Interview with Michael 'Wazz' Piper - PLO Poker Pro and EPT Final Tableist

Date: Fri, Aug 27, 2010

Video Interview with Michael Piper aka 'Wazz'. Michael is a professional poker player specialising in Pot Limit Omaha, and has recent NLHE tournament success including an EPT final table.





MP3 Streaming:

MP3 Download: http://drop.io/0pyb2gz/asset/daleroxxu-interviews-wazz-mp3

Don't forget to check out other interviews. TheLipoFund, Nick Rainey, Jhub3000, Jonathan Little, Spacegravy

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Poker Avatar Tells - 5 easy ways to spot the fish.

Date: Thu, Aug 19, 2010

When you play live poker you can usually tell a lot about a player without even playing a hand with them. The way they look can be quite a reliable source of information. Well, the same is true with online play, you just need to look at their avatar.

Here are the top 5 types of avatar that will let you spot the fish at the tables.




Pocket Rockets

Why not show everyone how "into poker" you are by choosing some cheesy poker-related image as your avatar? Popular choices include pocket rockets, royal flush or a picture of some cartoon shark.

Yes, these fools are the same people that turn up to the casino to play 1/2 No Limit wearing some ridiculous "I'm all in" t-shirt. Most of these guys will be new to poker but those who aren't will not have improved since, or will be worse than, when they first ever played the game.

Will usually own at least 2 books by Phil Hellmuth and spend more time typing in the chatbox than playing hands.

Most likely to say: "I hate all these frickin donkeys, they make it impossible to win. I play better against people that know what they are doing, at least you can put them on a hand".





Douchebag






The douchebag pic is a favorite avatar of your typical egotistical, fake tanned, kissy faced douchebag. I mean, when you spend your whole entire day looking in the mirror it's the natural to chose a photo of yourself as your avatar. I wonder, do these guys really think that other poker players want to sit and look at a picture of some dude's face while they are playing? I guess they do! Right-click -> Block Image -> GTFO.

With an ego the size of the BP oil spill, these players have way too much confidence in their ability as poker players to ever feel the need to learn how to play better or take advice from anyone else. Every hand of poker for them is personal and they will try to outplay their opposition at every opportunity, generally spewing off large amounts of money in the process. Value-checking strong hands to these guy will make you rich.


Most likely to say: "ty" (straight after winning a hand)



Famous pro




When you suck at poker, why not trick people into thinking you know what you're doing by using an avatar of your favorite pro player. Phil Ivey or Stu Ungar seem to be the most popular choices.

These "poker enthusiasts" spend far too much time watching poker on TV and not enough time working on their own game. Word of advice guys, you're never going to get better at poker by watching Mike Matusow and Chris Ferguson play a donk-n-go on Poker After Dark. And just because you watched durrrr 3-bet 73s in a deepstacked TV cashgame it doesn't mean that you can do the same thing profitably with a 30bb stack in some turbo SNG.

Most likely to say: "I knew you hit the damn flush, I knew it. Nice chase donk." (after paying off a huge river bet)




Athene / Chiren80






This is another very accurate tell that a player is bad. Unfortunately these players are rarely found playing above the very micro-est of micro stakes offered on the site.

People with Athene avatars are all newbies to poker, struggling to learn how to play a game that doesn't involve running around a virtual world casting magic spells on hobgoblins and gnomes.

The Athene avatar player is almost always atrocious at poker but when their main influence and inspiration in poker isn't even a winning player himself how could they turn out to be anything other than terrible?

Most likely to say: "POOOOONED" (After hitting their 3-outer on the river).




Ugly Baby




What is it with people who have babies that think everyone else wants to see them? I couldn't care less that you have a baby and I certainly don't want to look at the wrinkly little bastard while I play poker. It's a pretty terrible idea to put photos of your young children on public display on the internet in the first place, but to put those photos up while you gamble away the nappy/diaper money is just lolridic. Not to mention that you're just asking for some wise ass to write "Hey, what breed of dog is that in your avatar?"

In my experience, baby-avatar donk is almost always a loose passive calling station. Typical full ring VPIP/PFR in the 37/9 range. When you have screaming kids to look after and stop you from sleeping you're never going to have the time or concentration to improve as a poker player. That is why the baby avatar is one of the most accurate online tells available, always a fish!

Most likely to say: "That's my child!"

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Video Highlights of the Epic Hyper Shoveament

Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010

The poker tournament of the year was held tonight and you can see video highlights right here. No, I'm not talking about the WSOP main event, I'm talking about Daleroxxu's Hyper Turbo No Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Shoveament Freeroll of course. Not only was there much more thrilling action in my tournament but you won't have to listen to Normal Chad telling some garbage ex-wife jokes while watching the highlights.

Thanks to everyone who signed up at short notice and thanks to Steve and The PokerStars VIP Club for setting it up and adding to the prizepool, also at short notice. That was pretty awesome!





Everyone who played seemed to have enjoyed themselves thoroughly playing this so I think it's about time we saw some Hyper Turbo 45man SNGs running regularly on PokerStars. Not only NLHE but NLO and NLO H/L too (pot limit doesn't work in SNGs, not hard to figure out why). I believe these action filled games would be extremely popular with both recreational and pro players.

From the recreational players point of view, the chance to play and win a multi-table tournament in 15-20 minutes is very appealing, especially for those with busy lifes. From a pro player's perspective, the ability to play an insane volume of games while still having a good edge over the field is a no brainer.

If you agree please write a quick message to support@pokerstars.com from your stars registered email stating your support for Hyper Turbo Multi Table SNGs.

Sample email for lazy bastard poker players:

Dear Pokerstars

I would love nothing more than for you to start spreading Hyper Turbo 45man SNGs on your poker site. These games would encompass all the speed, fun and action that I look for in playing online poker, and I'm sure many of your customers would feel the same way.

Yours,
Lazy Bastard Poker Player

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100,000 Hits Celebration - Hyper Freeroll Fun

Date: Mon, Aug 9, 2010

As the new version of my blog is about to reach 100,000 hits, it is time for a celebration.

