Grief & Audley

I was dreading the funeral, as it got closer I would have done anything to magically have woken up the day after, but now it’s happened it was actually a kind of nice day. Obviously it was a tough day, not something I plan on going through again, but it was also a great celebration of his life.

The funeral was pretty much a full house, as was our home afterwards. This made a difference, it was nice that so many people were there because of my Dad, rather than necessarily showing their support to us, because it affirmed to me what I’ve always thought of the guy, which is that he was just a really nice fun bloke to be around who will be sorely missed. Not only did a lot of his friends turn up, a lot of mine did too, again not because they were showing their support to me (which was nice) but because my Dad really was just one of the guys when my friends were around and everyone loved the youth club that was the Carter family home when I was a teenager.

It’s probably premature to spout advice about dealing with grief given I’m less than three weeks into it myself, but I think I am handling things well and this is what I’ve learnt about it so far:

Talk about them – I know people who think the best thing to do is avoid the subject but talking about Dad regularly, good things and bad, has really helped me get my head round whats been going on. It feels like you are keeping the memory more alive.

Go through every stage of the grieving process – I actually thought I would try and avoid things like seeing his body, arranging the funeral etc, but again doing these things have helped, they’ve been unpleasant, but they have helped me come to terms with things.

Do – I’ve been working, which has been a great distraction. I’ve been doing my best to sort out his estate and run errands for mum, which has helped me feel like I am being useful. I went out on Saturday and I’ve been going to the gym. It doesn’t numb the pain completely, but it does get you out of the limbo of sitting around doing nothing.

A long way to go yet, perhaps the worst is yet to come, but the whole thing has made me realise how lucky I am to have what I still have in life – great job, great fiancée, great family, great friends, great dog.

On to cheerier stuff and I went to Haye vs Harrison over the weekend and what a joke that was. I did actually enjoy myself because I was with some good mates and we had a laugh, in fact we had a real laugh on the way back at just how bad it was and the chants of 'Your shit and you know you are' will always make me giggle.

It was such a shame because the atmosphere in the MEN was amazing. The crowd were going nuts when Frank Bruno & Lennox Lewis got in the ring together and it really felt like a special night was brewing.

Then Audley came out to a weak ass Phil Collins tune and I knew the writing was on the wall. Don’t get me wrong, I never expected a great fight, I was going for a laugh with my mates more than anything, but it was even worse than I could have feared. I’ve actually seen a pretty interesting video which suggests the fight may have been a fix, I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Booing Audley in real life was so much fun, Dad would have been proud. I can only imagine the chat for his table on Full Tilt will be gold. 

Things at PokerNews are going great and I am getting involved in some pretty exciting stuff right now, more of that to follow I guess. 

Finally this made me lol 

RIP Dad

Well I was kinda hoping the next blog I wrote would be a quick chirp about making two final tables at the IPO in Dublin or the really fun time I had with the PokerNews team in Lithuania last week. Unfortunately real life has got in the way.

My dear old Dad, Brian, died suddenly over the weekend. He was 72 years old but you would never have thought it, he was one of the youngest healthiest guys we have ever met. He’d only been to the doctors once in his life and when we was in the Army never had a sick day. So it was a huge shock to us all when he just died in his chair on Saturday night (Reportedly his last words were slagging off Wagner on X-Factor which I am sure he would have seen the funny side of).

I’m 31 so Dad was a little bit of an ‘older dad’ than the other kids in my class, he was 40 when I was born, so in the last few years I had been a tiny bit anxious about him getting older, not that he gave me any real reason to. My worst fear in life was him dying and I had played it out in my head, I must say it was pretty much exactly how I expected it. I was at a party when Mum rang me and rather than getting upset I just was full of adrenaline and had to get out of there, get to Mum, tell my sister and just generally ‘do’ stuff.

