LOST HIS SHIRT I wonder if ex-Tottenham Hotspur owner Sir Alan Sugar has recently considered retrospectively firing himself in view of the monster thirty four million pound shirt logo deal recently completed with Mansion poker? Having failed to tempt Manchester United or, apparently, Liverpool, with almost seventy million, it was uplifting to see the famous London club grasping the golden poker pot to give it the financial boost all Premier clubs outside the big four desperately need to stay competitive. Sir Alan took the view that, financially, football (particularly at Spurs) was a black hole and he may yet be proved to be correct. However, there are enough poker billionaires around now to give the Russian oil barons a run for their money at the top of the UK football league table and I think a side effect of the online gaming revolution will be a soccer-casino marriage that will act as a money magnet for the world’s top talent. Sir Alan’s ex-club are simply leading the charge and good luck to them. Football clubs whose cash affairs are based simply on gate receipts and television income may be monetary minefields but if they start landing casino licences and shirt deals of the current magnitude they could turn land mines into gold mines.
DON’T GET OUT-KICKED Returning to poker but keeping with the soccer footnotes you can often suffer what I call meta-farcical damage in short-handed games. This tends to occur when you are over-playing something like Ace-ten in a heads-up and you get “out-kicked”. A majority of times you’ll find you’re facing another Ace but with a higher “kicker” card like a Queen or a King. In general don’t play cards that can be dominated in this fashion in short-handed games. It’s different at a full table because if you are playing Ace-ten under the right conditions you know you have to land two pair to have a chance of winning. Nobody in their right mind would consider Ace-ten is a likely winner in a ten player game unless an Ace hits at the flop and encourages you to try for the ten at the turn or the river.
GOLDEN OLDIE This is really a golden oldie tip for the new players among you. Always keep an eye out for players who play almost every hand. Nine out of ten times these are gamblers who just can’t stand to be left out of the action. You can afford to be very aggressive towards them because the odds suggest the majority of the hands they play are going to be a long way from premium. They will lose more often than they win and you want them in your sights. If you are becoming one of them, let this be the day you change your ways.
