Yorky Pud

On Monday a total of 155 poker players passed through the doors of the oldest running casino in the world, the Casino Di Venezia, and exchanged €4,950 for 30,000 tournament chips and the chance to join the likes of Phil Ivey, and Gus Hansen in becoming a World Poker Tour champion.

For 149 of them the dream has ended but for the six men who have reached the televised final table the dream is certainly still alive and in around 24 hours time one of them will indeed be crowed WPT Venice Grand Prix champion. The man who they all have to catch when the tournament resumes at 1400 CET on Friday is Andrea Dato who ended the penultimate day with 1,591,000 chips, the only player to pass the one million chip barrier..

The name Dato may ring a bell with some of you and it should because in December 2011 he was mentioned on these very pages after he finished fourth in the WPT Venice Main Event. That particular tournament carried a lower buy-in of €3,000 and was hosted on the mainland not the historical floating city. Now the Italian is looking to go all the way and follow in the footsteps of Edouard Alescio (winner of December's WPT Venice) and keep the trophy in Italy.

Five men stand between Dato and him winning the title not least of all Simon Ravnsbaek who will start the day as Dato's nearest rival with 922,000 chips. Ravnsbaek has played controlled, aggressive poker throughout this Main Event and it is nailed on that he will either win this event or have a major say in who does. He has shown he is not afraid to get involved in pots, especially against Dato who he has position on and Friday's encounter should be very interesting indeed.

Making up the final six are Rinat Bogdanov (907,000 chips), Alessandro Longobardi (558,000), Andrea Carini (347,000) and Gianluca Trebbi (343,000). The blinds will start at 10,000/20,000/2,000a and the average stack is 775,000 so some of the shorter stacks have a little work to do if they are to mount a serious challenge at this final table.

Along with the prestige if winning such an event there is also the not so small matter of prize money. The finalists have now locked up at least €32,195 for their efforts over the past week but the eventual winner will walk away with €229,800 which includes a seat to the 2012 WPT World Championship worth $25,500.

WPT Venice Grand Prix Final Table

Seat 1: Andrea Dato: 1,591,000
Seat 2: Simon Ravnsbaek: 922,000
Seat 3: Rinat Bogdanov: 907,000
Seat 4: Alessandro Longobardi 558,000
Seat 5: Andrea Carini: 347,000
Seat 6: Gianluca Trebbi: 343,000

He may not be a household name in any sense of the word but Rinat Bogdanov has earned a place amongst poker's elite. How and why? By winning a World Poker Tour Main Event, the WPT Venice Grand Prix to be exact.

Until the €4,950 WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event Bogdanov only had three cashes worth a combined $14,773 to his name, but now he has an extra €229,800 to his name after his epic win.

The financial trader started the final table third from six in chips and stuck to his game plan perfectly, to play tightly and try to move up in the payout places. it may not have been the most ideal of strategies but it certainly worked for him.

The €32,195 he was guaranteed at the start of the day was soon increased as Andrea Carini was eliminated in sixth place. Carini decided to three-bet all in for 367,000 (blinds 12,000/24,000/4,000a) after Andrea Dato had opened to 50,000. Dato made the call with pocket eights, which held against the Ad3s of Carini, and the tournament had lost its first player.

Five became four 90 minutes later when Gianluca Trebbi was sent for an early bath. Finding himself short-stacked Trebbi had become increasingly aggressive and had already moved all in preflop at least half a dozen times so it was only a matter of time before he was called. And sure enough he was when he moved in one final time with Th7h. Alessandro Longobardi called him with pocket jacks and a drama-less board saw play become four handed.

Another 90-minutes passed before another player busted out, the aggressive Simon Ravnsbaek. The Dane had been very entertaining throughout the tournament with his loose-aggressive style but it just wasn't to be. Down to 15 big blinds he opted to open-shove with a pair of red deuces but was in a whole lot of trouble when Bogdanov snap-called him with a pair of tens. No miracle two-outer for Ravnsbaek and four had become three.

Three-handed play took a staggering four hours with the only player willing to mix things up ironically being the third place finisher. Dato lost a couple of key confrontations before finally committing his remaining chips with Ks4d only to run into the dominating AcKd. Dato was drawing dead by the turn after Bogdanov flopped an ace, and he headed for the cashier's cage in third place just one place higher than his finish in the WPT Venice Main Event in December.

