Harder in Nevada

Spring is in the air, the daffodils are poking through the warmer soil,
and the thoughts of lusty young poker folk all over the country turn to one thing -



Vegas.



What is it about this obnoxious city that so captivates the thoughts of the poker playing public, particularily as there is one immutable law of British poker players and Vegas, they ALL come back skint.

(OK, you can throw the names of Julian Garner and James Vogl at me, but any statistician will tell you that such tiny exceptions to the rule can be safely ignored.)

Some people complain that the overriding annoyance in Vegas is the never ending ringing of the slots, but to me, it's the the unceasing and unsavoury spectacle of skint fellow countrymen on the nip. The low hum that accompanies word of a British player winning a large pot in some hidden corner of Benny's Bullpen soon breaks out into an undignified scramble as the array of nippers jostle for prime position to waylay the poor sucker on his way to the bar, with tales of "unbelievable outdraws" and "just a monkey till we get back home". All of which means that, even in the unlikely event of making good on the poker table, the chance of bringing home any ready cash is a negligible one.

Western Philosophy

The ongoing saga that is the Western club continues to confound.

Does anyone have any idea how much it cost to fit out this monstrosity? And for what? So that the people who sunk money into this comic venture can have a place to park their ample arses while playing a £1000 omaha game, and a few dismal chicken soupers can decamp from St Johns Wood now and again for some tight arse kalooki?

Has it dawned on them yet that for half a million or so less, they could have continued to play the same opponents, for the same stakes, at the Vic, but now they have burned their bridges and will have to scrape and bow to have their memberships reinstated when the Western crashes and burns, as it inevitably will?

Say what you like about the Gutshot spivs and all their money grabbing antics (and I will, Mitser Fneehney), at least their motives are apparent (grab as much cash as possible before the law gets it's arse in gear). But unless the Western is an elaborate front through which to "lose" some unexplained income, there is no business sense behind the venture at all, merely a collection of egos only surpassed on the day that David Young attended his first Mensa meeting.

From The Mailbag

From : James Feeny
Sent : 31 January 2005 18:37:09
To : pokerbastard@hotmail.com
Subject : poker article about Gutshot


You article about the Gutshot poker room makes me laugh. You say it is full of think people that cannot play the game. I make my living playing poker and play at Gutshot everyday. You say it is full of bad players, but in my opinion everywhere is. I think the only think person is you.

ps your articles are shit.

You couldn't make it up.



.

They watched their Rome burn.

Bobby Moore, Sir Leonard Hutton, Martin Johnson, Murray Brown.

The chest swells with pride, and a tear wells in the hardiest eye, when one ponders on the great names that have captained English sports teams to magnificent victories over the years, and which have brought honour and nobility to the humble citizens of our island race.

But what's this? Pint-sized colonial poker whore Keith "Bendigo" Sloan dares to have a pop at one of our aforementioned heroes?

I organized nothing, I was invited to be tournament director by the casino because of previous problems with the teams event. The marketing, organizing etc. of this event was all done by an Englishman. With no rules available to me (lost by one English organizer).
When the rules allowed for a player to be on the final table (chip leader) with no chance of collecting a single $ in prizemoney the end result was inevitable.
The casino was advised by me (and many players also) of the potential problems with this tournament but were talked out of changing any of the procedures by the organizer and unfortunately the Casino Manager was left to take the blame.
They have made changes to the format and rules for the next event of this type in an attempt to overcome previous problems (however the organizer still refuses to accept the format is flawed).

All is sadness. There truly are no more heroes anymore.

And in other news

From today's FT:

The world's biggest online poker site is edging towards a market listing, in what could be a further sign of a resurgence in investor interest in internet businesses. PartyGaming, formerly known as iGlobalMedia, owns Party-Poker.com, and has 5m registered users. It has been sounding out banks in London over a potential flotation that could be worth more than £2.3bn ($4.3bn).

Bankers who have seen the Gibraltar-based group's accounts say that it generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of more than $350m in 2004.

PartyGaming is owned by a small group of investors, including Ruth Parasol, an American lawyer, and Anarag Dikshit, a software specialist from India.

Noble Poker Chief Executive Jac Dipshit also revealed plans for a float, "We hope to float all 170% of our stock, and we are talking to various parties in the hope of selling the entire company to 3 or 4 of them".

