George Bush has a heart attack and dies. He goes to H e l l
/> where the Devil is waiting for him. /> /> "I don't know what to do," says the Devil. /> "You're on my list but I have no room for you. But /> you definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what /> I'm going to do. I've got three people here who /> weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them /> go, but you have to take their place. /> /> I'll even let YOU decide who leaves." /> /> George thought that sounded pretty good so he agreed. /> /> The devil opened the first room. In it was Richard Nixon /> and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing /> empty handed over and over and over, such was his fate in /> H e l l. /> /> "No!" George said. "I don't think so. /> I'm not a good swimmer and I don't think I could do /> that all day long." /> /> The Devil led him to the next room. In it was Tony Blair with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did /> was swing that hammer, time after time after time. /> "No! I've got this problem with my shoulder. I /> would be in constant agony if all I could do was break /> rocks all day!" commented George. /> /> The Devil opened a third door. In it, George saw Bill /> Clinton lying naked on the floor with his arms staked over /> his head and his legs staked in spread-eagle pose. Bent /> over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best. /> /> Bush looked at this in disbelief for a while and finally /> said, "Yeah, I can handle this." /> /> The Devil smiled and said, !!
Only folks of a certain age may understand the gist of this...I may be wrong though.....
Roy Brindley was entertaining Tikay at his home one night. They were talking about all sorts of things and Roy, knowing of Tikay's love of cats mentioned he had a very good cat but this cat had been acting strange lately. He was biting and chewing all of Roy's shoes.
He had just gone out and bought some new ones to replace the shoes the cat had destroyed. Only this very morning Roy found that the cat got to his brand new shoes and completely ruined them too. Just then, the cat walked through the living room and settled itself down in front of the fire. Tikay looked at the cat before saying, "Pardon me Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?"
All the top chess players in the world show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others.
The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. "If there's one thing I can't stand," he tells the receptionist, "it's chess nuts boasting by an open foyer."
There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. Theis lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever.
One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever!
Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude that is was better Nate than lever.
Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn't on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.
Four friends, who hadn't seen each other in 30 years, reunited at a party. After several drinks, one of the men had to go to the toilet. Those who remained talked about their kids.
The first guy said, "My son is my pride and joy. He started working at a successful company at the bottom of the barrel. He studied Economics and Business Administration and soon began to climb the corporate ladder and now he's the president of the company. He became so rich that he gave his best friend a top of the line Mercedes for his birthday."
The second guy said, "Darn, that's terrific! My son is also my pride and joy. He started working for a big airline, then went to flight school to become a pilot. Eventually he became a partner in the company, where he owns the majority of its assets. He's so rich that he gave his best friend a brand new jet for his birthday."
The third man said: "Well, that's terrific! My son studied in the best universities and became an engineer. Then he started his own construction company and is now a multimillionaire. He also gave away something very nice and expensive to his best friend for his birthday: A 30,000 square foot mansion."
The three friends congratulated each other just as the fourth friend returned from the toilet and asked: "What are all the congratulations for?"
One of the three said: "We were talking about the pride we feel for the successes of our sons. What about your son?" The fourth man replied: "My son is gay and makes a living dancing as a stripper at a nightclub." The three friends said: "What a shame...what a disappointment." The fourth man replied: "No, I'm not ashamed. He's my son and I love him. And he hasn't done too bad either. His birthday was two weeks ago, and he received a beautiful 30,000 square foot mansion, a brand new jet and a top of the line Mercedes from his three boyfriends."
There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job it was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:
Dear God,
I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had £100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension payment. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?
Sincerely, Edna.
The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few pounds. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected £96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman.
The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.
Christmas came and went.
A few days later, another letter came from the old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened, It read:
Dear God,
How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. By the way, there was £4 missing. I think it must have been those thieving b*****ds at the Post Office.
(This is a reprint of a controversial column. from a magazine way back in the late 80's with a small amount of my own thoughts and editing)
I wish I could say I wrote it, but I've just tweeked it a little to bring it up to date Happily I was a 'Mod' in the 70's/80's, and my belief's are that todays 'Chavs' are desendants of the 60's hippies....
