve never been to China, and don’t have any plans in the foreseeable future, but they let me join up anyway. The best option was an economy flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles and with connecting flights at both ends. According to the forum dudes, who have some amazing advice to give if you can cope with the acronym overkill, it’s absolutely possible to fly MAN–LAX–LAS with DC using any *A airline. Oh no, I’m doing it now… But the thought of three planes and a 20 hour journey wasn’t appealing. It would be free but you still have to pay the tax (remember it’s about ten times as expensive to leave the UK as is it to come back) so those miles are still saved up for next time. Instead it’ll be my first experience of MaxJet, who had a direct flight for £349+tax. That’s their lowest rate, but all their seats are business class. Only one minor drawback. We’re flying out from Stansted and back into Manchester. That’ll be a logistical nightmare and I can’t even bear to think about it yet. We’ll cross that bridge – and think about where to stay – next year sometime. All in all though, it’s a business class return flight for two people for under £900. Can’t be bad. Once those luxury jet-set floodgates opened though, there was no stopping me. MaxJet was showing the £349 rate for the same Sunday we’ve flown out the past three summers and it was just a case of waiting until the return could be booked before the inevitable happened. We’ve paid more than that for BMI premium economy in the summer, and almost as much for basic economy so this is an absolute bargain. Booking for the return leg opened sometime yesterday, but according to the seating plan, someone else had already beaten us to it by the time I had made the booking at 8pm. I can understand that the outbound flight would have already started to fill up as it’s been available for a few weeks already. But it just shows what a popular destination Las Vegas has become in recent years that people are lining up waiting to book seats on a flight ten months away at the very first opportunity.
That’s us in 9A/9C. I booked an exit row just because I could, for the extra leg room. I’m sure it’s really not necessary with these super luxury seats though. Time will tell. EDIT: When I looked again today (Thursday) – and I’m glad I did, as they’d already lost one of my seat reservations – there are now 11 other passengers who booked on this flight (which is still over 300 days away) within 48 hours of it going on sale. Blimey. This weekend, I had my best ever result on the National Lottery. All six numbers! And the jackpot for that piece of good fortune: a whopper £38. OK, so the six numbers hit across a combination of two tickets, but they’re the only two tickets I’m involved with. Using the numbers that Claire and I have played for as long as I can remember – it wasn’t quite since the lottery started in 1994, but it wasn’t long after – we had a four-number (£28) and a three-number (£10) hit from the same draw. Seriously. £28 for four numbers. Isn’t that pathetic? The odds of matching four is 1031-1. I believe this is only the second time we’ve had a four number win in over ten years, which actually feels about right for playing two lines on a ticket, each for two draws a week and 52 draws a year. In fact, officially it was draw #1224 on Saturday, so I’m ever-so-slightly owed… So you wait years for a winning ticket, and then two come along at once – and it’s so totally not worth it. Take away the £2 stake and we’re looking at £36 profit – the amount I paid in stakes for just 9 weeks of draws – for this freak occurance. OK, I know that hitting all 6 numbers from 11 picks (our tickets overlap by one number: 12) is still much more likely than actually winning the big one, but I just don’t expect to ever see six matches again. Sorry, I don’t know the exact odds and I don’t really care enough (read: know how) to work it out. It’s small though. What I do know is that to have permed those 11 numbers every possible way in order to ensure that I’d hit the jackpot this week would have taken 462 different tickets. I know that when Claire reads this she’ll reach for her calculator to check (and hopefully work out the odds of hitting 6 from 11 too…) but I’m pretty sure that’s right. So if I’d actually made that £462 bet in the past 1224 draws, my total stake would have been £565,488 before it hit. This week’s jackpot prize fund: £3,583,830. If only I’d known! Split six ways (there were already five other winners) we’d have scored £597,305 each. Over thirty grand profit from my half-million investment – that’s obviously how you’re meant to play the lottery. But I’ve come up with a another way: don’t bother. I cancelled my subscription this morning. I feel like a winner already. EDIT: D’oh. After a sleep I realised I’d already done the hard work for the odds of 6 from 11. If the chances of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 13,983,816, then the chances of striking rich with one of my 462 combinations is 462 in 13,983,816 or about 30,000-1. Actually it’s about twice as likely as hitting five numbers all on one ticket (55,490-1). I know I’m on some peculiar mailing lists from the amount of junk email I get, but I’m pretty sure one message I got today wasn’t just random spam, but a list I subscribed to. Quite possibly it’s connected to The Dealer’s News, a newsletter intended for professional casino dealers in Nevada. Though their obsessive comparisons of which casinos have the best tippers are clearly not intended for the casual reader, I still subscribed because I like to read it every month for the insider stories and bite-size factoids and opinions. Here’s a taster.
Anyway, the email I got today may be nothing to do with them (I actually don’t care if they’re sending me spam as you know I’ll enjoy reading any Vegas-related mail I get) but it’s definitely too specific to be a mass broadcast.
