Punctured Dinghies & Pigeon Crap

It's 7.40am, a pigeon has shat on my copy of the Metro and somehow the paper's content is better for it. I trudge my way into the KPMG office and take the stairs to avoid any excruciating elevator encounters. Upon getting to my desk I’m barked commands at by Duncan, who’s already tucking into his 4th Diet Coke whilst his waistline fails to tuck into his pinstripe trousers.

I’m 19 years old, fresh faced on the outside whilst my soul is dying a slow and painful death each second I mournfully observe the clock ticking from 9 til 5. Moments like these allowed me to realise that there must be more to life than following the ‘tried and tested’ method. Surely my endeavours could be more aligned to my own values than simply serving as a proud anecdote for my Grandma at her WI meeting.

I threw in the corporate towel, faced the wrath of my family and enrolled at Cardiff University to study Business Management. Ultimately I had next to no interest in going to every lecture and colour coding my notes, I found it ironic that you’re paying £9,000 a year to be taught business by someone that’s had to resort to teaching to pay the bills. What University did provide, however, was the independence to do some self-exploration and figure out my next move.

“DEAL ME IN, DEAL ME IN!” “George you know your hand is dead, you can’t just swan to and from the bar and play when you feel like it.” A few months into the semester and I’m a regular at the weekly £5 Poker Society tournament, splurging £30 behind the bar most weeks. I’d played recreationally before University but became enamoured by the possibility of playing cards as a vehicle to freedom.

Dissatisfied with only playing once a week I turned my attention to Full Tilt Poker, instantly encapsulated by the cartoon avatars, smooth interface and surprisingly weak standard of play. The unique selling point of the site was the ability to multi-table the same tournament. Having up to 4 entries at a time reduced variance and allowed for a more consistent win-rate (see below).

Despite the graph alluding to a disciplined and earnest approach to micro-stakes online MTTs, leaks were flooding into my mental game quicker than a punctured dinghy navigating Niagara Falls. The first 2 years of my University experience would be blighted by reoccurring instances of late night intoxicated play. These bankroll bonfires would always follow a similar sequence of events.

I’d be stumbling home semi-conscious from the Student Union in the early hours of the morning, the unforgiving Welsh winter breeze sobering me scarcely enough to regain knowledge of my whereabouts. After clambering up the stairs and into my room, ruining any slim chance the other boys had of being well rested for their 8am lectures, I’d sit down and aggressively register high stakes Jackpot SNGs and table games. Inevitably I’d be left with a couple of doughnuts for an online balance and reaching for the warm can of Stella on top of the fridge. The day after I'd be welcomed back to the Daily Dollar like Paul Gascoigne at his local AA meeting and 6 weeks of rebuilding the roll would result in the same - rinse, lather, repeat.

By the time third year rolled around my inner magpie craved a new shiny object to sink my claws into, and that came about in the form of sports betting. I saw a gap in the market for a website that provided carefully selected advice for individual leagues in Europe and went about recruiting a team with specialist knowledge of a particular league, thus Europe’s Elite was born. To begin with I didn’t know shit from chocolate but after religiously scrutinising the betting markets, match reports, highlights videos, odds movements and relevant statistics I began to make headway.

The most lucrative route for monetisation of the blog would have been referrals for sportsbooks, where I’d receive a percentage of a sign-up’s losses. Selling out simply wasn’t an option as it involved skinning the life out of the same target audience I wanted to help get more out of their betting activity. The moral obstacle offered an alternative solution: to utilise my endeavours as a stepping-stone into the sports betting industry.

I’m 24 years old, weary and sleep deprived on the outside whilst my soul is dying a slow and painful death each second I mournfully observe the clock ticking from 9 til 5.

My idealised vision of the sports betting industry had long since dissipated and I’d returned to the crossroads of internal moral conflict, where I had been marooned for quite some time. How I had avoided skinning the disposable income out of the average Joe with such nobility, yet here I was limiting winning accounts to penny stakes whilst allowing problem gamblers to have as much as they liked on a mug bet. I was losing self-respect by the second and something had to change.

Armed with a healthy SkyPoker bankroll I once again tossed in the corporate towel, choosing this time to attempt to forge my own freedom.