Die, hippies, die!But, you won't, will you? You won't do even that simple little favor for me. Instead, you're determined to leave your goofy, guru-inspired grumblings all over the planet -- hippie droppings everywhere, destined to become permanent and petrified.Let's talk. Think back to, or imagine you were a hippie…......... oh, around 1969 to 1976. Remember how we would sit around and you would blurt, in your thickened good-grass smokin' voice, "Nobody should have to work for a livin'. If me and Sally were in charge of this country, there'd be free cars and television and food and whatever the people need."Remember how I would nod affectionately and ask, "But where would all that come from if nobody worked?"You would invariably grow irritated and say something like, "Big corporations are creating all those tanks and bombs. All we need to do is tell 'em to make other stuff instead."And Sally would leap from the sofa, shrieking, "Right on, man!" and roll another bomber (i.e., a big, fat marijuana cigarette, for those lucky enough not to have suffered through the sixties). "They'd rather make things for their rich pig friends than feed the people and give us new televisions."Not so funny anymore. Back then, I found my friends' behavior amusing. Once in a while, I tried to reason with them, but mostly I just sat back and observed. Sometimes, I listened to words like these: "Vote? None of us will ever vote. That's establishment bull chit. You gotta sell out to the establishment to vote, man." SO, WHY THE **** ARE YOU VOTING NOW? WHO ASKED YOU TO? DOESN'T YOUR WORD MEAN ANYTHING? Sorry if I'm shouting.By now readers are wondering what this has to do with poker. Not a **** thing that I can think of… except… hang on, we're getting there. There were many other favorite causes for the hippies: They hated banks, they thought that taking a job for the money was "selling out." They said things like, "It doesn't matter if your parents really did something bad to you or not, if you think they did it, then they did it." And that made perfect sense to them, because they were squiggly, wiggly people. And they have grown up to be what I call squiggliwigs. Please don't think I'm being mean-spirited by coining this term. I have actually field tested it on real hippie remnants and they like it! Everything made perfect sense to the squiggliwigs, except logic. Just use the word logic positively in a sentence and you'd be confronted with a drug-induced, contemptuous stare. Now, I know that many readers think I'm exaggerating, but those who lived in those times among those peers will confirm that every word I'm saying is true.Another thing: If you ever tried to reason with a hippie, challenging a cherished notion, you would often be told that you were "playing with my head." This was never said lightly, because "playing with my head," especially among women, had become a crime unparalleled -- equivalent to assault. Hippies and other similar sixties people professed love, but they could be very hateful. I know, I was there. They professed total tolerance, but they were among the most intolerant people who ever walked this earth. I know, I was there.Should you compete? Anyway, one special concept of the hippies was that competition is bad. You cooperate, you don't compete. Last week, I realized just how embedded the ghosts of the sixties are in our lives today. I've finally come to believe that the majority of people that surround us are not sane.We enjoyed the hippies because what they did seemed fun, and because we believed they were just kids who had decided to delay maturity by five or ten years. But 11 years passed, and 15, and 20, and now 25 or more, and there is no sign that they will ever mature. Obviously, when I say the majority of people around us are not sane, I had better mean that as a powerful figure of speech used to pound home a point, not as a statement to be taken literally. Unfortunately, I want you to take it literally. I honestly believe that the poisoned thoughts of the squiggliwigs have polluted the mainstream.Here's why I'm writing this today. It's that last hippie concept I talked about: Competition is bad. Well, a few weeks ago the Little League team representing the United States (Mission Viejo) played a team from Mexico for the championship. Our guys are leading 4-1 going into the bottom of the final inning. Pitcher gets tired. Hits batter. Walks batter. New pitcher. Homerun ties game. Sadness and shock all over the young pitcher's face. Whole team is in fog. Runner gets on base, goes to second. Somewhere in here, we change pitchers again, I think. Not positive. Ball hit to outfield. Gets by center fielder. Run scores. Center fielder collapses facedown in outfield, possibly sobbing. End of his world. Great drama. Television has come of age.Kids feel they choked. Total numbness and disbelief. Fine. All is as it should be. But, over the last few days in Los Angeles, there's been a feast of news coverage celebrating this defeated team as a wondrous success. OK. They got to the final game; they deserve credit for that. But, let's get something clear. Most newsrooms throughout this nation are populated by people who went through colleges learning sixties-style messages. And one of those messages was that competition isn't so good, and losing isn't so bad.As a consequence of this sixties, squiggliwig thinking, the accolades these kids received for losing went way beyond what they would have received for winning. In fact the C B S affiliate in Los Angeles proudly abandoned their regular news format and gleefully devoted the first eight minutes of the 6 O'clock news to the celebration.Harmful concepts. This makes me sad. The squiggliwigs from the sixties don't care how much they harm children with their nonsense. If these kids believe that they failed and that their glorious one-time opportunity escaped them, then let them grow from that pain. That pain is good. That pain has purpose. It conditions them to protect a win more aggressively next time. There is pain in losing; there is pain in life. We should tell these kids, "I, too, know what losing feels like. You blew it, but remember today, so that you won't want to feel this way ever again. Next time you won't blow it." If you condition someone to feel more valuable by losing than by winning, common sense has been rolled over, and we might as well get stone d so that this stuff makes sense to us, too.I've finally had enough of the sixties. It's my fault, by the way. Instead of nodding bemusedly in response to the brain-dimmed babbling back then, I should have sent these people to their rooms without supper. Now they can't see the difference between what is grownup and what is juvenile. They can't see the difference between what is logic and what is squiggliwig. Long ago, when I sat on a sofa and listened to their babble, trying to be friendly, I never thought these same people would sometime want to take charge of the universities, the newsrooms, and the legislatures. I never dreamed there would dawn a day when people of such flimsy vision would dress up in their parents' clothes and pretend to be adults. But they did.Poker warning. And, so, we as poker players need to beware. The majority of people that surround us are not truly sane. And they can't turn to the conventional channels for help, because most psychologists are also squiggliwigs, products of the same upbringing, and are themselves not sane. We are tempted to lessen our competitive drive at the tables, to blend in, but we must not. Competition is good. When our opponents are squiggliwigs, we can easily spot them, because:Bluffing feels unnatural to them, so they seldom bluff. They call a lot to be sociable, but seldom raise. If they do bluff or raise, it's always in a friendly, half-apologetic manner, never a warlike one. If they get ahead a lot of chips, they seem to play poorly in an attempt to equalize things and cash out an amount that seems fairer to them. If they get lucky and win big, despite these efforts to win small or lose, they will apologize for taking so much money out of the game. One good thing: If you allow yourself to slip into that sixties attitude at poker, you'll be more satisfied if you lose. It won't hurt as much. On the other hand, if you want to win consistently at poker, you must shake free of the sixties entirely. Seek squiggliwigs to play against. Those hanger-on hippies/chavs can be your most profitable opponents.