I just know I could be a self-proclaimed fun dealer in a self-proclaimed incredibly fun party pit given half a chance, and it’s a tempting change of career. But does it really matter that I’ll never look good in a tight t-shirt and hotpants? I’ve been playing promotions with Sporting Index whenever they’ve offered anything that looks favourable. These are usually offers to refund your losses if you play a set amount on their novelty games, but I’ve always come out losing and getting the refund. If, like today, the requirement is ten bets with a refund of net losses up to £30, I’ll usually play an even money bet nine times and then lump whatever I have left on one final no-lose bet for the win. In what must be close to ten previous efforts (I wrote about a couple of them here and here, and then stopped counting) the bet that matters has always lost. Not that I’d ever imply that online gambling could be easily rigged, oh no. Especially not stupid novelty games like "soccer shootout" where a cartoon footballer that you cannot influence kicks a ball at goal a few times and gets awarded points if he scores against a computer-controlled goalkeeper. The number of points you get is related to where the ball hits the net – just like real life. Goooooaaaaaallll! You win, well, let’s say six points this time. Assuming that their roulette game is fair, and forgetting that games of chance don’t have a memory, then was definitely owed before I hit a massive £26 profit today. Nine bets of £2 betting red all the way with four wins and five losses put me in good shape for one last bet… and it came in!
I’ve had a bonus offer from Party Poker sitting in my inbox for nearly a week now. It actually expires at midnight tonight, so I’ve really left it until the last minute. The problem is that I just can’t find a way to convince myself it’s worth depositing for. This is a pretty depressing time. Any Party bonus in the past has always been a must-play situation. I’d hate myself if I found I missed one. Until just now, it’s always been a number of raked hands that’s required to clear the bonus. You contribute rake on roughly two-thirds of the hands you play at low stakes fixed limit hold’em (even at $0.50/$1) and on about half the hands at any no-limit from $0.25/$0.50 upwards. It’s always been really easy to clear their bonuses at low stakes, even with a raked hand requirement equal to 10x the bonus dollar amount. Play no more than 2000 hands for a $100 bonus? I’d get eight-tabling and bash it out in two very manageable evening sessions, and only go a little square-eyed in the process. Those days are gone. Instead of counting raked hands, you now have to earn a set number of PartyPoints to release a bonus. In the case of the bonus I’m about to let expire, it would be 6 points per $1 in bonus. I’ve also just had another bonus offer that’s even less generous at 8x points per $1. Frankly, I’m not sure why they think I’d take the second if I ignored the first, but it’s nice to be missed nonetheless. So, earn 600 points for a $100 bonus? What does that mean exactly? It’s complicated. Playing the old standard $0.50/$1 or $1/$2 limit you earn 3.5 points for every 20 raked hands so that’s nearly 3500 raked hands needed to clear this bonus. There’s only seven days to meet the requirement before you lose the bonus completely so that would take me every evening. Because obviously I’d never dream of playing poker during work time. No limit is no better, with 20 hands earning you 3 points at $0.25/$0.50 and 5 points at $0.5/$1. Double the blinds again and it’s still only 8 points per 20, and I never really got the hang of playing more than 4 tables of no-limit anyway, let alone trying to 8-tabling a $100 buy-in game for any length of time. I just can’t see how a casual player has any chance of doing this at small stakes any more in the seven days allowed. $2/$4 limit is clearly the level where they start to make some serious rake, as the reward value shoots up to 11 Party Points for every 20 raked hands. That’s triple the rate of $1/$2! I’m fairly happy playing $2/$4 and for a juicy bonus I’d be prepared to open up as many tables as I could fit within my field of vision. It would leave me with a much more achievable release condition for the bonus – 1100 hands. 11x raked hands is almost back to how it used to be. Just one minor drawback: nobody actually plays $2/$4 on Party! I’ve been keeping watch all week. Tonight there are actually two full tables, but the second has only just started up. There was just one table struggling to get going at 6pm UK time, so I think I’d struggle to get in enough hands even if I played as many as both tables all night, every night. Nope. I just don’t think I can do this with poker. So how about the casino? I’ve started to get back into playing blackjack for casino bonuses again (more on this will surely follow) so I could play it through that way. But it says you earn one Party Point for every $200 bet, which would make the total wagering requirement a cool $120,000. Compare that to the $500 bonus I just got from Sky Vegas for $10,000 in action. It’s not even close to being worthwhile. Even if you could find a way to do this (you’d either have to use a bot, or play $100 a hand, surely?) and even if their blackjack game is excellent (and fair, of course), just a 0.1% house edge would win back a theoretical $120 for the house by the time you’d cleared the bonus. No value there whatsoever, and I haven’t even bothered to check out their blackjack rules – I know it’s going to have a higher edge that 0.1%. Their sportsbook then – a last resort? The best rate you’re going to get on a straight wager is one point per $5 in bets. On popular sports it’s $10 or $15 for the point. If I deposit $500 