Heads-up only last two hands, which surprised everyone after the four-hour slog of three-handed play. The first hand saw Bogdanov open to 200,000 with Ah8c and Longobardi call with Js10c. Both players caught a piece of the Jc-8d-4s flop and both checked but when the Ac landed on the turn Bogdanov bet 200,000 when Longobardi checked to him. The Italian called and the dealer put out the 7d onto the river. Longobardi checked again but when Bogdanov fired a bet of 360,000 he tank-folded.

Then came the last hand of a memorable tournament. The blinds were 40,000/80,000/10,000a and Longobardi opened to 200,000 with KhQd and Bogdanov made the call with 6c4c. The flop came down Qh7d4d and Bogdanov checked, Longobardi bet 60,000 and Bogdanov called. The 6s turn saw Bogdanov check-call again, this time a bet of 240,000. The 4s on the river gifted Bogdanov a full house and he expertly checked again, Longobardi made it 300,000 to play and then called when Bogdanov moved all in on him. When he called he looked to the heavens but it was too late for them to intervene because he had now run out of chips and become the runner-up.

The WPT is currently in Florida for the Seminole Hard Rock Lucky Hearts Poker Open but it returns to Europe in April for WPT Vienna. Will Bogdanov be there to defend his title or will Dato be able to make it three final tables on the spin? I guess we will have to wait to find out!

WPT Venice Grand Prix Final Table Results

1st: Rinat Bogdanov: €229,800
2nd: Alessandro Longobardi €111,700
3rd: Andrea Dato: €72,275
4th: Simon Ravnsbaek: €52,565
5th: Gianluca Trebbi: €42,705
6th: Andrea Carini: €32,195

The World Poker Tour has quite literally dropped anchor in the beautiful and historical city of Venice for the WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event, where the 155 entrants have been whittled down to the last 27.

Those 27 players will return to the Casino Di Venezia, the oldest fully functioning casino in the entire world, today knowing that only 18 of them will make it through to the money places. One man who looks nailed on to make it there is British pro James Akenhead.

Akenhead starts the day fourth in chips with a very healthy looking stack of 336,000. Throughout yesterday's Day 2 Akenhead made a complete nuisance of himself by constantly three and four-betting his opponents in a relentless fashion and looked like he was in the zone. When asked about this step up in aggression he simply said,

"I went for it all day long,"

The 28-year old former train driver is full of confidence after winning the Sunday Million a couple of weeks ago and he is certainly one to watch when the cards are back in the air.

Another player who is going to be impossible to ignore is the current chip leader (pictured) Marcel Bjerkmann who starts the day with 436,300 chips. Bjerkmann has almost $950,000 in live tournament winnings thanks in large to two wins in consecutive months back in 2010. First he took down the €1,500 Belgian Open Poker Championship for €200,030 in October 2010 then followed that up by winning the €6,000 Amsterdam Masters Classic of Poker for a career-best €403,380 in November of the same year.

But despite these results he is still better-known for his online poker prowess where he terrorises players under the moniker "p3rc4." On various sites Bjerkmann has racked up more than $1,000,000 in cashes thanks to his crazy style of play, a style of play he is trying to apply in the live arena.

Other notable players still in the field include American pro Jason Wheeler (348,200), Gianluca Speranza (134,000), Simon Ravnsbaek (78,100) and Kara Scott (60,100).

The plan of action for Day 3 is to first burst through the bubble and then play down to around 16 players, but the tournament director has said his plans may change depending on how long it takes for the money to be reached.

Tune in tomorrow to find out who makes it into the money and who has gone home with their dreams of becoming a WPT champion in tatters.

Most people have heard of the term “fight-or-flight” at least once in their lives. It is used to describe how animals and humans react when faced with immediate danger or threats, we either run away (flight) or stand toe-to-toe with our adversary (fight), or at least that is what most people think.

What these people fail to realise is there is actually another “F-word” thrown into the equation and that is Freeze. Since the very first human to present day man the very first reaction to danger is to completely freeze, not move, and hope that whatever the danger is does not see you. If a snarling dog jumps out of a garden whilst you are walking past your first reaction, the one you've not even had to think about, your instinct it to freeze. Admittedly within seconds you are probably thinking about running off or at the very least praying you are not about to be savaged by the angry beast stood there in front of you. But even for a split second your instinct is to freeze.

