TheWaster

Rejected EPT locations

2011-09-28T12:37:00.002+01:00

It goes without saying that the EPT has been massively successful. So successful in fact that Europe simply isn't big enough to contain it. As a result, the EUROPEAN Poker Tour stops at places such as The Caribbean, a region more usually located southeast off the Gulf of Mexico and North America. Hardly Benelux is it.

Anyway, in its efforts to find more 'European' destinations for the tour, PokerStars sent out some experts to come up with new and interesting locations. Some are still under consideration, others were rejected. Here are some of the rejections:

EPT NARNIA: couldn't get the tables through the wardrobe doors

EPT MOON BASE ALPHA: Liv Boeree kept floating away; there was no affective way to moor her, and when they tried tying her to Michelle Orpe they both just floated off in to space together giggling.

EPT FANTASTIC VOYAGE: All 826 entrants were to be miniaturised and injected directly into John Duthie's spleen. However, plans were abandoned when it was discovered John had no internal organs, only breadcrumbs and the stuff you get in jiffy bags.

EPT BERMUDA TRIANGLE: You work it out.

EPT COPA CABANA: After speaking to one of the organisers (her name was Lola) it became apparent that while music and passion were always the fashion, they weren't really into poker.

A couple of other considerations:
EPT PANCAKE HOUSE: It fell flat.
EPT HOT POTATO: Was dropped.
EPT FITNESS GYM: It just didn't work out.

Fortune Cookie #1

2011-01-19T14:08:00.002Z

Hello again.

So I fancied a Chinese takeaway last night as we've not had one in ages (not that I have to justify it to you, Mr Policeman). I found the menu (after digging through about 16 Pizza Hut menus - BOY do those guys know how to waste trees!) and worked out what we were after. Then... DISASTER! They (Hong Kong, Hornchurch High Street - name and shame) are shut on a Tuesdays! What to do, what to do...

And so it was that I headed boldly into the night clutching only a £20. We, ladies and gentlemen, were through the looking glass - off to try a never-tried-before takeaway.

Frankly, I've already forgotten the name of the place I ended up in, but that's not important right now. The fact they also do Thai, Malaysian, Cantonese, and another one I've also forgotten IS important as I'll probably go back there and try them all (in my next life when I plan to have loads of disposable income to spend on takeaway food).

Anyway, the point is that this new takeaway didn't give you free prawn crackers with every order over £10, oh no, you got a fortune cookie . How cool is that! (please don't text in, it's just for fun).

Anyway, I had my food (plain chow mien, lemon chicken, hot 'n' sour soup and mini veg pancakes in case you were wondering) and then couldn't wait to find out what my fortune held.

FORTUNE COOKIE #1

"Your biggest virtue is your modesty"

Yes. I think it is. When you are as excellent as me, you have to be modest with it or people think you're a wanker. What an apt fortune (although it's not really a 'fortune', more a spot appraisal with very little in the way of a sample - the cookie had only known me 20 minutes, and for most of that I'd be throwing noodles up my nose).

I told the wife: My virtue is my modesty. Love.

"Really?" she replied, "So why do you walk around with your cock out and your balls balancing on the top of your trousers so much then?" she quizzed. Bless her.

She clearly doesn't understand how modesty works.

Lucky Boy

2010-05-19T09:46:00.005+01:00

So I know the last post was a bit doom and gloom, but things are on the up! I appear to slowly be transforming into a session musician while remaining closely connected to the poker world without having to rely on it entirely. Which is nice.

This week sees the recording of the final week of the radio show I've been doing with Jesse May for over a year now - thepokershowlive.com. It's incredible to think we've done 32 weeks of this! We started out producing three three-hour live shows a week for twelve week runs. We did this for the first two seasons (seems like even we English now prefer the term 'seasons' to 'series' - how very '24') but the third season has seen us shift to three podcasts a week, no more than 70 minutes in length. It's proved much easier both practically and from a content control point of view. I won't lie to you; with nine hours a week to generate we often had dullards on the phone that I STILL let talk for 30 minutes just to eat up the shows (shame on me). With these more compact shows we've not had to fill in such a way, while proper planning has allowed us to keep the quality high.

I'm not sure if the show will get picked up for a second year right now, but it would seem a shame to have built up a good name for ourselves to not continue. I'm also worried that if we don't have a radio show I'll never get invited to any PR jollies again. Which brings me to... BRIGHTON!

Yes, thanks to my affiliation with The Poker Show and also the ON THE RAIL podcast, I was fortunate enough to be invited down to Brighton for the relaunch of the seafront G Casino. I introduced myself to the group via a slight faux pas, involving a rather attractive PR lady who brought out the never-useful 'alpha male' in me. I attempted to take over the manly duty of instructing the taxi driver, and promptly sent him down towards to the wrong casino some 15 minutes away (doubly embarrassing considering the G Casino turned out to be literally one minute from our hotel). Still, everyone agreed it was nice to see a bit more of Brighton (ahem).

Inside the G you can see where Vegas has really set the trend for UK casinos. I remember my first experiences in London casinos, where nursing-home carpets and silence were the order of the day. The G Casino has smart decor (is it too metrosexual to REALLY like chocolate and orange as a colour scheme?) a lively sexy atmosphere, with music and chatter providing a much more welcoming background noise than the snorting and gambling of old. Another interesting introduction to the G Casino is... SPACE! Yes, rather than dedicate every square inch to gaming machines, there's lots of room to simply 'be' without having to constantly face flashing slots or avoid eye-contact with a blackjack dealer.

I've always envied how relaxed casinos are in the states, where the majority of visitors are there to party, meet friends, have a drink, grab some food, and MAYBE gamble. In the UK it's always felt like you have to walk in, check your coat, shuffle to a table, must immediately gamble, and then quickly leave to make way for more 'winners'. I'm glad to say the G seemed to be full of young people (well, young at heart anyway) mostly more interested in the bar, restaurant and Four Tops tribute singers (of which I counted only three - a small technical error I'm sure).

Poker-wise there's a 10-table room, boasting games such as a mid-week £15 freeze out (which I think is the perfect kind of level to encourage people to play that might not normally). In my journalistic guise I sampled the beer, lemonade (which seemed fine but NOT as tasty as beer) and also attacked a few plates from the bar menu. The PR team even pitched in with the eating and drinking to make sure I had a good time. God they work hard.

I know this has ended up like a bit of an advert, but I'm keen to impress upon you that casinos are becoming nice places to be - regardless of whether you consider yourself a gambler or not. Rank now have about a dozen of these revamped G Casinos in the UK, and if the Brighton one isn't near enough for you, I suggest you find one that is and make an evening of it. You never know, you might even win something (or at least meet a pretty PR lady dragging hungry journalists around).

Happy hunting.

Serious Poker

2010-04-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

It’s been a very strange 2010 so far. Sadly I’ve had one close family member death, one VERY close family member near-death/hospitalisation/drama, and a continuing lack of anything much to do. I bet that REALLY makes you wanna read on eh! Do I know how to capture an audience or WHAT!

The funny thing is I thought I’d accounted for the way in which a freelancer’s life tends to come and go with various bits of work. In case the TV stuff ended I had my writing; in case the writing ended I had the radio; in case the radio stuff ended I had my voice-over work… and so on. Sadly I failed to implement an “in case it all ends at exactly the same time” plan, which is kind of where I find myself.

Sure the radio show (www.thepokershowlive.com) is still going very strong but it’s changed shape this series. Rather than three three-hour live shows a week, it’s now three pre-record 70 minute shows that we nail in one LONG day. Also – and I’ll just be straight with you on this – I’ve already been paid for the work so it kinda feels like I’m ‘doing it for nothing’. I know that’s twisted logic, but there you go.

The funny thing is, with all my work suddenly dormant I find myself in a position that I’d previously dreamt of, namely with no reason not to take my poker more seriously. I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I have regularly (for about the last six years) promised myself that I would DEFINITELY go out and play more live poker. I have another recurring self-lie that says I should take my poker more seriously, perhaps dedicating two or three days a week to playing online as if it were a job. In the past this hasn’t happened because other guaranteed paying work options have popped up to block it, but now I have no good reason. The interesting thing is… I find I don’t want to do this.

But why? Isn’t this every poker enthusiast’s dream? Well yes, but also… no. If you’re commuting every damn day to work a 9-to-5 (and just for the record I did this from the age of 17 to about 33, so I do know) then this must seem like a dream. However, playing a game for love is different to playing a game for need… and next time I’ll explain further.

I know: just like a proper blog isn’t it! ^__^

Be seeing you…

The Post Office

2010-01-18T16:00:00.004Z

F**king Freedom Passes!

Now that might not mean a lot to you if you don't often visit the Post Office, but as I am currently enjoying the life of a 'home trader' (i.e. I'm so skint I am having to sell most of my personal belongings to pay the mortgage) I spend a lot of time in the Post Office waiting to weigh and flog my old games, books, guitars, clothes, pride, etc.

Pretty much every day since the new year has been shite thanks to the oldies renewing their Freedom Passes (Just WALK or STAY INDOORS love!) but today was particularly crap for some reason, and I had a book AND an Evel Kneivel toy to sell (I shit you not).

Matt walks into the Post Office. It is VERY busy. After a 10 minute wait...

OLD INDIAN TELLER IN WINDOW 6: Anyone NOT renewing their Freedom Pass?
MATT: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Matt approaches the counter and plops a heavy book on the scales.

MATT: I want to send this in the UK. Just the cheapest method please.
TELLER: It will be £4.41 or £4.45
MATT: What's the difference?
TELLER: 4p
MATT: No, I meant the difference in the services?
TELLER: One is standard post, one is Parcel Force
MATT: Umm... Just which ever is the cheapest one then please
TELLER: Well I'm just worried that that might take a long time
MATT: Well that's why I asked what the difference was
TELLER: It's 4p
MATT: No, I understand the monatery difference, I meant the difference in the service - i.e. if one was faster than the other...
TELLER: Well if you want a faster service...
MATT: NO! The speed isn't important to me, I'm just trying to explain why I asked!

Matt is clearly becoming somewhat flaberghasted and appears to be getting 'slightly' louder. A nearby teller has twigged...

WINDOW #5 TELLER: Is there a problem?
MATT (through gritted teeth): NO! Just a misunderstanding. It's fine now.

Matt's teller passes him a postage sticker for the book. Matt now produces a HUGE box and places it on the scales.

MATT: Same again please.

The teller looks at Matt and opens his mouth to ask what service he wants. However, before he can say a word...

MATT (loudly): JUST THE SAME AS THE LAST ONE PLEASE!

Matt manages to pull a smile out of the bag so the authorities aren't called for. The elderly teller passes another sticker to Matt. Matt applies the label, pays the man, thanks the man, walks to his car, turns the radio on VERY loud and BLOWS HIS BRAINS OUT WITH A SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN.

The last bit didn't happen, but you can understand why people just turn up in Post Offices with guns sometimes.

I'm not saying I'd do it... but I understand.

That's all.

Bruce Lee and the round table

2009-12-18T16:28:00.001Z

"To become immortal, one must first live a life worth remembering."

I think Bruce Lee said that, or at least stole it from someone more ‘wordy’ and brought it to the mainstream (and by mainstream I mean ‘anyone who saw the film DRAGON’). Anyway, it made me look to a more contemporary version, which is: “To blog, one must first have a life worth remarking upon”. And that’s my problem right now – I’m dull as dog dirt, bland as bat bilge, rank as rat’s rectum (you get the general idea). To blog at the moment would just be inflicting my own misery on a wider audience, and Phil Hellmuth appears to already have that market cornered with his own blog.

In the glory days of poker journalism I got to travel the world, interview people I’d never interviewed before, witness things I’d never witnessed before, play in games I’d never played in before, and so on… Now, sadly, I do best part of fek-all on a daily basis.

Trying to make an interesting and witty blog out of “woke up, read my three emails, wallowed in my friends’ successes via Facebook, refreshed my email inbox just in case, played SNGs until 5pm then played Call of Duty until it was time to make dinner”… well, you can see what I mean. It’s not quite at the dullard “woke up, brushed my teeth” level I attained in my acclaimed personal diary of 1981, but it’s pretty damn close.

In an attempt to do something with my life before my legs rot and they put me in a wheelchair, I decided to investigate the local Round Table. Having seen an advert in the local paper that described it as ‘A drinking club for blokes who occasionally have to do something for charity’ I thought I might fit in quite well.

I went along to the first meeting that, though not that Masonic, certainly had a few ‘funny handshake’ moments (without, I’m sad to report, any actual funny handshakes - although I like to think that once I left they shook the crap out of each other’s hands in a ‘funny’ way). There were people who were Chairmen of this and that, one chap who had to stand up and recite the ‘Aims and Objectives’ (a kind of boy scout pledge for children over the age of 25) and a Master at Arms (I shit you not) who reviews the meeting at the end and ‘fines’ people for lapses in behaviour and protocol. It’s only fair to say it was all done very much tongue-in-cheek and with a sense of fun, but it was certainly interesting to see grown men being told off and financially penalized for shouting “fuck!” at each other.

