HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO SET UP A WORKING PHONE LINE?!?!?!?!!!!!!
/RantMode
Hello, how are you? I am yet to get an internet connection for the new house. It was due to be activated on Monday, and now I've been told it'll be Thursday at the earliest due to unknown problems. There was an engineer supposed to turn up on Monday but the good people from my phone and broadband provider cancelled the call out and happily text me:
'No Worries, you don't need him!!! It'll be fine!!!! Happy days!!!!! I will avoid talking to you with every last fibre of my being!!!!'
Unhappy.
On the plus side I've decided to stay at my folks and get my fix tonight. Why? Well, I need to get some stuff together before my little trip next week.
SPT Blackpool? Here's the cliffs sponsored by the never tedious checkbox format.
[ ] MTT went well
[X] Drinking went well
[X] Cash went well
[ ] I remember everything
[ ] Greg isn't competitive at Crazy Golf at all
[X] Caught up with some lovely people
Got a few stories I hope you'll be interested in, might post them tonight but more than likely when I get my own internet connection back. Which will probably be next year. After another 1754 line tests. Growlface.jpeg
Surely one of your neighbours must have an unprotected internet conx? ;-) Anyways good to see you back & have a good time in LV. Tikay will be unbearable by the time you get out there! He's burning the strip up & played some poker!
And as of yesterday, I have my own broadband connection again. At last. The previous few evenings I was taking advantage of the internet connection at my folks for some much needed ironing out of the poker kinks, but it really is good to be back in my 'grind chair' again.
My new place has five phone sockets. So naturally when the engineer finally paid a visit to my home there was only one way for him to go:
Scratch backside for two minutes.
Stare at sockets waiting for one to talk back to him and shout 'Ta Daaaa, I'm the live one'
Get disappointed when point two doesn't happen.
Scratch backside again for a bit.
Tell me 'I can't work out which one is live so I'm just going to drill you a new one.'
So I now have six phone sockets, at least I now one that works. Well what have I missed while I've been away?
First up very well done to Andrew1947 for winning SPT Blackpool. I didn't rail the FT and I had no idea who won it until a couple of days ago. Andrew is a quality gentleman and a quality player, love the fact he took it down. My own SPT Blackpool main ended before the dinner break. I did not play well, probably the worst I have played in years. So peaking at the right time then, sigh.
In my defence my mind wasn't wholly right by the time we sat down to play. I went to a great evening of racing and Madness (the band, not the state of mind) on the Friday night with my family and as such drove up Saturday morning. A four hour motorway journey and at the end of it I had to find a hotel as well as through laziness I didn't book anywhere beforehand. But it's Blackpool, there'll be plenty of places right? Well yes, the problem is the German machine of twisted metal that surrounded me that morning. Very few places had anywhere to park. I really didn't want to go to a chain place, I wanted to give some cash to an independent. Karma and all that. I tried a few places but most were full or had no parking. Then I finally found a place.
'The No 1 hotel.' Swish name, not pretentious at all. I wander in, the inside was how i imagined a Private Member's Golf Clubhouse to look. All tweed and the smell of leather and Scotch. It seemed quite lovely. So I find reception, wait patiently and talk to the fellow behind the counter. The following first interaction is quoted word for word.
'Hi there. Do you have a single room for the night?'
'You're in the wrong place.'
Now at this I immediately thought this was a gay hotel and I missed the rainbow flag on the way in. But I've stayed in gay hotels before without a problem (there's a lovely one in Torquay but that's for another post). Hang on I thought to myself, as I walked in there were adverts for gentlemen's golfing packages available here. Now golf isn't generally the preferred sport of the gay male, not with those clothes you normally have to wear on a course. So I said 'Pardon me.'
Ok I wasn't looking the height of class, unshaven and wearing some baggy travelling gear. But he must have felt I was some kind of rapscallion as he told me, and I again quote:
'We are the number one hotel in Blackpool (points to award on wall), you can find much cheaper.' So what is the price of this room the likes of me cannot afford? I was expecting something mammoth, he told me a pricey but not huge amount of £100. I didn't tell him I had just tried to book a £130 room ten minutes beforehand across the road but didn't get in as I had no photo ID on me. To be honest I've spent more money on much less for a room but quite frankly I wasn't handing over any sheets to him now. I wished him a good day and gave more money to a chain brand. Sigh, and people wonder why a lot of the independents in Blackpool have closed in recent times.
The weekend was a great laugh though. Really good to see everyone.
(I'm not sure that many people wonder why hotels are going broke in Blackpool... Not those who've been to Blackpool, anyway.)
Good morning Mr. Dyer.