The truth about "stop loss" and your bankroll, I'm old school so when I get slated for not agreeing with the experts about bankroll management I get my old magazines out and look at what the 'good ol boys' have to say on the subject, and here's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth .... )
The following by Mike C first appeared in 2002.
Does Stop Loss Equal Stop Win?
If I were a normal sort of guy with a normally functioning mind, I would have yielded to common wisdom. That common wisdom says stop losses are just the right tool to save your poker bankroll. But, of course, I’m not normal, so I never say that.
Instead, I point out that that “stop loss” is a cherished concept for many poker players. Stop loss has millions of fans, but I’m not one of them. If you’re new to gambling, maybe you don’t know what the term means. Stop loss simply means that you’re not worried about ever suffering a terrible loss, because you’ve predetermined to quit if you lose a given amount. Now the lecture…
Imagine that you set a stop-loss at $500 in a $20/$40 hold ’em game. That’s equal to two-and-a-half minimum buy-ins, since a minimum buy-in is usually considered to be 10 times the small bet. As soon as you move beyond $500 negative, you’ll quit on your next big blind. This means you might lose a little more than $500 during the leaving-the-table process, but not substantially more. While other players around you might lose $1,000, $2,000 or who knows how much, this will never happen to you.
Should you use a stop loss? I don’t. And, I don’t think you should, either. Before I tell you what’s bad about a stop loss, I’ll be fair and tell you what’s good.
Good stuff about stop loss
The first good thing is that you’ll never get numbed by bigger losses than you anticipated, start playing poorly, and dig yourself into a serious hole it might take a long time to crawl out of – if you ever crawl out at all. With a stop loss, you can accept a more manageable defeat, go home, lick your wounds, and contemplate with your goldfish. That part’s good for many players who are afraid they may lose control of themselves if the loss builds too large and who like to hang out with their goldfish.
This benefit has a lot to do with Caro’s Threshold of Misery. Did I ever tell you about that? It states that in poker and in life you can reach a stage where the misery grows so great you stop caring. You already feel maximum pain. Maximum misery. If more bad things happen in life or if you lose more money in poker that night, it doesn’t feel any worse. You’re maxed out. You’ve crossed the Threshold of Misery.
I teach that you’re supposed to keep right on playing well, even after you cross that threshold. You’ve got to remind yourself that even though things don’t seem to matter now, there will come a time when they do matter. So, make good decisions. Maybe right now it doesn’t seem to matter a lick whether you lose $4,495 or $4,125, but there will come a time when that $370 matters again. Always play poker as if that time is now. That’s important and I’ll repeat it. There will come a time when that $370 matters again and you should play poker as if that time is now.
More good stuff
But, OK, if quitting before you get anywhere near that Threshold of Misery is the only thing that will allow you to avoid logical brain shutdown that will cost you significant money or devastate your bankroll, then – by all means – practice a stop loss. What else is good about a stop loss? Well, if you’re playing in a back room of a tavern off the wharf, you might be getting cheated and not know it. So, quitting because you reached a predetermined limit can keep you out of further danger.
Or you might have misjudged the skill of your opponents. Maybe the game isn’t as good as you thought it was. Maybe you’re not the favorite and you should expect to lose more if you keep playing. In that case, too, a stop loss can keep you out of danger and preserve your bankroll.
And there’s one more thing that’s potentially good about a stop loss. It prompts you to quit when you’re losing, which often can be a good thing in itself, even if the game was originally profitable. The reason has nothing to do with superstition. It has to do with the fact that when your opponents see you losing, they sometimes get inspired and play better. They think, hey, there’s someone unluckier than I am. I’ll beat up on that player.
When this happens you won’t make the profit you normally would, because players will take unexpected shots at you. And they’ll push their good hands for extra value, because they’re not intimidated by you. In this case, it’s sometimes a good idea to quit the game.
A final thing, for some players a stop loss can keep setbacks psychologically manageable. They can go home and sleep well knowing that no significant damage has been done in a single day. A bad streak still can continue, but it will be broken up into smaller, more psychologically manageable segments.
Some bad stuff about stop loss
OK, I’ve been fair. I’ve said all the good things I can think of about stop loss. Now I’m going to tell you that the whole concept sucks. It makes no logical sense at all. It’s just babble.
You see, everything I told you that was good about stop loss can be accomplished by you without it, just by using your own good judgment. You can be aware of the Threshold of Misery and discipline yourself to keep making good decisions. You can decide to quit at any point if you fear you’re being cheated – before that magic stop loss number or after it – whenever you decide it’s right.