My next encounter with The Table (for ‘tis how it’s referred to once one is ‘in the know’) was the Santa sleigh, which grinds up and down the local streets behind a Range Rover playing loud Xmas music while Santa shouts “ho ho ho!” and waves at kids fizzing with excitement in the windows. Meanwhile a gang from The Table knocks on doors and collects money for the local charities and causes they support throughout the year. I wasn’t sure how I felt about joining in with this as I’m usually the one sitting watching telly in only my socks shouting “bah humbug” when charity collectors visit. However, upon seeing the sleigh I remembered how excited I used to get as a kid when the Upminster version came down our road, and once a few old folk had merrily bunged me a couple of quid with smiles on their faces and I’d witnessed the reaction of the kids down the first street I was well into it.

The activity was, however, not without its own perils. As well as smiling elderly folk and excited young-uns, my town is not without (how shall I put this)… mentals. I’d briefly enjoyed the fantasy of having the door answered by some MILF in a see-through gown who invited me in for more than a mince pie, but the closest I got was one old women who wanted me to feel how warm her hands were (seriously). I told her “I have two pairs of gloves on – I can’t feel anything” but she simply lurched out of her doorway with surprising speed and rubbed her moist, elderly hands up and down my semi-frozen cheeks (my face, MY FACE!) until I agreed that they were indeed very nice warm hands, and could I please go now.

Another door was opened by an enormous and entirely hairless man who stood in nothing but his boxer shorts, holding and eating a plate of baked beans. “Hello!” I merrily blarted despite immediately fearing for my life. “Round Table doing the Christmas collection”. He stared at me silently and scooped another two (yes, two) huge mouthfuls of beans into his bald hole while I stood like a tit in the doorway wondering how long I had to live. “No.” he finally grumbled, “You’re alright”. I screamed off up the road as if my shins were on fire, shouting “Merry Christmas!” over my shoulder in case he was chasing me.

Behind door number three was an old lady who I’d seen sitting (presumably dead) in her chair through the front window as I tried to get up the snow-covered ramp that lead to the door without sliding down it like some extra out of Indiana Jones. I now know access ramps are the 2-7 of charity collecting. Houses covered entirely in flashing Xmas decorations are three-of-a-kind, and any house with kids’ bikes and toys outside is the jackpot. I got to the top of the treacherous slope feeling like I’d just completed an ice level in Zelda, and reluctantly pressed the bell. The Tablers had told me to give ample time for old folks or people who lived in the back of their houses (why DO people do that?) to answer. However, after about three minutes I was starting to worry about the police finding her dead broken body clutching a 10p piece in the hallway ALL BECAUSE OF ME!

I could see her chair was empty, knew she must be on her way, and had to wait. After five more minutes she opened the door. “Round Table!” I beamed trying to make it worth the epic two-room trek she’d been on. “Oh,” she said, “I thought you were my carer. Have you got my dinner?” Oh. Fuck. “No, sorry – I’m collecting for the Round Table”. “Oh,” She said, “I thought you were my carer. Have you got my dinner?” Oh. Fuck. Again. What to do? I did have a Snickers bar in my pocket, but to be honest that was already earmarked as my 9pm treat. I opted for the only decent thing a modern chap could do; I ran away. Obviously I didn’t LOOK like I was running away (just in case someone saw me sliding back down the ramp and later shopped me to the body-collecting cops) but I certainly ‘left’ without collecting any money or resolving her problem. One can only hope her ‘carer’ was mere minutes behind and had more than one Snickers bar.

Staying on the ‘ruining old people’s evenings’ front, I also witnessed an old man break the world record for most time taken between opening a front door and opening a porch door. Having stared at me long enough to ascertain I wasn’t a mass murderer, I told him we were doing the Christmas collection, to which he said “you’re a bit late aren’t you?” He looked quite surprised when I told him it was only December 16th, but he handed over £2 anyway. Exactly what month he thought it was (or indeed what year) I can only imagine, but I certainly didn’t wait to watch him clamber slowly back into his house; I was due down the Indian restaurant in two hours.

The avoiders were good. Some would simply stare at you from the comfort of their sofas as if deaf and blind (even thought they were watching telly) while others would dive out of the front room and lie prone on the carpet in the hallway with the lights out. I took to opening the letter box, making eye contact with their frozen bodies and whispering “have a nice Christmas”.

Others would say things like “No, you’re alright” or “don’t worry” before closing the door, while the more creative would say “I don’t have any change” and then pat their trouser pockets. I told one person that if he patted his pockets before saying he had no change it would be much more convincing. I thought he might be insulted, but he looked genuinely grateful for the tip. I’m sure next year will be even less expensive for him thanks to that nugget.

One of the last excuses of the night was particularly involved, with a women turning on all the lights in the house, pulling up her trouser leg, and showing me an ENORMOUS scar (that sadly was not visible to the human eye) that accompanied a story about being off work, hospital bills, £200 a month, etc etc. It was only when she patted her pockets and said she had no change I believed her.

Anyway, that’s my poker blog. Sorry there was no actual poker, but it’s the thought that counts eh! For the record we made just under £400 for 2.5 hours walking, and I had the Chicken Shashlik with pilau rice and sag aloo. The Snickers bar remains uneaten in my coat pocket, and I check the local papers every day to see if my carer-less old friend has been found dead yet. Nothing yet... nothing yet...

Merry Christmas!

It's a kind of tragic

2009-08-21T11:16:00.000+01:00

“I should warn you,” said the woman taking her place in seat seven, “I’m a bit psychic”.

I looked at Nick who did that thing you do with mates where you roll your eyes at each other without actually moving your eyes just in case the subject of your rollage catches you (she was a big girl, and neither of us were brave enough to risk being seen disputing her magical powers – you know, just in case she put a voodoo hex on us or something).

“Oh. Really?” Nick ventured, “What star sign am I?”

Kim (for t’was her name) stared at Nick for several seconds (no doubt tuning into his aura, or some other bollocks) and then announced: “Cancer”

“Nope” Nick replied (probably as relieved as I was that she’d got it wrong) at which point Kim span round to me (almost catching me rolling my eyes – phew!) and asked, “Are you… a Gemini?” I stared at her blankly, accidentally encouraging another attempt: “Libra?”

“Sadly neither,” I told her, “But do keep trying. I’m sure you’ll get there eventually.”

Luckily Kim didn’t have time to magically guess her way around the rest of the zodiac as we were dealt the first hand of the charity tournament we were at The Empire to play. I was chuffed to see QQ but was in reasonably early position so made it 225 from the 25/50 blinds. I know it kinda gives away that I like my hand but not enough to go nine-ways to the flop, but considering I was sitting with a psychic and three people asking if a flush was better than a yahtzee I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Kim called, and then Nick went all-in. Now Nick is a far superior poker player to me, but even I knew immediately it was AA or KK. With a tear in my eye I released my queens back into the sea, but Kim (and let’s not forget she has ‘The Gift’) called, turning over that power-house of all-in calling hands: A-10o.

Nick looked absolutely chuffed to bits when the ace arrived on the board, and even happier when she pumped her fat little fist into his personal space with a massive “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

Now I know that it’s EXACTLY this sort of over-celebration that gives Nick a warm feeling deep inside, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy to give all his chips to a mental woman after only one hand. Nick gave me a look similar in many ways to the rolling-your-eyes-without-rolling-your-eyes one, only this one said, ‘you get the spades, I’ll kill her’.

Nick immediately went for a re-buy (he is so generous when it comes to kids’ charities!) while Kim assured us all that she “knew” the A-10o would win. I wouldn’t say that Nick was steaming, but some local gypsies did hang their carpets over him to give them a good clean.

Pay-back was clearly quite high on Nick’s agenda (just under drinking the open bar dry and consuming his body weight in free deserts) and sure enough he somehow managed to side-step the mystical powers of Kim and get her to double him up with AJ against his AK. Even in defeat Kim couldn’t help herself. “I knew he had me beat”. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

Strangely Kim didn’t manage to utilise her awesome powers to make a comeback, and shortly thereafter shuffled off no doubt to see if her ‘Gift’ stretched to guessing what numbers the roulette table would deliver. I managed to maintain the habit of a lifetime and bust out of the tourney with 88 like the clown I am, while Nick eventually fell foul to a bloke who constantly asked what the blinds were, how many chips did everyone have left, and “what is it to me?” Believe it or not, he was the gimp who won the bloody thing. God I hate poker.

Anyway, the evening got MUCH better for us as we headed off to a local ‘club’… but it’s not that kind of blog, so you’ll have to imagine the rest (and don’t forget to imagine LOTS of glitter and some really good high-heeled shoes while you’re at it).

Happy hunting

I URGE you...

2009-07-31T10:24:00.001+01:00

Ok - not much of a blog post I know, but I URGE you (see, the title was pretty acurate eh!) to watch High Stakes Poker Season 5 if you haven't alredy done so. I downloaded it from Mininova (which MAY be illigal - not sure) but i'm sure there is a legit way to find it. Watching Durrrr is a pleasure, and THE best answer to any player who ever types "card dead" into the chat box.

Anyway, a real blog entry VERY soon. Honest.

On the air

2009-05-30T19:36:00.001+01:00

It’s the 30th of September 2008 and Jesse May – the voice of poker – has just asked me a question. It takes my brain about 20 seconds longer than normal to formulate an answer, but then again we are 22 hours into a marathon 36 hour commentary stint. I only entered the fray at about hour eight, but Jesse has been here from minute one of hour one, and will still be belting it out when we wrap things up in the 59th minute of hour 35.
‘The Kids’ might think Red Bull is the only way to go, but Jesse reminds me why coffee remains the number one stimulant in the world as he asks/shouts his question at me with trademark enthusiasm: “Matt, what’s Feldman’s thinking!? Is it a complete steal or does he think he’s ahead!?”
I haven’t got the heart to tell Jesse I have absolutely no idea. The last time the camera was on Andrew Feldman was about ten minutes ago and the poor kid was face-down unconscious in a pile of chips with drool hanging out the side of his mouth. For all I know Andrew might think he’s at home asleep and is just dreaming about re-raising Juha Hellpi with 10-6 offsuit. I offer up a mostly-useless “Who knows Jesse, who knows…” and reach for another handful of Beechams capsules. Thanks to an untimely bout of man-flu I’m struggling to stay focused, and have to admit I’ve exceeded the recommended dose. What am I doing here…

It’s the 1st of October 2008 and Jesse May – the voice of poker – has just asked me a question. We’re on a short break while some fresh players buy-in and some knackered players cash out. Outside the door I can hear Roland De Wolfe snoring, and can honestly say I’ve never been so jealous of a man lying on a concrete floor outside a toilet. “Matt,” Jesse asks, “what do you think to an old-school, American sports-style poker call-in Radio show?” I stare at him blankly while my brain attempts to have an opinion about anything. Jesse takes this as a sign of encouragement. “You know; talk to the biggest names in the world, take a bunch of calls from players grinding it out online, chew over the latest news, gossip, tourney results… it’d be amazing don’t ya think!?” Actually, it does sound pretty good...

It’s the 14th April 2009 and Jesse May – the voice of poker – has just asked me a question. “Do you think the mics are plugged in properly?” Yes Jesse, I think the mics are plugged in properly. Sadly, the mics are the least of my worries. I’m slightly more concerned that I somehow seem to have become the ‘Exec Producer’ of “The Poker Show with Jesse May”, have a room full of Matchroom and Boyle Poker management staring at me expecting a fully-functioning radio station, and I have absolutely no idea why none of it’s working. “Maybe the mics aren’t plugged in properly?” suggest Jesse. Again. What am I doing here…

It’s the 5th of May 2009 and Jesse May – the voice of poker – has just asked me a question. “Matt, I think this is gonna work out pretty great. What d’ya say?” We’ve just completed our second week of broadcast; have had Phil Hellmuth, Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan, Mike Sexton, Luke ‘FullFlush’ Schwartz, Phil Laak, John Duthie, Barney Boatman, Roland De Wolfe, Vicky Coren and master of the bedtime story, Mad Marty Wilson on the show - to name but a few. Jesse is beaming at me as we prepare to turn the studio lights out for another week. I give him a big smile in return. “I think you might be right Jesse.”

See you next Sunday…

“NEWS”: An angry Jennifer Tilly has trouble storming out of a rotating restaurant

2009-03-27T13:10:00.001Z

Unabomber girlfriend, Jennifer Tilly, underestimated the difficulty and frustration involved in her attempt to storm out of a rotating restaurant last night. Tilly says she was disorientated by both the ever-moving restaurant and the blinding rage she felt towards boyfriend, Phil Laak, who had once again brought up the matter of that YouTube clip with the full house.

Jennifer said: “I was storming out for what felt like forever, and then before I knew it I was standing in front of our table… again.”

Fellow poker player Liz Lieu successfully stormed out of the same rotating restaurant last March and offered: “Knowing what I know now, I would suggest finding someone who works at the restaurant to help you find the exit.”

Author's note: JUST in case it wasn't obvious, this is a work of fiction. D'uh!

Poker isn’t just for Christmas…

2009-03-12T15:51:00.002Z

As we blast ever-deeper into 2009, I realsed that no one bothered to ask me for a review of 2008 (which is a shame as I’m sure it would have been hilarious). I hope, however, that we’re not so far into 2009 that I can’t still talk about one of my favourite poker moments of 2008. I’m referring to the car-crash that was the ‘celebrity’ heat of the Party Poker Women’s World Open; featuring easily one of the best acts of poker numptitude since Jennifer Tilly checked her full house to Patrik Antonius ‘just in case he had quads’ (the twatt).