This Sunday PokerStars will be home to the "Daleroxxu's NLO H/L Hyper Shoveament Freeroll". A No Limit Omaha Hi/Lo tournament with very shallow stacks and extremely fast blind increases. The winner walks away with the $100 prize, with runners up prizes of $30 and $20 provided courtesy of The Pokerstars VIP Club.

And a bounty on Daleroxxu - A ticket for the Sunday quarter million.
(If multiple people bust me, bounty will be awarded to the player with the most chips at the start of the hand, if equal - then decided by who lasts longest in the tournament)

The tournament takes place on PokerStars this Sunday, 15th August. 3pm Eastern, 8pm British. Tourney ID: 299717523

To sign up for this event you need to be following my blog on at least 2 of the 3 following ways: Twitter , Facebook or youtube.
(Subscribe to Daleroxxu on Youtube, Follow @Daleroxxu on twitter and either click "like" on any of the facebook icons on this page or via the new Daleroxxu's Blogaments facebook page.

Blog comment, facebook comment, youtube message or tweet at me to let me know your Twitter/FB/Youtube usernames, plus your PokerStars ID and you will be credited with a ticket before the event starts.
Final date to do this is Friday morning (13th August 6am ET / 11am UK time). No exceptions. You must make sure to type your PokerStars ID exactly, with the correct case.

Lets gogogo.

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Interview with TheLipoFund - Poker Pro and World Traveler

Date: Thu, Aug 5, 2010

Video interview with Marty 'The Lipo Fund' Mathis (TheLipoFund on Stars and WISHIGOTFPPS on ftp).

In the interview Marty tells us how he built a roll up from nothing and has been traveling the world, meeting tons of other poker player and having fun.





MP3 streaming:

MP3 download: http://drop.io/3lgf9gx/asset/daleroxxu-interviews-thelipofund-mp3

Don't forget to check out other interviews. Nick Rainey, Jhub3000, Jonathan Little, Spacegravy

-

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PokerStars support extreme awesomenes. (Monkey Flag Semaphore)

Date: Sat, Jul 31, 2010

I recently had the pleasure of interacting with PokerStars support team. Awesomenes ensued.

I sent an email to stars about a bug and they replied:



I noticed the subject was in Italian. Luckily I was able to translate it no problem - it's just english words with a bunch of i's and o's stuck on the end - but thought I'd have some fun with them.

I replied:


Translation: Who is the best poker blogger in the world?


They replied:


Translation:


I replied:




Translation:


They replied:



Translation:


So epic! PokerStars support team are, by a mile, the very best in the online poker industry. They are always quick to reply and with a friendly, personal touch and many times in the past they have refunded buyins to me and my friends for situations where they weren't even at fault, such as internet disconnections / power outages. I compare this to the time when I used to grind SNGs on the Tribeca network (now merged with ipoker), when THEIR servers would crash once every 48 hours and I'd have to send 5 emails begging to get my buyins refunded - eventually after a week if I was lucky. What a contrast.

Even when I think of other industries where I, as a customer, have had to deal with a company's customer service department, the experience is never pleasurable. It usually ends up with me being put on hold for a very long time followed by a conversation with someone in Bangalore who I can't understand a word of, and who doesn't understand me either (Seriously I had to spell out the word GLASGOW to a girl from ebookers.com). That crap puts me on life tilt for the rest of the day.

Thanks to Stars and Giuseppe G for being awesome!

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Cake Poker Security Alert and Chiren80 VIP Abuse Update.

Date: Tue, Jul 27, 2010

Cake Poker Security Alert

It seems that Cake Poker (Doyles Room etc.) are using the crappy, easy to hack, XOR encryption method between client and server rather than something that is actually secure such as SSL.
This means that any 13 year old with some knowledge of computers and a script could easily decrypt this data and view sensitive information such as hole cards and login/password. They just have to be somewhere between your computer and Cake's servers, most likely the same wireless network, but also people working for ISPs and people working for Cake could be snooping too.

This is the same drama that was brought up relating to UB / Absolute not so long ago, which has since been fixed (eventually).

If you are a user of ANY Cake skin do NOT play on the site until they fix this mess!

Again, all the work on exposing this was done by Poker Table Ratings.



PTR - Security Alert: Cake Poker Uses Weak Encryption


Chiren80 VIP Abuse Update

It was mention in a previous blog entry that PokerStars Team PRO player Chiren80 (Bachir Boumaaza) had exploited a PokerStars promotion to effectively steal money from the company that he was representing.

Since then, Steve D from PokerStars VIP has issued the following statement:

And Chiren80 has issued this statement:



The reaction to the statements on 2p2 has been largely negative. Not least from the fact that Chiren80's apology ends with some self promotion, but there are many comments from people saying that the punishment isn't tough enough and some have accused PokerStars of favoritism.

When players have been caught chip-dumping in the past it almost always results in a permanent ban from the site. However PokerStars has decided that this wasn't a case of chip-dumping by their definition of the meaning. They decided that although the players were "dumping" chips back and forward, they did so to abuse the VIP system rather that to transfer monies under the radar, and have issued their normal punishment for such an offence.

I think this will be quite a tough punishment and hard lesson for both Chiren80 and 3J55 as they both 24-table the same games. Now that they can't sit at the same tables, they can't get their normal volume of hands in to reach Supernova Elite again, there just aren't enough tables running. It's also a major blow to Chiren80's image in the poker community which was already fairly low due to his reputation as a "break-even rakeback pro". However he remains a PokerStars user and PokerStars representative so it's in his own hands how he goes forward and tries to recover from this.

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South Africa / FIFA World Cup - TRIP REPORT

Date: Mon, Jul 19, 2010

Found all these video clips and photos on my phone from South Africa, mashed them up into a video with some voice-over to create a Trip Report.

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Chiren80 exploits Pokerstars VIP rewards, Russian bot-ring found on Stars and French players strike

Date: Sun, Jul 18, 2010

Team PokerStars PRO player exploits VIP system.

PokerStars have been running a MicroMania promotion for it's micro stakes players, giving them extra VPPs and FPPs for their play this month.

One of PokerStars' Team PROs, Chiren80, who is known for his AtheneWins youtube channel, seems to have found a way to exploit this promotion. He was spotted playing heads up versus his friend '3J55' (who originally introduced Chiren80 to poker) on many €10NL tables, dumping chips back and forward in order to generate lots of rake / VPPs.

