That there Credit Crunch Thingy/Save our Snoopy

This whole credit crunch stuff is starting to become a bit of a worry. Not so much the impact on poker itself, I think it’s fair to say that a recession has not found its way to the tables yet and the numbers are booming at both the live and online felt, but in the poker media side of things. Future Publishing, the company that produced WPT Poker Magazine lost the contract with WPT and decided not to make another poker mag under a new name. This was sad for me, mainly from a sentimental point of view, because its the first place that printed one of my articles and everyone whom I have worked with there have always been great to me. WPT Poker is now with a new publisher, and reuniting me with my old mucker Jon Young, so it’s no actual loss to me as a writer.

Gala appear to have ditched they GCBPT tour and blamed the recession, which I don’t believe for one second. Every event and side event sold out and you only have to look at the numbers for GUKPT side events and the DTD £300er to know that there is a real demand for a £500 comp. I think that they must have made mistakes elsewhere (Their online cardroom for example, I was never really aware of any online sats and I think they missed a trick by not promoting them more) and I hope someone comes along and plugs that gap in the market soon.

Then my favourite forum and the place that, for me, is the single most community based forum reflective of the UK poker scene, BlondePoker, are having to size down their operation and cut their live updates/live update staff. It was a lot of things all at once, their business model wasn’t the best, the recession aint helped and they also got royally shafted by Poker Trillion for money they will never get back now that Trillion has closed.

If you are looking at live poker updates, I’d say that Pokernews is by far and wide the most accurate, slick and professional updates you can see, but if you want a bit of fun and community, the Blonde updates are head and shoulders the best. They have some of the funniest writers who know all the players and the community input is fantastic, It would be a shame to see them go. You can help Blonde out by obviously playing on their iPoker card room or by clicking on the RakeTheRake link above the next time you want to get a good rakeback deal. The commission money goes to Blonde, not me.

Perhaps most saddening of all, for me personally because they are mates, is they have had to let go of Adam ‘Snoopy’ Goulding and Chris ‘NoFlopsHomer’ Hall (It didnt stop me from adding the worst picture of Floppy I could find though lol). In particular, Snoopy has put every last breath into Blonde and is losing a significant portion of his income as a result. As soon as I found out I emailed him with some magazine/websitey/freelancey advice and some contacts, because I think poker needs Snoopy more than he needs poker, he is one of the funniest and most enthusiastic writers out there, much more than I could ever hope to be, and it would be a travesty if he had to get a real job.

In other news, I still have the 500+ Winamax t-shirts clogging up my house and nobody seems to want to take them back, I actually received another one in the post yesterday so it looks like my place is a refuge for stray Winamax t-shirts.

The book is coming on ok, I actually started the introduction, I’m a full 4000 words in, dunno if that is good or bad, no idea how long a book should actually be.

Played a home game with the lads (My non poker mates) last night, it’s been a long time since I played with them and very surprised with how much better a few of them had become. We also had burn cards for the first time, which was a nice surprise. There was 10 of us and I came 2nd for 60 quid, ship it, holla, balla!

Finally, check out this video of people that run good, my favourite is the bank robbers:

Chance
by titounetsan