My initial concern was that only one of the ‘celebrities’ was arguably an actual celebrity (and even that was just Cheryl Baker; ever-humoured on English telly because she took her skirt off in 1981 and her thighs won a trophy). Not to worry (thought I - ever the optomist) maybe these well-known unknowns can play poker. And then the first hand arrived...

Three female ‘celebrities’ (who neither I nor the dog had ever heard of) folded their cards. The button (some ‘celebrity’) called, the small blind (some ‘celebrity’) called, and the big blind (Cheryl Baker who, disappointingly, had trousers on and not a scrap of Velcro in sight) took a deep breath and said “stick”. No... seriously: “stick”. Press record lads; I think we might have a poker genius in our midst.

The dealer dealt the flop (which no doubt confused the life out of at least half the women at the table) and the first player announced “check”. The second player now took a moment to consider her options. What to do... what to do? Perhaps check and go for a free card… Maybe take a stab at winning the pot with a well-sized bet, or perhaps… “fold”. What? Say again love... That’s right, you heard - “fold”. Oh, brilliant. No one saw that one coming (I swear the dealer nearly slapped herself on the forehead in response). Meanwhile Cheryl – clearly delighted that someone had accidentally reminded her what the correct term for ‘do nothing’ was – also announced “check”.

With the turn dealt the first player dug deep and placed some chips onto the table. Cheryl sat back, looked at the dealer and – rather than embarrass herself by saying ‘bust’ or ‘Jenga’ or something similarly stupid – said simply: “er… I want to say whatever you say when you don’t want to go on any more.” (What; like ‘please kill me’?)

“Fold?” ventured the dealer tentatively. “Yes!” exclaimed Cheryl, “that’s the one.” And thus it was that the first hand somehow came to a conclusion without anyone knocking themselves out of the tournament or bursting into flames. My god, this was going to be one hell of a game.

Or at least it would have been had not the missus – who endures more crap TV poker than any reasonable person should have to – chosen this moment to reach out and silently remove the Sky remote from my hand. Pressing ‘backup’ she exited the show, returning to the Sky Plus menu as I looked on quizzically. She then deftly hit the ‘delete’ button, saying “it’s probably for the best”. Now I remember why I married her. Smart girl.

NO ESCAPE
Apart from watching televised poker approximately 365 days of the year (rough estimate. Source: Mrs Waster) then I’m generally playing poker or thinking about it. If I’m not writing about it, then I’m probably on telly blabbing about it; and if I’m not doing any of those things, well… let’s just say there better be a bloody good reason (i.e. family death, birth, marriage, or all three simultaneously). Don’t laugh – you don’t know my family.

Even the water closet – the last sanctuary of modern man – no longer offers safe haven thanks to a magazine rack chock full of poker magazines, a pile of thicker-than-brick poker books on the end of the bath, and a word search book by the sink (don’t’ worry; the latter belongs to the missus – the dirty bitch.)

I decided that for the good of those unlucky enough to be around me on a regular basis I should perhaps take a break from poker as we entered the Xmas season (i.e. December, not back in late-September when Sainsburys put the tinsel out). Though the idea of not being in some super-loose Badugi game by 10:30am each morning was slightly freaking me out I decided to just try to let poker waft from my mind for a bit. I even went as far as agreeing to visit various naff pre-Xmas bazaars and gift fairs in local halls.

And it was there, dear friends, that I discovered that there is no escaping poker. Next post I’ll explain how I turned three innocent Xmas activities into poker games. (Remind me again Cheryl: what do you say when you don’t want to go on any more?)

Making moves

2009-02-05T18:50:00.002Z

Last post I was harping on about a new-found interest in properly analysing key hands – something I’d not previously been too bothered about. However, after enjoying Gus Hansen’s book ‘Every Hand Revealed’ I decided to start going back through the notes I’d taken on tournament hands and putting them under the microscope.

Boyle Poker had been kind enough to invite me over to Dublin for the IPO and I jumped at the chance to play in a juicy deep-structure tourney (10k starting stack, 40 min levels).

There were a number of interesting incidents to report on, including the most lacklustre blogger I’ve ever seen, who handed a piece of paper and a pen to the player on my left and asked him to write down his name along with a rough chip count… while the player was actually in a hand!

However, the specific hand I wanted to run through the analyse-o-tron occurred about six hours into the tourney with the blinds sitting at 400/800. I’d been moved to a new table with about five minutes to go before we moved up to 500/1k. I had 14k to play with, so though nowhere near dire straights (even with the imminent level jump) I was still looking forward to unravelling my new table-mates and hopefully finding a few opportunities to get ahead of the average count before the dinner break.

Whenever I get to a new table (where I know nothing about my new opponents) I tend to assume the players involved play much the way I do until they prove me wrong. As I gather more information I can then start narrowing down their hand ranges and the moves they are likely to make in any given situation. I also start giving them rude names to help later identify them in my notes and to amuse my (childish) self. On this particular occasion I was (according to my notes) joined at the table by the likes of ‘Chunky’, ‘Hat’, ‘Beardy’ and ‘Smell’, to name but a few.

With the aforementioned 400/800 blinds, the UTG player folded and a well-stacked ‘SlimBeard’ (see how I cleverly combined body type and facial hair into one easy-to-remember name) raised to 2,000 from early position. 2k seemed a pretty standard raise, but assuming he plays much as I would (because I have to start somewhere in my profiling) I’m going to say he won’t be raising with seven players behind him with any pair less than J-J (maybe 10-10?) I’m also going to say he is unlikely to be playing any connected cards less than KQ, AK or AQ (I doubt KJ or AJ would be in the early-position raising range of a player who has as many chips as he does six hours in!) Remembering that I actually know NOTHING about this player; he could also be a nut job who raises with any old cack (playing 78o ‘creatively’ for instance), but right now I’ll treat him like a poker player…

There is then an all-in raise to 4k from the short-stacked ‘Beardy’ two to my right that I have to say I’m not too worried about. I get the feeling he’d made the decision to shove regardless, and could be on a small pair, but more likely a random ace or king. Obviously he might have found aces, but with only 4k I’m not too concerned.

I am, however, faced with a decision when I look down to find AcJc on the button. With only the SB and BB standing between me and the original early position raiser I focus my attention on him rather than being too worried about the blinds. If either of them has got something big enough to fancy getting involved in all this action (which I imagine would have to be KK or AA) then good luck to them.

I then make a move which I’d like to explain (you know what’s coming don’t you!) yes, I moved all-in. Why? Well it’s not because I love Ace-Jack certainly, it’s because… well, in light of a raise from an early position player, followed by an all-in, just what kind of a hand MUST I have to warrant such a move?

Imagine you’d raised from early position, seen a player move all-in, and then seen another 14k pushed all-in behind that! My hope here is that the move looks so damn strong that the original raiser can throw away anything from speculative randoms right up to premium pairs and AK . This would leave me heads-up over a 11.2k pot containing 3.2k dead money. I then enter the 500/1k level with a 21,200 stack. Lovely!

The blinds do indeed fold and I am delighted to see that SlimBeard doesn’t insta-call me, but neither does he quickly fold. He DID have a big hand (oops!) but the play has done the job of looking so strong that he is now writhing about on his chair as if his arse is on fire. I’m now sure it’s not KQ, AQ or AK, and have for some reason convinced myself he has QQ.

He now disappears up himself for about four minutes, during which time I try to throw out as many false tells as possible - looking to all intents and purposes like a man with two aces in the hole, another in his back pocket, and one up his arse for good luck.

Finally (rather disappointingly) SlimBeard groans: “I call.” followed by “Aces?” and turns over pocket kings. While delighted that my play nearly got him to fold cowboys, I turn over my AcJc (the short stack showed KJo) and though it’s by no means over for me, a flop, turn and river later nothing’s changed and I shuffle away from the table with nowt but a potential column entry to my name.

I shake SlimBeard’s hand who tells me he was VERY close to dumping his kings, but it’s small consolation. However, the experience is (I think, anyway) a great advert for an interesting move that so nearly worked.

Maybe next time eh?

Analyse this...

2009-01-05T15:58:00.001Z

In all the time I’ve been playing poker seriously (well, as ‘serious’ as I ever get about anything anyway) I’ve never really been much into deep analysis of past hands. Certainly I’ve pondered briefly after a big hand to considered ways I might have made more money, and have often reflected on key tourney exit hands to see if I could have avoided some self-inflicted donkey death, but that’s about it. Similarly, I’ve never really been tempted to post hands on forums and get into the tedious process of having twenty know-it-alls tell you what you should have done with your life (if I wanted some 2p/4p wannabe pro to run my hand through an odds calculator and bark numbers at me I’d ask for it specifically).

I appreciate this rambling might seem particularly hypocritical considering one of my main jobs is standing on telly picking other people’s hands apart, but ultimately that’s what I’m being paid to do, so I have a good excuse. Also, these shows offer more of a skim-the-surface observation than a cut-you-open-and-remove-your-spleen examination so I don’t think it counts as serious analysis anyway.

And why am I telling you all this? Well because I’ve had a change of heart after reading Gus Hansen’s book, ‘Every Hand Revealed’. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this book, and I think it’s mostly down to the fact that Hansen is not only accurate enough to let you see how he plays (with the facts and details of the hands) but also articulate enough to help you understand how he thinks (via his hand analysis and reasoning laid before you in black and white).

Though I’ve always been a player who takes notes at the table (and endured much ridicule as I produce my ‘little gay book’) these notes have primarily been to assist my writing. Pouring back through my notes there are clearly far more entries the likes of: “fat bloke to my left has a head like a parsnip and a tattoo on his arm that appears to say the word ‘COCK’ in gothic text” rather than any mention of pre-flop raising, betting tendencies or hand ranges.

Hansen’s book has, however, spurred me on to take more time dissecting my notes after games to be sure that I’ve made the most of each hand delivered to my grubby paws. It’s turning out to be a process that’s well worth doing - either validating the decisions I’ve made, or uncovering some ‘iffy’ moves made in the heat of the moment - and I’d seriously advise you consider having a go. Perhaps even start a blog that no one will ever read; picking your own plays apart to see if they buckle under interrogation. Remember, it’s easy to kid other people regarding your poker prowess - because you can always find a way to make your play sound more legit than it really was - but you can’t fool yourself.

It’s the same deal regarding keeping accurate records of your results. You can chose to record the wins but ‘kinda forget’ the odd loss because ‘it was only a muck-about game’ but ultimately you MUST acknowledge the truth if you want to move forward with your game. It’s also worth remembering that a quick tickle of pokershark or some such site will soon reveal the truth anyway, so you may as well come clean. There’s nothing I like more than to copy and paste my chum’s results to them on a fortnightly basis to stop them lying to me about how well they’re doing. Needless to say I never let them know my own user name (I’m not stupid you know).

And for my last wild tangent: I once had an email from a viewer of the now-defunct Poker Night Live show who said he had taken to delivering live commentary over his own online play as he found it helped crystallise his understanding of the situation. For him, calling out the action a la: “seat two limps, seat three folds, the rock in seat four raises double the blind (as he did with kings earlier in the game), seat five folds, etc…” kept him focused on the game and less likely to drift off and miss key nuggets of information.

I guess what I am saying is, be prepared to take an interest in your games rather than just your results. Next time round I’m considering sharing some hands with you that I’ve begun analysing under the new regime. To ensure you don’t lose interest I’ll also be attacking some of the more ‘hilarious’ players that have made their way into my little gay book. My hope is that it will 1) help you understand the process of analysis, 2) make me feel better about some of the moves I’ve made, 3) make us all chuckle as I attack men with heads like parsnips.

Oh, and I promise an absolute minimum of bad beats. No, really...

De Wolfe: Wasted literary genius? Discuss...

2008-12-02T15:54:00.002Z

This is a strange entry, but I was recently handed a piece of paper that I didn’t know what to do with, so thought this was the best place to dump its contents.

To set the scene: I went to the Maidstone studios for a stint of commentary with Jessie May, and had two heats of the 888.com Open to work on. The morning heat was full of the usual Matchroom players: Marc Goodwin, Rolan De Wolfe, Dixie Dean, etc. and the second one was interesting in that it had Eddie Hearn himself playing in the tourney.

Now if you’ve never seen Eddie and Roland teasing each other, you’ve never seen man-boys recreating the playgournd while in their ‘mid-thirties’.

Eddie basically ribs Roland about being a ‘failed gambler who forever needs bailing out’ while Roland likes to suggest that Eddie ‘would be nothing if his rich daddy hadn’t given him a job’. Sometimes this row can go on for hours at a time. I once left a dispute, did commentary on a four-hour game, and came back to find it still going on. (I sh*t you not). Oh, they also spend a lot of time calling each other ‘fat’.

So this one particular day Roland was particularly unhappy to not be asked to do the commentary as he was relishing the thought of being able to attack Eddie constantly while Eddie was helpless to do anything about it. Needless to say Eddie asked me to work the heat rather than Roland which left him gutted. However, Roland didn’t waste the opportunity; scurrying away with paper and pen, and later presenting me with his ‘helpful notes’. He was keen that I try to use as many of them as possible during the broadcast. Needless to say, I didn’t.

Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you (word for word I hasten to add) the brain spillage of Mr Roland De Wolfe:

1. Eddie is nicknamed Darren after Darren Furguson, because he got his chance because of his dad but he’s nowhere as good.
2. Barry wanted Eddie to take over his whole business affairs, but rather like Fredo he is the useless limp son, so he gave him the poker department.
3. Eddie dated Jodie Marsh at the posh private school they went to.
4. Eddie was put on the board of Leyton Orient by his father. He has overseen a slump from top to bottom of the league and an Orient fans spokesman said "It’s like being lumbered with Barry Evans from Eastenders"
5. Also, Eddie is terrible at poker. Lost to Barry in 888 heads-up. Also, he is fat and orange like Tangoman.

So, hopefully you can see what I’m talking about here; some genuinely useful notes. Not.
Oh, and Ian Frazer didn’t get away scott free either. We continue…

1. TV specialist Frazer tried to move in on level 3 at the WSOP main event coz he thought that’s what you were meant to do.
2. Ian was asking for Marty Wilson to make a ruling at the Vic believeing he was the TD.
3. Frazer’s the richest man in Europe, owns half of Kent, and has four Ferraries.
4. Grabs people’s bollocks when drunk.
5. Relegated from Premier League for ‘abysmal performance’.
6. Couldn’t beat a £5 NL cash game or a £100 tournament that was open to all-comers.
7. Actually paid £50k to Matchroom to get in Premier League.
8. Old and washed up.

Now it’s important for me to make it clear I neither put these forward as serious opinions from Roland, nor do I agree with many (sorry - I meant ANY) of them.

Roland is a wasted writer in my opinion. His most recent Facebook status said: Roland is in Poland. It’s freezing and it appears to be 1992 here.
Genius? Discuss.

Tools at the Table

2008-11-07T16:56:00.003Z

Though I like to almost entirely ignore poker in my writing (perhaps just including the word “poker” itself as a token gesture in the first paragraph) I thought I’d break the mould and respond to a question I faced recently about an apparently massive over-bet I made that came back to bite me in the arse.

The hand in question occurred during the Virgin Poker Festival at the Loose Cannon (doing a dazzling impression of a sauna thanks to a ‘heating malfunction’). Initially I was put on the dullest of tables; stuck out the back, dripping sweat onto my cards and enjoying the exploits of a player to my left who simply couldn’t grasp the fact that saying “raise 300” when there was already 150 on the table didn’t just double the bet to A TOTAL OF 300, but added 300, creating a 450 pot. Add to this constant over-building of the pot the fact that he was a serial calling station and, well… you can imagine the ‘fun’ we were all having with him. I pride myself on being polite and non-abusive at the table, but on a board of AQ994 I bluffed out a pot-sized post-river bet with air and got called because he had a ‘4’ in his hand, I couldn’t resist asking “is there anything you WON’T call with?” as the collective table slapped their foreheads for the nth time. Anyway, enough whinging…

I held my own through the first few levels; mostly just playing ABC poker against ABC opposition (and may I just remind you that if you ever find yourself up again a more ‘enthusiast’ than ‘professional’ field, continuation bets are the absolute bread and butter of building your stack). Finally our table was broken down and I was moved to a new spot in the centre of the room. I was immediately more comfortable as this was a chattier table, featuring some juicy stacks and a few ‘characters’ (i.e. plonkers).

The first thing I like to do when I arrive at a new table is spend a few minutes making entirely unfair, unfounded and - frankly - cruel assumptions about my opponents. Anyone who asks “how much is it?” every round or waits five minutes before looking at their cards when it’s their turn to act (and a further five minutes before folding so as not to give away any ‘tells’) is immediately labelled ‘numptie’. The numptometer also swings to “11” if I see anyone carefully laying out their chips a foot from the rail in neat, sequential piles; never mixing colours or amounts in case the universe implodes. I also like to imagine that anyone fat is also stupid. Don’t hate me; it’s just the way I am.

I had a cracking time at the new table; starting with decent hands, connecting with flops, and then continuation betting or re-raising to victory without having to show any cards. To the untrained eye I appeared to be the ‘table captain’ they’d all read about somewhere in a magazine. Actually I was just a lucky fish being hit round the head by the deck (don’t tell anyone – tee hee!)

I’d grown my stack to a comfortable 11k with the blinds still at only 200/400 when ‘The Hand’ happened. One of the numpties previously designated ‘Neat Stacks’ made an early min-raise to 800. Now we all know this is meant to indicate one of two things; either a monster hand or a tricky hand that players feel they should raise with but deep down don’t really fancy (i.e. pocket tens in early position). A hairy player two to my right called, and I looked down at KK. I had a think (which we’ll come back to later) and then pushed all-in. That’s right – 11,000 into about 2,000. Bonkers eh?

‘Neat stacks’ called for his 5,000 and I knew he had aces. Bollocks. The fun wasn’t over yet however, as ‘Hairy’ had a real quick think and then also called for his total 7,000. Now the question I imagine is running through your heads is ‘just what can hairy have other than aces that warrants a call here?’ Well I can tell you that ‘Hairy’ had AK. Yes – all his chips with nothing more than ace-high and only 800 previously invested. And THAT, my friends, is why I pushed with KK in the first place. Consider this: if ‘Hairy’ is happy calling all his chips off against TWO opponents all-in with AK, imagine how wide his calling range is if I hadn’t run into aces!

If I’d chosen to re-raise pre-flop from 800 to 2,400 I think my opponents are bad enough to still just call with lesser ‘premium’ hands, and then I run the risk of being outdrawn and losing a big chunk of chips finding out if I’m still ahead with KK post-flop. By making the massive over-bet I either take down 2,000 (which is fine by me thank you) or I force a numptie to make a massive pre-flop mistake with the likes of JJ, QQ, AK and possibly even AQ if they are particularly bad. On rare occasions I have run into another KK making this move, but generally speaking there is only one of the 1,326 distinct starting hands you don’t want to run into, and that is aces (I guess I just got lucky this time!)

No one improved on the board, so I gave 5k to ‘Neat stacks’ but took 2k off ‘Hairy’ in a side pot and was more than fine with 8k considering the blinds. The push might seem like a mental play, but it’s one of those situations where – if you don’t respect the abilities of your opponents much – you can find yourself 4-1 favourite against the likes of QQ and JJ, or 70% favourite against players who simply over-value AK.

Give it a go some time. Just don’t blame me if you run into aces (it does happen occasionally). Happy hunting!

“NEWS:” E-Dog swaggers proudly around the house after killing an intruder

2008-10-06T18:12:00.001+01:00

Ever since poker pro Erik Lindgren beat a burglar to death with a five iron in his house last month he won’t stop parading from room to room like some vigilante king. Lindgren’s wife, Jean, is grateful that her husband protected the family, but his constant bragging is beginning to wear thin: “He acts like nobody’s ever killed an intruder before.”
For his part, E-Dog says simply: “I AM A HERO.”
Lindgren has now requested that the police give him the burglar’s ears so he can string them into a necklace.

The best / worst seats in the house

2008-09-22T16:56:00.001+01:00

Having recently been out to Las Vegas for the WSOP I was looking forward to heading back there with absolutely no work commitments to get in the way of actually sitting down and playing some poker. A decade ago, taking a 'poker holiday' in Vegas required some serious planning. You needed to know exactly when the few decent poker rooms in town were running their juicy games, and be prepared to leapfrog from one tournament to the next to minimise dead time and maximise value. Sitting at the table was as much about finding out the good 'tourney routes' from other players as it was about taking their chips.

These days the poker comes to you. Even the smallest casinos have a poker room, even if that 'room' is nothing more than a couple of tables with a rope around them. My basic plan for the trip was to enjoy the Vegas sun (what with the British 'Summer' being the usual mixture of snow, wind, piss and general misery), hit a few shows, drink a few cocktails, and make some strategic decisions about where to play my poker.

We are forever harping on about profitability in poker being about game selection... When it comes to making money in Las Vegas the game selection goes as far as deciding which casinos to sit down in.

Consider this: Big Dave fancies himself as a bit of a poker player (having 'totally pwned' a £5 sit 'n' go on Betfair... twice!) Where would you expect him to go to play poker? O'Sheas? Casino Royale? That shitty little casino made of wood that I can't even remember the name of that nearly got blown up because everyone forgot it was hidden behind Stardust? No; of course not. Minutes after his fat head bobbles into McCarren's arrivals lounge, Big Dave will be swaggering into The Bellagio's sweet-smelling poker room looking like something out of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The locals will take one look at him and - quick as a flash - metaphorically have his pants down, his Pringle jumper up over his head, and be sending him tarred and feathered back out into the blistering sun, scratching his fat bonce and wondering where all his beer money went.

Which is exactly why you WON'T find me down The Bellagio, The Wynn, The Mandalay Bay, or any other casino that might be considered 'nice'. Why? Well let me ask you another question: where do you think the meek, timid, new-to-the-game, first-live-experience enthusiasts are going to go to pop their poker cherries? How about all the sh*t-holes that are entirely unlikely to have any 'proper' poker players sitting there!

And that, my wily friends, is exactly why you'll find me trying to peel my shoes off the sticky carpets at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon, sucking down warm beers at the soon-to-be-demolished Imperial Palace, and generally rubbing shoulders with the voucher-obsessed tramps who frequent the - shall we say - less salubrious casinos Las Vegas has to offer.

While my more image-conscious friends are trying to make a name for themselves in the beautiful surroundings of the Caesar's Palace poker room (with its fancy perfumed air-conditioning and yet-to-be-pensioned waitresses) I'm sat at the Flamingo's entirely adequate poker room between a rock and a hard place (i.e. two fat blokes) enjoying the juiciest cash table I've ever witnessed.

On a future occasion I shall share some specifics regarding the games I encountered during this latest trip, but suffice to say that upon my return my MSN 'tag' screamed "A VEGAS WINNER!" at my friends for a full week. Truly, it was the best of times (the results), it was the worst of times (the surroundings).

It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it...

Leaving Las Luton

2008-08-27T11:04:00.002+01:00

There’s something magical about returning from a poker game late/early enough that the sun rises as you drive home. Sharing the near-empty dawn roads with delinquent foxes kicking over dustbins and smoking cigarettes (I think I saw one lighting up) the trip back from Luton takes the time my Tom Tom optimistically said it would take to get me there originally. I knew better than to trust the lying bastard on the way up simply because my Tom Tom lives in a glorious world where feckless morons don’t crash into each other ever five minutes, and the never-ending road works on the M1 are a thing of fiction. I’ve got used to adding 30 minutes onto everything it says. It’s a bit like having a wife who says she‘ll be ready by 7pm but never is. The bitch.

Anyone who's followed my blog for a while might remember I used it this time last year to whine and moan about missing a couple of last season’s Luton GUKPT events by mere minutes thanks to crap traffic, a GPS system that looked at every potential journey through rose-tinted specs, and an antiquated casino law that meant to not be in the building at the start of the game was to miss the entire thing. This year I took no risks; arriving for event #1 with hours to spare, and immediately buying-in to every game that tickled my fancy.
There was one particular game that caught my eye, and though only a tiddler compared to the main event, it occurred on the 8th of the 8th, starting at 8pm. Now I’m not a superstitious man, but to miss a game so steeped in lucky 8s would be folly. And thus it was I headed to Luton for the “8.8.8”…

Now some people like to meditate before a big game, some like to pump themselves up listening to Metallica or System of Down. I chose - and please don’t ask me why - to drive up to Luton listening to Level 42. I can’t pretend this got my heart racing, but I did manage to annoy the fuck out of myself and those around me by thumbing bass lines on the poker table for the following nine hours.

Into the card room and luck makes its first appearance, landing me in seat nine, table 15 - right next to the free hot drinks machine. Bingo! Hand #1 convinced me further that my investment was a wise one, as a limped Ks7s hit an A-K-7 flop and continued with a turned 7 to clinch the deal. Game on!

Some hours later I begged with luck for the first time. Holding 77 against a 7c-6h-9c flop, a student-type pushed in on me with what turned out to be the nut flush draw. He missed. More tea Mr Luck?

I’m later moved to a new table (still within reach of the drinks machine, lucky me!) and spend the next 20 minutes trying to work out if it’s the dealer or the player in seat nine who stinks. For the record, it was seat nine (who could have done with a hair wash too). With this important business out of the way I can once again focus fully on the game.
Down to the last three tables, and fearsome blinds and antes coupled with plenty of short-stacks keep luck very busy indeed. I suck-out in a KT vs. AJ confrontation, only to lose a TT vs. Q7 fight moments later. It looks like karma’s joined the fray. The git.

I then participate in one of the strangest hands I’ve ever played... At 400/800 +50, seat five makes it 1,500 to go and I call, but for some reason he thinks I’ve folded and turns over the ace of spades. The dealer now tells the embarrassed-looking player that only I can now instigate any action; effectively giving me the option to check it all the way down if I chose to do so. And then the flop arrives: 8s-9s-10s. I’ve now flopped the nut straight but he either already has the nut flush (if his second card is a spade) or at least has the draw. What to do? Check it down and give him two free cards to hit his flush, or hope his second card isn’t already a spade and put him to the test. My brain farts out loud: “All-in” much to the amazement of the table, spectators (and, to a degree, me) and I watch my hands push 11,000 out across the felt. Thankfully there’s no insta-call so I know I’m not already ruined, but he does eventually call for his last 9,000 and I make luck aware that it has a lot of work to do. The turn is red, as is the river. Yehaw!