It didn’t hit me until the next day, when my truly amazing Fiancée Gina who had raced all the way from a party in Norfolk to be with me, took me out for a coffee and it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

Dad always said to me that his ideal way to go out would be to be hit by a truck, an instant death he would not even know about, that’s what he got. He didn’t suffer any indignity which I know he would have hated and it is a real comfort to me, because I have seen what it’s like for people who have long painful deaths and it is not pretty.

The messages of support have really helped and in particular, seeing how popular he was and listening to funny stories about him really help. I know 5 or 6 people who considered him like a second father to them and also, ALL of my friends are devastated because he really was one of the lads with all my mates, he really was young at heart, he was the Dad that all my friends could be themselves around and tell rude jokes to.

He was a really welcoming host and would often ‘haze’ my mates who made the mistake of falling asleep when we would stay up late for boxing matches by putting salt in their mouth and watching them wake up grimacing. Watching my Dad put salt in the mouth of my friend Hobson was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, because unlike everyone else he did it too, Hobson didn’t wake up and just gurned in his sleep for the next hour.  

I’m really going to miss him whenever there is a funny show on TV, a good boxing match has been announced, something funny happens with my dog or when something goes wrong with my car. Those are all moments where I always instantly reach for my mobile phone to have a natter with him. Dad was a funny, laid back bloke who liked a laugh, liked his boxing, loved his cars, loved dogs (Often we think much more than people) and loved his family. He always made sure we wanted for nothing, taught me not to worry about the big things in life and also how to appreciate the small things in life.

As devastated as I am, it’s really nice to talk about him, write about him and laugh at all the funny things he did. He has already passed on his love of dogs, sense of humour and (force fed me) his love of boxing – if I can emulate him in any other way beyond that then I will be a very happy man. 

Audley Harrison Interview

As someone who has grown up watching boxing , I jumped at the chance a couple of years ago to interview Gus Hansen & Theo Jorgensen for their boxing prop bet – I figured that’s as far as I would get in boxing journalism (And it was a godawful joke of a fight). Thankfully poker has that universal appeal that brings people from all walks of life together and it would afford me the chance to go one better – to actually interview a proper boxer ahead of one of the biggest world title fights this country has ever seen.

If you would have told me 6 months ago that this opportunity would come via Audley Harrison, I would have laughed at you. Partially because the idea of him fighting for a legitimate world title would have shocked me as that is not the way his career seemed to be heading, but also because I’ve never been his biggest fan. My generation of boxers who got me into the sport include Benn, Collins, Eubank, Tyson, Lewis, Holyfield, Barrera, Morales, De La Hoya, Jones, Bruno then later Calzaghe and Hatton – and my all time favourite when he was at his peak Prince Naseem. With the exception of his last couple of fights, Harrison has been dull to watch and doesn’t even come close to these guys in terms of excitement.

But he does interest me as a poker player, he has had two massive scores in Vegas and kept it quiet – that takes a lot for a celebrity poker player. This month I got a press release saying that Lock Stock star (Is it still fair to call him that? It was nearly 15 years ago) Nick Moran nearly made day 2 of the Ladbrokes Irish Festival. If failing to survive the first third of a tournament is headline worthy then for Audley to have kept this quiet must have been a miracle.

Of course he isn’t keeping it quiet anymore and striking while the iron is at its hottest, just before the biggest fight of his life and one of the biggest in British boxing for a while (I wish we could have had Hatton vs Khan a year or so ago, that would have been much better). I must say, he was a really nice guy and he also knew a lot about poker – much more than 99% of celebrity poker players.

But as you can imagine, never having been the most popular boxers in the UK, this has been met with a bit of bemusement from the poker forums – as it probably would have been from me had I not interviewed him personally. Lots of people do not seem to see the connect, it amazes me how shrewd poker players can be and how willing they are to exploit a fool with money at the tables – yet they are outraged when a celebrity gets the nod over a pro, they don’t see the value and say its unfair – when has poker, business or life ever been fair?