I must apologise for missing you at the SPT. I had intended to introduce myself at some point but I went out of the main fairly early and decided to make myself scarce. When I came back on the Sunday evening you had, of course, already scarpered. Probably something to do with having a job to go back to.
Anyway, from your diary I can at least console myself with the thought that early exits happen to the best of us. Better luck in Vegas.
i have been trading tommyd futures on the poker commodity market. my tip (almost insider trading) is buy now before the stock price soars and hedge against ryan spittals (walks the walk and talks the talk).
my enduring memory is from cardiff, standing near your table, watching you play cash sat next to a guy with lots of money but continually buying more chips. i thought, isn't tommy the nicest friendliest guy in the world, especially towards that bloke next to him.
Surely one of your neighbours must have an unprotected internet conx? ;-) Anyways good to see you back & have a good time in LV. Tikay will be unbearable by the time you get out there! He's burning the strip up & played some poker! Posted by Glenelg
Cheers Pad.
My new neighbours are lovely. However they are both women who live alone and are over 65. They are not the biggest fans of the internet. I did the whole network search and for the first time ever in London I got a return of 'no networks.' My new street is straight out of Eastbourne.
(I'm not sure that many people wonder why hotels are going broke in Blackpool... Not those who've been to Blackpool, anyway.) Good morning Mr. Dyer. I must apologise for missing you at the SPT. I had intended to introduce myself at some point but I went out of the main fairly early and decided to make myself scarce. When I came back on the Sunday evening you had, of course, already scarpered. Probably something to do with having a job to go back to. Anyway, from your diary I can at least console myself with the thought that early exits happen to the best of us. Better luck in Vegas. Posted by BorinLoner
Hey BL
Yeah I meant to find you as well but things got a little skewed. Hope you enjoyed it and catch you at the Grand Final if you're there!!
good luck in vegas tommy. i have been trading tommyd futures on the poker commodity market. my tip (almost insider trading) is buy now before the stock price soars and hedge against ryan spittals (walks the walk and talks the talk). my enduring memory is from cardiff, standing near your table, watching you play cash sat next to a guy with lots of money but continually buying more chips. i thought, isn't tommy the nicest friendliest guy in the world, especially towards that bloke next to him. good luck man. step forward in 2012. Posted by aussie09
Haha, cheers Rob.
You should have seen me at the cash table at Blackpool. Irene and myself decided to go shot for shot, which was interesting. So there I am drinking Sabucca and tea at a 1/2 table. Then a guy sat down opposite me who looked exactly like the Fonz, only with a moustache. I probably bored everyone with this but I swear he was Henry Winkler's double, I fear I got rather obsessed with that fact. Must have been the drink. Blooming tea.
I'M LEAVING ON A JET PLANE, NOT SURE WHEN I'LL BE BACK AGAIN!!!
Morning
I am now 99% packed and ready for the VLV trip. I have my holiday haircut (strangely identical to my normal haircut), dollars, book and various changes of underwear. All set then.
I'm not sure how much I'll be able to update this when I'm over the pond so in case I don't manage any may I say thank you now for all of the good luck wishes I've received, really touched.
So it's live poker for the best part of two weeks now, not bad timing as I managed to book my biggest losing day on SkyPoker last night. One of those times when nothing went well. Part of the game and I'm hoping to get a karmic flip for the main.
Bye for now, I'm off to the hotel near Gatwick. I'm meeting Dylan for drinks. The run bad continues......
I'M LEAVING ON A JET PLANE, NOT SURE WHEN I'LL BE BACK AGAIN!!! Morning I am now 99% packed and ready for the VLV trip. I have my holiday haircut (strangely identical to my normal haircut), dollars, book and various changes of underwear. All set then..
Posted by TommyD
Can I ask which book? Kindle FTW? Book related, I received Harrington's 2 x volumes recently BUT for the life of me can't find time to read any of them!!! Q. Should I stop playing & read or just keep playing & FIND time?
In Response to Re: Many Rivers To Cross. A Diary. : Can I ask which book? Kindle FTW? Book related, I received Harrington's 2 x volumes recently BUT for the life of me can't find time to read any of them!!! Q. Should I stop playing & read or just keep playing & FIND time? Good luck & have you sold any %? Posted by Glenelg
Stephen King - 11/22/63 and Under The Dome
Also taking the George Smiley novels
Books FTW, can't abide the electronic readers, although I'm sure I converted at some stage.
To your question, I think keep playing. IMO playing is much better than reading. However find the time to go through your hand histories and review your game. It's the only way to really notice and plug those leaks. Reading your own game is about a thousand times better than reading a poker book IMO.
