Nipper Years
If I said I never had any gamble in me till I found poker I'd be something of a gert liar. I'm not sure if its a nurture or nature thing but its fair to say I've always had that bit of Gamble/degen about me. Betting and gambling was always around me when I was growing up so its hardly surprising I got sucked into many different forms of it. Many of my most enjoyable kiddie memories revolve around going to the dogs with my Dad and his clan. At 10 scoring a goal like Gary Lineker or spraying a pass like Glenn Hoddle were the only things that ever came close to achieving the same buzz.
Some peoples greatest childhood memories may be seeing a singer perform or going on a fab holiday to some far flung exotic location. Mine was seeing Scurlogue Champ binking a race at Sheffield and outscoring even the wildest of wild stories my dad used to tell me about him. Meeting the living Legend and his owner/trainer post race was the pinnacle of my child years. Just thinking back now sends excitable chills racing down my spine. The dog was just the most awesomest racing machine ever. Its not just that it binked for fun but it was the super intelligent way he binked em. Its as though he was just taking the piss all the time and would almost always be miles behind coming onto the last lap. He would then just blow the field away like they had stopped still and snatch the bink at the last second. Nice memories :)
If I said I never had any gamble in me till I found poker I'd be something of a gert liar. I'm not sure if its a nurture or nature thing but its fair to say I've always had that bit of Gamble/degen about me. Betting and gambling was always around me when I was growing up so its hardly surprising I got sucked into many different forms of it. Many of my most enjoyable kiddie memories revolve around going to the dogs with my Dad and his clan. At 10 scoring a goal like Gary Lineker or spraying a pass like Glenn Hoddle were the only things that ever came close to achieving the same buzz.
Some peoples greatest childhood memories may be seeing a singer perform or going on a fab holiday to some far flung exotic location. Mine was seeing Scurlogue Champ binking a race at Sheffield and outscoring even the wildest of wild stories my dad used to tell me about him. Meeting the living Legend and his owner/trainer post race was the pinnacle of my child years. Just thinking back now sends excitable chills racing down my spine. The dog was just the most awesomest racing machine ever. Its not just that it binked for fun but it was the super intelligent way he binked em. Its as though he was just taking the piss all the time and would almost always be miles behind coming onto the last lap. He would then just blow the field away like they had stopped still and snatch the bink at the last second. Nice memories :)
Keep your eyes on the dog at the back.
A-Levels
I was skipping lessons to bink tards dinner monies at hearts to fund crazed weekend booze sessions. My edge in these games was pretty big which seems odd looking back as its mostly a memory and only part strategy/logic game. There were about 3 or 4 good players and I formed a partnership with arguably the best player. This involved either getting into a team game v two other villains or soft playing each other when we could in single player games. We would then share the combined profits straight down the middle and I cant ever recall us having a losing session. I guess this could be seen by some as cheating but I like to think of it as simply offsetting variance.
Uni
Uni
When I hit Uni (ye kinda surprised myself there) I was missing lectures going on day gambles down to laddies. If something had a market I had some monies on it. Looking back its easy to see that these were some of my darkest days . While most students were attending lectures and getting drunk on alcopops a few nights a week I was sinking more than a gallon through the day till the bookies closed. Days would then be rounded off with another gallon and a bottle of the super strong juice (not one of your 5 a day).
I was pretty anal in my quest to dig out any edge I could on any sport available. I would find any and all info I could before having a punt on it but given how out of it I was I'm not sure how reliable this research was. The gamble got the better of me more than once though and it took a pretty epic fail day to shake me out of my retarded ways.
During the World Cup I remember putting a large wedge of cash on some footballing superpower v a minnow. The punt was a win/win, half time/full time and the bet was meant to be eze monies. I think the initial bet was about £200/£300 which was a big slice of my student loan at the time. Things didnt quite go as planned. Brazil went 1-0 down and when it looked like I had burnt my money I started to offset my bets on other multiple scores, half time and full time results. I was fully inside the “I'm a fuck up and I have a gambling and drinking problem” zone and after quickly racing to the bank I had my little financial world on the line to the sum of about £1.3k. This might not seem like the biggest of figures but considering my student loan had just come through and I had yet to pay the terms rent it left me with about enough for a tin of Aldi beans, a bottle of Whisky and my train ticket back to Yorkshire (Uni was in Wales). When the final whistle sounded I rushed to cash in the slips to see what kind of damage I was looking at. Not even the surprise of finding I had made nearly £20 profit managed to rid me of the feelings of utter stupidity and worthlessness. I promised myself that day that I would never allow my degen side to get the better of me again (other fails to follow).
I was pretty anal in my quest to dig out any edge I could on any sport available. I would find any and all info I could before having a punt on it but given how out of it I was I'm not sure how reliable this research was. The gamble got the better of me more than once though and it took a pretty epic fail day to shake me out of my retarded ways.
During the World Cup I remember putting a large wedge of cash on some footballing superpower v a minnow. The punt was a win/win, half time/full time and the bet was meant to be eze monies. I think the initial bet was about £200/£300 which was a big slice of my student loan at the time. Things didnt quite go as planned. Brazil went 1-0 down and when it looked like I had burnt my money I started to offset my bets on other multiple scores, half time and full time results. I was fully inside the “I'm a fuck up and I have a gambling and drinking problem” zone and after quickly racing to the bank I had my little financial world on the line to the sum of about £1.3k. This might not seem like the biggest of figures but considering my student loan had just come through and I had yet to pay the terms rent it left me with about enough for a tin of Aldi beans, a bottle of Whisky and my train ticket back to Yorkshire (Uni was in Wales). When the final whistle sounded I rushed to cash in the slips to see what kind of damage I was looking at. Not even the surprise of finding I had made nearly £20 profit managed to rid me of the feelings of utter stupidity and worthlessness. I promised myself that day that I would never allow my degen side to get the better of me again (other fails to follow).