How does that predetermined number help you? It doesn’t. It just takes tools out of your hands – thinking tools that let you decide whether its profitable to keep playing or to quit. Same goes for whether your opponents might be stronger than you estimated. You can quit or don’t quit, whichever seems wiser, without a stop loss. Quit very early or tough it out if you think you can still win. What good is a predetermined magic quitting number? No good at all. Same if opponents see you losing. Yes, they’ll often play better, but it’s up to you to decide right then if this is a strong enough factor to make you quit. You decide. Not a magic number. You decide.
The most illogical thing about stop loss is that it often has the opposite effect of what’s intended. You see, if you’re a professional poker player or even a serious one, you need to think of poker like you would a job. You get paid to make the right decisions and, even though there are lots of fluctuations, you still get paid by the hour. If you’re a winning player in a profitable game, the more hours you play, the more money you earn, on average.
Stopping the profit
So, if you’re in a good game, you’re earning a given amount an hour. If you take yourself out of that game because you’re losing a predetermined amount of dollars, you’re cutting off your hourly funds, you’re shutting down your profit flow. You won’t work as many hours and, in the long run, you probably won’t win as much money. That’s the way to look at a stop loss. If you rigidly apply it, you’ll sometimes be excluding yourself from playing more hours in profitable games and you’ll be costing yourself money. That makes a stop loss a stop win.
Another illogical thing about stop loss is that people think that by dividing their time into segments, they can avoid long losing streaks. The truth is, if the game is good now, you might be more likely to extend your losing streak if you quit and come back tomorrow when the game is worse than by continuing to play right now. Interrupting a streak does not kill it. That’s nonsense. Your streak will either continue or not continue the next time you play, whether that’s next week or right now. You might stop it by quitting, true; but you also might prolong it the next day when it would have stopped if you’d kept playing tonight. You just never know, and because you never know, you should not expect a stop loss to save you.
So, I’m not a fan of stop loss. You should consider quitting when you’re losing, of course. But you need to weigh all the factors working against you to decide whether the next hour is profitable enough for you to play. You can’t make that decision if you’ve taken away your options by setting a pre-determined stop loss. So, why do it? -- MC
A woman decides to have a facelift for her 47th birthday. She spends £10,000 and feels pretty good about the results. On her way home she stops at a news-stand to buy a paper. Before leaving she asks the sales clerk, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but how old do you think I am?"
"About 32," the assistant replies.
"I'm actually 47," the woman says happily.
A little while later she goes into McDonald's and asks the counter girl the same question. She replies, "I'd guess about 29."
The woman replies, "Nope, I am 47!" Now she is feeling really good about herself.
While waiting for the bus home, she asks an old man the same question. He replies, "I'm 78 and my eyesight is going. Although, when I was young, there was a sure way to tell how old a woman was, but it requires you to let me put my hands down your knickers. Then, I can tell exactly how old you are."
They waited in silence on the empty street until curiosity got the best of the woman and she finally says, "What the ****, go ahead".
The old man slips both hands down her knickers and begins to feel around.
After several minutes she says, Okay, how old am I?" He removes his hands slowly and says, "You are 47."
Stunned, the woman says, "That is amazing. How do you know?"
The old man replies, "I was behind you in McDonald's."
A precious little girl walks into a pet shop and asks, in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, "Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep widdle wabbits?"
As the shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he's on her level and asks, "Do you want a widdle white wabbit, or a thoft and fuwwy bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?"
She, in turn, blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says, in a tiny quiet voice, "I don't think my python weally gives a thit."
A jockey was receiving instructions before a race by the horses owner. 'When you get to a fence you have to tell the horse to jump ok' said the owner. 'I've got it ' said the jockey.
So they get to the first and the jockey is too embarrassed to tell his horse to jump so he says nothing and the horse goes straight through the fence and there's branches and twigs flying everywhere. Gets to the second and says nothing again and the horse goes ploughing straight through again smashing the fence all over the place and nearly breaks its legs.
The jockey thinks ' i'd better start telling it to jump or i'm going to kill this horse' So just in front of the next he shouts 'jump' and the horse majestically glides over it , and the next and all the remaining fences and it wins the race easily.
In the winners enclosure the owner runs over to the jockey. The jockey says ' what a fantastic horse that is ' The owner said ' what the HECK do you think you are doing you nearly killed it you muppet you never told it to jump at the first or second '
Quickly thinking of an excuse the jockey said ' i did tell it to jump it must be a bit deaf '
'Its not deaf you blithering idiot' said the owner ' it's piggin blind !!!!'
Comments
'Paddy, will you draw your bedroom curtains before making love to your wife in future?'
'Why?' Paddy asked.
'Because,' said Mick,
'all the street was laughing when they saw you making love yesterday.'
Paddy said,
'Silly beggers, the laugh's on them".
"I wasn't home yesterday". !!!!!
/> where the Devil is waiting for him.
/>
/> "I don't know what to do," says the Devil.
/> "You're on my list but I have no room for you. But
/> you definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what
/> I'm going to do. I've got three people here who
/> weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them
/> go, but you have to take their place.
