Despite recent newspaper reports declaring that the poker club Dusk Till Dawn may have to shut its doors within weeks, founder and owner Rob Yong has said that the club will continue to operate and there's no chance of it closing any time soon.  He also said that there are parties interested in buying out the club, so it's unlikely it would ever close even if he had to eventually leave the venture.

Here's the official press release:

OFFICIAL DTD PRESS RELEASE

Dear DTD Employees and Members,

Following on from some recent speculation, rumour and misquotes, I would like to make it absolutely crystal clear that there is no chance of us closing in the near future, or trading unlicensed to avoid paying higher taxes.
In reality, closing the doors would probably never happen, as a number of companies have registered an interest to acquire us, should we ever feel that the "struggle" gets too much!

When we chose to take the legal route by applying for a full casino license, we budgeted for all of the additional costs of operating legally, such as licensing fees, extra security measures and the employment of a dedicated compliance officer. Unfortunately, because we chose this path, we have recently become "caught in the crossfire" between the authorities and the casino industry. Consequently, we now face major tax increases in the form of;

1. VAT - this is now based on our total gaming area, so our 46 poker tables are treated exactly the same as having 46 roulette tables – now that is a super casino! Therefore, VAT is not reclaimable on almost all of our running costs, including any capital expenditure spent on the building.

2. Business Rates - these have literally gone through the roof and we are now paying the same rates as a 22,000sqft fully equipped casino. It has been indicated that this re-evaluation was prompted by another casino objecting to the level of rates that we were previously paying.

3.Gaming Duty - the appropriately nicknamed "Poker Tax" is now payable on all tournament registration fees and cash game charges, unlike a full casino, poker is 90% of our income and this new tax is applied to all of our poker revenues - whether we make a profit or not.

Despite these setbacks, it will still be "business as usual" at DTD; however, Nick and I will be considering the options as we move ahead. We also intend to consult our members and employees for their views at a future date. Thankfully we are in a good financial position, whereby there is no pressure to make any hasty decisions, but the reality is that we must address these significantly increased costs. Furthermore, we must also factor in the probability of more tax increases in the future, as the authorities continue to target the UK casino sector.

Cheers, Rob

PS. Last week's DTD Grand Slam overlays will have no effect on our future plans - at least the cash goes directly back into the poker community! I am certain that we will be more successful in the future. This was our first attempt and many venues would be pleased with a 194 field for a £1000k buy-in, especially taking into account the WSOP changed their dates and the market leading £1000 GUKPT took place just a week earlier.

Yesterday was the last London Marathon sponsored by Flora.  From 2010 onwards it's going to be sponsored by Virgin.

One of the first changes that they've made is to overhaul the ballot entry process, and instead of sending your entry in via mail in the months running up to the ballot in October, they are asking people to do it online over the next few days.  This is all good, and in the name of progress.  You'd expect them to have the site working though…

They knew it'd be busy, and to claim it's due to unprecedented demand is a bit daft - of course it's unprecedented, it's the first time it's been done this way!

Three days to go until the London Marathon, and all my preparation is done.  I'm now carbo-loading, which has to be the easiest part of the training.  Tomorrow, I'll go out and run about 4 miles to keep things ticking over.  It's funny that at the start of the year 4 miles was a run - now it's hardly worth getting my running gear on for!  I suppose that's a sign that the training has gone pretty well.

The one thing I have no control over is the weather.

Having trained in great conditions for running (nice and cool, maybe a drop of rain, little wind), the weather this week has made a turn for the worse/better.  It's pretty warm and humid at the moment, and not ideal conditions for long-distance running.  So I'm wondering what it's going to be like on Sunday.  I've consulted two different sites for their forecasts, and they are markedly different.

The Weather Channel v the BBC Weather (if you click on those links you'll see the forecast from whenever you click - so no point clicking on them sometime in May, unless you're interested in the weather forecast for London from then).

Anyway - this is what they say the weekend, and most importantly Sunday will be like:

I don't think words are necessary…

Probably the best April Fool's I've seen this year was on the Guardian website, announcing that all their news stories would be published solely via twitter from now on.  This of course would restrict all news articles to 140 characters.

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5×6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Good work and well put together by 'Rio Palof'.

I'm sitting in Rossopomodoro in Covent Garden, enjoying a lovely pizza with two of my cousins, Caroline and Katie, and Katie's fiancé John.  I may have had a few beers and a glass of wine, but I was still coherent.  From my seat I glance up at the counter, and see the mosaic design: 

I pointed out the design to the others, and to be honest, they looked at me as though I was slightly deranged.  They couldn't see anything significant about the design in the mosaic.  Whereas to me, the design was quite obviously modelled on the Ebola virus.  Again, I got some blank looks when I tried to explian, and the conversation went back to whatever we'd been talking about before I'd interrupted on this slight tangent. 

For those who don't know, this is what the Ebola looks like (magnified a fair few times obviously):

 Is it just me then?

Real Madrid were comprehensively battered by Liverpool team clearly fired up.  Apparently, Fernando Torres pinned up the cover of 'Marca' on the dressing room wall.  The headline read "This is Anfield - So what?"  

After going down in a blaze of hubris, I think they now know what 'This is Anfield' is all about.