Chrien80 and 3J55 had figured that with them both being Supernova Elites and Chiren80 having a sponsorship deal worth $1 per 7 VPPs earned in addition to SNE benifits, that they could earn more than 100% rakeback on these microstakes tables. So they went to work chipdumping back and forward on the €10NL tables making easy money from PokerStars on every single hand that they played.




The head of PokerStars VIP Club "Steve D" has said that this type of action is considered abuse and that Chiren will no longer be doing it. He said that any action taken against Chiren80 and 3J55, if any action is taken, would remain confidential.

Having a look at the PokerStars TOS for the VIP club I notice:

11. Any abuse of the program or failure to follow program rules may result in the termination of membership and forfeiture of all accrued VPPs and FPPs.

I think the most likely outcome from this would be PokerStars removing all the VPPs earned during the abuse. However one has to think that Team PROs, the representatives of the site, should be held to a much higher standard than other players on the site. PokerStars are paying him to represent their site while he plays on their client, but what casual players see when they hit that "find a team pro" button is this player passing chips back and forward in an effort to exploit his "employer" for financial gain.

Steve D also stated that this incident was not being investigated by the security team. "This is not a security issue. Cooperation in two-handed games isn't technically considered collusion.". However, people have posted screenshots where there was a 3rd player on a table while they were doing this.

When news broke of this incident on 2p2 Chiren80 made the following statement:

"When the promo came out i started to play 24 tables 10NL as its very chill and good vpp's. 3j55 started to join my tables and play more and more aggressive vs me and i adapted ending up table selecting to be heads up vs him all the time.

I have won some and lost some the accusations in this thread are not in line with how i'm playing you can check the hand histories. I'm neither flipping nor chipdumping nor colluding and am not breaking any rules in the TOS.

If someone sticks it in with almost ATC its normal u call/shuv with botton pair.

And starting to play tight will only make him play tighter aswell which is minus ev for me.

I'm replying for the people that want a clear answer from me because i know that to some haterz it doesn't matter what i say.

As an online pro or normal player i wouldn't do anything illegal, if Pokerstars say it is i will stop immediately, although i don't think it's the case because i have informed myself and even talked to them as some people accused me of cheating in chatwindow."


This statement is just full of lies. It's so ridiculous that it's laughable.

People on the forum were quick to call him out. For one, people knew that 3J55 was his friend, in fact it's even been stated on 3J55's blog that they "share ev" (they normally 24-table the same fullring 100NL/200NL games and share the difference in won/lost "all-in ev" in an effort to reduce variance.)

Secondly the whole story that Chiren80 was seeking out 3J55 to actually play poker against the guy, adjusting to him, etc. etc. was ridiculed by some hand histories and stats.

Stats show him losing over $3,500 over ~6000 hands of 10NL, but he really expects people to believe that he was game selecting to play this guy because he thought he could beat him easily.




Posted by goldieshorn:
1. 3J55 had $20 you had around $70.
2. 3J55 raised to $5, you re-raised to $18 and 3J55 called.
3. 3J55 went all in with his remaining $2, you fold.
4. See number 3. You do this over and over again?

I can only imagine that Chiren and Jess, somehow (and I don't know how) did not think they were doing anything wrong, because they have both come across to me as very intelligent guys in the past. But even then, the blatant lies by Chiren when it was uncovered just makes him look so much worse.

2p2 threads:

PokerStars Pro Chiren80 Cheating (dumping back/forth for VPPs?)
Poker Stars Pro's dumping $$$ to friends?



10-account Russian ShortStack bot ring on PokerStars


Whilst grinding some 50NL on stars, 2p2er malloc looked up some stats for players at his tables and found 3 short-stacking players who had very similar winrates at each level and who moved up and down the stakes at exactly the same times, obviously very suspicious.




The website Poker Table Ratings took notice of malloc's 2p2 observations and did some investigating, which lead them to find a total of 10 accounts that they believe to be bots.

VPIP, PFR and 3bet even when filtered to each position are identical. Drilling down even further stuff like flop raise % and flop aggression frequency are identical.

The full article can be found here: PTR - Bot Ring Discovered On Poker Stars

These bot accounts have played as many as 1 million hands each and are from locations in Russia and eastern European countries. They played a simple short-stack strategy which earned them $58K in profit as well as VIP bonuses from a $187K of generated rake.

The accounts remained active throughout the night after the PTR article was publish and were then suspended by PokerStars.

It also came to light that the Spanish intellipoker forum found these bots 3 months ago:

There's a large 2p2 thread about this incident and a lot of posters believe that PokerStars has "dropped the ball" by not catching these bots sooner. It also looks pretty embarrasing for Stars to have a 3rd party website find these bots before they did.

However PokerStars bot specialist Jeff had the following to say:

"We would like to address the fact that the play continued throughout the night of July 16th, after a third party source posted an independent review identified 7 additional players. PokerStars had also identified 7 additional players very early in our investigation -- prior to the third party site's identification of them. We were conducting a very in depth search to locate other potential accounts, to ensure we had located all of the accounts prior to closing them down concurrently. Shutting down only part of a ring in mid-investigation can spook additional, undiscovered accounts into cashing out prior to locating them. As of this afternoon, July 17, that review concluded that the ten accounts were the complete extent of the matter."

I also noticed that PokerStars security specialist Micahel Josem made the following statement on twitter, which would seem relevant to this incident:

"@michaeljosem: People who think that massively data mining is the solution to big security challenges have no idea of the volume of data that needs to be s"

The fact is that one player noticed these accounts and their striking irregularities, and a 3rd party found conclusive evidence against them. By the time the accounts were caught millions of hands had been played.

addressing this issue PokerStars Jeff said:

"Finally, to address why these players played for a relatively extended period without detection, we can say that upon conclusion of this review that the bots were fairly sophisticated in certain aspects, including their human behavior modeling and their stealth capabilities. Our tools for bot detection are sophisticated, but they are not perfect. No site can guarantee you that they are completely free of bots. What PokerStars can and does pledge is that we use our extensive tools behind the scenes to detect bots as best we can... and they are very effective. We detect and remove most bots well before they even leave the development stage, and well before they could play long enough to come to the attention of players or third party databases the way these players did."