The next milestone is the money bubble, followed by the final table. I bad-beat out of the game (Ad4d out-flopped by the chip-leader’s QsTc). I shake hands, exit the game, pull a funny face at luck, and collect my winnings.

Oh, and for the record, I came 8th on the 8th of the 8th '08. Funny old world isn’t it.

“NEWS”: Greenstein’s brain sacrifices survival instinct to make room for advertising jingle

2008-08-04T17:35:00.000+01:00

Doctors are saying that poker professional Barry Greenstein’s brain subconsciously made room for a catchy TV jingle by deleting valuable space required for his survival instinct. Now severely injured, Greenstein only became aware of the change later, having accidentally walked through a dark alley filled with knife-wielding yobs. He told us: “I knew I should have been running in the other direction, but all I could think was: ‘I feel like chicken tonight; like chicken tonight’.
Greenstein’s uncle died under similar circumstances when his brain traded the part that controls breathing for enough room to accompany the Bird’s-eye Potato Waffles song.

Viva Las Vision

2008-07-14T18:11:00.002+01:00

I have a tendency to make my life more complicated than it needs to be. Having finally committed to heading out for the WSOP despite a distinct lack of work to justify the time and expense, I then went about making things as difficult as possible.

First up I invited a friend along - which in itself wasn’t a massive problem - but I then also decided to up the ante somewhat by organising to have eye laser surgery during the trip. That’s right; voluntarily paying American doctors to slice open my eyes, fire lasers into them, and then send me off half-blind into Sin City to play tour guide. Sounds like a shit comedy screenplay doesn’t it.

Things started about as crap as you could imagine, with a mere seven separate incidents on the M25 to Gatwick. Let’s think about that… SEVEN sets of dickheads who have somehow mastered the art of changing radio stations, adjusting their seats, and applying lipstick on the move, but can’t seem to stop smashing into the back of other people’s cars. Now I’ve never managed to be so fucking stupid that I can’t stop my car before it enters the same physical space as another car so I don’t entirely understand this problem. I have taken, however, to dealing with this constant frustration by winding down my window as I pass by the relevant drivers and shouting “COCKS!” at them as they sit scratching their fat, empty bonces on the central reservation while a grown-up from the RAC collects up bits of Mondeo.

The various delays also mean that the nice man who was waiting to meet and greet my car at the terminal has now buggered off for a brew so I have to call him back out again. Meanwhile, a uniformed job’s-worth traffic drone is insisting that I can’t wait at the terminal, so I pretend to have a ‘leg problem’ and shuffle back and forth with single items of baggage, killing time until the chauffeur turns up. Halfway through an award-winning performance (think Lieutenant Dan in Forest Gump) the driver finally turns up. I grab my bags, shout “It’s a miracle!” and sprint up the ramp to the check-in.

The pain continues as we discover that we can’t sit together. What was to be an incredible plane-based poker and beer festival now looks more like eleven hours watching The Royal Family and episodes of The Simpsons from back before Homer got his own voice right. FFS.

And then… as I plod through the gate… just as eleven hours of misery stretches out before me… I hear “come back, sir”. Oh great. What now? Has my friend hilariously stashed 20 kilos of cocaine in my backpack ‘for a laugh’ and I’m about to meet a hulking customs official called Bubba who likes to make finger puppets out of sphincters?

But no – instead the lovely gate lady utters those beautiful words that all travellers dream of: “You’ve been upgraded” BINGO! And then I catch my friend’s face. Oops…

Sadly it was only me that got upgraded and my friend still had to face eleven hours stuck between a man with no love of deodorant and a women more interested in piercing every square inch on her face than brushing her teeth.

I patted him on the back, commenting: “Good job we weren’t sitting together or that would have been a real tough decision for me”. Needless to say, BOLLOCKS would it have been tough! I would have been off up those stairs before you could cough the words ‘complimentary pretzels’ into a free glass of champagne.

I try to play down the generous leg room and free fruit as I visit the hobos down in economy a few hours later (I think my friend was pleased to see the banana I brought him, but perhaps asking him to “dance for it like a monkey” was a step too far.)

Before my Vegas trip I’d bought a new toy: a small video recorder no bigger than a mobile phone that grabs an hour of high-quality footage. I used this now to play my chum footage I’d taken ‘upstairs’, pointing out the spacious aisles, the orgy of free booze sitting about the place, and the entirely more attractive class of traveller that made up the higher echelons I liked to frequent.

At this point the slob next to my friend farted freely into the very air that he’d be sucking back down his fat gullet in a recycled fashion for the next eight hours, so I excused myself and headed back upstairs where I believed a small group of more fragrant passengers were putting on some impromptu Shakespeare. My friend waved goodbye with a clenched fist. And some spitting.

Settled back into the comfort of my small couch, I opted to watch I am Legend. If you’ve not seen it, he dies in the end. There: that’s two hours of your life I’ve just saved you. I also watched National Treasure 2 with Nicholas Cage. I don’t mean I watched it with him, just that he was in the film. He didn’t die (in case you were wondering) but that bald bloke out of The Abyss did. Again, I’d give it a miss if I were you.

Anyway, with a couple of hours eaten up by shit films, I put on some protective foot wear and venture back to the post-apocalyptic wastelands of economy to check that no feral dogs have eaten my friend yet. I ask what he ate for dinner. “Some chicken shit” is his reply and I decide it’s best not to mention the banquette my stunning hostess presented me with earlier (although I can’t resist showing him a video I took of my gorgeous metal cutlery). He tries to hide his plastic spork under a napkin but it’s too late, I’ve already seen it. The poor bastard.

It’s a tearful goodbye as I disembark, and though I’d like to think that the fact I was upgraded on the way out could mean I’ll get upgraded again on the way back, I think both the stewardess and I know that our time together is over. She doesn’t look quite as gutted about this fact as I am, but I’m pretty sure she’s just putting on a brave face. If only I could see under all that make-up I’d know for sure…

Once on the ground and back in the land of unexceptional average people, I slip back into the moribund disguise of my hollow life with ease. To look at me you wouldn’t know I travel as a sophisticate, but I don’t mind. I like to spend time with ‘the normals’ as I think it builds character.

With a tight schedule and plenty to do, it’s almost immediately off to the eye clinic for me, as I have a batch of tests to sort before my scheduled operation the next morning. Everything’s going well, right until they bring me a wad of disclaimers to sign.

Now I’d never sign up for a treatment involving burning light being fired into my brain on a whim, so prior to the procedure I’d talked to various people who’d been through the surgery themselves, read up on supportive statistics and grilled the hell out of my own surgeon on email for months. Nothing, however, could prepare me for the list I was presented with now. The likes of: “I understand that I might end up blind” was top of the sheet, followed by such gems as: “I understand that I could spend the rest of my life trying to tell the difference between men and women using only the power of smell”.

My nurse was a classic Las Vegas woman in her 50s, with way too much make-up and a sun-baked face that wouldn’t look out of place at the World of Leather on the A13. “Elenor” I asked, “Is this form designed to make me shit myself?” She smiled back. “I wouldn’t worry about it honey,” she reassured me. “I had my eyes done a while back and it was fine.” With that she handed me a pen, gestured for me to sign away all responsibility, and left the room. It was only once she’d gone I realised she’d been wearing glasses. Oh fuck.

It was, however, too late - my mind was made up. The next day I went back, had a man cut off the tops of my eyes, fire lasers into them and then put the tops of my eyes back on. ‘Weird’ doesn’t quite cover the sensation, but then again nor does ‘fucking awful’. It was like being abducted by aliens, only aliens with an eye fetish rather than a propensity to stick things up your arse while mutilating cattle (which on reflection is probably a good thing).

Later that day I stood at the top of the Rio’s VooDoo lounge looking in wonder and awe as the Las Vegan sun went down over the mountains and the lights came on along The Strip. I’d like to pretend my tears were tears of joy brought on by seeing properly with my own eyes for the first time, but actually it’s just that they really fucking hurt. It would be wrong of me not to thank Ladbrokes for inviting me to that particular party as it was a hell of a way to test out my new peepers. The invite did come at a cost though, as I had to bear witness to a bunch of teenage cheerleaders attempting to get us all to chant “We love Ladbrokes” (pronounced Lad-Brokes rather than Lad-Brooks). It was like being at a Nazi rally (I imagine). Needless to say the predominantly British crowd stood with their arms folded and their lips clamped shut. It was painful, but not as painful as my sodding eyes so I just shut them and waited for the cheerleaders to go away (not a sentence I ever thought I’d find myself saying, I can tell you).

I made good use of my new bionic eyes during the next few days, watching some amazing poker, bumping (quite literally) into some of the best players on the planet (inlcuding - might I add - one Kara Scott!) and discovering the delights of beer pong (more on that another time perhaps). However, I’m probably due for more eye drops sometime soon so i’d best go give them a rest.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t get upgraded on the way back, but I did steal a spork and looked through their underwear with my magic eyes, so effectively I had the last laugh. The tight bastards.

PokerStars guarantee a 2008 World Series of Poker Champion by sponsoring every poker player on Earth

2008-06-06T15:39:00.001+01:00

Pokerstars today secured its chances of owning the next World Series of Poker Champion by signing up every poker player on the planet to Team Pokerstars. The company’s CEO made the announcement in a morning press conference at the Rio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada: “With these acquisitions we’re in a position to finally nab that elusive 5th WSOP Champion”. The PPA approved the signing, noting that there was no reason why other companies couldn’t remain competitive just because they lack players.

Hallelujah! Praise be Rule 36

2008-06-06T13:16:00.001+01:00

Apart from the obvious general excitement of the tournament, something I’m very much looking forward during the 2008 WSOP is the introduction of Rule 36. In case you’re not familiar with this new section within Hurrah’s terms and penalties, it’s basically designed to do something I’ve always wanted to do: namely punch Hevad Khan squarely in the mouth as hard as I can.

If you’ve not witnessed this poker penis in full flight at the table, might I suggest that you very quickly run a youtube search for “Hevad Khan Montage” or just dump this url into your browser: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kh49fHFMUTg

Watched it? Good. Have you EVER seen anyone so desperate for a camera crew to come round and take their picture? (And did your arse not heal over with embarrassment as the ENTIRE audience dismissed Khan like a retarded child as he attempted to get them to play along with him?) Seriously, I don’t think he could have been any more off the mark had he invited them all to finger paint in human faeces with him.

I can’t help it – I just HATE this sort of behaviour at the table. I mean the guy is an adult! He MUST have played poker before. He MUST have been called with the best hand before. He MUST have won a pot a few times. The guy is meant to be a ‘professional’ poker player. Just how excited can you get every time something goes right?
Though I don’t often play in the sort of games that are likely to throw Hevad and I together on the same table (I don’t think he is a big fan of the £100 freezeout down the Loose Cannon), if it ever does happen I fear for my future. If he pulls any of that “BULLDOZER!” malarkey near me I am likely to lose it and go about seeing how many $500 chips I can fit into his eye sockets. Similarly, if he starts dancing with any chairs while in a pot with me I WILL burn him repeatedly with a car cigarette lighter. That’s just the way I roll…
Thankfully I need not fear any ‘hilarious antics’ from such idiots this year because Rule 36 is here. Thanks to this little beauty, Hurrahs will be stepping in to penalise players who display: “excessive celebration through extended theatrics, inappropriate behaviour, or physical actions, gestures of conduct.”

Personally I can’t wait to see Khan win a meager $T250 pot in the first level and then receive a 10 minute penalty for getting his arse out and pooing on the table in celebration. Maybe it won’t happen, but I’ll be keeping a very close eye on YouTube for the next six weeks I can tell you!

Devilfish pronounced ‘Dead on the Inside’

2008-04-30T16:54:00.000+01:00

Emergency medical technicians admitted today that they were two years too late to resuscitate David ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott, who had apparently succumbed to a long battle with crippling disappointment.

After unsuccessful attempts to revive Ulliott’s soul with the promise of half an hour in the back of a limo with Shannon Elizabeth and Vanessa Rousso, Devilfish’s was pronounced dead on the inside at the scene.

Paramedic, Kevin Baxter said: “If we could have got to him before the Premier League began we might have had a chance. No one can withstand that kind of emotional trauma.”

Ulliott’s soul is survived by his own hollow shell, which is expected to sleepwalk through a meaningless existence for the next thirty years.

Toys Toys Toys

2008-03-26T13:31:00.001Z

In the process of researching for the various articles I write, I get to play with all manner of poker-related toys, many of which - needless to say - are aimed at online players. Not least of these virtual gadgets are the various applications that plug into your online game and promise to make you a Hold ‘em god by working out everything for you; often going as far as telling you exactly what to do down to the last FOLD, CALL and CHECK. How exactly you’re meant to have fun watching one piece of software tell you which button to press on another piece of software is beyond me, but some people swear by these glorified calculators. If that gets you going, why not pay to watch one robot to toss another robot off. Just a thought…

These bits of software are clever to be sure; calculating things like pots odds, remaining outs in the deck, the time in Berlin, personal horoscopes, etc. but they also remove the need to think - much in the same way the invention of toasters removed man’s essential need to create fire.