CFO Willy Jackshit commented "We hope to invest all the profits in an online craps venture"

Chairman Gary Apeshit was not available for comment, but it is believed he would make the least money from the float, as he had paid twice what everybody else had originally.

Gut Rot

“The only “real” name in poker”

That should read “The real “Moneymaker” in poker”.

Let us start by airing a few basic facts about Gutshot. Not malice or jealousy. Facts.

The Gutshot card club/internet cardroom is not the future or the saviour of poker. The game of poker and the huge majority of poker players were doing just fine long before the place ever sprung up. The brand name is making an absolute mint for a very select few people because of some admittedly very clever marketing portraying it as some ground-breaking set up which has the best interests of the club members at heart, and which is revolutionising the game. As a business, it has the interests of its OWNERS at heart, and the clever spin of ”Gutshot is proudly joining forces with”(insert any organisation that will bung them a few quid in exchange for distributing branded baseball caps/key fobs/whatever-but of course NO actual money for the poker players themselves by way of adding to prize pools) should not cut any ice with anyone with more than one brain cell who should see it for what it really is-gloss to get punters in and nothing more.
New players are made to feel very welcome, but are omitted from being told that they will soon be rubbing shoulders with every barred casino cheat, angle-shooter, nipper and general lowlife poker has to offer. To educate people would be bad business so we don’t want that.
You do not argue with Gutshot. You do not air opinions that are seen as contrary to the interests of the club. You do not swear on the forum(unless you are in the clique then your post may not be removed). You don’t promote charity work or any poker related events that will not make money for Gutshot. You should all know this by now. The recent TIME OUT article which portrays the club in a less than wonderful light(a not uncommon opinion) was instantly shouted down, and its author personally attacked in a pretty appalling fashion-mostly by ignorant unwashed student-types who have seen far too many reruns of Late Night Poker and Rounders, and are sadly living in the belief that they are themselves experts at the game. From my few visits to the place I‘d concede that there are some great players and nice people there, but they are vastly outnumbered by know-it-all wankers and 25 quid cash game merchants whose only experience of real poker is watching it on TV (they just don’t know it) and choosing sunglasses and loud poker shirts from C and A, whilst learning how to twiddle poker chips and practice their dramatic stare prior to folding.
The Gutshot forum used to be a highly amusing and informative place to go. It’s now a horribly watered down hive of double standards which is primarily used to further boost the bulging coffers of the empire. Pretty much NONE of the original forum posters bother with the place anymore and it’s easy to see why. Various issues including gross overcharging, collusion, overcrowding, player intimidation, and the fact the whole thing is NOT really a “collective” in any sense (the members get no sniff of the profits at all and probably never will despite hints about shares for the members) have been swept under the rug and generally ignored. As long as the punters keep playing and paying-that is ALL that is important, and luckily most regulars are too thick to see it. Barbed snipes at other poker websites and cardrooms, along with in-house generated self publicising question/answer sessions give the illusion of everyone being delighted with ”the best thing ever to happen to poker”.
The poor people who have never known poker outside the goldfish bowl of Clerkenwell can happily continue to put down the rest of the UK (non Gutshot) poker scene and crow about how they don’t want to be like the regulars at the Vic. This is fine, because the regulars at the Vic who generally ARE players would be horrified if they ever became the uninformed poncified average-ability tossers who constitute the “new breed of poker player”, who have indirectly created precisely the kind of old boys network they originally said they hated and wished to banish. Same thing, different label. What a laugh. The club will continue to make a packet. The players will continue to live in cloud cuckoo land. Ad nauseum.

The Camel’s views about Gutshot are not one voice. In fact a fair proportion of people don’t like the place, the “ethic”, or the way it quite shamelessly makes a small fortune whilst pretending it’s on a crusade of some kind. It isn’t. Except for its own profit.

Ain't No Smoke

First came UKpoker, with the database of Mark's ever so impressive online results.

Then in chipped the Hendon Mob, with their exhaustive trawl through tournament results the world over (except the ones that didn't comply with Data Protection! Presumably Mr Anon of Brighton doesn't want the Child Support Agency to know how much he's winning).