/>
/> I'll even let YOU decide who leaves."
/>
/> George thought that sounded pretty good so he agreed.
/>
/> The devil opened the first room. In it was Richard Nixon
/> and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing
/> empty handed over and over and over, such was his fate in
/> H e l l.
/>
/> "No!" George said. "I don't think so.
/> I'm not a good swimmer and I don't think I could do
/> that all day long."
/>
/> The Devil led him to the next room. In it was Tony Blair
with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did
/> was swing that hammer, time after time after time.
/>
"No! I've got this problem with my shoulder. I
/> would be in constant agony if all I could do was break
/> rocks all day!" commented George.
/>
/> The Devil opened a third door. In it, George saw Bill
/> Clinton lying naked on the floor with his arms staked over
/> his head and his legs staked in spread-eagle pose. Bent
/> over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best.
/>
/> Bush looked at this in disbelief for a while and finally
/> said, "Yeah, I can handle this."
/>
/> The Devil smiled and said, !!
(you'll love this )
"Monica, you're free to go now !"
Lol, 3 very funny ones there Benny. Nice to have you back, even if you are only visiting
Plus Cheltenham Festival soon (March 17th-20th) and writing opinions on that on another forum !!!
So tips for Cheltenham !! Follow the Irish stables , O'Grady , Weld, and Mullins ..they'll be in the winners trust me...
This fella "Captain Cee Bee" would be "imo" the star of the show !! Glk and tks see ya soon xx
Only folks of a certain age may understand the gist of this...I may be wrong though.....
Roy Brindley was entertaining Tikay at his home one night. They were talking about all sorts of things and Roy, knowing of Tikay's love of cats mentioned he had a very good cat but this cat had been acting strange lately. He was biting and chewing all of Roy's shoes.
He had just gone out and bought some new ones to replace the shoes the cat had destroyed. Only this very morning Roy found that the cat got to his brand new shoes and completely ruined them too. Just then, the cat walked through the living room and settled itself down in front of the fire. Tikay looked at the cat before saying, "Pardon me Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?"
All the top chess players in the world show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others.
The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. "If there's one thing I can't stand," he tells the receptionist, "it's chess nuts boasting by an open foyer."
There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. Theis lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever.
One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever!
Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude that is was better Nate than lever.
Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn't on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.
Four friends, who hadn't seen each other in 30 years, reunited at a party. After several drinks, one of the men had to go to the toilet. Those who remained talked about their kids.
The first guy said, "My son is my pride and joy. He started working at a successful company at the bottom of the barrel. He studied Economics and Business Administration and soon began to climb the corporate ladder and now he's the president of the company. He became so rich that he gave his best friend a top of the line Mercedes for his birthday."
The second guy said, "Darn, that's terrific! My son is also my pride and joy. He started working for a big airline, then went to flight school to become a pilot. Eventually he became a partner in the company, where he owns the majority of its assets. He's so rich that he gave his best friend a brand new jet for his birthday."
The third man said: "Well, that's terrific! My son studied in the best universities and became an engineer. Then he started his own construction company and is now a multimillionaire. He also gave away something very nice and expensive to his best friend for his birthday: A 30,000 square foot mansion."
The three friends congratulated each other just as the fourth friend returned from the toilet and asked: "What are all the congratulations for?"
One of the three said: "We were talking about the pride we feel for the successes of our sons. What about your son?" The fourth man replied: "My son is gay and makes a living dancing as a stripper at a nightclub." The three friends said: "What a shame...what a disappointment." The fourth man replied: "No, I'm not ashamed. He's my son and I love him. And he hasn't done too bad either. His birthday was two weeks ago, and he received a beautiful 30,000 square foot mansion, a brand new jet and a top of the line Mercedes from his three boyfriends."
And the last one for tonight....
A Letter to God.
There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job it was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:
Dear God,
I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had £100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension payment. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?
Sincerely,
Edna.
The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few pounds. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected £96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman.
The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.
Christmas came and went.
A few days later, another letter came from the old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened, It read:
Dear God,
How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. By the way, there was £4 missing. I think it must have been those thieving b*****ds at the Post Office.
(This is a reprint of a controversial column. from a magazine way back in the late 80's with a small amount of my own thoughts and editing)
I wish I could say I wrote it, but I've just tweeked it a little to bring it up to date Happily I was a 'Mod' in the 70's/80's, and my belief's are that todays 'Chavs' are desendants of the 60's hippies....
Die, hippies, die!But, you won't, will you? You won't do even that simple little favor for me. Instead, you're determined to leave your goofy, guru-inspired grumblings all over the planet -- hippie droppings everywhere, destined to become permanent and petrified.Let's talk. Think back to, or imagine you were a hippie…......... oh, around 1969 to 1976.