Though these applications position themselves as great tools for beginners, I couldn’t disagree more. If you don’t learn to play poker by fruitlessly chasing wild hands with unfavourable odds, how will you learn not to? If you don’t make up the small blind with 8-3 only to have the BB push all-in and make you dump the junk you should have folded in the first place, how will your game ever develop naturally? It’s like telling kids not to touch the iron. It’s not that children don’t believe you; it’s just that it becomes MUCH clearer why you shouldn’t touch an iron once you’ve actually touched an iron. You can’t be afraid to get your fingers burnt in the name of education.

Obviously please do feel free to fire up one of these little toys because it’s interesting to see the logic that drives what (hopefully) has become your poker instinct. Just don’t just do what it says without thinking or the next thing you know the dishwasher will be telling you to make it dinner… and you’ll do it.

Some of my specific issues with these helpful applications include:
1) They just aren’t always right (anyone who has been told to fold K8s in an un-raised pot by Sky Poker’s ‘Hot-O-Meter’ will fully appreciate what I mean by this).
2) There’s no room for your own style to shine through (I personally love to raise with 7-5o in the cut-off with three limpers before me)
3) If you learn how to play poker with all these computerised crutches, how the hell will you cope when you have to play without your suite of Batcave enhancements?

Someone once said, “No pain, no gain” and they weren’t just referring to those gym-frequenting men who look like sausages, shout “Who’s your daddy!” a lot, and are a little too fond of mirrors. You can certainly be told how to play poker, but that doesn’t mean you’ll instantly understand how to play poker. Comprende? It’s not just the destination my friends, it’s the journey.

So learn as millions before you have. Lose a ton of games and win a few. Run your KK run into AA twenty times on the trot. Basically enjoy the process of building up your own feel for positive and negative situations.

In a world where too many folk learn poker online and then fall apart in live games (when expected to know what’s in the pot without it being conveniently displayed in Arial font on the table somewhere) I personally can’t think of a worse way to learn poker than these HAL wannabies (“I’m sorry Dave, you can check. Are you sure you want to fold? Mary had a little lamb…”)

So, young padawan, be like Luke Skywalker when he turns of his targeting computer (and scares the absolute shit out of the people likely to be blown up if he plops his bomb down the wrong hole) and turn off all the HUD displays currently fighting for space on your screen. Turn your back on the quick and easy path and go ‘poker commando’. Oh, and may the force be with you.

SHAZAM!

2008-01-30T11:52:00.000Z

If there’s one reason to get up early in Vegas (and let’s be honest, early morning aren’t exactly what Vegas is about) it’s to beat the morning tournament registration queues that have become a regular occurrence since everyone else became interested in poker. The sods.

One particular morning I even went down to the MGM poker room in my pajamas and complimentary dressing gown as a dirty protest against not being able to register remotely. The fact that no one raised an eyebrow or mentioned my choice of dress just confirmed that I was indeed in Vegas.

On the morning of this particular tale I was fortunate enough to bump into a rarity at the poker tables: a genuine psychic. No, really… Having organised my registration (and then danced gaily along the massive queue, waving my slip like a Willy Wonka golden ticket) I headed off for some hang-over breakfast action.

Returning 35 minutes later from a ludicrously large egg-based breakfast at the New York New York, my guts were fit to burst and gurgling like a dishwasher as an epic battle took place between three embittered factions: Sunny-Side-Ups, Scrambled, and Over-Easy. Happy in my egg-bound way (no toilet break would be required for at least 16 hours) I sat down at a limit cash game to kill some time before the tourney started.

For an impromptu time-filling game I did pretty well; with a couple of players on my table being kind enough to keep pumping their chips into losing pots like hemorrhaging Hungry Hippos. The rest of the cash session was actually reasonably dull until the poker room manager started calling for the tournament to begin and I played one last hand in a "getting-up-ready-to-leave" fashion.

78 offsuit would be my last hand of the game, kindly transforming into two pair on the flop. Now I've not mentioned any of my table chums yet, but hats off to the Vietnamese guy to my left who had attained the ranking of shit-faced before the clock even struck eleven. He was also ‘gifted’ with mystic psychic powers; magically able to tell you exactly what cards you had… (once you'd shown them to him, obviously).

It was pretty hard to take him seriously and also a tad tedious to be sat next to him. However, as his mind-bending powers hadn’t prevented him from financing my own personal rampage I’d been more than happy to let him dazzle himself with Derren Brown flights of fancy while I siphoned off his beer money.

Anyway, back to the 78 hand, which had developed into a surprisingly large affair thanks to my psychic chum and a solid player opposite raising and re-raising everything I threw at them. The board had become, frankly, fucking scary; with both flush and straight possibilities that had started to make my two pairs look somewhat wobbly… but I stuck with it, praying in turn to each of the many poker gods I worship (well, you have to hedge your bets) for a little act of kindness. Miracle of miracles, the river sent another 7 my way for a full house, and I knew for a fact that Mystic Mong hadn’t vaguely got a read on me despite his apparent Jedi mind-powers. Anyway, I went for maximum pay-off, pushing as much in front of me as the limit allowed. The smart guy opposite finally got out of the way allowing me and Brainiac to get on with it; handbags practically on the table at this point.

Now clearly I’m a particularly petty, self-centered man, so I couldn’t help but smile my absolute arse off when he flipped over his nothing of a hand and I dropped the bomb, only to hear him issue forth: "I knew you had the straight".

"Look again Mesmo!" I spat, finally reaching the point of no return, “I’ve got the house!”

"Yes,” he said, “I knew you had that".

“So why did you say you knew I had a straight just three seconds ago, you muppet?”

As I heard myself, I realised I was doing little for the game or people’s opinions of how Brits behave at the poker table. So I took a deep breath and gathered up my chips - spending an ENORMOUS amount of time lovingly arranging them into a rack while my ‘friend’ watched - before heading off to the tournament.

Behind me all I could hear was some mumbling and yet another bottle of Corona being ordered - no doubt to be opened using only the power of his awesome mind. Shazam.

We are the champions

2008-01-21T17:01:00.000Z

Picture the scene: Tiger Woods has won yet another golf tournament. He’s been followed round the entire course by cheering fans and well-wishers for the entire time. His opponents have played valiantly - nay brilliantly - and given him a real run for his money, but ultimately he has triumphed.

He steps up to receive his trophy in front of the assembled press, turns to the cameras and says: “You are nothing to me. You are all losers and turds. I am the best in the world, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I get bored playing on my own I wouldn’t even acknowledge you exist.” He then throws his clubs to the ground and strops off muttering to himself about how totally rubbish everyone is apart from him.

Then we turn over to BBC2 and find six-time snooker World Champion, Steve Davis, watching his opponent pot the final black against him in a frame. He turns to the camera and mouths the word “CUNT” before spitting at the lens; his fat lugie slowly sliding down millions of screens nationwide…

Now let me make it perfectly clear that neither of these events actually took place – nor do I imagine they ever would – and that’s the point about REAL champions. They aren’t just champions in their chosen discipline; they are champions in life. It’s easy for us to see this because of how they behave outside their arenas; i.e. how they respect their contemporaries and how they carry themselves day to day.

Oh, and then there is Phil Hellmuth. Yes, Phil ‘Poker Brat’ Hellmuth. A man who appears to derive no joy from the millions of dollars he’s made both on and off the table. A man who is never content enough to simply sit and ‘be’. A man who has to berate and insult ordinary decent folk during a GAME OF CARDS to feel like a real man.

I recently watched a WSOP show in disbelief as Hellmuth proceeded to blast anyone who appeared to be able to even vaguely play back at him; spitting insults, criticising every move, and referring to anyone with less than 11 bracelets as mere “internet players”. After being patronised twenty times (and being continually called “kid” by Hellmuth) one player on the table - Ben Fineman - ventured, “Phil, we’ve been playing each other for days now. Do you even know my name?”

Every time Hellmuth was all-in (or up against an all-in) he would parade for the cameras; showboating and negotiating insurance with a spectating Phil Ivey, regardless of the poor schmuck sitting waiting for the circus to end so that he could find out if he was still in the tournament or not. Imagine what Phil would do if you made him wait five minutes while you dicked about before the flop was dealt? He’d explode!

At one point Ben Fineman called an all-in with A-K against Dustin Holmes’ K-10 only to watch as Dustin rivered trip tens. If that had been Hellmuth just imagine how much of the level would have been wasted while he blarted curses into the sky like some angry poker trumpet. All Ben did was turn to a sheepish-looking Dustin and say “Don’t sweat it buddie”, before sitting down and carrying on with the game. Amazing composure - truly.

And then there’s Phil’s exit hand. He raises with Ac-10c and Beth Shak calls with Kh-Qh. The flop comes 10-Q-x and Beth shoves all-in. Phil calls and when he sees that he has the worst hand, does he acknowledge that he has made a mistake? Oh no – it’s HER fault!! “I can’t believe she called!” he bleats. “How can she call!?” Well Phil, maybe it’s the fact that she was in the big blind, was getting 2.5-1 on her money, and then flopped top pair! And the thing is, we KNOW that Hellmuth knows this, so his wining is even more pitiful to behold.

I’d love to think that it’s all just for the cameras, but it clearly isn’t – he really is that much of a moron! Hellmuth is the kind of person that I pray no one watches on TV and wants to be like.

Do I want his success? Of course. Do I want his personality? Christ no. Personally, I want to be like Ben Fineman, who proved to me that just because you have to sit next to a total imbecile like Hellmuth doesn’t mean you have to act like him.

I go back to my very first thoughts in this entry. Go on: chose any sport and think of a champion from that sport. Now try to imagine them behaving the way Hellmuth does.

Roger Federer smashing some kid in the face with his racket? Alex Furguson calling Wenger an 'utter wanker' live on Match of the Day? Johny Wilkinson drop-kicking a toddler into touch if he loses? It’s just not going to happen is it…

So why, then, is Phil Hellmuth allowed to act in such a rude, insulting, pathetic way without penalty? Burn him - I say - and burn his face first (metaphorically-speaking of course - I have to add for legal reasons). Anyway, thanks for listening. I feel much better now.

Don't stand still

2008-01-11T13:16:00.000Z

About three years ago the most common question I got asked as a TV pundit was ‘what starting hands should I play with?’ We, the presenters, just looked at each other, sighed, and replied ‘pocket pairs from 9-9 upwards and A-K’ (while probably mumbling something sarcastic under our breath incorporating the words “Christ” and “Muppet”). It was – suffice to say - an unsophisticated answer for an unsophisticated question.

Jump forward in time to present day and I’m now more likely to be asked (by a beginner I hasten to add) how to trap a tight-aggressive early-positioned opponent in light of a raise and a re-raise while holding the nut straight with a second-nut flush draw. There’s a very good chance that this query will be accompanied by a full hand history and Poker Tracker data. Times – my friends - they are a’ changing.

The interesting thing for me is identifying those people within the world of poker who move with the times and those that sit, quiet and smug - entirely self-assured that they are the real-deal - while the rest of the world accelerates off into the distance waving ‘ta-ta’ back over their shoulders.

Curiously, the development of industries is not a subject new to me. A large part of my training to be a marketeer (don’t worry – this was during my old life!) was looking at case studies for various companies in various markets. If there’s one thing that holds true across all of them, it’s that change is inevitable, and if you chose to stand still you must be prepared to watch your competitors sprinting past you for the finish line, no matter how far ahead you were when last you checked your rear-view mirror, so to speak.

This entire train of thought/rambling/BS (feel free to delete as you find applicable) was kicked off by two strategy pieces sitting back-to-back in Poker Player Magazine.

The first piece was from online marvel Brian ‘sbrugby’ Townsend. It contained the kind of deep, analytical thinking that has become synonymous with today’s online professional. For example: “…unless my opponent has a pocket pair larger than Jacks, a bigger flush draw or a set, I am at worst even-money from this point forward. If he has A-9 without the flush draw I’m still a 52% favourite. He could be holding Jacks or better, but it’s unlikely as I viewed the player as loose and one who’s willing to gamble with marginal hands.” Wow – is this guy’s opponent screwed or what!

Then we turn the page and bump into the familiar grinning mug of Phil Hellmuth. Ah Phil… bless him: the only man on Earth who can tell you story where he gets the crap kicked out of him but he still emerges (somehow) victorious. It’s like Alan Partridge ending every painful anecdote with, “Needless to say, I had the last laugh.”

So, on the back of Brian Townsend’s thoughtful insight, what kind of tactical analysis can we expect from ever-humble Hellmuth? Well, Phil kicks off with: “Imagine this: I’m playing poorly in the $5,000 No-Limit Short-Handed event at the WSOP.” What!? You’re playing poorly? How am I meant to imagine that, Phil! I mean, I like to think I have a pretty vivid imagination, but that’s simply too much to ask of me!

Anyway, in a beautiful Hellmuth-shaped turnaround (totally unexpected, obviously *ahem*) Phil suddenly turns on the heat and becomes brilliant again. Phew - thank god for that!

He talks us through one hand, ending with: “I love the fact that I stayed so aggressive in this hand.” Do you Phil? Do you really love it? Do you love it so much that you went home and pleasured yourself? I do hope so…

Other classic story-ending statements of self-congratulations include: “Player A folds and I feel like a superhero”, “Wow, what a beautiful three hands!” and my personal favourite: “One theme common to all of the above hands is this: I was either reading my opponents well or throwing them off the scent by giving out false tells”. Remember kids: Phil Hellmuth is remarkable. Just ask him. Or his mum.

