The Reborn

It’s been a couple of weeks and i apologise but being busy at work and socially has meant little time for the game i love. I want to go back a fortnight when on the saturday morning , I opened up the Racing Post and to my surprise they have a poker pullout. Now the reason I was shocked to see this , is that it’s no real secret that the paper really couldn’t be arsed with poker in the past. Hey I am always willing to forgive and seeing that they were holding a freeroll to readers for a trip to the Arc in France, I was quite willing to register to their site and have a crack at it.

It suddenly dawned on me that on the same evening was the PokerNews Headlines League game and for anyone not involved, there is a great prize on offer which really is winnable considering the amount of people that play in it. Which unfortunately was cancelled due to a lack of runners. Anyway this gave me the opportunity to concentrate on the freeroll.

It had entered my mind that the Racing Post was just doing this as a publicity stunt tgo get a few people to join their poker site, this was due to the fact that the poker articles they did have were old news basically but as i said, i will give them a chance to convince me otherwise. Get a good structure in this freeroll right and a decent bit of play in , then the praise and forgiveness will come in abundance.

So why on earth did they bother? Within an hour the blinds were up to 2000/4000, we had gone from 300+ players down to 32. Players were moaning at each other for poor play which was unavoidable to be honest. It wasn’t so much bad play but some people couldn’t grasp the fact that the blinds were going up so quick , you just had to press the all in button then close your eyes and hope for the best. I hope the person that won has a great time , i really do.

The Racing post has since continued to have a 2 page spread on poker which consists of an article by Roy Brindley, which isn’t a bad read but the rest is tripe I am afraid. So do us all a favour and improve it or stop it now as it is just painful to look at as it is at the moment.

Whilst I have been grinding away, trying to build up some sort of bankroll to be able to play some games at higher levels, I have been visiting a few of the old forums that I used to frequent. Some things never change as the mad are still mad, the grumpy still blaming everyone else apart from themselves and the majority still looking for that big payday. One thing I did notice and this tends to happen in cycles for some strange reason is the amount of players moaning about Hold’em and how they are going over to omaha.

The main reason for this by most players is that Hold’em is becoming a lot tougher to beat and there are millions of fish now playing omaha. This is all very well but how many of these were actually beating Hold’em in the first place? Even those that were , i can’t believe that when they first started playing that they straight away made money. To me it just stinks of players not being able to change and keep changing so they can consistantly beat the game that they fell in love with also it wiffs of boredom of what can be at times a grind when all doesn’t go well.

Ok, I don’t believe in sticking to one game and I myself enjoy a few variations of poker including omaha. In fact just the other day i played a few sit and go’s with some success, it certainly helps when the stupid sit at your table. This poor chap after the flop kept betting the pot and even though I never had a made hand , I had more outs than the Aussie cricket team this summer. Of course I won the hand and then was subjected to the usual abuse that comes from a loser at an online table. But getting back to the point, if we all dump Hold’em and move over to omaha then it won’t be long until all those that moaned and moved over will be moaning again.

Although maybe I should be encouraging all the better players to make Omaha their bread and butter, then that would leave me with all the newbies and bad players.

While we are on the subject of Omaha , I have been reading quite a few arcticles on the strategies I should be adopting. To be honest I am totally confused as the information i am getting is rather conflicting. Some experts say its a drawing game whereas others say those drawing are mugs and the deeper you go the more confusing it gets. So I have decided to go my own way for now.

I am just going to close by saying my journey to the 2010 wsop is going in the right direction although rather slowly at the moment but with the PNH freeroll 2nd leg tomorrow night, I aim to increase my bankroll. I will report on that next time and also I will also have the result of my first prop bet which involves singing at a karaoke.

The next part of my visit was to see how Gala bingo online worked and to be honest, the idea of playing bingo online just seems so ridiculously boring. I must admit though, I can know see how much of a social tool it actually is. Thousands of people everyday log on to just chat and in the meantime decide that a game or two of bingo is needed. I was shocked to see how many ways you could lose money playing with all the side attractions that are available and these include scratchcards ,lottery tickets for the next bingo game where you use the first 15 balls to come out as the winning numbers, betting on which colours will come out and many more. One thing that did tickle me was a graph I was shown as to when people use the site and from 6pm til 8pm it gradually rose and then dipped for an hour when the soaps are on and then rose dramatically until midnight.

Next was an extension of the online bingo and that is Gala Tv which is on Sky and has an automated show running most of the day until 6pm when the show goes live until midnight. Most of the time they get actual bingo hall callers to front the show which is a nice touch but they do have a celebrity host in the form of  Spencer Moon from Eastenders. This may sound harsh but if I was part of one of the most familiar families in soap history and now find myself  on a bingo channel , I would definitely sack my agent. I apologise now to the hardcore viewers of Gala tv as I was told how seriously you take the show and how you even phone up and complain when a presenter leaves as they do become like a close pal to you.