I haven't sold any, but I have swapped a very small amount of %. Might swap a little more but I intend to be keeping the vast majority of my action. I'm greedy like that.
So that was Vegas. Thanks for all of the well wishes, had a blast.
I'll detail all the good stuff later but I think it's time to get the business stuff out of the way. Tourney report for the main event, part 1:
Day 1 - Levels 1 - 3
Wearing a brand new SkyPoker Shirt I wander into the Amazon room to take my seat. The surround sound of chips riffling all around me remind me of crickets in the fields at dawn, and we shuffle up and deal. I played precisely zero hands for the first hour. This was half design and half circumstance. I was always going to play slow early but I also never got a hand. I was watching and learning from those around me and it was quickly clear I was at a great table. Also a tilting one. A fellow even older than Jakally three seats to my right sat in full Good ol' boy Cowboy regalia tapped the table with two fingers every single time he folded. The first eighty times it was cute. Later ir grated. The young kid on my right had a mobile phone with a funny text chime. He got a text every thirty seconds. I wanted to smash that phone over his head.
There was literally two decent players at the table so after the hour I decided to take it up the gears. Whoops, as I ended the level on 19k. I lost a few with KK v QQ on a Q99 flop, folded on the flop of J55 V Good ol Boy when I held Queens (I'm still 50/50 if this is a good fold in this spot, I think I gave him too much credit. He had called an early raiser and called my 3bet before raising my flop lead. If I had called the flop raise then I was getting into playing for stacks territory and I just had a bad feeling I was crushed).
After the break and getting a pep talk from my bro I decided to turn it up a notch for level 2. Luckily this was the second hand after the break:
BvB I flat the SB's raise holding AT. Flop AT6r, flat the c-bet. Turn T (lovely). Check/check. River T (I think I love the dealer). I overbet the pot after the SB leads, get my value and am over starting for the first time of the main. These two levels were probably the best I played in the tournament. I started to roll over the whole table, floated the heck out of good ol' boy several times, punished limpers and was reading hands the best I did for the whole trip. I peaked at 45K and went into dinner with around 43k or so after having to fold Kings yet again. The few times I held a genuine hand I ran into a much bigger one or was obviously outdrawn, but those important orphan pots, those marginal spots, those weak moments around the table, all of those chippies were falling my way.
Sadly I never found that level of rhythm again for the rest of the tournament.
Comments
Surely one of your neighbours must have an unprotected internet conx? ;-) Anyways good to see you back & have a good time in LV. Tikay will be unbearable by the time you get out there! He's burning the strip up & played some poker!
My new place has five phone sockets. So naturally when the engineer finally paid a visit to my home there was only one way for him to go:
Scratch backside for two minutes.
Stare at sockets waiting for one to talk back to him and shout 'Ta Daaaa, I'm the live one'
Get disappointed when point two doesn't happen.
Scratch backside again for a bit.
Tell me 'I can't work out which one is live so I'm just going to drill you a new one.'
So I now have six phone sockets, at least I now one that works. Well what have I missed while I've been away?
First up very well done to Andrew1947 for winning SPT Blackpool. I didn't rail the FT and I had no idea who won it until a couple of days ago. Andrew is a quality gentleman and a quality player, love the fact he took it down. My own SPT Blackpool main ended before the dinner break. I did not play well, probably the worst I have played in years. So peaking at the right time then, sigh.
In my defence my mind wasn't wholly right by the time we sat down to play. I went to a great evening of racing and Madness (the band, not the state of mind) on the Friday night with my family and as such drove up Saturday morning. A four hour motorway journey and at the end of it I had to find a hotel as well as through laziness I didn't book anywhere beforehand. But it's Blackpool, there'll be plenty of places right? Well yes, the problem is the German machine of twisted metal that surrounded me that morning. Very few places had anywhere to park. I really didn't want to go to a chain place, I wanted to give some cash to an independent. Karma and all that. I tried a few places but most were full or had no parking. Then I finally found a place.
'The No 1 hotel.' Swish name, not pretentious at all. I wander in, the inside was how i imagined a Private Member's Golf Clubhouse to look. All tweed and the smell of leather and Scotch. It seemed quite lovely. So I find reception, wait patiently and talk to the fellow behind the counter. The following first interaction is quoted word for word.
'Hi there. Do you have a single room for the night?'
'You're in the wrong place.'
Now at this I immediately thought this was a gay hotel and I missed the rainbow flag on the way in. But I've stayed in gay hotels before without a problem (there's a lovely one in Torquay but that's for another post). Hang on I thought to myself, as I walked in there were adverts for gentlemen's golfing packages available here. Now golf isn't generally the preferred sport of the gay male, not with those clothes you normally have to wear on a course. So I said 'Pardon me.'