I guess my point (that’s right folks, I have a point!) is that Phil is old school and starting to sound like a poker-parody joke. Indeed, as ludicrous as it may seem this early in their careers, to a degree even the likes of Esfandiari, Laak and Hanson are ‘old school’. Today’s poker players are younger, fitter, healthier, and less worried about TV time and selling DVDs than they are about playing good poker. They’re hungry poker machines that want to eat chips and poo pound coins (or wads of dollar bills depending upon relative nationality, aspirations and anus size).

Right now the spotlight still moves to highlight the dancing clowns first, but more and more it seems the majority of the audience are turning to watch the clever young jugglers over in the corner. So, you just have to ask yourself; do you want to be entertained or educated? Well, whichever you chose, please enjoy the circus.

Don't feed the animals

2007-11-30T16:52:00.000Z

I’ve probably said this so many times over the last two years that it’s becoming more farcical with each utterance, but I REALLY want to play more live poker.
I recently picked up a sponsorship deal that evaporated almost before it had begun, when the company decided to almost instantly fuck off out of the industry (I’m only 90% sure that their departure wasn’t my fault).

Anyway, before the wheelbarrow of cash trundled off into the distance I managed to be late for two of the staked tournaments (days before the law changed to allow late appearances!) made the final table bubble in another comp, and – as I write – am days away from playing in the last of my sponsored games. I’m so glad I have a garage filled with branded T-shirts.

The key point here thought is not about the sponsorship (I just needed to get it off my chest) but about the joys of playing in live games.

Yes, it helps develop your game; yes, it helps you develop your reading skills; yes, it’s a more social ways to approach the game. Yes, yes, yes…

However, what I’d like to concern myself with today is the fact that playing live poker allows you to meet the freaks. Smelly, stupid, egotistical, bullying, know-nothing morons who play a £10 sit and go like it’s the WSOP and are more than happy to pretend they’re Tony G when it comes to slagging you off for calling their minimum raise with 8-8, hitting trips and cracking their pocket aces.

I recently found myself in a £20 afternoon freeze-out at the Gutshot as part of a media event. Things were improved by the fact that a fellow journalist and keen poker player was sat to my right, so I could at least enjoy his company (as well as re-raise him for chuckles every time he tried to enter the pot.)

We sat examining our table chums… and BOY had we struck gold! I kid you not, it was like the poker zoo was in town and all the animals had stopped at our table to graze.

Exhibit A: The Donkey.
He handled his chips like they were oversized carrots and, when he accidentally made an under-bet, was told by a friendly player ‘it needs to be at least double the previous bet’. The donkey looked insulted. “Yes,” he honked, “I DO know how to bet”. He then proceeded to prove otherwise by calling a raise and a re-raise for all his chips with that monster of hands A-Q off-suit (I, incidentally, folded before him with AhQh, so his chances were ‘slim’ at best). As he trotted off sans chips I wondered if he even knew how to spell ‘Bet’ let alone how to do it.

Exhibit B: The Ape
This physically large specimen was all over the table like a hairy rash. Lining up flops, tidying chips, sorting out side-pots that didn’t involve him… he didn’t care what it was; if it was happening on the table he was in charge of it. At one point I needed a wee and was worried he’d come down with me to ensure all was ship-shape in the trouser department.

He’d routinely pretend to be Thomas Kremser, spouting rules based loosely on the actual rules, but displaying none of the authority, poise, or actual knowledge required to take over a table in such a way. He was also the master of calling your hand, and even after 10 or so miserable failures, was still more than happy to announce “Jacks” with all the certainty of a man telling you how many feet he had regardless of the 7-8 in your hand. When he was finally out of the game, he was able to tell us all in great detail exactly why it was his fault for playing too well against such ill-equipped competition. Whatever. We didn’t care. We had all his hairy chips in our stacks.

Exhibit C: The Peacock
A magnificent puffed-up prancing cock with his glorious tail feathers on display for all to see. He was a hardcore poker pro who’d obviously been there, seen that, and had played poker for more years than you’ve had hot dinners (sonny). He even knew a chip trick. Yes, ‘a chip trick’. The only problem was that he had to bring his own ‘special’ chip (that his mum probably made for him) in order to do this trick, making it somehow less special, and also that much more sad. Oh, and he also had a lucky stone that protected his cards. Seriously, this boy was well kitted out for a £20 freeze-out. If he could have afforded to bring a masseuse to the room I’m pretty sure she would have been there; reluctantly squeezing his fat bonce while he played with his little pebble.

When my chum raised into his big blind, the peacock stared him down and spat: “the next time you raise my big blind I’m going all-in blind”. I don’t think our roaring, table-slapping, howling laughter and five minute piss-take was quite the result he’d hoped for, but it certainly made our day. He even stood up and put his jacket on every time he went all-in with the absolute nuts. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Anyway, you get the idea. Don’t sit at home enjoying poker, get out and enjoy people. Some of them are quite decent folk, and some of them are fucking hilarious. Happy hunting.

It ain't easy

2007-11-17T11:55:00.000Z

Probably the Holy Grail for most poker players is getting some kind of sponsorship deal. The thought of being able to play with the best poker players on the planet without having to personally stump up thousands in cash sounds like a dream come true. Oh, and the prize money is hardly a put-off either…
I recently had this dream realised, when a company called WINunited decided to make me a sponsored player – representing them in a bunch of UK tournaments.

Now I always thought the tough part of the tournament circuit was the long hours of focus required at the felt; the punishing ‘fold fold fold’ of card-dead levels; the grim buffets; having Tony G slag your mum off to your face while Devilfish tries to get off with your girlfriend, etc. However, I’ve recently found that the hardest part of the gig is actually getting to the bloody games in the first place!

With the GUKPT taking place in nearby Luton, it seemed the perfect opportunity to unwrap my freshly-branded shirt and get things going at the tables. Having had the funds transferred to my account, I logged into the official GUKPT site just to be sure I had the details right. There it was: Wednesday 8th August, £300 PL Omaha, 8pm. Superb. With Luton about an hour’s drive from my gaff I thought I’d set out at about 5:30pm, giving myself plenty of time to get familiar with the venue, have a natter with anyone I knew there, and just generally prepare myself for the event. If the traffic was bad, I’d still be there no later than 7pm (7:30pm if it was REALLY bad).

I found myself too distracted to work during the day so ended up killing time playing Mah Jong for money (I’ll tell you more about that another time) until about 5pm when I thought I’d start gathering up my bits and pieces and prepare for the zip up to Luton. As well as the iPod, I’d also remembered to power up my trusty Tom Tom so that it could take charge of dragging my lazy arse up to Luton without having to think. I often worry that I’ve become too reliant on the Tom Tom. If it ever breaks down I’ll have to make a life for myself wherever I am at the time – I’ll never find my way back home without it.

Anyway, I decided to do a quick internet search to get the venue’s postcode for the GPS, so Googled the casino rather than jump direct to the GUKPT site I’d mostly been referring to. Up popped the address, along with the tournament listings. But something was wrong... On this site it had the £300 PLO as a 6pm event. The fools! They’d only gone and put the wrong time on their own site! How laughable. I mean… unless the official GUKPT site had got it wrong.... Nah. That was a ludicrous idea. I mean, how likely was it that the official site would be so stupid as to get the time wrong for their own event? Gulp…

I decided to call the card room anyway, you know, ‘just to be sure’: “Hello there. You’ll probably think I’m being silly (chortled I, nervously) but I just wanted to check that the time of the £300 Omaha event hasn’t changed.” “No sir,” I was reassured, “it’s still at 6pm.” AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG!

Sadly, no amount of Tom Tom-foolery or disregard for British speed limits could get me round the M25 and up the roadwork-laden M1 in anything less than an hour and a half, leaving me standing in the tournament room watching everyone play in MY tournament. I’ve never really understood the phrase crest-fallen, but my ‘crest’ was not only fallen, but dragging along the floor like a prolapsed anus.

All I could do was use the opportunity to register for the £1k Main Event in two days time, grab a free coffee, and shuffle back to my car and the pitiful stare of my GPS. “Take me home Tom Tom, take me home…”

Monte Carlo or Bust pt.3

2007-10-02T11:42:00.000+01:00

Well I’ll give you this – you’ve got stamina! I mean the EPT Grand Final was only, what, seven months ago, and here I am still prattling on about it! Then again, short of coming down to my office and holding a gun to my head there’s not a lot do to stop me is there? Why not click the 'close' button now and save us all the bother?
No?
Ok – then let’s carry on…

As you’ll no doubt remember (possibly – I started this story a long while ago) the nice people from PokerStars’ PR agency very kindly flew me out to Monte Carlo to interview poker’s superstars and report on the EPT Grand Final. As is always the way on these trips, lots of ‘things’ happen to me along the way, all of which I’m more than happy to record on my ever-present digital recorder to later bore/entertain(?) you with. When I finished up last entry I had suggested that masseuses with large breasts were a great idea, and that Patrik Antonius had a head like a jacket potato. Really high-brow stuff then clearly. Let’s continue…

Having previously set up a nice little portable office outside my sliding balcony door, I wake up actually looking forward to getting outside and doing some work. Ordering the hotel’s signature ‘bloody expensive omelette’, I gather my bits together and head for the door. However, I’m stopped in my tracks, as there appears to be something outside my balcony trying to get in. I say ‘something’ rather than ‘someone’ because I can see a shape pounding against my door, but from only about two feet off the floor. Having gone to bed late and full of red wine - and therefore slightly fuzzy this morning - my barely adequate mental functions are unable to come up with any reasonable explanation for this, so I decide it’s probably best to just sit back down on the bed and wait for it to go away. Please.

After a minute or two the pounding stops and I decide to open the door. Peeking through a tiny slit as only really heroic men can… JESUS CHRIST! There is – no word of a lie – a seagull the size of a badger sitting on my balcony wall. In his beak – nay, his crushing jaws – he holds a large Coke cup that he has clearly been wielding as a battering ram. Whether he wants to come in, or simply wants me out, I couldn’t say, but I certainly didn’t want to take him on mano-e-gullo to find out. It wasn’t that I wanted to hand over my hotel keys to the vicious-looking bugger, but visions of headlines back in England to the tune of: “Pathetic Brit eaten alive by enormous seagull” certainly had me on the back foot.

As if to prove a point, the seagull/badger picks up the cup and starts bashing it up and down against the balcony. This clearly serves no other purpose than intimidation; showing me what he plans to do if he ever gets hold of my bonce. With this, I tip my hat in his general direction, and reverse back through the balcony door. In my mind I hear: “beep beep… this coward is reversing… beep beep”, but I don’t care. I want to get home with both eyes still in my head rather than being bashed up and down on a balcony wall until liquid gold (or whatever it is the gull thinks is stashed within my peepers) spills forth.

Rather than spending ten euros on a five minute cab ride, I can walk from my hotel to the tournament venue buy taking a not-unpleasant fifteen minute stroll down something called “The Champions’ Parade”. Though I personally struggle to think of anyone who came from Monte Carlo who might be considered a hero, I’m still rather surprised to find George Best’s hand and foot prints in the pavement. Now I’m not one to suggest they were struggling to find ‘champions’ from Monte Carlo and grasping at straws, but let’s just say I wouldn’t be too surprised to find Bob Marley or perhaps those two lesbos from Tatu wedged into the parade somewhere down the road.

I make it to the tournament (no sign of that seagull, you’ll be glad to hear) and go about the business of sweating a friend of mine (let’s call him ‘Arny’) who’s still in the main even. I’m particularly interested not note that three seats to Arny’s left is Mark Teltcher. Now I don’t like to bitch in these pages (*ahem*) but when I went to Google Mark’s surname to be sure I’d spelt it correctly, I was drawn towards the second result from the search engine. A link that led me to the blog of a popular young poker player, who let rip with: “I had the pleasure of playing Mark Teltcher, who won the London EPT last year. He was without doubt one of the biggest arseholes I've ever met.” So I guess you could say there’s no love lost there then.

I of course don’t want to get involved in this fight, but I will tell you that my friend Arny also happens to ‘dislike’ Mr Teltcher. In fact, Arny ‘dislikes’ him so much that when we were here for the EPT Grand Final last year Arny went up to Teltcher late one night in a bar and pretended to be a journalist who thought Mark was “The Future of Poker”, and asked if he might grab the golden one for an impromptu interview.

Mark – who I’m reliably informed has ‘a bit of an ego’ – obviously agreed to the interview, and for the next 15 minutes was quizzed by Arny who put on the plumiest Tim Nice-but-dim voice you’ve ever heard, and held up what was quite obviously a digital camera to Mark’s mouth as if it was a dictaphone. He also asked some of the most mock-sycophantic questions ever, including the likes of: “How can you be so bloody awesome at poker mate?” and “Do you think you were just born with this gift?” It wasn’t big or clever, but it was fucking funny.

Anyway, back in the tournament room a noise rings out that’s familiar to me but seems totally out of place and is therefore hard to fathom. This sound has clearly registered with a large number of other folk in the room, who are all now looking around like people in a lift who suspect someone might have farted.