The one thing that was abundantly clear on my visit was , how bad a situation Gala/Coral are in financially. The company are in debt for the tune of £2.5 billion and they are looking to get hold of £200 million which is staring them in the face on the balance sheet but to touch it would be in breach of agreements put in place with their debt. The Sunday Times has reported that the company are looking to close 6 of its 156 bingo clubs with a further 40 to 50 closing within the next 2 years. While this will stop them losing money it wont actually raise any cash. Floatation is another option but apparently not in the near future ,so the only other option would be to sell the retail betting shop estate but this now has it’s problems.

Prior to the 2005 Gambling Act coming into force in 2007 Coral were buying up shops all over the place when the shop values were high. Since then , the absence of the demand test has made new openings easier and cheaper even to the extent where some of the companies that sold shops to Coral have now reopened for a lot less than they sold which means the value of the shops bought have dropped. This also means that where a company would want to get rid of its less profitable shops, its very hard to as there isn’t a market for them now. As for selling the whole retail estate, the likes of Ladbrokes and William Hill couldn’t see it as an option due to monopoly concerns.

These are dark times for the Gala/Coral group but I hope that a solution is found before its too late. So if you have £200 million under your pillow, do them a favour and give them a ring.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting the guys that form the remote gaming division of Gala/Coral. The online casino is run by a third party so the division is made up of, all 3 poker brands; Gala bingo and Gala tv.

Now it was a no brainer as to which part I was most interested in and it was the poker guys I got to meet first. Now it was monday morning and the night before was the big sunday tournament called The ChampionChip, which unfortunately decided to crash shortly after starting. So it was no suprise that there were literally hundreds of complaints. These were easy to deal with as it was just a case of making sure money was refunded. I was shown a complaint from a man who had been thrown out of the site whilst playing a $30 sit and go, this presented myself with the oppotunity to see how a dispute like this is resolved. Firstly the game that was played was identified and with this came the hand history for the entire game . Going through the hand history it was plain to see the player was disconnected as they were being dealt some great hands and none were being played. Next we got the players details up which showed all the vital info you would need as a business , for example the amount raked by the player since joining and how much has been deposited etc and from all this a decision is made to what action to take regarding the complaint.

Next I was shown a new side game that had been put on the site and this was Dice Hold em. Played in exactly the same way as normal hold em but with dice which means there are less combinations of winning hands , but this seemed to be lost on most people apparently. Although only played for small stakes at present it is hoped that this will be increased if proved popular. I must say that i am tempted to give it a crack for a bit of fun but the variance must be huge. So if your a sick degenerate gambler then this could be up your street.

Whilst I was being shown all that goes on the conversation went onto the Coral Masters Poker tour and why the change of name? It seems that when Gala announced that it’s tour would be no more after 2 seasons that they were in fact telling the truth. To most it seemed a marketing ploy that Gala’s Tour came to an end and so soon after The Coral tour was announced but the tour was dead and buried until AWorldOfPoker asked why the Gala tour had ended. Under Gala’s name the cost of the tour was unbelievable and not really viable especially in the current climate and the situation that the company finds itself in at the moment, which I will come to later. So AWOP it seems had a think about this and as the tour was popular it seems as though they had an interest in keeping it alive. They approached the company and put an offer on the table stating that they would be able to run the tour for X amount of pounds and Coral came back and said ok we will sponsor it and hey presto the pheonix had risen from the flames. Before everyone rejoices though it has to be said that numbers are down on the tour since Corals name has been put to it which doesn’t bode well for the future of it and this would be really sad if it ended so soon.

I just want to wrap up this first part by saying the guys from the poker side of remote gaming certainly knew their stuff and want so much to make the site as successful as possible but as I will point out in part 2, there is a more immediate problem for Gala/Coral. On a lighter note though I will be telling you the answer to the question, “What happened to Spencer Moon from Eastenders?”.

So here I  go with my very first blog entry and I suppose I should start with a hello and a warm welcome to anyone that is going to follow myself, on a journey to next years wsop. Well, I have exactly a year to do this and will be starting with £37 but before anyone thinks this is just another jesus challenge that every poker player has started to attempt at some stage of their playing career, this is not.

Before I explain why it isn’t, let me just fill you in on my life as a poker player so far. I took up the game roughly 6 years ago and through playing I have met some new friends and great people. In terms of status I am a nobody who at my peak was playing $1/$2 NL hold em under a girls name which to my annoyance never really fooled anybody.  In a game where anyone can get to play giants of the game, I have had the privilege to lock horns with Joe Beevers online and Willie Tann in a live tournament. I have also made a complete idiot of myself and mistaken Erik Lindgren for another high profile player whilst drunk. I have appeared in PokerPlayer magazine and represented TeamPokerPlayer in a match against Team Pokerroom which we won. All in all it was fun but over a year ago things happened in my life which meant poker had to take a back seat.

Well i am now ready to return to the game and have set myself a goal. So the reason it’s not your normal run of the mill challenge is that for starters there is no bankroll management as such. I am going to make this journey as enjoyable as possible and that can’t be done grinding away online,so I will be seeking live action as well. Seeing that prop bets seem to be all the rage , I will be seeking out as many as possible and hopefully adding to the pot in that way.

This could turn out to be a complete disaster but either way, in a years time ; I hope to look back and say I had a great time trying. So that’s it for now, I should get cracking because as it stands I only have the cab fare to the airport.