Ok I wasn't looking the height of class, unshaven and wearing some baggy travelling gear. But he must have felt I was some kind of rapscallion as he told me, and I again quote:
'We are the number one hotel in Blackpool (points to award on wall), you can find much cheaper.' So what is the price of this room the likes of me cannot afford? I was expecting something mammoth, he told me a pricey but not huge amount of £100. I didn't tell him I had just tried to book a £130 room ten minutes beforehand across the road but didn't get in as I had no photo ID on me. To be honest I've spent more money on much less for a room but quite frankly I wasn't handing over any sheets to him now. I wished him a good day and gave more money to a chain brand. Sigh, and people wonder why a lot of the independents in Blackpool have closed in recent times.
The weekend was a great laugh though. Really good to see everyone.
Ok, enough stalling, back to the grind.
Good morning Mr. Dyer.
I must apologise for missing you at the SPT. I had intended to introduce myself at some point but I went out of the main fairly early and decided to make myself scarce. When I came back on the Sunday evening you had, of course, already scarpered. Probably something to do with having a job to go back to.
Anyway, from your diary I can at least console myself with the thought that early exits happen to the best of us. Better luck in Vegas.
good luck in vegas tommy.
i have been trading tommyd futures on the poker commodity market. my tip (almost insider trading) is buy now before the stock price soars and hedge against ryan spittals (walks the walk and talks the talk).
my enduring memory is from cardiff, standing near your table, watching you play cash sat next to a guy with lots of money but continually buying more chips. i thought, isn't tommy the nicest friendliest guy in the world, especially towards that bloke next to him.
good luck man. step forward in 2012.
My new neighbours are lovely. However they are both women who live alone and are over 65. They are not the biggest fans of the internet. I did the whole network search and for the first time ever in London I got a return of 'no networks.' My new street is straight out of Eastbourne.
Yeah I meant to find you as well but things got a little skewed. Hope you enjoyed it and catch you at the Grand Final if you're there!!
You should have seen me at the cash table at Blackpool. Irene and myself decided to go shot for shot, which was interesting. So there I am drinking Sabucca and tea at a 1/2 table. Then a guy sat down opposite me who looked exactly like the Fonz, only with a moustache. I probably bored everyone with this but I swear he was Henry Winkler's double, I fear I got rather obsessed with that fact. Must have been the drink. Blooming tea.
play nice
Oh, and ship a hug to WelshDyl from me if you must
#CRUSH
xx
I'll detail all the good stuff later but I think it's time to get the business stuff out of the way. Tourney report for the main event, part 1:
Day 1 - Levels 1 - 3
Wearing a brand new SkyPoker Shirt I wander into the Amazon room to take my seat. The surround sound of chips riffling all around me remind me of crickets in the fields at dawn, and we shuffle up and deal. I played precisely zero hands for the first hour. This was half design and half circumstance. I was always going to play slow early but I also never got a hand. I was watching and learning from those around me and it was quickly clear I was at a great table. Also a tilting one. A fellow even older than Jakally three seats to my right sat in full Good ol' boy Cowboy regalia tapped the table with two fingers every single time he folded. The first eighty times it was cute. Later ir grated. The young kid on my right had a mobile phone with a funny text chime. He got a text every thirty seconds. I wanted to smash that phone over his head.
There was literally two decent players at the table so after the hour I decided to take it up the gears. Whoops, as I ended the level on 19k. I lost a few with KK v QQ on a Q99 flop, folded on the flop of J55 V Good ol Boy when I held Queens (I'm still 50/50 if this is a good fold in this spot, I think I gave him too much credit. He had called an early raiser and called my 3bet before raising my flop lead. If I had called the flop raise then I was getting into playing for stacks territory and I just had a bad feeling I was crushed).
After the break and getting a pep talk from my bro I decided to turn it up a notch for level 2. Luckily this was the second hand after the break:
BvB I flat the SB's raise holding AT. Flop AT6r, flat the c-bet. Turn T (lovely). Check/check. River T (I think I love the dealer). I overbet the pot after the SB leads, get my value and am over starting for the first time of the main. These two levels were probably the best I played in the tournament. I started to roll over the whole table, floated the heck out of good ol' boy several times, punished limpers and was reading hands the best I did for the whole trip. I peaked at 45K and went into dinner with around 43k or so after having to fold Kings yet again. The few times I held a genuine hand I ran into a much bigger one or was obviously outdrawn, but those important orphan pots, those marginal spots, those weak moments around the table, all of those chippies were falling my way.
Sadly I never found that level of rhythm again for the rest of the tournament.
Looking forward to next instalment although I do blub at sad endings....