‘Ain’t Got No Soul Brother

Times Have Changed In the past week or so I’ve found myself reminiscing about the early days of my gambling career, for a couple of reasons I think, firstly and most prominently myself, Pab and Middy (my housemates) have recently moved into an unfurnished apartment, after locating the ideal spot for our huge tele, then organizing some lavishly comfortable sofa’s, that niether go with carpets nor really fit in the room, to sit on and watch it we kind of slacked off on buying anything else for a while, as the essentials were very much catered for. After purchasing blinds and curtains we decided the next port of call would be a dining table, we all knew that we would likely spend very little time at the dining table but just felt that if you want to be a “real” person, then you should have a dining table. Then we had an even better idea – lets buy a poker table instead! We’ll use it probably equally as infrequently as the dining table but it will look cool and will be easier to justify in our heads spending money on it if its multi-use (savvy consumers to the end.) After … Continue reading

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Happy New Year!

I’m Back! Hello everyone A few years ago my blog was inherently part of my identity, I remember when i used to play live poker tournaments from time to time and I’d make the updates (usually for walking in the building over doing any good in the tournament!) and it would say things like “blogger extraordinaire” “online poker blogger” David Nicholson. Jesse May who is one of my all time favorite people in gambling even once referred to it as “the best thing on the internet” (obviously Porn is the best thing on the internet!) This wasn’t something that bothered me at all, the fact that i was known for the blog over my poker achievements, in fact i actually loved it, created a bit of mystique about me, people started to think i might be kind of a big deal, but no-one knew why! That is actually way more of an interesting character to play than the guy with a 26% ROI over 11,000 online tournaments, and a shiny picture of you on a magazine cover with an EPT trophy.   This worked nicely with my personally, I’ve never been a naturally braggy person – I find it a … Continue reading

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Hello!

You Miss ME?! So after nearly 4 months away from my virtual pen, I’m making a triumphant return to my blog – my hiatus, though not entirely planned, has been for pretty good reason. Sometimes, and this year has defo been one of those, I over-stretch myself – not in terms of how much stuff i’m doing, but mentally – this year has been pretty busy and sometimes I’ve felt like im choking with everything going on around and the situations I’m putting myself in. When that happens I want to curl up and sit in the dark on my sofa, not write about it. However as with all shameless self promoters (not my words ) ego will always take over and i’ll always be back!! SO. Whats been happening? WELL I’LL TELL YOU !!! POKER :-  Poker ey? Well you’ll be surprised to learn I’ve been playing an absolute heap of poker this year, and it’s been pretty damn swingy. Online poker, despite a terrible start in January, has been pretty solidly excellent all year, the first 2 months of the year saw a huge rush of 20/50 euro games running on iPoker, and despite snap losing £25k in … Continue reading

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I Want To Be A Part Of It!

 I Want to Wake Up in a City That Never Sleeps! Happy New Year merry readers! After what can onnnllly be described as a manic end to ’13 has transferred into a pretty manic start to 2014!! The first, and perhaps most pressing, point to address was my address, it was exactly 6 yrs ago to the month I left home from the security of a fridge that magically restocked itself, the carpets which never needed hoovering and where light bulbs never went out! A very different lil Dave left home in January, I had no idea that a massage parlour in Vegas was anything other than a place to get a massage (still remember the mocking laughter from Franky and Eames as I commented “people in Vegas must love massages if all these parlours can stay in business?”) I had never watched darts, rarely bet on football and my lifes goals were focused on climbing the corporate ladder. Funny looking back, I guess “the same roads” really do lead to “different places” – life’s a journey, deaths the destination someone once told me…I’m not sure If I actually agree with that, but it makes sense enough when you think … Continue reading

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What you Lose on the Swings you Find on the Roundabouts

The Top5! Highs and Lows 2013 One of the things that intrigues me most in the world is people. People are very interesting, and people’s motivations are what really fascinates me; Why is this person here? What is important to them? It’s quite amazing really that 2 people could be in the same place doing the same thing for ENTIRELY different reasons – I think I first learnt this from poker, and it definitely made a big difference to my approach to everything I do in my life. If you can figure out WHY someone is doing what they are doing, and WHAT they wanna achieve from doing it, well, that’s gotta be a big advantage right? With my dazzling new insight I started right at home, and looked at myself – So David, What are you doing? What are you Hoping to achieve? I answered my questions exactly as I expected myself to; “Well David,” I said, briefly wondering if i should be concerned about conducting a 2-way 3rd person conversation with myself – funny how you’re mind can wonder after 3/4 of a bottle of rum on a Tuesday afternoon – “I am trying to build a future … Continue reading

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THE TOP 5!