However the response to this statement has been entirely negative among the forum users.

RNiner:
"I just have to say, that this doesn't cut it. If your 'sophisticated systems' couldn't detect these 10 players after millions of hands, then you need a new system.

If PTR hadn't detected these guys they'd still be playing. Given the timing of what has happened, saying anything else is just silly. Whoever started the investigation, you guys shut these guys down one day after a PTR article outed them. They ran for months and months before that. So obviously they played a role.

We expect systems that can detect these guys BEFORE THEY PLAY MILLIONS OF HANDS, not after they've raped the games for months. Maybe that is outside the scope of your technology. Intelligent posters in this thread say it shouldn't be. Common sense says to me there should be some way to do this better."


NOSUP4U:
"My god this is terrible! So we're supposed to believe that you guys were totally on the ball and after a year of not having any idea about bots on your site you just happened to come up with all the same data that PTR released a day ahead of you all on your own.

Oh and they're sophisticated bots so your highly trained detection staffed missed them? YEAH WE CAN TELL HOW SOPHISTICATED THEY ARE! THEY ALL HAVE THE EXACT SAME STATS! I'm not sure what exactly your detection methods are, but maybe tell your staff to go back to basics and look at the easy stuff?

Nobody here expects any guarantee that your site is 100% bot free. But we do expect you to go out of your way to make sure you catch bots. And we do expect you to catch ones that are ridiculously obvious like these."




The French are on strike

When the French aren't busy surrendering or watching their football team make a complete c*** of themselves on the international stage they enjoy spending their time blasting off their hard earned cash playing poker.
Unfortunately for winning poker players across the globe, the French government has taken note of the millions of euros being donked out of their economy by their poker-playing citizens and have taken action.
New laws that were recently enforced have made it illegal for French players to play on .com poker sites. They now must play on .fr sites only with other French players, with the government taking a 2% tax directly from each pot.

The approach from PokerStars, on their new PokerStars.fr site, was to increase the standard rake from 5% to 7.7%, increase the rake cap and start raking pots where there was no flop. Also SNG / Tournament fees increased. The midstakes turbo SNGs are now raked at 10.62% on .fr, compared to .com's 6.66 - 9%.

The French players are pretty pissed off about the whole thing. Not only are they forced to play with a much smaller pool of players, but the increase in rake makes the games practically unbeatable.

Although the isolation from the global poker world and compulsory tax were brought about through French government legislation a lot of the anger from players has been directed at PokerStars. Players are upset that they are expected to take the full hit of the tax with the site absorbing none of it, plus the fact that 5% + 2% DOES NOT equal the new 7.7% rate, PokerStars are taking more rake into the bargain.


So a good old french revolution was called and players started a strike by sitting at as many tables as possible and sitting out, effectively blocking anyone from playing on that table. At one point there were over 300 tables blocked because of the strike.




As for the impact of all this, well the guy who was leading the protests on a French forum said he was called by the very low key big-boss at PokerStars, Isai Scheinberg, where it was explained that PokerStars can't absorb any of the French tax because they are making a loss in the French market. Seems unbelievable but apparently Isai has even offered to open up the financial books to prove this fact.
But looking at the rake page on pokerstars.fr it now appears that Stars have got rid of the preflop rake, so that is some progress at least.

And for people all around the world who think this doesn't concern them just because they don't live in France, be very concerned because your country could be next. Everyone still keen on USA regulating online gaming?

Read more on 2p2:

Pokerstars.fr just started cash games tables and made them unprofitable

pokerstars.FR ON STRIKE !

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Scammer takes UK Poker Forum for over £100,000

Date: Mon, Jun 21, 2010

Around 10 months ago (August '09) a trusted poster on the Blonde Poker forums, Neil 'Blatch' Blatchly set up a thread asking for stakes into football trading fund, to make trades on the Betfair website.

For those that don't know, Betfair is a "betting exchange" where users bet against each other with the website taking a small commission. Users can either back or lay any selection. The type of trading that Blatch requested investment for involved predicting a shift in the odds before the kick-off of live televised english football matches that had high volume of betting action. No "in running" bets would be made, a selection would be backed and then layed again before the match started. With large enough sums being used in the trade his backing of a selection would also be significant enough to move the line, giving him better odds when he later lays the same selection. This type of trading can be potentially profitable and is low risk compared to the size of the bets because by backing/laying the same selection you're working off relatively small margins.

I didn't invest in this, so everything you read here is my impartial interpretation of what happened based on what has been said in ridiculously long forum threads.

Since starting to trade with a small bankroll in August (Start of the English Premier League season), Blatch posted a huge streak of "wins" on matches where there had been a significant shift in the betting line pre-game. This success, along with the idea that making bigger bets would allow him to move the line more in his favour, brought in more investors for larger sums of money. The largest of the investors were his friends, who knew him through playing live events in the UK and through the online community. Until recently he had been posting that current bankroll was £80,000, with 3 very well known UK players having investments of around £10,000, and he was still accepting new investments right up until last week.

The fund was supposed to end with the English Premier League season but Blatch wanted to continue by trading World Cup matches. After some people asked for cashouts and he told them they'd have to wait a month or so some suspicions were raised. Then a new user on the forum, arbboy (Mark Wilson), made quite a few posts in the staking thread saying that things didn't add up. He posted a number of questions to Blatch, firstly stating that he had been following the thread and thought it was very strange that Blatch missed out on the most profitable trading opportunity of the world cup so far, the South Korea vs Greece match. After some weak responses by Blatch arbboy kept making posts that basically said that he smelled a rat. A huge majority of forum posters and moderators defended Blatch, their trusted friend, and accused the user arbboy of classless trolling. Arbboy was soon banned from the forum and his posts deleted.