Remember how we would sit around and you would blurt, in your thickened good-grass smokin' voice, "Nobody should have to work for a livin'. If me and Sally were in charge of this country, there'd be free cars and television and food and whatever the people need."Remember how I would nod affectionately and ask, "But where would all that come from if nobody worked?"You would invariably grow irritated and say something like, "Big corporations are creating all those tanks and bombs. All we need to do is tell 'em to make other stuff instead."And Sally would leap from the sofa, shrieking, "Right on, man!" and roll another bomber (i.e., a big, fat marijuana cigarette, for those lucky enough not to have suffered through the sixties). "They'd rather make things for their rich pig friends than feed the people and give us new televisions."Not so funny anymore. Back then, I found my friends' behavior amusing. Once in a while, I tried to reason with them, but mostly I just sat back and observed. Sometimes, I listened to words like these: "Vote? None of us will ever vote. That's establishment bull chit. You gotta sell out to the establishment to vote, man." SO, WHY THE **** ARE YOU VOTING NOW? WHO ASKED YOU TO? DOESN'T YOUR WORD MEAN ANYTHING? Sorry if I'm shouting.By now readers are wondering what this has to do with poker. Not a **** thing that I can think of… except… hang on, we're getting there.
There were many other favorite causes for the hippies: They hated banks, they thought that taking a job for the money was "selling out." They said things like, "It doesn't matter if your parents really did something bad to you or not, if you think they did it, then they did it." And that made perfect sense to them, because they were squiggly, wiggly people. And they have grown up to be what I call squiggliwigs. Please don't think I'm being mean-spirited by coining this term. I have actually field tested it on real hippie remnants and they like it! Everything made perfect sense to the squiggliwigs, except logic. Just use the word logic positively in a sentence and you'd be confronted with a drug-induced, contemptuous stare. Now, I know that many readers think I'm exaggerating, but those who lived in those times among those peers will confirm that every word I'm saying is true.Another thing: If you ever tried to reason with a hippie, challenging a cherished notion, you would often be told that you were "playing with my head." This was never said lightly, because "playing with my head," especially among women, had become a crime unparalleled -- equivalent to assault.
Hippies and other similar sixties people professed love, but they could be very hateful. I know, I was there. They professed total tolerance, but they were among the most intolerant people who ever walked this earth. I know, I was there.Should you compete? Anyway, one special concept of the hippies was that competition is bad. You cooperate, you don't compete. Last week, I realized just how embedded the ghosts of the sixties are in our lives today. I've finally come to believe that the majority of people that surround us are not sane.We enjoyed the hippies because what they did seemed fun, and because we believed they were just kids who had decided to delay maturity by five or ten years. But 11 years passed, and 15, and 20, and now 25 or more, and there is no sign that they will ever mature. Obviously, when I say the majority of people around us are not sane, I had better mean that as a powerful figure of speech used to pound home a point, not as a statement to be taken literally. Unfortunately, I want you to take it literally. I honestly believe that the poisoned thoughts of the squiggliwigs have polluted the mainstream.Here's why I'm writing this today. It's that last hippie concept I talked about: Competition is bad.
Well, a few weeks ago the Little League team representing the United States (Mission Viejo) played a team from Mexico for the championship. Our guys are leading 4-1 going into the bottom of the final inning. Pitcher gets tired. Hits batter. Walks batter. New pitcher. Homerun ties game. Sadness and shock all over the young pitcher's face. Whole team is in fog. Runner gets on base, goes to second. Somewhere in here, we change pitchers again, I think. Not positive. Ball hit to outfield. Gets by center fielder. Run scores. Center fielder collapses facedown in outfield, possibly sobbing. End of his world. Great drama. Television has come of age.Kids feel they choked. Total numbness and disbelief. Fine. All is as it should be. But, over the last few days in Los Angeles, there's been a feast of news coverage celebrating this defeated team as a wondrous success. OK. They got to the final game; they deserve credit for that. But, let's get something clear. Most newsrooms throughout this nation are populated by people who went through colleges learning sixties-style messages. And one of those messages was that competition isn't so good, and losing isn't so bad.As a consequence of this sixties, squiggliwig thinking, the accolades these kids received for losing went way beyond what they would have received for winning. In fact the C B S affiliate in Los Angeles proudly abandoned their regular news format and gleefully devoted the first eight minutes of the 6 O'clock news to the celebration.Harmful concepts. This makes me sad. The squiggliwigs from the sixties don't care how much they harm children with their nonsense. If these kids believe that they failed and that their glorious one-time opportunity escaped them, then let them grow from that pain. That pain is good. That pain has purpose. It conditions them to protect a win more aggressively next time. There is pain in losing; there is pain in life. We should tell these kids, "I, too, know what losing feels like. You blew it, but remember today, so that you won't want to feel this way ever again. Next time you won't blow it."
