Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

The toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | Off topic | 3 Comments

Since I don’t really have any poker related articles to post today, I thought you might find the toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick interesting.

The toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick

Nobody at my work thought the trick was cool, but they are all physicists so what can you expect?

IMO this is an exceptionally illustrative example of the Lever Principle in action, and best of all it only took me about half an hour to master.

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Gardening project

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | Off topic | 3 Comments

This is about as offtopic as it gets:-) My girlfriend and I decided to tidy up our patio about a week ago and in the process we purchased two tomato plants and sowed a bunch of different wild summer flower seeds in the limited soil we have available.

I thought it would be kind of fun to documents how the plants in our little garden grow during the summer. Many of the seeds have actually already germinated, but you probably won’t be able to see them in the first picture series below.

Tomato plants, Hostas and Hortensia

Pelargoniums and hopefully soon to come summer flowers

I will give you another update in a couple of weeks

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Nice try but I’m not that stupid

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Off topic | 2 Comments

Usually I just delete the emails I receive from people who have inherited gold mines in Africa and just need me to send them a few thousand dollars which in return will make me a rich man. However, the email below from Andrew Likierman is the most elaborate and well written email scam I have received to data and I simply had to share it with you. I just googled Andrew Likierman. It turns out the he actually exists and is in fact “non-executive Director of Barclays Bank plc and the Chairman-elect of the National Audit Office”. Hope the real Andrew Likierman doesn’t mind me posting this email from some person who is obviously impersonating him.

Dear Friend,
I am Andrew Likierman, Chairman National Audit at Barclays.I am contacting you concerning a deceased customer William Nathan,and an investment he placed under our banks management.I would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this mail confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this mail.
I contact you independently and no one is informed of this communication.I would like to intimate you with certain facts that I believe would be of interest to you.
In 2005, the subject matter came to our bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking division. He informed us that he had a financial portfolio of 2.35 million British Pounds Sterling, which he wished to have us turn over (invest) on his behalf.I was the officer assigned to his case, I made numerous suggestions in line with my duties as the de-facto chief operations officer of the private banking sector, especially given the volume of funds he wished to put into our bank.
We met on numerous occasions prior to any investments being placed. I encouraged him to consider various growth funds with prime ratings.

The favored route in my advise to customers is to start by assessing data on 6000 traditional stocks and bond managers and 2000 managers of alternative investments. Based on my advice, We spun the money around various opportunities and made attractive margins for our first months of operation, the accrued profit and interest stood at this point at over 4 million British Pounds Sterling, this margin was not the full potential of the fund but he desired low risk guaranteed returns on investments. In mid 2006, he asked that the money be liquidated because he needed to make an urgent investment requiring cash payments.He directed that I liquidate the funds and have it deposited with a security firm.

I informed him that Barclays would have to make special arrangements to have this done and in order not to circumvent due process, the bank would have to make a 9.5 % deduction from the funds to cater for banking and statutory charges. He complained about the charges but later came around when I explained to him the complexities of the task he was asking of us.
I undertook all the processes and made sure I followed his precise instructions to the letter and had the funds deposited with a security consultancy firm. This security firm is an especially private firm that accepts deposits from high net worth individuals and blue chip corporations that handle valuable products or undertake transactions that need immediate access to cash.
This small and highly private organization is familiar especially to the highly placed and well-connected organizations. In Line with instructions, the money was deposited with them.He told me he wanted the money there in anticipation of his arrival from Norway later that week. This was the last communication we had, this transpired around 25 th February 2007.

In June last year, we got a call from the security company informing us of the inactivity of that particular portfolio. This was an astounding position as far as I was concerned, given the fact that I managed the private banking sector I was the only one who knew about the deposit at the security company, and I could not understand why our client had not come forward to claim his deposit.I made futile efforts to locate him.
I immediately passed the task of locating him to the internal investigations department of Barclay. Four days later, information started to trickle in, apparently our man was dead. A person who suited his description was declared dead of a heart attack in Canne, South of France. We were soon enough able to confirm all of this including cause of death. The bank immediately launched an investigation into possible surviving next of kin to alert about the situation and also to come forward to claim his estate.