So here at Bastard Towers, we decided to announce the formation of our own Bastard Database. We aim to bring to you a comprehensive list of all players banned from casinos in the UK, with a short description of the misdeed (or more likely, outright criminality) that caused their downfall.

But folks, we cannot do this without the generous help of our loyal - and growing - readership, so we hereby invite all of you to name and shame as many people as possible by sending details to pokerbastard@hotmail.com, or by a comment to this post.

You send 'em, we'll post 'em.

Bastard Gongs 2004

Player of the Year

Best - James Vogl. Managed to win massive World Series event despite the handicap of being coached by Ron "Mad Yank" Fanelli and Victor Bede.
Worst - Barny Boatman. Has sponsorship money ever been spent worse?

Tournament Performance of the Year

Best - Xuyen Pham. So there IS a decent player in that relationship!
Worst - Marty Wilson. "Wasn't his hand mucked?"

Cardroom of the Year

Best - The Vic. Well managed, high quality staff, and good numbers of players.
Worst - The Western. Was supposed to be the answer to a London poker player's prayers, but is merely an 800 seater white elephant that hosts what is basically a private game for the club's many owners.

Standard of Play at Cardroom

Best - The Vic, unfortunately.
Worst - Southampton. More play that has you gasping at it's incompetence than anywhere else in the UK.


Cardroom Staff of the Year

Best - The Vic. No frills, just incredibly competent.
Worst - Luton. Full of frills, but incredibly incompetent.

Dealer of the Year

Best - Deano, Vic. Doesn't make mistakes, ever.
Worst - Grey haired middle aged guy at Gutshot. More interested in getting involved in the players conversations and fawning over female players than in dealing properly.

Poker Website of the Year

Best - The Mob Forum. Useful information and entertaining ireverrence.
Worst - For the umpteenth year in succession UKPoker.com. I won't link to it, don't go there.

Poker Blog of the Year

Best - The Camel's blog. Funny, impassioned, and usually right.
Worst - The Wise Owl. Cutting and pasting fawning interviews is not a blog.

Like Moths To A Flame.

Reading reports of the Brighton Festival this week, I notice that among the leaders of the main event is none other than "cricketer Ed Giddins".

How at home this guy must feel among the cheats and card sharps of the Brighton Rendezvous, for this is the man who is currently banned from all forms of cricket for 5 years, having been found guilty of betting £7,000 on his county (Surrey) to lose a National League game. Earlier in his career, he had been sacked by a previous county and banned for 18 months, having tested positive for cocaine at a random drugs test.

Isn't it nice when fine upstanding members of the sporting world grace our poker rooms with their presence?

Poker Loopy

A post appeared on the Hendon Mob forum from one Andy Pyrah (who a google search tells me works for Matchroom), about the PacificPoker.com UK Open that graced out TV's last week.

Assuming the poster is indeed who he says he is, Mr Pyrah says, among other things, this -

Marty is a true proffesional (sic) at what ever he does, be it, playing in front of the cameras, working behind the scenes every hour of every day, or entertaining the online qualifers back at the hotel, ensuring that they enjoy their stay - There's nobody better at what he does.

If he is trying to suggest that a true professional would deliberately try and take the chips from a pot knowing that he hadn't won it, I'm afraid that Mr Pyrah knows less about the game than he claims to do.

Liam Flood is the best around. Anyone questioning Liam's credentials should hang their head in shame. Every 'TRUE' proffesional (sic) out there will agree.

Saying that someone is "the best around" doesn't make it so. Attacking people who rightly criticise Flood for the debacle of the wrongly awarded pot does not diminish Flood's responsibility. He fucked up, admit it.

Padraig Parkinson - This guy has been there done it, got the t-shirt several times over. How many of the 'posters' which knock him will achieve what he has in their lifetime?

Well, if they handed out awards for the most alcohol consumed by a poker player, then yes, Parkinson (did they name the shaking disease after him?) would be the poker equivalent of The Simpsons, but does no-one else see the irony of a NON poker player having a go at poker players for their lack of achievements in the game! What the fuck have YOU achieved Mr Pyrah?

The fact remains that this show is the latest in a long line of shoddy, unattractive and badly edited TV poker shows, with the now de rigeur inane commentary.

And every 'TRUE' proffesional out there will agree with me.