But a few investors started to become uneasy when thinking about some of the points raised by arbboy and started pressing Blatch for answers. It wasn't long before it was revealed that all the funds in the account had been lost.
Blatch sent a PM to investors that included the following

Blatch PM:

Going back a few months everything was fine and going great. Everything I had posted was spot on and then one day I had made a trade on a midday kick off between Liverpool and Stoke and I simply didnt wake up in time. I must have not set my alarm right but basically I woke up with around 15 mins to go. At this point I could only rescue about 15% of the bank. I threw up at the time realising what had happened but for some stupid reason I decided that I could get the money back by the end of the season. Basically since then I have been trading the games still but without actually putting the amounts on. I was hoping that I would be able to raise the money by the end of the season and therefore the results would still be ok.


He said that he continued for many months to make trades "on paper" to keep up appearances, even though his account was near empty. He has since stated:


yes some of the losses werent infactual truth. It was to reduce the account balance and therefore I had to win less back. I know this whole thing is one serious mess up and I really want to turn this round and get people their money back.


Pages and pages of furious responses ensued from investors, including those who invested after the point that he claims to have lost most of the fund's money.


LOJ:

FACT. You lost the roll before I invested! Fucking ridiculous that you still had the balls to say more people could invest after you were sat there knowing you had “lost” people their cash (more than likely spunked it all on roulette on some dodgy site somewhere) Maybe saying to potential new investors that it wasn’t open to any more would have been a start?!?

FACT. You put bull shit results up on to keep people hooked! Where did you honestly think you were going to get £80k to pay people back to cover your lies?

FACT. You are a liar and a thief & the biggest grimmer ever...

....

ForthThistle:

Why did you still accept peoples money last week.Huh???

I know everyone can feck up but if this was 3 months ago
and you still pm'd me asking if I was wanting to be involved
last week.

.....

jizzemm:

I am quite angry, especially as it seems that me and brother seemed to have invested after this liverpool game where it had all gone wrong, and that taking the money was only making a situation worse, but I suppose would give you some funds to try and build the bank up.


Blatch continued to post on the forum and obtained a spreadsheet from Betfair detailing his betting history (over 10,000 transactions) which you can find here: http://rs899.rapidshare.com/files/400541349/BlondeBlatch.xls

Although there is no way to know if the spreadsheet was doctored before being passed on to investors the first observations from looking at the spreadsheet were that on this Stoke vs Liverpool match that he claimed to lose £50,000 he actually won £22,000 but that there was a whole load of betting on other stuff, including £5000 1.01 odds bets on cricket that he lost, multiple tennis bets up to £13,000 and a whole bunch of bets on everything from Darts to Motor Racing.

Betting at odds of 1.01 (wagering £100 to win £1) on some random guy to make 50 runs in the cricket seems absurd and is summed up by this post from Ismene.


Ismene:

I can also see two bets on the 21/01/2010 line number 3033 and 3034.... £5000 each time backing Raquibul Hasan in Bangladesh vs India first test @1.01. and the second time backing Niclas Fasth in Group B of the Abu Dhabi Champs.

Both bets in my opinion Blatch new had barely no chance of winning, and are low volume markets. It certainly looks to me like he has put up £5000 to lay at 1.01 on his own betfair account (knowing nobody would take that bet), and logged in on the trading account and backed it for £5k. Both times, within 6 hours of each other. Obviously both bets lost as they are more like 1000 than 1.01 and Blatch makes £10k just like that.


So it started to become clear from looking at the spreadsheet that Blatch's investments as he reported them in his thread were false and that he was actually using this Betfair account to fund his "balla lifestyle" and his sick gambling addiction. He even took his family to Florida recently on a 5-star vacation, posting pictures and facebook updates of him living the highlife.


People reading this must be wondering how he managed to go so long before people figured out he was scamming. Well, similar to Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, Blatch's fund was apparently making such huge returns that most people were keen to leave their money in the fund long term rather than cash out profits in the short term. The few people who did request cashouts could be repaid as he was still taking money from new investors who were impressed by the success that he was reporting to have. Being friends with many trusted members of the UK poker community (both live and online) who also had invested in him gave further confidence to investors that their money was safe.

Blatch also had a staking thread for the WSOP (now deleted) where people had staked him $10,000. It now seems he had no intentions of going to vegas and that money was all part of the same scam. In addition to this many people came forward to say they had other private deals with Blatch which they were stuck for too.


skolsuper:

I was one of the people with £10k in this and from other dealings with Blatch I am in for around £20k total.


Since all this has come out, Neil Blatchly has confessed to a gambling addiction, claims to be completely busto and now living with his parents (he's in his mid 30's). He said that he plans to pay everyone back by getting a job and selling his crappy ford fiesta. Meanwhile, people aren't convinced. The dumping of funds to another account of his (the 1.01 odds cricket bets for example) lead people to believe that he may be hiding money away that he has scammed.

Lots of the investors (there were around 40 or so of them) have said that this was money they couldn't afford to lose, or that it was money they had earmarked for a trip to Vegas this summer, that they will now miss out on.

However, while a lot of backing and staking goes on in the poker community, and some people do extremely well out of it, it is never wise to invest more than you are prepared to and can afford to lose. Even the most trusted of people have turned out to be scammers, nothing is without risk in this game, bare it in mind.

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Off to South Africa for the FIFA World Cup 2010

Date: Tue, Jun 8, 2010

Posting this from the airport business lounge waiting for the first of my flights on route to Johannesburg for the World Cup. You fanboys were bugging me to do another video blog so I took the time to make one before I left for the airport.

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49 player Chinese cheating scandal on PokerStars Double or Nothing SNGs

Date: Wed, May 26, 2010

A team of at least 49 Chinese players on PokerStars have been caught colluding in Double or Nothing SNGs.

As a result of this organised cheating ring, an estimated total of around $750,000 has been stolen from innocent players!




I remember when Double or Nothing SNGs were introduced on PokerStars around 18 months ago. My first thought was "great, a new game that the fish wont understand how to play", but while I was studying the ICM for this structure of game and seeing how small differences to stack sizes near the bubble can hugely affect a players equity in the game I just knew that these games would attract colluding scumbags like moths to a light bulb.

I know people will say that collusion can happen in any form of poker but there's no format of poker where collusion is as attractive and profitable as in Double or Nothing SNGs. A subtle dumping of a couple of big blinds or giving a walk to someone when it's an easy push can make an absolutely massive change in equity. This isn't the type of collusion that requires guys with headsets talking and sharing holecards over skype. It's more of a pre agreed softplay strategy, that guys can still do while seriously multi-tabling.

