Nick Clegg

After 2 and a half years sucking up to and helping to lay down the life of his party to save  the Tory party, Nick Clegg has decided to do something for society. He and his colleagues have proposed a change to the law that will restrict the limit that can be bet on those damn fixed odds betting terminal otherwise known as ‘roulette machines’.

As you probably gathered I hate these things with a passion. I am all for people taking responsibility for their own lives but when they are being seduced into losing 3% of their bet with every spin which seem to run at 3 a minute then people will have to be protected from themselves. Although I am not what you call a wise gambler, but, I do know the odds and these machines are designed for people who have not got a clue about odds, so will bet on emotions and belief that they can out think a machine. 

Do not get me wrong, not all addicts are clueless about odds and percentages. I know really clued up guys who seem to perform really when on these machines, but, I am not with them during all their betting escapades, so cannot tell when they are on a down swing and what they do, but I do have a clue.

The proposal to limit the betting to £2 do seem rather small and may lead to betting shops who take most of their money from these machines to drop in revenue. But, the money and heartache it will save families around the country must be a good thing.  The joke that FOBT’s are crack cocaine for gamblers is a well earned joke. The high you get from each spin is an intense one. 

Should I as a libertarian be in favour of controlling the behaviour of individuals? Yes because I am not a complete libertarian, just like most libertarians I have prejudices and if all libertarians are truly honest they also have prejudices. So my prejudice against FOBT’s is not absolute but is enough to be in favour of restrictions for the good of society. On this one ‘I agree with Nick’.

ITV Debate: Gordon Brown agrees with Nick

The Nick Clegg Apology Song: I’m Sorry (The Autotune Remix)

You can tell a government is finished when they are constantly open to ridicule and disdain. With the UK coalition it began with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg getting royally shafted over tuition fees (he signed a pledge not to raise it and in fact to get rid of it and promptly did the complete opposite when in government), continued with the Prime Minister David Cameron badly judging the Murdoch fiasco and now is ending with the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne being seen as out of touch with the reducing millionaires taxes, but, raising of granny’s taxes. 

The sign that he is out of touch is the rather innocuous and rather insignificant issue of value added tax (VAT) on hot pies. Hot pies are a favourite with working class people during lunch breaks, football supporters during half time (a common term of abuse to fat footballers is ”who ate all the pies”) and school kids who did not enjoy their dinner. As is seen in the video George Osborne when asked the question by John Mann and George Osborne has not got a clue, and, worst of all made it clear that VAT will not be charged if a pie that was hot is no longer hot when sold. Straight away you can see a small bakery in some non-descript town who will sell a pie in a very hot shop without VAT added and it will be in all the papers as a snub to George Osborne.

This is what happens when you have a bunch of over privileged spoilt brats being allowed to play politics because they were born to do this just as the Kennedy’s and the Bush’s always seem to not live up to the hype and in fact all look to fail badly when given the chance to shine. Dynastic rule and rule by a small clique of individuals always mess up in a democracy because it is not part of the DNA of democracy to have incestuous relationships. Democracy is about liberating the people from inbred  thinking. It can lead to wild ideas and ‘blue sky thinking’ but that is the price to pay for egalitarian living

In the video of the Treasury Select Committee, Gregg’s is a high street shop that sells bread, cakes, pies and other food stuff.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron

The General Election in the UK has just taken place and it is going to be a hung parliament which means that no one party can govern outright. This is very unusual as it means that to have a government you need to have 50% of the seats. So now the horse trading begin and it will resemble a poker game in which a three way pot was split between two of the players but squeezing the third player.

In this scenario the third player squeezed has to be Nick Clegg the Liberal and Democrat leader. The lucky player is the present Prime Minister and Labour leader Gordon Brown, who looked down and out when the flop happened, but, managed to split the pot on the river with the Conservative leader David Cameron.

Nick Clegg flopped top pair but David Cameron also flopped top pair with a good kicker. He should have made a ‘questioning bet’ not big enough to look like a over bet, but big enough to drive out any potential drawing players – in this case Gordon Brown – and keep it to two players in which he would be winning due to the kicking. In fact David Cameron checked, Nick Clegg made a flat bet this was called and Nick Clegg went on to lose to the straight draw.

Poker and politics can be dirty business. The plans by the Conservatives were to get radical parties such as the British National Party to split the working class vote. The Liberal Democrats wanted to squeeze the traditional progressive vote by having a fresh faced wunderkind as leader. The Labour tried to scare the voters with tales of massive cuts and money going to the rich friends and family of the Conservatives. All the time the Labour party have hidden that they will have to make cuts, maybe on at the size that the Greeks are making as of now.

So in the next few days Gordon Brown who was never elected as leader, survived a massive recession and numerous coup attempts is now in the position to form a government if he can persuade the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties to support him. Obviously he has a carrot for those and its primarily electoral reform and scrapping the ‘first past the post’ system.