You see this all of the time at the poker tables across the world, players suddenly freezing, becoming statuesque in an attempt not to give off any tells about the strength of their hand, but what they fail to realise when they lock up is they are often giving off a quite reliable tell that they are not in possession of a hand nearly as strong as they are trying to make you believe they have, they will be bluffing a large percentage of the time.

This is because the person running the bluff knows they have a weak hand and that they have chips invested in the pot and they find this threatening. After all, if their opponent calls they are almost always going to be beaten and they stand to lose the chips already in the pot and if it is a significant percentage of their stack they could even jeopardise their chances of winning the tournament or even make it through to the money places. The bluffer freezes in a vain attempt to go unnoticed by his opponents, just as you would do if a ferocious dog escaped from its garden and decided you were its lunch.

The tell becomes more accurate if the player suddenly freezes, even for just a few moments, after making a bet and that player is usually one for looking around the table, tapping his leg, riffling his chips or any other sort of movement when he is playing. Some players become all too aware that they are no longer acting how they usually do and will go back to riffling chips, drumming their fingers etc but for two or three seconds they may have sat completely stoic, completely out of character.

The next time you are playing some poker in your local card room or casino and see an opponent freeze up, even if you are not in the hand with them, watch carefully as to what hand they eventually show down. Use this natural response to danger to aid your decision making because when it is combined with other observations you have made it can become a stone-cold and damning tell that the vast majority of people have little or no control over.

The month of January is almost done and dusted and what a rollercoaster ride it has been at the tables. Not including whatever I play today I have played a total of 200 tournaments during the last 15 days of Janaury and I'm rather pleased with my fat self for turning a profit, finishing with an ROI of 16.6%.

Whilst an ROI of 16.6% is hardly going to see Phil Ivey quaking in his boots at the prospect of an overweight Yorkshireman breathing down his neck in the all-time money listings it is actually a pretty amazing figure considering how my month progressed.

I started playing tournaments again on the Jan. 15 and by Jan. 22 I was already thinking I was the best thing since sliced bread as I had played 61 tournaments, cashed in 10 of them, made six final tables and had two outright wins to my name. Ship the 163.0% ROI to the Pudding. Obviously I knew this was unsustainable but I had high hopes of playing a ton more tournaments and ending the month with an ROI of at least 50%, but my little Poker God friends had other ideas and thought they would play a sick little trick on me, a trick that would make me believe I was a complete donkey who had just run like Jesus for his first 61 games of the month.

Their silly little game almost worked too because between Jan. 23 and Jan. 30 I played a further 107 MTTs and I can honestly say, hand on heart, I have never ran so badly in all the time I have played poker. Although I managed to make it into the money 13 times during this period, there were only four of those cashes that were not for the bare minimum. I ran horrifically during crucial stages of games and I was thinking of jacking in tournaments once again but I'm no longer a quitter so I simply gritted my teeth, went through my HEM database and looked for glaring mistakes. It was here I discovered that although I was, and still am, missing some spots where I should be getting my money in I was for the most part doing everything right and the fact I was more than 130,000 chips under EV during those 107 games is testament to that fact.

Then yesterday I played 32 tournaments to bring the total played for January to 200. Out of these 32 I made it to the money in four of them, bursting the final table in one but finished fifth twice and fourth once. Although my ROI for that session was only 13.9% and the profit less than five of my average buy-in it was great to get my chips into the middle and suck out for a change and actually book a win after seven consecutive losing days!

The plan for February was to play no less than 600 games but those plans are almost certainly going to have to be put on hold until March due to work commitments. You see I fly to Venice on Sunday for the World Poker Tour Venice Grand Prix and I will be ridiculously busy plus I am sure you can't online poker there anyway so that is one week without grinding. Then I am back for a short while before I head to Denmark on Feb. 19 for the European Poker Tour Copenhagen Main Event where again I'll probably be super busy and I'm not sure of the legal status of playing in the land of the Vikings.