If you condition someone to feel more valuable by losing than by winning, common sense has been rolled over, and we might as well get stone d so that this stuff makes sense to us, too.I've finally had enough of the sixties. It's my fault, by the way. Instead of nodding bemusedly in response to the brain-dimmed babbling back then, I should have sent these people to their rooms without supper. Now they can't see the difference between what is grownup and what is juvenile. They can't see the difference between what is logic and what is squiggliwig. Long ago, when I sat on a sofa and listened to their babble, trying to be friendly, I never thought these same people would sometime want to take charge of the universities, the newsrooms, and the legislatures. I never dreamed there would dawn a day when people of such flimsy vision would dress up in their parents' clothes and pretend to be adults. But they did.Poker warning. And, so, we as poker players need to beware. The majority of people that surround us are not truly sane. And they can't turn to the conventional channels for help, because most psychologists are also squiggliwigs, products of the same upbringing, and are themselves not sane. We are tempted to lessen our competitive drive at the tables, to blend in, but we must not. Competition is good. When our opponents are squiggliwigs, we can easily spot them, because:Bluffing feels unnatural to them, so they seldom bluff. They call a lot to be sociable, but seldom raise. If they do bluff or raise, it's always in a friendly, half-apologetic manner, never a warlike one. If they get ahead a lot of chips, they seem to play poorly in an attempt to equalize things and cash out an amount that seems fairer to them. If they get lucky and win big, despite these efforts to win small or lose, they will apologize for taking so much money out of the game. One good thing: If you allow yourself to slip into that sixties attitude at poker, you'll be more satisfied if you lose. It won't hurt as much. On the other hand, if you want to win consistently at poker, you must shake free of the sixties entirely. Seek squiggliwigs to play against. Those hanger-on hippies/chavs can be your most profitable opponents.
'Mod's rule ...
The truth about "stop loss" and your bankroll,
I'm old school so when I get slated for not agreeing with the experts about bankroll management I get my old magazines out and look at what the 'good ol boys' have to say on the subject, and here's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ....
The following by Mike C first appeared in 2002.
Does Stop Loss Equal Stop Win?
If I were a normal sort of guy with a normally functioning mind, I would have yielded to common wisdom. That common wisdom says stop losses are just the right tool to save your poker bankroll. But, of course, I’m not normal, so I never say that.
Instead, I point out that that “stop loss” is a cherished concept for many poker players. Stop loss has millions of fans, but I’m not one of them. If you’re new to gambling, maybe you don’t know what the term means. Stop loss simply means that you’re not worried about ever suffering a terrible loss, because you’ve predetermined to quit if you lose a given amount. Now the lecture…
Imagine that you set a stop-loss at $500 in a $20/$40 hold ’em game. That’s equal to two-and-a-half minimum buy-ins, since a minimum buy-in is usually considered to be 10 times the small bet. As soon as you move beyond $500 negative, you’ll quit on your next big blind. This means you might lose a little more than $500 during the leaving-the-table process, but not substantially more. While other players around you might lose $1,000, $2,000 or who knows how much, this will never happen to you.
Should you use a stop loss? I don’t. And, I don’t think you should, either. Before I tell you what’s bad about a stop loss, I’ll be fair and tell you what’s good.
Good stuff about stop lossThe first good thing is that you’ll never get numbed by bigger losses than you anticipated, start playing poorly, and dig yourself into a serious hole it might take a long time to crawl out of – if you ever crawl out at all. With a stop loss, you can accept a more manageable defeat, go home, lick your wounds, and contemplate with your goldfish. That part’s good for many players who are afraid they may lose control of themselves if the loss builds too large and who like to hang out with their goldfish.
This benefit has a lot to do with Caro’s Threshold of Misery. Did I ever tell you about that? It states that in poker and in life you can reach a stage where the misery grows so great you stop caring. You already feel maximum pain. Maximum misery. If more bad things happen in life or if you lose more money in poker that night, it doesn’t feel any worse. You’re maxed out. You’ve crossed the Threshold of Misery.
I teach that you’re supposed to keep right on playing well, even after you cross that threshold. You’ve got to remind yourself that even though things don’t seem to matter now, there will come a time when they do matter. So, make good decisions. Maybe right now it doesn’t seem to matter a lick whether you lose $4,495 or $4,125, but there will come a time when that $370 matters again. Always play poker as if that time is now. That’s important and I’ll repeat it. There will come a time when that $370 matters again and you should play poker as if that time is now.
More good stuffBut, OK, if quitting before you get anywhere near that Threshold of Misery is the only thing that will allow you to avoid logical brain shutdown that will cost you significant money or devastate your bankroll, then – by all means – practice a stop loss. What else is good about a stop loss? Well, if you’re playing in a back room of a tavern off the wharf, you might be getting cheated and not know it. So, quitting because you reached a predetermined limit can keep you out of further danger.
Or you might have misjudged the skill of your opponents. Maybe the game isn’t as good as you thought it was. Maybe you’re not the favorite and you should expect to lose more if you keep playing. In that case, too, a stop loss can keep you out of danger and preserve your bankroll.
And there’s one more thing that’s potentially good about a stop loss. It prompts you to quit when you’re losing, which often can be a good thing in itself, even if the game was originally profitable. The reason has nothing to do with superstition. It has to do with the fact that when your opponents see you losing, they sometimes get inspired and play better. They think, hey, there’s someone unluckier than I am. I’ll beat up on that player.
When this happens you won’t make the profit you normally would, because players will take unexpected shots at you. And they’ll push their good hands for extra value, because they’re not intimidated by you. In this case, it’s sometimes a good idea to quit the game.
A final thing, for some players a stop loss can keep setbacks psychologically manageable. They can go home and sleep well knowing that no significant damage has been done in a single day. A bad streak still can continue, but it will be broken up into smaller, more psychologically manageable segments.
