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Trekking for Patagonians
Oct. 10th, 2010 08:02 pmI went to bed at 10pm last night and didn't eventually get up for the final time until 9am, which just goes to show how exhausting everyday life is for me in London. Just getting up, going to work, and all the other shit that ordinary living entails, tires me out. It takes a day of my holiday just to get my head a bit straight.
I couldn't resist a bit of online poker this morning, but it appears that Party Poker and Full Tilt Poker are now out of bounds to anyone in France, even if they have a UK-based account. Full Tilt didn't bother to reply to my email, while Party said that, basically, "you are fucked". You can't play on Party Poker International because you are in France, and you can't play on Party Poker France because you aren't a French resident.
Pokerstars fired up okay, but one has to assume that the future is one of online poker retreating behind state boundaries, with taxes on turnover being introduced that will make playing the cash game pointless.
If I were serious about living in France for any length of time (which perhaps I am), then I would look at something like Ghost-Surf to throw a fake IP address at the poker sites. But the problem here is that the use of a proxy server usually means occasional time lags, which is a serious issue in online poker.
However, as I say, before to long it probably won't make any difference, because there will be a tax on turnover no matter what country you play in.
It's ironic that online poker and its boom will actually lead to less internationalism in the game rather than more. As the Youngster pointed out, in the old days people would travel a long way for a decent tournament. These days they don't need to bother, because there are enough people in all of the major cities to bring a good tournament to you. How many players in London bother going to Walsall any more? But a decade or so ago, some nights that would be the only tourney in town (or, more accurately, not in town). And now the very internationalism of online poker is under threat. Frenchmen can only play other Frenchmen. Italy is heading the same way.
It's all rather sad.
++++++++
I've managed to lose an hour's typing simply by speed typing CTRL+A rather than Shift+A, and then quickly typing an 'S'. Thus instead of typing the word "As" (as had been planned), I selected all of my writing for the previous hour, and replaced it with the single letter 'S'. Panicked typing of CTRL+'Z' was to no avail. It was gone. Bloody Netbooks. No smartarse comments on what could have been done to avoid disaster (e.g. "I don't use a Netbook, so it's never happened to me" would be one particularly unhelpful aside).
+++++++
Today, after faffing around, I got my act together by about 2pm and walked up to the toytown station (the one with a metre-gauge train to Digne Les Bains and another to Var) north of the "real" station.
To do so I had to pass underneath the "real" railway lines. This passage was illuminated by some odd blue fluorescent lights, perhaps part of the Nice tramway "installation art" (see later picture for an explanation of this).
( pictures" )
I couldn't resist a bit of online poker this morning, but it appears that Party Poker and Full Tilt Poker are now out of bounds to anyone in France, even if they have a UK-based account. Full Tilt didn't bother to reply to my email, while Party said that, basically, "you are fucked". You can't play on Party Poker International because you are in France, and you can't play on Party Poker France because you aren't a French resident.
Pokerstars fired up okay, but one has to assume that the future is one of online poker retreating behind state boundaries, with taxes on turnover being introduced that will make playing the cash game pointless.
If I were serious about living in France for any length of time (which perhaps I am), then I would look at something like Ghost-Surf to throw a fake IP address at the poker sites. But the problem here is that the use of a proxy server usually means occasional time lags, which is a serious issue in online poker.
However, as I say, before to long it probably won't make any difference, because there will be a tax on turnover no matter what country you play in.
It's ironic that online poker and its boom will actually lead to less internationalism in the game rather than more. As the Youngster pointed out, in the old days people would travel a long way for a decent tournament. These days they don't need to bother, because there are enough people in all of the major cities to bring a good tournament to you. How many players in London bother going to Walsall any more? But a decade or so ago, some nights that would be the only tourney in town (or, more accurately, not in town). And now the very internationalism of online poker is under threat. Frenchmen can only play other Frenchmen. Italy is heading the same way.
It's all rather sad.
++++++++
I've managed to lose an hour's typing simply by speed typing CTRL+A rather than Shift+A, and then quickly typing an 'S'. Thus instead of typing the word "As" (as had been planned), I selected all of my writing for the previous hour, and replaced it with the single letter 'S'. Panicked typing of CTRL+'Z' was to no avail. It was gone. Bloody Netbooks. No smartarse comments on what could have been done to avoid disaster (e.g. "I don't use a Netbook, so it's never happened to me" would be one particularly unhelpful aside).
+++++++
Today, after faffing around, I got my act together by about 2pm and walked up to the toytown station (the one with a metre-gauge train to Digne Les Bains and another to Var) north of the "real" station.
To do so I had to pass underneath the "real" railway lines. This passage was illuminated by some odd blue fluorescent lights, perhaps part of the Nice tramway "installation art" (see later picture for an explanation of this).
( pictures" )