I'll still try to play as much as I possibly can and I'm still hopeful of playing in most of the upcoming GSOP games so February won't be a complete write off. I'm super pleased at how I am developing now as a player, the mental side of my game that was so lacking seems to be getting better and better each day and I honestly feel that the sky is the limit right now and progress is certainly being made. Until next time, good luck at the tables!

The Aviation Club de France in the heart of Paris was the venue for the 11th edition of the European Poker Awards, which took place on Thursday. In total there were nine awards presented thought the category that everyone had their eye on was the European Player of the Year accolade.

The selection committee chose six players who they thought were worthy of the title European Player of the Year, those being Jake Cody, Pius Heinz, Andrey Pateychuk, Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, Eugene Katchalov and Sam Trickett. Any of the six would have been worthy recipients but when the votes were counted up it was Trickett who had captured the judges imaginations and he was revealed as the 2011 European Player of the Year.

Trickett's achievements during 2011 were nothing short of amazing, notching up close to $4,600,000 in live tournament winnings and a rumoured £1,000,000 cash haul in the Big Game in Macau. His huge winning total was helped by him winning the Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge, coming second in the $250,000 Super High Roller (again at the Aussie Millions) and taking down the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event. Just these three results alone made Trickett a worthy winner.

The former professional footballer was also nominated for the Best Tournament Performance but that honour was only ever going to one player and that was the aforementioned Heinz for winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. It is difficult to vote against someone who has navigated their way through a field of 6,865 players!

Two of Trickett's fellow Player of the Year nominees also scooped awards. Grospellier bagged himself the Rob Gardner Memorial Award for the Poker Peronality of the Year whilst Pateychuk, who came 15th in the WSOP Main Event before winning the Main Events of EPT San Remo and WPT Prague was crowned the Rookie of the Year.

Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies helped himself to the Internet Player of the Year whilst the delectable Natalia Nikitina of Russia picked up the Europe's Leading Lady award. The WSOPE in Cannes won the Best European Event of the year whilst bwinparty's Warren Lush is now the reigning Poker Staff Person of the year. And last, but most certainly not least was the Lifetime Achievement award. This was handed to the legendary Jesse May and there is not a single person in the poker industry who would argue against the judges decision to award the Voice of Poker the prestigious award.

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Turbo tournaments are gaining in popularity both in online poker circles and in the live arena but there are a core section of poker players who are dead set against them. They often cite the reason for disliking them as turbo structured tournaments not being real poker or that they take away some of the skill element and whilst to some degree they are absolutely 100% correct what they are omitting a few crucial facts that make turbo tournaments not only great fun but also massively profitable to boot.

The poker purists amongst us will argue that proper poker is played as deepstacked as possible, with at least 100 big blind stacks but even in tournaments where you do start this deep all the important action seems to occur when you are between 10-30 big blinds deep, which also happens to be the most awkward stack size to play and a common stack size in a turbo tournament. Do you see the link here? I thought you would. Could it be that the naysayers and anti-turbo brigade do not like the fast format because they simply are not good at them?

Could Turbo's Be The Ultimate Test?

Their argument stating the turbo blind structure takes away an element of skill is actually true, it does take away some of the skills required to play deep stacked poker because after the first 15-20 minutes you are very unlikely to be anywhere near deepstacked. But what a turbo tournament does do is put ALL of your tournament skills to the test, deepstacked, medium stack and short all within a quick timescale and if you do not make the necessary adjustments almost instantly then you will simply fail in a turbo format. The problem many players have is the inability to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions turbo tournaments naturally create and this failure to adjust to the pace and aggressive style needed to succeed leads them to fall by the wayside more often than not.

Now we have established that turbo tournament do require skill we can talk about why they are great fun and potentially extremely profitable. The main reason they are so fun is because you simply have to play a lot of hands aggressively because of the rapidly rising blinds. Your aggression increases and your starting hand requirements decrease as the blinds start to bite into your stack and who amongst us does not find it exciting to move all-in, especially when you are only holding a hand such as 9s7h and are hoping not to be called so you can add the blinds and antes to your stack.

Fish Magnets!