Some bad stuff about stop lossOK, I’ve been fair. I’ve said all the good things I can think of about stop loss. Now I’m going to tell you that the whole concept sucks. It makes no logical sense at all. It’s just babble.
You see, everything I told you that was good about stop loss can be accomplished by you without it, just by using your own good judgment. You can be aware of the Threshold of Misery and discipline yourself to keep making good decisions. You can decide to quit at any point if you fear you’re being cheated – before that magic stop loss number or after it – whenever you decide it’s right.
How does that predetermined number help you? It doesn’t. It just takes tools out of your hands – thinking tools that let you decide whether its profitable to keep playing or to quit. Same goes for whether your opponents might be stronger than you estimated. You can quit or don’t quit, whichever seems wiser, without a stop loss. Quit very early or tough it out if you think you can still win. What good is a predetermined magic quitting number? No good at all. Same if opponents see you losing. Yes, they’ll often play better, but it’s up to you to decide right then if this is a strong enough factor to make you quit. You decide. Not a magic number. You decide.
The most illogical thing about stop loss is that it often has the opposite effect of what’s intended. You see, if you’re a professional poker player or even a serious one, you need to think of poker like you would a job. You get paid to make the right decisions and, even though there are lots of fluctuations, you still get paid by the hour. If you’re a winning player in a profitable game, the more hours you play, the more money you earn, on average.
Stopping the profitSo, if you’re in a good game, you’re earning a given amount an hour. If you take yourself out of that game because you’re losing a predetermined amount of dollars, you’re cutting off your hourly funds, you’re shutting down your profit flow. You won’t work as many hours and, in the long run, you probably won’t win as much money. That’s the way to look at a stop loss. If you rigidly apply it, you’ll sometimes be excluding yourself from playing more hours in profitable games and you’ll be costing yourself money. That makes a stop loss a stop win.
Another illogical thing about stop loss is that people think that by dividing their time into segments, they can avoid long losing streaks. The truth is, if the game is good now, you might be more likely to extend your losing streak if you quit and come back tomorrow when the game is worse than by continuing to play right now. Interrupting a streak does not kill it. That’s nonsense. Your streak will either continue or not continue the next time you play, whether that’s next week or right now. You might stop it by quitting, true; but you also might prolong it the next day when it would have stopped if you’d kept playing tonight. You just never know, and because you never know, you should not expect a stop loss to save you.
So, I’m not a fan of stop loss. You should consider quitting when you’re losing, of course. But you need to weigh all the factors working against you to decide whether the next hour is profitable enough for you to play. You can’t make that decision if you’ve taken away your options by setting a pre-determined stop loss. So, why do it? -- MC
) benny)
( I love this guy
The weird thing is......you're going to tell me it's true!!
A woman decides to have a facelift for her 47th birthday. She spends £10,000 and feels pretty good about the results. On her way home she stops at a news-stand to buy a paper. Before leaving she asks the sales clerk, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but how old do you think I am?"
"About 32," the assistant replies.
"I'm actually 47," the woman says happily.
A little while later she goes into McDonald's and asks the counter girl the same question. She replies, "I'd guess about 29."
The woman replies, "Nope, I am 47!" Now she is feeling really good about herself.
While waiting for the bus home, she asks an old man the same question. He replies, "I'm 78 and my eyesight is going. Although, when I was young, there was a sure way to tell how old a woman was, but it requires you to let me put my hands down your knickers. Then, I can tell exactly how old you are."
They waited in silence on the empty street until curiosity got the best of the woman and she finally says, "What the ****, go ahead".
The old man slips both hands down her knickers and begins to feel around.
After several minutes she says, Okay, how old am I?" He removes his hands slowly and says, "You are 47."
Stunned, the woman says, "That is amazing. How do you know?"
The old man replies, "I was behind you in McDonald's."
A precious little girl walks into a pet shop and asks, in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, "Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep widdle wabbits?"
As the shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he's on her level and asks, "Do you want a widdle white wabbit, or a thoft and fuwwy bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?"
She, in turn, blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says, in a tiny quiet voice, "I don't think my python weally gives a thit."
They like cats ..and squirrels
Love the jokes keep um coming Bob !
This poker malarkey on the forums a bit heavy !!
A jockey was receiving instructions before a race by the horses owner. 'When you get to a fence you have to tell the horse to jump ok' said the owner. 'I've got it ' said the jockey.
So they get to the first and the jockey is too embarrassed to tell his horse to jump so he says nothing and the horse goes straight through the fence and there's branches and twigs flying everywhere. Gets to the second and says nothing again and the horse goes ploughing straight through again smashing the fence all over the place and nearly breaks its legs.
The jockey thinks ' i'd better start telling it to jump or i'm going to kill this horse' So just in front of the next he shouts 'jump' and the horse majestically glides over it , and the next and all the remaining fences and it wins the race easily.
In the winners enclosure the owner runs over to the jockey. The jockey says ' what a fantastic horse that is ' The owner said ' what the HECK do you think you are doing you nearly killed it you muppet you never told it to jump at the first or second '
Quickly thinking of an excuse the jockey said ' i did tell it to jump it must be a bit deaf '
'Its not deaf you blithering idiot' said the owner ' it's piggin blind !!!!'