Poker sponsorship is all about bringing new blood to the tables, and for me there are only a handful of pro players that do that. Its only players like Ivey, Daniel, Hellmuth, Doyle, Tony G, Liv Boeree, Gus etc that can bring that sort of value to a poker room – they bring something else, a character, a hook, a gimmick, a WWE persona. This is why players from regions where poker is less popular also have value, because they are famous, relatively, in their own country, compared to places like the UK where they have hundreds of rivals. It amazes me that so many players who are ‘just good’ at poker and are decent ambassadors get deals at all.  

Take someone like Jake Cody, he is a really nice guy, great ambassador for the game and obviously tremendously good at poker – but how many players is he going to get playing on a poker room? I hate to say it but if I was starting a poker room I would much sooner have Anne Widdicombe represent my online room right now than Jake Cody, and that is a horrible truth to admit.

Whether they love him, or hate him, whether he wins or loses, Audley Harrison is going to get a lot more people checking out Full Tilt Poker than a half the Red Pros combined. I really think that PokerStars are going to offer Haye bags of cash to wear their logo on the night in retaliation.

My full interview with Audley Harrison is here. 

Oh well, enough of all that, I’m off to Dublin this weekend for the IPO. It was a cracking event last year so more of the same this time round hopefully. 

Portorose, Slovenia - Future Poker Mecca imo

So I went on holiday the other week, my old mucker Mike Lacey told me about Portorose in Slovenia and said it was ‘Monte Carlo’ without the price tag and a great place to take the missus. He has been running some events over there and fell in love with the place, and now we have too. I’d never heard of it before last month, but its now my favourite place in Europe and we are already planning the next one.

It’s an easy thing to say in hindsight, but as soon as we arrived in Portorose I knew I loved the place. The weather was great, the views were amazing and perhaps most of all it felt very safe. I always feel a little vulnerable whenever I go to a new (non English speaking) country but not here. Usually within the first hour I have seen either a potential mugger or a drunk Brit pissing in the street, but there were none to be seen. With a population of only 4000 crime is nearly non existent in this tourist town which is one of the more hospitable places I’ve been to.

We landed at Trieste in Italy but it’s a 30 minute drive into Slovenia from there. Portorose is 5 minutes away from Croatia and an hour away from Venice. But we didn’t go very far because the small town we were staying in was lovely. Slovenians are like very relaxed Italians and everything was done at a ridiculously slow pace all week.

Poker players really get looked after as well, during off peak times in Portorose the casino is responsible for the majority of the tourism and as a result, gamblers are held in high regard. Poker players get a brilliant rate on most of the main hotels (including one of the only 6 star hotels in the world), if we needed a ride somewhere we could just get the casino shuttle car to take us there and we were sent to some of the best resteraunts where we were really well looked after. Aleksander, the casino host, came with us for one meal and the whole resteraunt seemed to stop to accommodate us because we were with him – it was like a scene from GoodFellas (the fancy resteraunt part, not the stabbing people with pens parts).  

Just about every view put in front of us would be one I would categorise as a ‘good place to propose’ – so much so that I put it to the test. We had had such a lovely time and it really was so peaceful and romantic that I asked my long time girlfriend Gina if she would marry me at the top of a medieval wall in the small town of Piran (Nicknamed ‘Little Venice’ because it inspired the architecture you now see in the Italian City) – obviously she said yes otherwise this wouldn’t be going in the blog.

I have been very lucky that poker has taken me all over the world to some exciting places, but unfortunately rarely somewhere I could take Gina. Not because she wouldn’t enjoy the place itself, but because she would be bored out of her mind while I spent 16 hour days inside the casino for the entire trip. This is not the case with Portorose, quite the opposite; I would say it is perhaps the best destination in Europe to bring your girlfriend while you play poker, safe in the knowledge that it’s relaxing, classy, warm, safe and beautiful (And not financially crippling) so your partner can enjoy herself while you are away. Gina is already begging me to play in the future festivals being run there and for the first time I will be very comfortable buggering off for an entire weekend in the casino and leaving her to her own devices.

