Thursday, September 07, 2006

Free Consulting Advice to Execs of Online Gaming Companies: No, Seriously, Do Not Travel to the US

Sportingbet PLC Chairman Detained in the US

I read a fairly encouraging story yesterday that despite Frist's desire to try to ram the Online Gambling is the Root of All Evil legislation through the Senate before the end of September, there were still Republican senators with holds on the bill, and that odds of it passing didn't appear to be great. But then if we're going to keep yoinking bigwig execs of firms traded on the London Stock Exchange and hold them indefinitely on ambiguous charges in undisclosed locations, well, I'm not sure that bodes well for the future of online gambling for US citizens.

I've been hitting the sportsbetting hard this week, but very little poker to speak of. ScurvyWife is going to Dallas for the weekend, which would normally allow me much time for degeneracy, but I'm retiling the master bathroom in the Austin house, which should effectively suck up the entire weekend.

GO STEELERS!!!



While I probably would hedge the Mansion free bet on the Steelers -4.5 if I could, I have to admit I'm looking forward to watching the game, with a potential $1,000 on the line. I've probably run well over $1,000,000 in wagers through sportsbooks in the last few years, due to my neverending schemery, but I almost never bet on games in the normal, traditional sense. 'Tis kind of fun to have a vested degenerate interest in the game.

Anyone interested in speculation, poker, and/or investing should check this out:

The Zurich Axioms

It's not a quick read but contains some very interesting stuff, and most definitely applies to poker (sometimes directly, as poker examples are sprinkled throughout).

Definitely resonates with many things rolling around in my head of late, especially in regards to the whole conundrum of not just creating enough wealth to significantly alter your life, but also doing so quickly enough so that you can actually enjoy it. Yeah, it's very responsible and Suze Orman-esque to hoard your pennies and sock them away into mutual funds, and over decades turn your pennies into nickels (or maybe even dimes!), so that you can retire comfortably at 65 and leave a nice chunk of money that your ungrateful kids will blow through in 6-9 months.

And I'm not really knocking that and suddenly saying that you should invest your entire life savings in lemur farms in Wyoming, but there is something to be said for setting aside some monies for more speculative endeavors, apart from all the "boring" investments. To some extent, I've been doing this, but it's been a bit self-defeating, as I've never set aside enough money for truly speculative stuff that would hurt, if I blew through it all, nor enough that would make an appreciable difference in my life, if I tripled up. On the bright side, it's not enough money to hurt. On the less than bright side, it's not enough money to matter. So the tendency (for me at least) is to splash and donk around, never really making or losing any serious money.

And, again, not the worst thing in the world, but if I'm going to speculate, I might as well use my whole ass, and not just half my ass.

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