The reason why David Cameron will probably not form the next government is that he has ruled out electoral reform, because, he thought he would glide to power on the anti-Brown wave of support. This is like a chip leader watching his chip stack melt away just so he could get into the money by default. So the moral of this tale is that when playing poker and you have your opponent on the ropes, never let them get a chance to get back in the game – take them out when you can.

Collusion and cheating are both rife in poker and politics

Collusion is an agreement, usually secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage[citation needed]. It is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production. [1] It can involve “wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties.”[2] All acts affected by collusion are considered void.[3]

Wikipedia

With online poker the act of collusion is so easy that it is an unwritten rule that it happens and happens regularly.

Everything from colluding with an opponent to gain a disconnected player’s chips, right up players phoning each other and discussing the merits of each others hands.  Online poker have so many blatant holes in the security of the game you do have to factor in the act of collusion when playing poker online.

Sometimes players will check down a pot when they see their friends are in the pot but have a soft hand and they may fold if there is a raise or it can be as big as drug dealers laundering money by taking over a cash table and let one person win thereby legitimising the cash.

As in politics and poker collusion is rife and yesterday the culmination of political collusion reached its zenith when Ken Clarke openly admitted that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats could work together in a ‘hung parliament’ – a parliament with no overall majority.

This is political dynamite because for the first time a major Conservative figure admitted that David Cameron has not won and cannot win the general election! So Peter Mandelson hope to realign a pro European centrist political movement may finally come into being.

The reason why the Conservatives have lost this election – and it is a major assumption I am making here since voting is still 2 weeks away – is that the general public want ‘change’ but do not  trust David Cameron to bring the ’change’ that they want. Maybe it is David Cameron and his chums background  that scare the general public. George Osborn the man who would be David Cameron money man has never had a real job not even a job as a paper boy!

The only Conservative person that the public feel in touch with is the jazz loving, cigar smoking, council estate born  Ken Clarke. The only problem is he is hated by his own party because he wants the UK to be more integrated into the European Union.

So here is the act of collusion between the players of this political poker game. Gordon Brown could not win and he knew it! He hates David Cameron with a passion because David Camerons team makes continuous attacks at Gordon Browns class.  Therefore he will do anything to make sure David Cameron does not win – enter Nick Clegg and Peter Mandelson.

Gordon Brown made over the top approaches to Nick Clegg live on TV.  Nick Clegg with the oxygen of publicity makes the pitch to be the ‘agent of change’ the public love it! David Cameron unleashes the dogs of war (right wing newspapers) at Nick Clegg, which does not work. Peter Mandelson continues to keep Prime Minister profile low.  All of a sudden the argument for coalition government becomes a pretty standard debate, enter Ken Clarke who once shared a platform with Tony Blair and other pro European leaders including Peter Mandelson.

So there you have it a nice little stitch up by the centre pro European politicos. If this was a poker tournament there would be complaints inquiry and bans all round, but, this is politics. The reason why Gordon Brown went with it was due to the fact that it gives him the only chance to remain Prime Minister and brought revenge on a class conscious campaign by David Cameron and his cohorts. Why David Cameron kept George Osborn as potential Chancellor of the Exchequer no one will ever know especially when it has now cost him the election. Peter Mandelson (Labour) and Ken Clarke (Conservative) have played a blinder in getting Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats) to the position of  being king maker. Collusion, what collusion?

P.S Follow The Magical Tipster and get your money on a hung parliament you are literally buying money

The Devil plays poker

Today is quite a big day in UK history because we could see the beginning of the change with the voting system used in the country’s democratic process. The reason for ths is that there is a X Factor/Strictly Come Dancing/Britains Got Talent type program on TV featuring the 3 main party leaders. Yesterday, I said that Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown all exhibit classic poker personalities. Now we will see how there personality play out in a televised political ‘mortal combat’.

I have said on numerous occasion that poker is psychological chess. it is not as precise as normal chess which is virtually a pure mathematical exercise. While poker is scientific it has a lot more random things chucked in which can throw a game by sheer luck. A bit like life its self, in which a curve ball can come right out of the blue and that upset the apple cart by letting the outsider become the certain winner. Politicians are notorious for managing that risk but sometimes no matter what they do the result will be the same.

In Britain they do not do revolutions, they do procedural motions from which revolutionary outcomes are produced. Tonight on Sky if Nick Clegg solidifies his postion as the ‘man for change’ and Gordon Brown  subtlely promises to ‘resign’ it means that a grand alliance for the ‘progressive’ side of the political devide can be maintained to take out the Conservatives, then we will have seen a truly revolutionary event.