I haven’t even got to the best bit yet – Italians! Slovenia is a popular tourist destination with Italians and every time a major festival is on in the Casino Portorose the Italians outnumber the locals 20-1. I’d probably go anywhere to play if Italians were there (Or French) and until recently this was the only place where Italians could go for live poker.

As you can see, I am a bit of a convert. What I thought would be a one off trip has led to me getting engaged and we are already planning our next excursion early next year (And possibly even having the wedding there). Nobody is paying me to say these nice things, I just really think I have stumbled upon one of the next big things in poker and I want to get in on it from the ground floor.

It took me more than five years but I have finally found a way of mixing my personal life and poker life in perfect harmony and all it cost me was my freedom.

Getting back home sucked major ass though, especially as it dawned on me I had to shell out on an engagement ring plus it’s the busiest time of the UK poker year in London. I for one think there has been one or two too many things going on in London this year, it’s been overwhelming. I wish the WPT would have been a different time of year because unfortunately I think it’s been lost a bit amongst all the other stuff.

The WSOPE is always great though and I headed down to see some of the PokerNews crew and generally get in the way of everyone working while I enjoyed myself. I think the coverage has been superb and the Live Updates second to none. I can’t actually wait for it to be over because since we moved I have been rushed off my feet and I really really want a couple of months where nothing happens.

Probably shouldn’t have proposed if that’s what I wanted though. 

Audley Harrison & Stalked By BT

It’s amazing how naked one feels when you have some recent technological innovation you didn’t even use two years ago taken away from you. I moved house two weeks ago (Very nice new place, very expensive move) and amongst a catalogue of errors from furniture suppliers I also went two weeks without internet, due to a string of errors from BT.

I had a pre paid dongle which kept me going, but I had the shakes throughout because I missed….YouTube, Twitter and TheOnion. Oh, and it was stopping me working too, but mainly TheOnion.

The funniest thing about the whole affair was that once it was fixed, I log onto twitter to find that BT have found me and tweeted me to see how it went. What a unique rubdown, they don’t seem to have a decent infrastructure for resolving customer problems but they do have budget to stalk their customers on twitter.

The dog is now fine and allowed off the lead since his op, back to his normal self minus two huge swingy sacks.

This month, as soon as I hang up my journo gloves, I got a rare poker & boxing scoop in one which forced me back into the game for one more time. Eddie Hearn contacted me to say he only wanted to tell the story of how the WSOP helped create the potential Audley Harrison vs David Haye title fight and he was giving it to me because we have had some really good chats about boxing in the last year.

I must say, Audleys poker story has really conflicted me. Because I really admire the fact that he has bagged two big live MTT results but purposely stayed under the radar about it, when 99% of celebrities would shout from the rooftops and sign a deal with PokerStars for getting a min cash on the Sky Poker Tour.

However there is the other side of me who has thoroughly enjoyed booing him for the last 10 years. He has been the dullest fighter to watch I have ever seen and I am always routing for the other guy, until now, part of me wants to cheer him on because he plays poker. I also tend to go for the underdog too. The one thing I will say is that pre interview with Eddie, I still wanted to see the fight happen, it’s a decent clash of styles and a potentially big fight from a fight/British public point of view.

Anyway, welcome back the Onion


Fat Kid Successfully Avoids Ridicule By Swimming With Shirt On

The Mutts Nutts

Although I loved my time as a full time poker journalist, one thing I was looking forward to by taking this marketing role would be that I would no longer have to interview 20 year olds who have been playing for a year and managed to turn a microstakes bankroll into millions.

So one of my first assignments is going to be to interview a 20 year old who have been playing for a few years and managed to turn a microstakes bankroll into millions.

I mentioned that poker journalism and marketing are closely intertwined and this is a good example of it. One of the best ways of marketing something is to create something people would want to read anyway, which is why I have opted to do a series of interviews with successful online players that also promote some of our brands. So coming up over the next few weeks will be a series of interviews which include people like Dusty Schmidt, Bodo Sbrznesy and hopefully man of the moment URNOTINDANGER2.