Since I started playing DoNs I have received refunds from PokerStars on approx 25 separate occasions where players were caught colluding in (what must be several hundreds of) my games. So I always have this feeling of paranoia when I'm playing DoN SNGs that I'm being cheated against. When I'm running bad and I have the same regulars on every table folding to each other's steals on the bubble until I get so short stacked that I have to push, then the largest stack of the regs calls me with some marginal hand, I wonder to myself "are these guys are ganging up on me?".

A lot of the regulars in these games know each other and talk strategy together. I find it hard to believe that a bunch of these guys aren't treating each other at least a little bit more favorably in these games than they would treat random players.

While on a vacation last year with some SNG players from twoplustwo three of us were regulars in the $104 DoN SNGs at the time. When the 3 of us were alone, one of them said "we should respect each other's shoves, you know" subtly trying to suggest that we softplay. It back fired on him because I spend the next 2 months spite-calling him at every single opportunity until he quit the games.

So it's safe to say there are a lot of regulars playing these games that have agreements with each other not to play too hard against each other in certain spots where it actually makes a big difference to their equity but can't really be detected as collusion. Sure the guys who aren't so subtle about it will end up, and do, get caught but there are spots in the game where guys can collude subtly enough never to be detected.

Back in January of this year I noticed 2 Chinese players in my games who were clearly helping each other out near the bubble. See the email I sent to stars bellow:

Aladin888	strong arm A	Combined
Total Played	1053	829
Played Together	237	237
Av. ROI Apart	2%	4%	3%
Av. ROI Together	6%	7%	6.5%

So a week later I was told that the players that I had reported were guilty, were now banned and their funds would be redistributed to players affected by their cheating. gg suckers.

Just to illustrate how collusion affects equities in DoN SNGs lets take a look at the second hand that I reported above, where 'Aladin888' limp-folds to 'strong arm A' on the bubble.....

Before the hand begins these are the chipcounts of each player with their $ev as determined by ICM.

$50 Buyin Double or Nothing SNG (Top 5 recieve $100).
Blinds 150/300 with 30 ante.

Player Chips ICM Equity ($)
Aladin888 5400 98.4649
Daleroxxu 2608 91.3261
strong arm A 1047 62.8020
Freddou74 2865 92.8395
doombear 1290 71.7531
azn808r 1790 82.8143


ICM is the best formula for working out our equity in a SNG, however it does have it's limitations. It makes no adjustment for future actions, and in this hand 'strong arm A' is posting the BB of 300 which has a huge impact on true equities, he's worse off that the ICM numbers suggest.


After the limp-fold of the bigstack to his friend in the BB, this "1BB chipdump" brings a massive change in equities.

Player Chips ICM Equity ($)
Aladin888 5070 97.7338 (-$0.73)
Daleroxxu 2428 88.1056 (-$3.22)
strong arm A 1647 77.1006 (+$14.30)
Freddou74 2835 91.1955 (-$1.64)
doombear 1260 66.5286 (-$5.22)
azn808 1760 79.3359 (-$3.48)

The bigstack only takes a 73 cent drop in equity while the short stack gains $14.30 as a result of the action. Where did the extra money over the chipdumpers 73 cents come from? Well it's stolen from the other players at the table, who weren't even involved in the hand and who's stack sizes are only minus the 30 chip ante. You can see the shortest stacks are hit the hardest. To put it into perspective, a +$14.30 gain in a $52 DoN is worth an extra 28% ROI, this in a game where the best players only beat the games for around 5% ROI. And all those other players not involved in the hand losing 6-10% worth of ROI as a result.

This is why these games will always attract cheating scumbags. When lowlife scum work out that there are poker games on the internet where they can dump a few cents in equity with the result being that their friends gain hugely significant amounts of equity, dollar signs go off in their eyes and they flock to these games.


Chinese Invasion

So I just recently learned from reading twoplustwo that a cheating ring of 49 Chinese colluders that played in the DoN SNGs on PokerStars had been caught. Their most active period was November '09 to mid February '10 and it looks like they netted around $750,000.

Most of the names on the list had their accounts suspended in February. But as I looked through the list of names, recognising most of them, two of them jumped out at me - they were the two guys that I reported back in January ('strong arm A' and 'Aladin888'). When I reported these guys in January I was pretty happy to have caught 2 cheaters but had no idea that it would lead to the investigation of such a large amount of players colluding together in the games.

When it comes to cheating, PokerStars never publicly reveals any details on what went on. If you are the person that reports specific players of cheating and PokerStars security team finds those players guilty they will email you back with their findings and compensate you fully for games where you were hurt by the cheaters.


But all the other players who played against the cheaters will get a much smaller refund, which I believe is worked out as a percentage of what could be confiscated from the cheaters (what they had left in their account when caught) minus what was given to the person reporting the cheaters. These players will be given a standard email saying that PokerStars found people working together and as a result you are being refunded $X. With no mention of who cheated them, in which games, how much they were cheated for compared to how much they were compensated, etc.

This is the same exact email that I've received countless times:

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players. You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players' accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete. Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.

In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders' winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible. To confirm your credit, log onto your PokerStars account, go to the 'Cashier' screen and click the 'History' button. Your share will be shown "ADMIN CREDIT", followed by the amount of the credit.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question. Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games. We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances. In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.

Thank you for your continued play here on PokerStars. Please do not hesitate to let us know any time we can be of help.

Most people will get this email and think "there were cheaters in my games but Stars found them pretty quickly and have compensated me, great". However the reality is that if you receive this email you are never going to know truly how badly you were affected by the colluders and if the amount credited to you by PokerStars comes close to making up for it, where as the person reporting the crime is over-compensated in most cases because they are given refunds for the games played with colluders where they dont cash and get to keep the money when they win, effectively freerolling in games with colluders. Meanwhile the other players in the game are given a small portion of what's left over from the confiscated funds.

Is this fair? No, ofcourse not. This policy isn't set up to be as fair as possible to everyone involved, it's set up to protect the image of PokerStars. PokerStars image means absolutely everything to them so it makes sense for them to treat the person reporting the crime as well as possible, to the point where they are even over-compensated, then to split up what's left of the confiscated funds and send small refunds to the other players who had no idea that they were even cheated, while keeping absolutely silent about what events took place on their site.

