A Never Ending Story
Just as I announce my final departure from Paradise Poker, they announce a deposit bonus. They've done this before, offering a 20% bonus plus a freeroll (which is also excellent value, I recall, mainly because 70% of players fail to turn up) if you get on the right side of the NFL spread. I've backed Seattle — a team for which I have always had a soft spot because they are so utterly hopeless and they are in a city with which you wouldn't really associate American Football. Cleveland, yes, Cincinatti, yes, but Seattle? Not really.
The deposit on Paradise did not get off to the most flying of starts. Three-tabling last night was a definite test of faith. I got back to $190 down before I called it a day, a quarter of the bonus worked off.
Interesting times at work. Late last year we discusssed launching an Asian version of my own publication (not based in Asia, but covering Asian insurance). I produced a couple of test issues. On Friday my immediate bossman called me in for a chat, muttered some irrelevant crap about the 2006 bonus scheme (embarrassing for both of us I think -- he knows that £500 is hardly likely to incentivise me) and then said that all the marketing, etc, had been done for the publication, but that they had been unable to find an editor. Would I do it?
All of which is a bit messy. Last year I told them point blank that I wouldn't do my fortnightly letter as well as the daily, but this was slightly different. There's more, er, synergy. And, anyway, I didn't want to get a reputation as a Doctor No (as in "No, I won't do this").
So I'll probably say yes, particularly since I guess we will deal for an extra £7.5k a year. I reckon I could do them for £10K, but they might resent that, so I'll accept 7.5. On the downside, I've got to figure out where to find an extra two to two-and-a-half hours a day. I'm leaning towards (and I'm serious here) a 3.30am alarm call, doing the Asian issue at home, sending it out, and then getting the train to work. Do the ordinary daily, go to the gym tat 11am, return to office for minor admin stuff, leave at 2pm, catch a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon, get up about 6pm, play online, go to bed, repeat.
Tough, but doable, and it makes the Birks financial target for 2013 significantly more achievable.
After a quiescent January, the fish seemed to have reappeared this morning on Party -- or perhaps I was just lucky with my table selection. But I'm still a couple of hundred bucks short of moving to 3-6. But I cracked on the account-checking. I've decided that I like looking at spreadsheets and playing with the numbers. Last night I actually began a complete rejig of my "old" main sheet (which tries to cover all types of poker played by me since 1998, online and bricks & mortar) to make it less of an amorphous mess. My newer sheets are far "cleaner", but one is only for the current year and the other one is online bookkeeping (so it has the Schwab, Neteller and various other accounts to deal with).
Fun.
The deposit on Paradise did not get off to the most flying of starts. Three-tabling last night was a definite test of faith. I got back to $190 down before I called it a day, a quarter of the bonus worked off.
Interesting times at work. Late last year we discusssed launching an Asian version of my own publication (not based in Asia, but covering Asian insurance). I produced a couple of test issues. On Friday my immediate bossman called me in for a chat, muttered some irrelevant crap about the 2006 bonus scheme (embarrassing for both of us I think -- he knows that £500 is hardly likely to incentivise me) and then said that all the marketing, etc, had been done for the publication, but that they had been unable to find an editor. Would I do it?
All of which is a bit messy. Last year I told them point blank that I wouldn't do my fortnightly letter as well as the daily, but this was slightly different. There's more, er, synergy. And, anyway, I didn't want to get a reputation as a Doctor No (as in "No, I won't do this").
So I'll probably say yes, particularly since I guess we will deal for an extra £7.5k a year. I reckon I could do them for £10K, but they might resent that, so I'll accept 7.5. On the downside, I've got to figure out where to find an extra two to two-and-a-half hours a day. I'm leaning towards (and I'm serious here) a 3.30am alarm call, doing the Asian issue at home, sending it out, and then getting the train to work. Do the ordinary daily, go to the gym tat 11am, return to office for minor admin stuff, leave at 2pm, catch a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon, get up about 6pm, play online, go to bed, repeat.
Tough, but doable, and it makes the Birks financial target for 2013 significantly more achievable.
After a quiescent January, the fish seemed to have reappeared this morning on Party -- or perhaps I was just lucky with my table selection. But I'm still a couple of hundred bucks short of moving to 3-6. But I cracked on the account-checking. I've decided that I like looking at spreadsheets and playing with the numbers. Last night I actually began a complete rejig of my "old" main sheet (which tries to cover all types of poker played by me since 1998, online and bricks & mortar) to make it less of an amorphous mess. My newer sheets are far "cleaner", but one is only for the current year and the other one is online bookkeeping (so it has the Schwab, Neteller and various other accounts to deal with).
Fun.