If you are familiar with private banking affairs, those who patronize our services usually prefer anonymity, but also some levels of detachment from conventional processes. In his bio-data form, he listed no next of kin. In the field of private banking,opening an account with us means no one will know of its existence,accounts are rarely held under a name; depositors use numbers and codes to make the accounts anonymous.
This bank even gives the choice to depositors of having their mail sent to them or held at the bank itself, ensuring that there are no traces of the account and as I said, rarely do they nominate next of kin. Private banking clients apart from not nominating next of kin also usually in most cases leave wills in our care, in this case; our now deceased client died in testate. In line with our internal processes for account holders who have passed away, we instituted our own investigations in good faith to determine who should have right to claim the estate. This investigation has for the past months been unfruitful. We have scanned every continent and used our private investigation affiliate companies to get to the root of the problem.

It is quite clear now that our dear fellow died with no known or identifiable family members. This leaves me as the only person with the full picture of what the prevailing situation is in relation to the deposit and the late beneficiary of the deposit.
According to practice,the security company will by the end of this year broadcast a request for statements of claim to Barclays, failing to receive viable claims they will most probably revert the deposit to Barclays. This will result in the money entering the Barclays accounting system and the portfolio will be out of my hands and out of the private banking division.This will not happen if I have my way.
What I wish to relate to you will smack of unethical practice but I want you to understand something. It is only an outsider to the banking world who finds the internal politics of the banking world aberrational. The world of private banking especially is fraught with huge rewards for those who sit upon certain chairs and oversee certain portfolios. You should have begun by now to put together the general direction of what I propose. There is  2,350,000.00 deposited in a security company.
This bank has spent great amounts of money trying to track the deceased”s family; they have investigated for months and have found no family. The investigation has come to an end. My proposal; I am prepared to furnish the necessary details to you as the closest surviving relation. Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share the money with you in half. That is: When the bank simply nominate you as the next of kin and the deposit to you.We share the proceeds 50/50.

We can fine-tune this based on our interactions.I am aware of the consequences of this proposal.I ask that if you find no interest in this project that you should discard this mail.I ask that you do not be vindictive and destructive.If my offer is of no appeal to you, delete this message and forget I ever contacted you. Do not destroy my career because you do not approve of my proposal. You may not know this but people like myself who have made a tidy sum out of comparable situations run the whole private banking sector.

I am not a criminal and what I do, I do not find against good conscience, this may be hard for you to understand, but the dynamics of my industry dictates that I make this move. Such opportunities only come ones way once in a lifetime.I cannot let this chance pass me by.For once I find myself in total control of my destiny.This chance wont pass me by.

I ask that you do not destroy my chance, if you will not work with me let me know and let me move on with my life but do not destroy me.I am a family man and this is an opportunity to provide them with new opportunities.There is a reward for this project and it is a task well worth undertaking.I have evaluated the risks and the only risk I have here is from you refusing to work with me and alerting my bank.
If you give me positive signals,I will give you the relevant details and initiate this process towards a conclusion.
Please, again, note I am a family man,I have wife and children.I send you this mail not without a measure of fear as to what the consequences, but I know within me that nothing ventured is nothing gained and that success and riches never come easy or on a platter of gold.This is the one truth I have learned from my private banking clients. Do not betray my confidence.I await your response.
Sincerely,
Andrew Likierman

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The resurrection of an Acer laptop

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | Off topic | 2 Comments

For those of you following my Twitter updates you will know that I have been experiencing a lot of problems with my Acer laptop lately. Not only did the screen need serious persuasion to display an image, the laptop also overheated and crashed within an hour of turning it on. The overheating got so bad that it was necessary to regularly cool it down. When I was playing tournaments the fastest way of doing this was to put the computer in the fridge:

Computer in fridge

On one particularly frustrating day I over-persuaded my laptop screen which resulted in a work of modern art:

Over-persuaded laptop screen

Needless to say I was happy that my new Mac was on its way when the above incident took place. However it turned out that busting up the screen of my Acer was a blessing in disguise. Now it does not overheat anymore. I can even connect it to an external monitor and use it as a stationary computer when playing poker tournaments on poker networks that do not support Mac.

I do not recommend over-persuasion as a means of fixing laptops, but it my case it turned out great.

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Charlie Glynn

Monday, April 13th, 2009 | Off topic | 7 Comments

My family purchased a new dog about 4 months ago. It’s a Basset Fauve de Bretagne (sounds fancy huh) and they named him Charlie Glynn. For most of my life I haven’t really been a fan of small dogs, mostly because many of them resemble small rats. Lately however, I have started to change my mind on this and have come to realize that many good things come in small packages. Charlie Glynn definitely belongs to the “good things in small packages” category…what a great dog!!!

I didn't chew up your shoe

Let go of that stick or else.....

Posing for the ladies

I took the pictures with my Samsung F-480 mobile phone. They actually turned out a lot better than expected.

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