PokerStars refuses to reveal their method for working out how much money to refund to players. The following post from a PokerStars player on 2p2 regarding a very tiny refund he was once given shocked me:

"When I questioned PS on the tiny admin credit I recived they just said that "I wasn't really affected by the cheatiing, and to consider the credit as a gift from my friends at PS".

Here is a portion of that e-mail from PS support:"

"The method which we use to compensate players who have played in a
tournament where collusion was present is complex and relies
upon an estimation of likely harm done in each case. This is why the final
compensatory figure does not always tally up exactly to a buy-
in. " -BlackSerac

When there are people colluding in a DoN SNG that you're playing in you're ALWAYS affected. I've already demonstrated how there can be huge swings in equity just as a result of the slightest bit of softplay.


So with stars non-disclosure policy we would never normally hear about large rings of cheaters being caught, and the only reason that we found out about this cheating scandal was that one of the players involved posted their email history with PokerStars support which included the list of names, all of whom live in the same Chinese town, while in a vain attempt to get twoplustwo users to help him get the $10K that was confiscated from him. My favorite post from the user was


Hilarious!

flopp_deuces who is a SNG regular pulled up some stats for about 40 of the 49 players, to see how much money they had profited and when they last played. (note, dates are American mm/dd/yy)

jessica318- 30k profit, last game played 1/25/10
wudiyg- 99k profit, last game played 2/10/10
jane1023-55k profit, last game played 2/18/10
gucci53- 33k profit, last game played 2/8/10
lazzzzzzy- 15k profit, last game played 1/7/10
renhe88- 34k profit, last game 2/14/10
Xuanyu.L-16k profit, last game 3/19/10
chenxr- 42k profit, last game 2/18/10
flypretty-4.4 k profit, last game 5/4/10
nayouyi-13k profit last game 2/17/10
hzlsl-25k profit, last game 1/29/10
freetime1955- 400 profit, last game 2/5/10
xxwpk168- 21k profit, last game 2/5/10
microsoft25- 3.1k profit last game 2/8/10
wenpk15888- 8.4k last game 2/18/10
strong arm A- 2.2 k profit, last game 1/23/10
degreexia- 1.5k profit last game 11/7/2009
ellena054- 4.4 k profit, last game 5/20/2010
jinse888-15k profit, 2/5/10 last game
liuli888-1k profit, 2/5/10
rara999-3.1k profit last game 2/17/10
dcbm288- no profit, last game 2/18/10
linyin- 2.7k last game 2/10/10
yangguangze-830 profit last game 11/29/2009
pakerster-2k profit last game 2/9/2010
yutian-8.1k profit, last game 2/6/2010
coroinpu- 6.3k profitlast game 2/16/2010
maomao1832-9k profit last game 2/18/2010
hslj001- 1k profit last game 2/3/2010
psnyls-1k profit last game 2/14/2010
goloverez777- 11k profit, last game 5/10/2010
leaders668-4.8k profit last game 2/18/2010
guiliang- 2.0k profitlast game 1/31/2010
chijianli- 10k profit last game 2/17/10
xiawenju- 5.3k profit last game 2/1/10
147222-11k profit last game 2/17/10
wzem618800- no profit, last game 2/17/10
mnbqwe12- 4k profit last game 2/18/10
wzhongz-6.4k profit last game 2/17/10
superxia-16k profit, last game 6/29/2009
sishun-14k profit, last game 6/29/2009

Which comes to a total of $541,900. Now add on some FPP bonuses and supernova milestones etc. and I'd estimate the real financial gain here to be more in the region of $750,000. Yes, three quarters of a million dollars stolen from SNGs that have a maximum buyin of $100.

All the regulars who have played hundreds, even thousands of SNGs with these cheaters are up in arms right now about what has been revealed. Back when most of this cheating was going on, Jan - Feb, most of the winning regulars in the games were having their worst month ever

"I've played about 7000 $52-$108 dons in the first 6 weeks of 2010. I kind of felt like something was up, but I assumed I was a losing player and just gave up. If true, this makes me pretty sick as they have not only just stolen money from me, but they have taken away future earning power from me. I was on a pretty nice pace to hit SNE. I've played >$600,000 in buyins during this time and only received a refund of ~$400." -Simplicity8

"and this thread from jasty is back in Feb. and has all the non cheating regs saying how jan. or feb. were the worst months profit wise that they ever had and even had simplicity saying that he quit playing because he was bad(you probably weren't as 'bad' as you thought) This affected the mentality of many players as I remember fossilkid saying he had his first losing month in like 2 years in January or February." -flopp_deuces

"After my onetime 8% ROI in the DONS dropped to ~1% in 2010 I gave up on the games, and in turn gave up on your site and moved over to full tilt.
I always thought the DONs we're a little troublesome........... I was not the only player having an awful 2010 and end of 2009, I know many others who became discouraged and either dropped down levels or moved onto other sites and/or games." -DirDirDirty

"+1 I'm in the same boat as you with over 10k $104s played and shying away from the game after my roi began to drop unexpectedly.
It really does do a number on your game when you think you are doing something wrong even tho you are playing the same way that had you winning months before." -eppy12588

" I had stopped playing double or nothings because of the health problems i got because of stress and the downswing I was on." -flopp_deuces


When high volume winning players quit the games as a result of being systematically cheated for an extended period of time it isn't just the money lost in those games where these players are being affected. A much greater impact comes in the lost earning potential by not playing in future games, not to mention that most of the players who quit the games were on pace to make Supernova Elite and reap the many benefits that come with that.

In addition, with approx $750,000 taken out of the games by the cheaters it's not just games where we have played against the cheaters that we are being hurt. The recreational players who are long term "dead money" in these games will lose their money to a team of colluders much faster than they would normally lose their money, so future games get tougher because all the fish are broke. Even when we are playing games after all the cheaters have been suspended we are still playing in tougher games because of how much money has been removed from the SNG economy.

