Update!

Muggling Along!

Things have been pretty quiet of late, been working IRL quite a bit, as the more grown up of you will know January is a time where the government asks you to work out how much money you owe them, and then send it to them - wonderful! You'll all prolly be surprised by this because in general i'm a bit of a trainwreck but when it comes to my business I'm actually extremely organised, I have lever arch files on my desk where I store all my paperwork, Invoices, receipts etc, everything has it's own little file and is sorted always on time. When stuff builds up to the point where instead of having 30minutes work to do you have 3 hours that can be really tilting.

So I've been going through all my last 6 months paperwork, organised it nicely and sent it off to my accountant who for the price of some minimal fee makes sure I don't go to prison. Job done, lovely, a bottle of Strawberry cider later and I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. I'm pretty anti-tax for the most part, but I do like to be contributing a bit to the world, feels very grown up and it lets me say stuff like "fucking government spunking my tax money on XXX" which is one of the better things to rant about! I also just got a refund of £181.65 from overpaying taxes previously, which is cool, hilarious how they could have just not told me and I'd never have known! I worked out that from my actual income last year I have paid >2% in tax...

So I decided to donate my £181.65 to Charity, I chose Macmillan Cancer Support as I know a girl who is doing volunteer work for them right now and she was telling me about one of the nurses there who (after she'd finished work every day) she goes to visit her patients at home to get shopping for them, make sure they are comfortable, even doing some housework, takes about 2-3 hours every day and she doesn't get paid for it. basically 10 hours per week, 500 hours per year of her own time she puts into making other peoples lives easier during horrible times - and there are loads like this nurse as well.  Lets say they earn £10 p/hour, thats £5,000 a year they are giving up.  

So in tribute to her, and in honor of my good friend Shaun Conning's dad who recently passed away I felt like this charity was a good choice. I know ~£200 isn't a lot in the grand scheme of it but hopefully it makes a small difference to someone, somewhere. It's defo true that if everyone gave a few hours of there time every week to help people who are less fortunate then the world would be a miles better place, but that isn't how the world works alas.

So, I decided the other day that I wasn't going to go drinking much before i get back from L.A - I've set myself a good target and that is after L.A when Stu gets to Vegas I will be heading for a week in Cancun for sprrrinnnnggg brrreeeeeaaaaaaaaaak! Spring break is amazing (I went a few years back) and had the best time. Super hot, beautiful place, sick hotels and as many drunk 19yr old American girls as you can shake a stick at, and that's a LOT trust me I'm good with sticks :D....After 2 weeks in LA and 2 Weeks in Vegas, following a trip to Venice I'm gonna need a holiday of some sort !!

Anyway the point of the ^^ shameless brags (didn't even bother veiling them, no need) was that they would be rewards for my not drinking much. It's a great plan, be productive, healthy and hopefully make money and then reward yourself with days of drinking in the sun. A grown up plan from new grown up David - Thank You, everyone, Thank You....

About 9 hours after making this plan, I'm in HiFi with Sam Mac, Ash, Pez, Jamie, TommyC and Ash's girlfriend Soph (and her Russian/American friend) Ash has ordered so many jagerbombs and it's so busy we dont have a table that me and Sam are seeing them off so we can hold more, thrown some cider, a few soco+lemonades and a collection of other stuff I can't even remember I'm smashed dancing like a 43yr old taking MDMA for the first time and its so loud I can't hear the little man in my brain telling me that I'm no longer allowed to go to Cancun. Whoops. More control needed. 

Next day I wake up feeling surprisingly fine, debate with the little man in my head telling me I cant go mexico anymore, agree that I can have one more chance. Wiiiii Cancun's back on!

That night I went for dinner with Matt who has just got back from the Bahama's, I like Matt he's hilariously good company and always good for a spontaneous night out and like's good so very glad to have him back in leeds! We had a great meal at Chino Latino and a few "dragon-flys" which is like a chilli+Lychee sakatini (so good) we then went to his club where he wanted to show someone round, I sat at the bar chatting to one of the girls I'm friendly with there and before I know where I am, I'm smashed again! Sigh, gonna be in trouble with the little man again.