for the $100 bonus, let’s say I can earn 100 points through risking it all on a game. If I win and double up, I could risk it all for 200 points, and then I’d only nede to put $1500 on the last game to get to 600 points. It’s possible, but it’s not for me. If you’re not putting your entire bankroll on every game, sports just won’t happen fast enough to get through the bonus in 7 days. I guess I can understand why they’ve had to tighten up, because they were literally giving away their chips with these promos. Whenever I’ve calculated just how much, it’s been very good news for the player: for a $100 bonus, they were paying out $45 more than the rake I had generated at $1/$2 limit, and $65 more than their revenue from $0.25/$0.50 no-limit. The only other option I can come up with is to deposit a smaller amount – it’s a percentage-based bonus – and play enough hands at $2/$4 in a week to earn maybe $20. You know what… I just can’t be bothered. After I took the picture, I had to check. Indeed, on my can of expanding foam it says "360 degree application" and "quickly fills large, awkward holes and cavities". But it definitely doesn’t say anywhere, even in small print, "in zero gravity conditions". Hence, I’m sure, the reason for this spectacular filling disaster on the side of a house in Longton:
This is not my mess, I hasten to add. Admittedly, I could have been capable of overestimating the mighty power of expanding foam and trying to fill a high-up crack from the bottom, but I’d like to think that if I started off expecting to beat the laws of physics, I’d at least be smart enough to give up once I’d spotted the signs that I just wasn’t that powerful. There were plenty of warning signs. The footpath tells the story:
Clearly it’s someone else’s job to clean up stray filler once it’s fallen onto – or in the vicinity of – a public street. Plus, the longer you leave it, the easier that’ll be. I have to wonder whether the master craftsman actually used a ladder or was reaching up high to fill the gap from underneath. So I’m going to keep my eyes open for a mysterious figure walking around town that looks a bit like this.
After my spectacular break-even performance at the Orleans Open in July, I’ve decided to put together another sponsorship package for anybody who fancies a piece of my action. It was great fun last time (not just for me, I’m told) with the live chip graphs and all the winning. So let’s give it another shot. Well actually I’ll be trying to putting something together along the same lines for my Christmas Vegas trip. I doubt there will be a festival on – it’s very unlikely over Christmas week (as it’s the quietest time of year) or over New Years (as everybody is too busy getting drunk, or getting their tits out, or watching others get their tits out) – so I’ve not quite worked it out yet. I’m thinking it will probably be a crawl along four of the major cardrooms, playing whatever the best value tournament is at each. It’s only a ten day trip, but I’m sure I can figure something out. In the meantime, I’ve come up with another adventure to share. This time it’s a real shot at greatness and fortune – albeit a long shot. And I’ve left it until rather late to start begging for money too. Two weeks today – Saturday September 21st – I intend to play a £330 super-satellite at The Vic to try to win entry into the EPT London Main Event. That’s a £5500 buy-in, so there’ll be one seat awarded for every 18 players in the satellite. I’m quite keen to double my chances of getting there by having two attempts to qualify via a satellite, and so I’m going to sell myself off in small chunks to try to get there. Here’s the deal. The bankroll I need for the two days rounds up to £700. That’s 2x £330 for the poker, and I’ll use the other £40 towards accomodation in London – I don’t think that’s exactly taking the piss. A 1% share will therefore cost £7.00. I take many different payment methods – but a player-to-player transfer on a poker site is usually the easiest, and makes it easy to pay out winnings too. BUY A STAKE IN ME AT THE EUROPEAN POKER TOUR FOR JUST £7.00! That was for the benefit of anyone who was just skimming the blog. They’ll go back and read this entry in ful now, maybe. Ideally I want to sell 50% – a pretty big chunk, but that way I’ll still be paying the same amount to play as I was always going to but will have doubled my chances of making it to the Main Event. This is more about the chance of getting to play in a major tournament than it is about winning a life-changing jackpot. Although half of £750,000 isn’t exactly insignificant… However, with just two weeks to go I’ll be amazed if I come anywhere close to that. So: If I sell 30% or more (£210) then I’ll definitely play two satellites. It’ll cost me no more than £450 for the two stabs, and that’s just about within my budget. If I sell less than 30%, I’ll only play one satellite. I’ll offer backers the option to take double their percentage in the single tournament, or to withdraw completely for a refund. So if you bought 5% for £35 and I only played one satellite, you’d could actually end up owning 10% of me when I make it into the money and onto the TV table. With Vicky Coren sitting to both my left and my right, hopefully. If I intend to play two satellites but win a seat in the first one, then I can’t double the percentages, or I’d end up with nothing left for myself! So in that case if I was allowed to play the second and sell the seat, I would. Otherwise I’d play another £330 tournament, like the second-chance event at the Vic on Saturday 29th. Sounds good doesn’t it 🙂 To get involved or if you think you can pick holes in my masterplan, email chris at luckydonut.com. |
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