I ran a PowerGrep query on my hand histories to pull out games where I'd played with at least 2 of the players on the cheater list. I found 244 games, with 44 having 3 or 4 cheaters. And I was barely playing any volume during the time of the cheating. Having looked through a bunch of the HHs I never once, not once single time, seen two of the cheaters get all in against each other. It's more than likely that the main part of the collusion was an agreement not to call each other's raises / shoves, which is such a huge advantage in DoN SNGs.

I sent an email to PokerStars with the list of 244 tournaments and received a quick reply.


So this cheating scandal was so complex that it has taken over 3 months to investigate. The list of names that we have came from an email to one of the cheaters on Feb 19th. Who's to say that there weren't many more accounts found after this date who were a part of this? I mentioned that I had played 244 games with 2 or more players from the list, well I've also played in 1421 games with at least 1 of the players, and it doesn't strike me as likely that such a well organised ring of cheaters would only collude some of the time and play a whole bunch on their own. So there is the possibility that this thing could be much bigger than we believe it to be already.

Questions are being raised about how PokerStars are policing their games. It certainly seems to be more of a retroactive than a proactive approach. When someone reports suspected collusion they always investigate it fully, and I believe PokerStars employs some of the very best poker security experts to do this. However, do they actually have people proactively looking for cheaters? It seems unlikely when such a large number of players from the same location can go on cheating for months and cash out $750,000 before they are caught.

I'll be very interested to see how players are compensated by PokerStars for being affected by this scandal. No doubt most of the money stolen has been cashed out but just dividing up what was left in their accounts when caught between the players affected just isn't going to be enough this time. If PokerStars don't dig into their own pocket on this one there will be a lot of angry and vocal players out there.

If you don't believe that it's PokerStars responsibility to pay money out of their own pocket to replace that stolen by cheaters (who got away with cheating on their site for many months) think of it this way. Most of the regualrs in these games, myself included, have payed well into six figures in rake to PokerStars. We pay this rake and in return we expect to be able to play poker in a safe and secure environment. When we are hurt by people cheating, we should be fully compensated and if stars cant recover this from the cheating scumbags how about digging into all that rake we've paid. Also, these cheaters must have paid in the high six figures in rake themselves so theres another source of money to compensate the players.

Going forward I wouldn't be surprised to see these DoN games removed from the site. With such a large amount of cheating gone on in these games they must be a huge strain on PokerStars security team. Not only that but having games running on their site that are associated with cheating and collusion is simply terrible for PokerStars image. And their image of being the most safe and secure site to play on is their number one asset in an industry where some pretty scummy stuff has happened in the past.

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Just signed a major deal :D

Date: Fri, May 21, 2010

There has been a lot of demand for this and as an internet celebrity who likes to take care of his fans I have made it a reality.

Yes, I have just signed a major deal with UK high street clothing retailer Topshop to get the Daleroxxu brand onto clothing, so the fanboys and girls can show their support for an internet legend.

The summer line of clothing has already been produced and will be in a store near you very soon.




There is the "Best Blogger" V-Neck for you fanboys who want to remind everyone who was officially named the Best Blogger in the universe.

Then we have the Daleroxxu trademarked GTFO t-shirt. So when some moran is annoying you by having shit for brains you can avoid being rude to them out loud as I would and instead let them get the hint from your t-shirt.














For all you railtard fanboys out there who love to rail Daleroxxu consistantly winning money rather than rail Isildur1 clowning off his backer's millions, we have the Daleroxxu is greater than Isildur1 poloshirt.














Last but not least in the Daleroxxu summer collection is a top for the fangirls. I possibly, and i dare say probably, have more fangirls than any other poker player. Not a day goes by without some bimbo offering me sexual favours in exchange for a satellite seat into the sunday $1/4 million. So for you fangirls I have produced the Dalecoxxme girl-shirt.

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South Africa World Cup Trip Itinerary

Date: Mon, May 17, 2010

Leaving things until the last minute is pretty normal for me. Why do something now when it can wait until later, right? I also hate making plans that are more than a week in advance because I hate having any kind of commitments in my life.

I applied for tickets to the FIFA World Cup in Feb '09 and was thrilled to have gotten CAT 1 tickets for some major matches. Having been to the last world cup in Germany I know how fucking awesome it is, and it only happens every 4 years.
So you'd think I'd be super keen and motivated into getting organised for my trip to South Africa, right? Well, you'd only think that if you didn't know me too well.

I only just got off my ass and booked flights and hotel, with less than a month to go, only to find out that everything is pretty much fully booked.

Fortunately I managed to book the last seat on a flight to Johannesburg in time for the opening ceremony match, but at $2000 it's pretty expensive for an economy flight... where I will no doubt be squeezed into a seat beside some big fat bastard with BO for the 13 hour duration while I risk developing DVT due to their not being enough leg-room infront of me, even if I was a hobbit.

And when I finally managed to find a room at hotel which was at least 4* quality and fairly central, and that was super super tough, I had to shell out over $400/night, for a room that is probably normaly 1/4 that price, but hey at least they give me "free" internet.

So here is my rough itinerary so far:

8th June - Fly from Glasgow
9th June - Arrive Johannesburg 9am, visit Johannesburg Zoo
10th June - Gold Reef City - Theme Park (and Casino, if they have poker)
11th June - Opening Ceremony then South Africa vs Mexico
12th June - Travel to Rustenburg England vs USA
13th June - dunno
14th June - Netherlands vs Denmark
15th June - Lion Park then 8:30pm Brazil vs North Korea
16th June - dunno, then fly home at 9:30pm
17th June - Arrive in Glasgow

I need to fill in some blanks there but I'm sure I'll think of something and update the itinerary. If anyone has suggestions please let me know. It pretty much adds up to a $10,000 vacation, but it sounds a lot more fun than playing some 10K donkament and not cashing, so that's the way I'm looking at it.

I also have Cat 1 tickets for both semi finals, 2 quarters and one RO16. I'm tied between selling those tickets on or booking another trip from end of june til start of july to take in those matches. I'd obv get hold of a ticket for the Final too if i did that. I'm not too big on traveling though and I get very homesick very quickly when I do travel, so I'll see how I feel towards the end of the trip I have booked and decide then.

peeeeace

Dale

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