As turbo tournaments are completed in a much quicker time than a tournament with a standard blind structure they attract recreational players in their droves. A large number of recreational poker players, or fish to you and me, do not want to sit down in a tournament and grind it out for six hours, instead they want to pay $5-$50 sit down and have the chance of winning $300-$3,000 in an hour or two. For example, a turbo tournament in the Betfair Poker lobby as I am writing this saw 680 people pay $5.50 and within one hour and 51 minutes it was completely done and dusted and the winner had walked away with $633.86. Not a bad hourly rate if you ask me. And why are recreational players more than welcome in a turbo tournament? Because they make more mistakes and mistakes are amplified in a fast moving environment. As the stacks are much shallower the slightest error can be costly and players can go from being in a comfortable spot to being in a push-or-fold scenario very quickly.

Instead of rubbishing turbo tournaments and completely dismiss them why not give them a chance. You never know, you might just discover they are actually your forte.

Hi there fishes, Yorkshire Pudding here updating my little piece of the internet with claims that my facial hair is actually magical and that I could become very rich by plucking out the little black, and occasionally ginger for some unknown reason, hairs from my chin and cheeks and selling them on ebay. Honestly.

Since I last updated Pud's Poker Progress I have actually made some progress, which in itself is probably a first. Yes I have been winning. The day after the last entry I had a rather unbelievable run that saw me play in a further 13 tournaments, finishing in the money places three times, coming fourth, third and taking one down! Ship it etc came the cries.

A couple of days later and I played in another 17 MTTs and was nowhere near the money in any of them, though in 65% of them I was in the final 1/3 of the finishers. I sent a tweet out saying something like I'd had a terrible session and needed fourth or better in my last tournament to breakeven and it appears the Poker Gods use Twitter because they allowed me to run like the proverbial wind and I took down the last tournament I had running! One tabling home the win like a true pro!

During January so far I have played 71 tournaments, have an ITM of 15.5% and an ROI of 128.7% which of course is almost certainly unsustainable but it feels good to be back on the winning trail after my mini PLO disaster. There is something rather deadly about running well and playing well but I think it could be to do with my stubble, it could have magical powers.

You see I hate shaving, absolutely hate it. I even said I would rather have periods than shave I hate it that much. I can't put my finger on it but the whole shaving thing winds me up. You shave off your facial hair with ridiculously overpriced razors only for it to start coming back a few hours later and the cycle continues, until you die. Most of the time I don't even bother to shave and just let it grow, which is what I have done this past week and just look at my results at the tables. Coincidence or magic beard you decide. Actually we will find out because tonight I am going to dig out my trusty razor and have a shave because it has reached the stage where my face is so itchy I could tear it off with a wooden chip fork. I've even taken to fighting the cat just so it will scratch my flabby chops but it must think I am it's birth mother because she just meows, purrs and wants to lick my face, which just doesn't have the same effect I can tell you.

Away from the pokerz I've been working hard, probably a little too hard if I am honest and probably why I expect my doctor to tell me that my blood pressure is through the roof. I really need to come up with a plan to either work more efficiently or drop some of the work I have because some of it is very time consuming. This isn't really a problem whilst I am home but as soon as you throw working abroad into the mix, as will happen in a week or so, then it could be a complete nightmare to say the least.

I've also been enjoying writing my own personal blog which so far contains no poker whatsoever and is basically me having a rant about things in the news, experiences that don't really fit into this blog and in the coming weeks a number of other silly little things to keep me amused. I'm not going to link to it on here because I think that is tantamount to biting the hand that feeds you but it is easy to find, just google my actual name.

Erm, I guess that's it for now. Before the end of the month I will update these pages with my progress both at the felt and away from it because I have been trying to change a number of things in my life such as drinking less, learning a new language and other such bumpf. So until next time thanks for reading and good luck with growing a magic beard.

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The eighth edition of the fantastic Grand Series Of Poker (GSOP) online is just around the corner and this year it will be bigger and better than ever, with a staggering $3,850,000 guaranteed across all the events! Thanks to an promotion exclusive to Betfair Poker players you can win one of 500 GSOP tickets, some worth $525, in the Team Betfair GSOP VIII Online Trials!

In total there will be five trials, each of which is restricted to players who have opted-in on this page here and earned the required number of Player Points during the qualification period. Stage 1 Qualification runs between January 18-24 and during that time players need to earn just $25 Player Points to grab themselves a ticket to the Stage 1 Trial on January 28 where there will be $2,500 worth of GSOP VIII tickets up for grabs, shared out amongst the top 100 places.