After bickering with him for about an hour (must have looked like a bit of a nutcase on the train) him insisting I should NOT be allowed to Mexico, I eventually told him that he isn't real, I only invented him for the sake of this story and he should shut the fuck up. 

We haven't spoken since, think I prolly upset him - I shouldn't have sworn, out of order.

Upshot is, I'm still going to Mexico, unless I go broke and Stu doesn't fancy lending me a few grand :D !

I think there was some hilarious stuff from the night out to share, but I can't remember - one comedy moment was Sam Mac vanishing from action for a bit then returning wearing a womens fur coat about 6 sizes too small, with a huge rip down one side. I can't remember the exact story behind it, but I would like to say that I don't believe anything that would require him going on a register should the authorities find out happened. 

GUKPT Manchester has rolled around, I was about to take my usual stance of "would rather eat  a cobra than play a GUKPT" I don't know why cos they are good tourneys but I just don't get on with them, the chips are too thick, the places are always tilting and MAN ALIVE WHY OH WHY do I always get stuck on the most annoying table full of the most annoying people. This all aside, I always do terribly in them, I don't even know why I Just suck, but then I remembered this...

Manchester was the exact leg Simon Moorman won! So with the opportunity to follow those footsteps an easily manageable train journey away I got 1,000 of my pounds together and headed to Manchester ready to dominate.

Level 4 rolls around and everything is going perfectly, I have 3 Amaretto sour's in front of me at the bar alongside Alan (a nice scottish guy I met) and Danny Lamming, all in agreement that whereas people are still buying in for the tourney being at the bar is a LOT less tilting than being at the table. Skalie joins us 15minutes later with plenty of high morale stories and I'm just left sweating my small % swaps with Julian and Stu. Was pretty happy to see Julian bust quickly afterwards, followed by Keith Johnson, Will Fry and Mitch! A great drinking team has emerged! A failed dice spin up, several more Amaretto Sour's later and a near on exclusion from the casino following me doubling a 13 for £200 to spite the pit-boss, pinging an 8 vs a 7 and then celebrating a little over enthusiastically and I'm nicely smashed and In a taxi home with Marcin and Pez both of whom made day 2. 

Was DEV'D Sammy Grafton didn't win he's literally one of the best guys in UK poker and would be a well deserving winner of a live comp, Kev Steele struck me as a nice bloke on the table, 2x Sunday Million wins and a 2nd in a GUKPT in the last 8 months....Lessons plz? 

Since then I've played a bunch online and done reasonably poorly - would love to post you a graph but HEM2 I don't know how to work yet and it doesn't seem to want me to copy the graphs. I'm running pretty badly actually, speshly at high stakes (mainly £3/£6 with some 5/10 and 10/20) and those games don't run enough right now to really make them worth playing, when you can really grind out a solid hourly at $1/$2 - £2/£4 and live happily. Problem is though when good higher stakes games run I just literally cannot say no. I've notoriously run poorly at anything above 5/10 online, was speculating with stu what my lifetime net 10/20+ online is, quickly thought about something else, very depressing. Not saying every hand was played well at HS, (tbf ~70% of them prolly weren't) but if I'd had some sick fortune in a few spots think where i'd be! 

This is why I love gambling so much, when you risk $30,000 you don't just risk $30,000 you risk the utility value of not winning it and when you get lucky for $30,000 you don't get lucky for the $30,000 you get lucky for the added Utility value of the extra cash! Variance is literally the best thing ever imo, I'm going to do a proper article on why I think this soon. The more you learn, think and experience it the more you realise how fascinating it is.

That's all from me for now, gotta head to town for lunch with Tommy C and to start getting stuff organised for me LA trip!

GL everyone

lilD