THE TOP POKER HANDS! So, as the majority of the year has been taken up with poker hands, where better to start than here, with the top 5 hands of the year. Unfortunately these hands are not all the most memorable for positive reasons :S however they are the top 5 we also “enjoyed” the biggest pot of my gambling career so far! 5. CLICKING BUTTONS Recently online there has been a wave of players either new to iPoker, or returning accounts that haven’t been around for a while. I have had a policy all year on ipoker of playing anyone between 2/4 and 5/10 (and being a bit more selective at 10/20 and  25/50 which i don’t think is bad at all) so if you sit with me (I only ever on 6max tables) doesn’t matter if I think you’re better than me or not, I play. Most people don’t play HU or shorthanded with me (not because I’m a huge sicko) but because most people don’t play HU or shorthanded unless very poor players are involved. However gonna give props to Un1dentified, LostInBatCountry and Privko as my fave opponents on Ipoker – they all 3 very good but … Continue reading

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Step Into Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Hey everybody! So. It’s Christmas, even the biggest scrooges among us are permitted as soon as it becomes December 24th, to drop the grumpiness and join in the festivities. Truth be told I think Christmas is great, everyone is Jolly and for 36 hours GOLD becomes half watchable. The thing I really hate is the build up to Christmas, everything becomes more expensive, if you want ANYTHING at all (irrespective of it’s relevance to Christmas) then you have to queue for 35 minutes to buy it and people start to get needlessly panicy because the shops will be closed for 24 hours. All very silly really however it’s all over now and we can all don our Santa hats, drink needlessly high amounts of spirits we would never dream of drinking in any of the other 51 weeks of the year, such as Baileys, Mint Schnappes and this ludicrous tradition we have of bludgeoning red wine by boiling it and throwing fruit in it :S Merry Christmas Everyone! I’m going to rejuvenate my blog this period with a proper look-back to 2013. Going to do my TOP 5 2013.  Top 5 People Top 5 Poker Hands Top 5 … Continue reading

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That’s Right!

I’m Back! Question? Where you Been Dave? Well I’ll tell you. It’s been a pretty frantic/fun/tilting/frustrating/awesome 5 weeks. Its been pretty all over the place, so I guess we should start at the beginning! 2013, to date has been pretty fucking intense for me, I’ve had a really strange year, as last year drew to a close I was coming off a really good few months poker wise, and one of my most insane trips ever! Me and JP went Barbados/St. Kitts/Miami/Vegas and had an abso blast, I’d also spent a chink of time in Vegas earlier, L.A, Austria + Barcelona all for poker, and all seeing very little of anywhere but the inside of casinos. My Business outside of poker had started to flail in my focus, it was all poker poker poker, so I decided that 2013 was going to be the year of change. I was nicely settled into my new(ish) apartment in Leeds (since leaving home 6 years ago I’ve lived in 8 different places, as well as long stints on the floor in Frankie + Jake’s homes and prolly the best part of 350 days in hotels) so I was hoping to stay in one … Continue reading

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The World’s Gonna Move…

You Just Gotta Move Quicker…   Last time I posted on my blog I was in the process of a lot of running about/slight upheaval in my plans, where to live POST November continues to be a worrying issue for me. I’ve all but decided I’m going to stay in Leeds, I’ve been blessed over the past 4 years to do a lot of travelling, visiting loads of cool places but with all this one thing remains constant, I LOVE coming home, Leeds – despite the ribbing it gets from all the silly southerners suits me down to the ground, its not too big but there is plenty of stuff, living is pretty good and not too expensive, you can be London in 2hrs, Manchester in 1hr, Newcastle in 2, Edinburgh is 3, Nottingham in 75minutes, it has an airport, and I LOVE WOMEN with yorkshire accents! Yes could use a few more shops, yes could improve the nightlife a little bit by replacing the worlds most obnoxious door staff and sure a couple of bigger poker games would be nice too, but most importantly – It’s My Home, and it’s where I will stay! On the subject of home … Continue reading

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Where’s The Fucking Justice?

Calling the Gods! There has been a lot of talk around the UK lately, inspired by DTD owner Rob Yong’s blog post ( http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/blog.php?profile=4&id=438 ) about the condition and ethical stature of online poker. This is not a new debate, and Phil Galfond wrote a blog about it a couple of years ago entitled “Lets Make Some Changes,”  However, despite the advances on the subject from a man as influential in the poker community as Phil, have any changes really occured? No, Not Really. So, the natural question to follow this would be, WHY? Why have we identified the problem, highlighted most of the culprits and still no difference has been made. I hate to say it, but despite the efforts and points made by Phil Galfond and Rob I can’t see it changing. Nah, I don’t think this a job for the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot, it’s actually in my eyes quite simple and extremely worrying. Plainly put there is not a single person/company involved in this from any side who has both the means, and the motive to make the changes Galfond called for. Lets look at the 4 protagonists in this saga; 1) The “Good” Regular players … Continue reading

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Let’s Make LIKE A LEGEND…

AND SPLIT As I came off a pretty whirlwind Start to August I was expecting myself to feel desperate for peace and quiet, despite my reputation I don’t actually enjoy relenting carnage, not that I didn’t used to, or still crave it, but now as I enter my mid 20′s my body has to keep reminding me I’m not 18, and month long bender’s aren’t going to cut the mustard any more! However after a day’s relaxing and recovering from that week I was itching for some more adventure, I shared my thoughts at dinner one night with JP and Pez and they said they were feeling exactly the same – after a very intense summer the prospect of just grinding away in Leeds was not setting my spine tingling. We reminded ourselves that one of the best things about online poker (aside from the endless stream of glamour models ofc) is that all you need is a Laptop and an internet connection, if we’re just gonna be sat in Leeds playing internet games, may as well be sat somewhere else right?! So we decided we were going to find ourselves a sunny european hotspot, where the drinks are flowing … Continue reading

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