It is clear that Labour appear to be in third place in percentage of votes to be won, however, because of quirks of the voting system, Labour could end up in first place with the largest amount of seats in parliamnet.  This is known in the poker world as a complete suck out in which a river card satisfy the massive odds needed to complete the zero to hero moment. If this did happen it would lead to a definite change in the political voting system because it is unsustainable,

If the Liberal Democrats maintain their present position and even increase their share of the vote they could be the biggest party, which they haven’t achieved for nearly 100 years! If they manage to be in the position to be the king maker in a hung parliament then they can achieve their goal of negotiating a change in the voting system which Gordon Brown has more or less guaranteed Labours support. The Conservatives have to win outright to make sure the system remains the same which basically means the David Cameron needs to up his table image as the dominate person and that he should not be messed with.

The only problem for David Cameron is that to do this, he then has too attack or bully both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown. Overplaying his hands and getting caught with his trousers down – as they say in poker when a overly aggressive player gets caught out! David Cameron could be described as a massive chip leader that’s just lost a load of chips to Nick Clegg. His performance was so rubbish, he pulled faces at Nick Clegg which was weird and didn’t say anything substantive which said ‘he was a leader in waiting’.  Technically he is still in first place but if Labour and the Liberal Democrats gang up on David Cameron or even the Lib Dems get a second wind of voters making them the biggest party then David Cameron has basically thrown away his chips.

Funnily enough David Cameron is not losing his chips because he is on ’tilt’ or playing recklessly. He is losing his chips because he has been caught out bluffing and was looking to bluff his way to the top. This was never going to happen as Gordon Brown is too strong and motivated player to be easily manouvered out of position. He may not have had the cards to play, but, he hates Cameron’s snobby attitude to Gordon Brown and Brown does not like been looked down at. If it means Brown resigning the Premiership in order to defeat the Conservatives – he will do it at the last moment. Therefore denying David Cameron his ultimate goal of being Premier. Never underestimate the revenge element in politics and part of the problem with Gordon Brown is that he hated being patronised by David Cameron and he holds a grudge- big time, ask Tony Blair!

So today’s debate is a must watch TV and I will be doing a live tweeting (pokerknave) commentary on this fascinating period of UK history.

Unless you have been in Iceland recently you will have probably heard that there is an election taking place in the UK which is both interesting and fun. Fun because there is always gaffs and slips being made such as David Cameron targeting China for the attention of Polaris submarines – which seemed a bit off to the British public. Also, there are loads of opportunity to have bets on a relatively fair event and thanks to The Magical Tipster we should be showing a nice profit at the end of it. 

However, there is another intriguing side show of this election and it is the poker game and personalities of the main players Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The reason why it is intriguing is that politics is so much like poker in that you have to make moves at the right time and in the right way. Also, as the former Prime Minister Harold McMillian once said ‘…events dear boy, events…’ meaning that things will happen that will turn the best played hands into losing hands due to random things happening. Just as in a game of poker a player goes all in with 7 2 unsuited against a pair of Aces and the 7 2 unsuited wins when the flop and turn showed 7 2 Ace 8 with 3 hearts giving the Aces a flush draw as well as trips, but, then the river produces another 2 for a full house. 

In the US its been traditional for presidents to be poker players at it lends its self to the American psyche of gung-ho individualism and the wild west culture, therefore the loneliness of decision making at the poker table, playing your opponent as well as the cards works well. In the UK it has tended to be chess and more Machiavellian tactics that seemed to be the template, This maybe due to the UK being a relatively small nation which once had an empire stretching across the world and was mainly due to playing people against people to do so. However times have changed in the UK and with recession, global meltdown and now a three horse race being tight this resembles more poker than chess.

Gordon Brown can be seen as your typical tight/passive player who keeps his cards very close to his chest, only tends to play premium hands and is a grinder par excellence. In fact his partner and long time opponent Tony Blair described him as a great big clunking fist. Playing a solid game is all well and good but because he does the same things in the same way over and over again, this makes his game open to a well timed bluff and he has been bluffed a few times by David Cameron!

David Cameron is a tight/aggressive player but he has the ability to be very loose when he needs to be. Being loose against a tight passive opponent will lose you hands, but, if the cards fall right can get you a nice payoff to cover the loses and make a profit. So far he has had things mostly his own way politically and the cards have fallen nicely. For example when the expenses row kicked in, he managed to not get burned even though out of all the leaders his expenses was the most outrageous because he claimed expenses to clear up the wisteria from his second home! However, his luck may have turned against him.

Nick Clegg is the knave in the game. His pattern of play has been loose because he has been constantly short stacked but the first TV debate between the leaders gave him a nice little 8 7 of diamond on the big blind, both opponents just called and he flopped 4 5 6 of diamonds giving him a straight flush. His too opponents decided to battle each other and he got paid off big style. Now the question will be what is his table image. is he a mug gambler or does he have a solid game? No one is really sure but the next TV debate will be interesting because he now has the chips to play his hands in an aggressive way. But if he plays too aggressive he may give all his chips back too his opponents. More on this on Friday 23rd April, 2010

http://pokerknave.com – defends the political class over the expenses claim debacle. Why is a poker playing reprobate and degenerate doing this?  We need to have a class of people in which we can chuck stuff at, and, it might as well be politicians.