Also coming up next week you can see my first crack at viral marketing, sort of. I produced a short video of me signing up to one of PokerNews’ biggest promotions, which is one where you can get a $50 bonus on PartyPoker without having to deposit. People are naturally suspicious when you are offered free money for nothing, which is why I produced the video to show it was legit. CardRunners quality it aint, and you will see me stutter, errrr, mumble, extended pause and whoops my way through the whole thing. That’s kind of the point though, idiots guide in every aspect.

Elsewhere unfortunately I had to take Charlie in to get the snip yesterday. He is such a gentle dog I didn’t want to do it ever, but the few times he has seen a dog in season he has gone nuts. This week we met a stray dog in season and he chased her out of the park and over a mile away onto a main road, running in front of several cars along the way and narrowly missing being hit. I know because I ran the whole way and was quite impressed with how I kept up with him, though I looked a horrific red faced sweaty site as I did, screaming ‘stop that dog’ all the way.

He rarely even goes more than 40 yards away from me no matter how much fun is having on our walks, so for him to run away like that and put himself in harm’s way was a real eye opener. He seems OK post-op, very whiney but up to his usual silly antics.

This is him btw:


Finally we move house (again, sigh) this weekend to a nice new bigger place, which once again is one road away from the last place. I have lived in 4 places in the last 5 years and all of them have been in the same postcode and all of them one road away from the last. At least if the dog does another runner we have a first place to look for him while he searches for his balls.

This week I am loving the Onion btw:


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

I'm a Marketing Tosser Now

Big changes afoot, well, big for me, to an outsider looking in I would wager it doesn’t look like a single thing has changed. I have had a big career shift away from the murky world of poker journalism and into the murky world of poker….marketing.

Huge difference right?

Not really, well, kind of. Poker media is so heavily reliant on advertising from online poker sites I would say that the journalism and the marketing sides of things are very closely intertwined. If you don't believe me, you try and write something critical of an online poker room/sponsored pro for a publication with an advertising deal with the same room. Anyway that’s a discussion for another day really.

I have been wanting to get into marketing for a while now, I always thought I could do a good job of it and in fairness I have been doing it for a while and just not getting paid for it. The last two years I have helped so many people promote their brands as ‘favours for mates’ and I often get people asking me for advice on things like advertising/sponsorship/getting editorial in magazines etc. When I say ‘mates’ I don’t just mean people down the pub I actually mean sponsored players, online poker rooms, live card rooms, TV companies and publishers (Who are also mates who happen to have those jobs).

My main role will be for the entire PokerNews network and will be primarily coming up with new ways of pushing their exclusive promos. This is not difficult, in that we have bigger and better promos than anyone else (See, I’m doing it already). Ironically the first thing I do after casting off a career as a writer is a shit load of writing. I would never stop writing altogether, I love it, but from now on anything non marketing-y I write will be out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully It will mean I update this blog more often now I won’t feel as knackered from writing 4000 words a day. 

The great thing about this opportunity is I will learn so much from such a big company like PokerNews, which is great for the book I am writing with Jared Tendler (Yep, that’s still happening, nearly done, I promise). Always very nice to have more than one thing going on at a time.

As for my baby, the UK Pokernews site, not sure what the plan is. I love it very much and it certainly won’t disappear, I am still updating it at the moment but that won’t be forever, your guess is as good as mine but it will continue without me.

Some other stuff I will be getting up to will be playing freerolls. No I’m not busto, it’s just that as part of my job will be to push our freerolls I want to understand them from a player perspective. I have already qualified for a 10k and a 5k freeroll on Winner Poker and it will be interesting to see how quickly I get bored. It’s sad, but I cant envisage enjoying playing that low.

Normally by now I would get excited about the footy season started tomorrow but unfortunately Wednesday have been relegated and the World Cup was so bad in every way, not just for England, that I kind of detest football players. No doubt the Owls will have a solid win tomorrow lulling me into a false sense of hope for the season.