Qualification for Stage 2 runs between January 25-31 with the Trial being on February 4, Stage 3 Qualification starts on February 1 and runs until February 7 (Trial takes place on February 11) and the fourth stage qualification period is between February 8-14 with the Trial being held on February 18. Each of the first four trials only require 25 Player Points to be earned, which can be less than $7 in rake, and each trial has $2,500 in added GSOP online VIII tickets shared out amongst the top 100 finishers.

But you may recall we said there were five qualification periods and five trials and we have only mentioned four of them. Well that is because the fifth and final Stage is quite special! The qualification period for the Final Stage is shorter, February 18-21 and required players to earn 150 points in total but the Final Stage Trial, on February 25, sees $5,000 in GSOP online VIII tickets added, $5,000!

Last year Betfair Poker players had a great GSOP online and we want it to be even better this time around. We want champions coming out of our ears and with this promotion we stand a great chance of that happening because we should have scores of Team Betfair players in the vast fields. Good luck everyone, see you at the final tables!

The Epic Poker League may only be a year old but if reports on Wicked Chops Insider are correct then it could be under complete new ownership within the next 60 days.

The new owners would be Pinnacle Entertainment who operate casinos in Nevada (Reno) Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Louisiana. Wicked Chops divulges that the management team at Pinnacle consists of a number of former Harrah's executives including a woman named Ginny Shanks who is the head of Pinnacle's marketing team. Shanks helped to run the World Series of Poker when Jeffrey Pollack become the commissioner of the WSOP. Pollack is now the Executive Chairman of Federated Sports+Gaming (FS+G), the company behind the Epic Poker League.

Although Wicked Chops do not post any concrete evidence and nobody from Pinnacle or the Epic Poker League were prepared to talk to PokerNews (according to their Nightly Turbo), there have been rumours circulating about the future of the Epic Poker League for the past couple of months.

When Daniel Negreanu initially snubbed the Epic Poker League many thought he may have been cutting his nose off to spite his face after his public falling out with the Epic Poker League Commissioner Annie Duke but his opinions seems to be running. Negreanu wrote a lengthy article on August 11 stating numerous reasons why he did not participate in the open Epic Poker League despite qualifying for one of the 5-Year cards. Within the first paragraph Negreanu states he does not believe the Epic Poker League will be a success and a lot of that is down to the sheer cost of the operation. Along with the everyday costs of paying staff each of the four legs has $400,000 added to it and the top 27 money earners across the four events win an entry to a $1,000,000 freeroll.

None of the tournaments are raked as such (although 2% of the prizepool for dealers and floor staff) so the only way the league can generate money is through sponsorship and TV time but thanks to the situation in the USA this just will not happen. Can you image someone like PokerStars sponsoring the Epic Poker League when a massive percentage of its possible audience is not allowed to play on its site? No, neither can I.

The three tournaments that have run so far have not been very well attended either, which cannot help its cause in the slightest, especially when looking for TV deals and the like. The first event, a Six-Max tournament, saw 137 players pony up the required $20,000 to participate. However, at the time there were 252 who were eligible to play so just over half decided to play. The second event was even less popular, an 8-max format, where only 97 players showed up to the Palms Casino and although the third tournament saw 100 players take part they are hardly figures that are going to set the world alight. Also, to add to this the fourth tournament has been postponed to a yet-to-be-decided date in the spring. The management team say this is what the players wanted but you never know.

Personally I love the idea of the league but have to admit it is severely flawed. As Negreanu points out the only differences between the Epic Poker League and say a World Poker Tour or European Poker Tour is that the Epic Poker League would have a far tougher field which means even with $400,000 added most of those playing are still going to be -EV and although the TV stations do like well-known pros on their screens they also like a complete amateur, an unknown, to make it to the final table and mix it up with these names but that simply will not happen. And what happens when these so-called big names' passes run out and they have to earn the right to play? Hardly any of them will make the grade and the tournaments, if they run, will be full of great poker players who the mainstream fans will never have heard of.

It should be interesting to see the developments between the Epic Poker League and Pinnacle Entertainment because it is obvious to anyone, except those running Epic Poker League, that it cannot survive in its current guise. What will Pinnacle do with the Epic Poker League because opening it up to all players surely undermines its unique selling point. We guess time will tell.