I look up to the massive screens that show the tournament details, and realise why the noise was familiar - it’s an error alert that my laptop dishes out. The screens normally busy displaying all the information relevant to the tournament (players, blinds, time, etc) are now proudly announcing: “Low battery. You should change your battery or switch to oulet power immediately to keep from losing your work”. With that, pretty much every manager and dealer in the place bolts towards the same spot – presumably some nook with a magic laptop secretly running the whole European Poker Tour in Microsoft Excel. It’s like they pulled back the curtains and found that not only was the Wizard of Oz an old bloke in a dressing gown, but he was also on his hands and knees having a wank. Ah, the magic revealed…

With the laptop plugged in and normal service resumed, another emergeny occurs on table twenty three; this time a severe trouser malfunction. It appears some ‘youth’ - who clearly knows a lot more about poker than he does about wearing clothes properly – is suffering from an unusual condition that has lead to the waistband of his jeans falling level with the backs of his knees while his paisley knickers hang out for all to see. Regardless of just how bloody stupid this looks, I’m sure it’s very popular with the younger men. As a teen, I myself would often pull my socks up over my genitals and hang a Burton’s tie out of my arse. Fickle fasion eh?

Having seen quite enough for one day, I head back down the ‘Champion’s Parade’ keeping an eye out for the seagull. Luckily for me there’s no sign of the bugger, and I can only imagine he’s sitting on a hotel balcony somewhere, savagely tearing into some hapless Brit’s face.

Back at the hotel bar a group of us meet for a drink, but talk soon moves to thoughts of a quick game of poker. Though all present are keen on the game, we’re a mixed group, passing through all levels of ‘skill’. All the way from two hardcore Swedes who want to play for serious money, right through to a PR girl who thinks you need two decks of cards to play Hold’em. I can see we’re in for an ‘interesting game’, but comply none the less, trying to work out what we can use for chips.

Looking down at our table I notice a small box of matches in an ashtray… hmm.
Each box only holds twelve matches, but with a bit of thought – and LOTS more boxes – we might just make this work.

I explain my plan. We’ll break each match in two. The halves with the head are worth 100, the halves without, 25s, and the boxes are worth 500 each. Genius! Now we just need more matches. Leave this to me…

"Stealth". "Cunning". "Guile". Just some of the words that might be used to describe how I sauntered around the bar, ‘flying casual’ as it were, stealing boxes of matches en route. At one point I had about twenty five boxes in my trouser pockets. Had there been a fire, everyone could have gathered round and roasted marshmallows while I ‘genied’ like a roman candle.
At one point I catch the eye of the waitress whose job it is to ensure they tables all have clean ashtrays and matchboxes. She squints at me suspiciously; trying to work out why her job has suddenly become so much more demanding despite the fact that the bar is near empty. I chuckle to myself. The perfect crime!

I return triumphant to the table, but all eyes are over my shoulder. I turn around and find myself face-to-face with the waitress who is wearing the sort of face that practically spells out the phrase “you pathetic twat”. Without saying a word she drops 50 boxes of matches onto the table, spins around and stomps off. So much for the perfect crime... Anyway, who fancies a game of poker!

Monte Carlo or Bust pt.2

2007-07-19T17:49:00.000+01:00

So… last time I attempted to entertain you with my take on the preliminary stages of the Monte Carlo EPT. The bad news? There’s more!

In the main tournament room, I’m scribbling away at my note book – making notes on interesting table draws – when Hendon Monbster, Barny Boatman walks in. I find myself hiding because I still owe him 50p (he lent me some change for a parking meeting outside the Ladbrokes casino a month or so back). It then dawns on me that, considering the company I’m in, hunting down a stray 50p is probably a long way down Barny’s debt collecting priorities right now.

An hour into the game and Hellmuth still hasn’t arrived. Famous for these late appearances, anyone with a spare seat at their table is literally playing every single pot in an attempt to get as many chips stashed away before The Brat arrives to rape them all. Metaphorically speaking, obviously.

A journo (who managed to trick the gullible PR team into buying him into the main event) waddles over: “I’ve got Chris Moneymaker on my table. I’m off for a shit.” Now whether these two statements are related or merely next to each other chronologically I couldn’t say. I personally love to play against such poker luminaries; but then again I had eggs for breakfast so am probably less likely to shit myself if a World Champion pushes all-in against me than most of these Red Bull-fuelled lads.

I bump into Katja Thater (magnificent at about 6ft 5” in heels incidentally). Out of 650 players, she somehow managed to defy the odds and draw the same table as her husband. One can only imaging the quality of pillow talk if one of the Thaters knocks the other out. I wonder just how long conjugal rights are suspended if you knock out your wife to the tune of €10,000?

I’m a big fan of Mr David Devilfish (as I like to call him) but he is gradually turning into that guy from The Fast Show (the one who’s your dad’s age, but is clinging onto his youth for dear life). Resplendent in leather biker jacket, ripped designer jeans, dark glasses… well, I never thought I’d say it, but I find myself wishing he’d go back to the old gangster suits. He does, however, make an amazing laydown on the river holding KK against a guy with AA who slow plays it to the river. Dave loses the hand but saves a considerable amount of chips. He turns round and shrugs at me. He’s seen this a million times…

AK is easily the most over-played hand I see all tournament. In one hand a guy with big slick can’t resist going all-in despite a board containing an ace (of course) a pair of threes and three hearts. Needless to say a slightly more cunning player has 7h8h and lets his AK-obsessed friend know how it feels to only have 1,000 in chips at only the 3rd level.

Almost as if the poker gods can’t help further punishing ‘AK boy’, he (now very short-stacked) pushes in with Q-8 on a queen-high board only to run into Q-K. He can only survive by hitting one of the three eights left in the deck, and on the river… he does. Those poker gods are sick bastards. What a silly silly game poker is. Never mind; I’m sure another AK will come along shortly so he can bust himself out the tourney once and for all.

I bump into The Fossilman, who loves to wear his WSOP bracelet while playing. On someone else it might seem a bit of a ‘bling’ show-off act, but on Raymer it doesn’t seem that way. You just get the feeling that he’s proud and happy to have it. God bless him – lovely chap.

It’s nice to be reminded that the subtle art of PR hasn’t died, as the Dusk Til Dawn contingent spills into the room. This basically involves lots of large-breasted ‘models’ in porno heels, hot pants, crop tops and too much make-up staggering around the room putting off any of the poker players who happen to be male and under 60 (i.e. 99% of them). Screw rakeback deals and deposit bonuses, THIS is how you capture your target audience.

I later bump into the DTD girls again who – having whipped up all the men into a state of total and useless arousal – are now relaxing by the pool. It’s a bikini-clad vision to be sure; right up until one of them opens her mouth and shouts, “Oi! Darlin!” in a voice not entirely unlike Grant Mitchell of Eastenders fame. It’s a jolt to the system, and I’m immediately transported from Monte Carlo to Romford Market, where I believe one can purchase ‘arf a pand a cherries’ for 50 pence. Delightful girl.

On the matter of attractiveness, I feel I’m capable of recognising a good-looking bloke when I see one, but with Patrik Antonius I just don’t get it. To me he looks like a well-groomed yet gaunt potato, but all the PR girls are gathered around him like snails in the rain licking the top of his head (metaphorically speaking). He even manages to get away with massive fashion faux pas such as flip flops with socks (generally a look monopolised by Greg Raymer and the over-60 crowd) and yet the girls STILL wilt as he enters the room. I REALLY hope this doesn’t become a trendy new look for poker players because, to be quite frank with you, I just haven’t got the socks for it. A few days later I bump into Patrik again, and can’t help but notice his spud-head appears to have been gradually cooking under the Monte Carlo sun. I don’t know whether to offer him some sunscreen or stick a fork in him to see if he’s done.

Back in the tournament room, a clearly silicon-enhanced masseur is touring the tables offering a damn good rub down to anyone with cash to spare. She’s bang-on attractive, and has become somewhat of a status symbol for the players. If you’ve got her boobs mashed against the back of your head, you’re clearly one hell of a player!

One particular chump has obviously been waiting hours for her to finally become free so that he can make his table-mates jealous, but doesn’t realise that he’s finally reeled her in only seconds before the dinner break starts. Just as he’s about to bask in the kudos (as her thumbs slip between five folds of fat where his shoulder blades used to be) everyone files out of the room to grab some chow and he’s left sitting there, missing his dinner, being given an over-priced backrub in an empty tournament room. Priceless.

At one point I snap a picture of the attractive masseur (just for research purposes, of course), and Gus Hanson spins around as the camera’s flash fires off; mildly disappointed that I wasn’t taking a picture of him. I’d personally have enough trouble playing against Hansen at the best of time, but how the fuck you concentrate with old ‘big tits’ rubbing away at your jowls I really don’t know.

Hellmuth is up to his usual tricks over on the far table. He spends five minutes thinking about folding pocket 2s against a board containing a ten, a Jack and an eight. When a player quiet asks if they should put the clock on him, he goes totally insane. Shouting the floor manager over Hellmuth demands a new dealer, insists he only took 80 seconds (which I can confirm is at least 450 second out) and even starts offering people to bet for money on exactly how long he took. It would be mildly amusing if it wasn’t for the fact that the level is ticking away while all this is going on, and most people came to play poker rather than watch The Brat Road Show.

Everything finally calms down on the Hellmuth table once no one cares any more, and I move over to a table featuring the key player who took all my chips from me out at the Ultimate Bet Aruba Classic. He seems pretty disappointed that I’m only reporting on and not playing in this game, but that’s probably just because it was all my poorly-played chips that helped him cash last time. I can only imagine that when he looks at me he sees a big bag of cash with $$$ on the side in much the same way a hungry cartoon Tom would see Jerry as a small roast chicken complete with trimmings.

And I am again, out of space. Who’d have thought I can say so much about so little. And even better, I think I might carry on next time. Bet you can’t wait…

Monte Carlo or bust

2007-06-13T09:49:00.000+01:00

Let me just start by saying that to my mind there are two important positives to say about Monte Carlo. 1) It’s not Paris, 2) The local girlfriends. Now I won’t expand on point one (I think it speaks for itself) but as for point two, well… let’s just say that, if you can afford to reside in Monte Carlo you’re not likely to have a minging sow hanging off your arm dressed in anything less than the hottest, shortest, tightest, most expensive drapery. I could certainly never drive in Monaco; I’d be wrapped around a lamppost before you could shout ‘porno clogs’. Suffice it to say this is NOT the place to visit if you have a shoe fetish. You’d probably spend the whole time bent double in groinal discomfort.

The only problem with the ladies of Monaco is that the part of a woman’s brain that normally kicks in at the age where long hair and short skirts are no longer appropriate doesn’t seem to function. From the back – Bingo. From the front – Bingo Hall. It’s often like your Nan has been dug up and forced at gun point into an outfit even a Barbie doll would roll her eyes at.

Oh, and if you were thinking that maybe beer goggles might ‘iron out’ some of those wrinkles, let me just tell you that a bottle of Heineken round these parts will set you back €30. This could be a very expensive trip…

First up: the obligatory media tournament. Now this always creates a stir in the poker room, as anyone currently not doing anything else sharks about worried that they might be missing out on something. I get asked by random strangers (only about 23 times) how they can get involved. “A career in journalism,” becomes my instant, nay hilarious answer. Frankly I’m surprised I get through the night without having my head caved in.

The quality of play isn’t all that great to be honest, but in our defence most of us have been travelling since about four o’clock this morning. To describe the group as ‘a little unbalanced’ would be fair. If you brought a doner kebab Piñata into the room right now there’d be carnage. THAT’S how much Red Bull has been consumed.

Sitting down, I’ve managed to draw a table including Greg Raymer, Luca Pagano, Humberto Brenes and Victor Ramdin. So… nothing to worry about there then. I shan’t bore you with the game itself, but those of you who enjoy sob stories will be delighted to know that I chose to make my short-stacked move with 5-5 just as Victor picked up A-A, and I enjoyed the rest of the game from the party downstairs.

A friend of mine from an oily tabloid goes deep in the game, but gets an ear bashing from me about nearly throwing it all away when he goes all-in with T-J for no reason against Noah Boeken’s A-J. He’s fortunate enough to suck out and win the hand, but I ‘gently’ suggest T-J isn’t the sort of hand to piss about with. He proudly mucks T-J the next time it comes round, only to see a 7-8-9 flop. Oops. To suggest he gives me ‘daggers’ is to suggest that the Big Brother contestants are ‘a little bit stupid’.

He then goes into ‘fuck you’ overdrive, calling an all-in with 9-7 against pocket jacks. The flop comes 9-3-9-6-7, and at this point I’m pretty sure ‘maths’ has nipped downstairs to get twatted on €30 beers while the poker gods run amok upstairs with us.

The next morning we gather in the spectacular new tournament room at the Monaco Bay Resort for a grandiose opening ceremony. Strauss’ Sprach Zarathustra (that’s ‘the 2001 music’ to you and me) blasts out as the final table’s curtain rises on-stage to reveal an orgy of dry ice and felt. Everyone too close to the platform coughs their lungs up and attempts to keep last night’s Red Bull from erupting through their nostrils, but the onslaught is far from finished. Next up is a room-length curtain that veeeeery slowly opens to the melody of The Blue Danube. One hundred bloggers gasp in unison and grab their cameras, desperate to capture this wonderful moment. One can only assume that where ever these bloggers come from (where DO bloggers come from?) they just have bare windows. I also get the feeling that YouTube is about to be brought to its knees, as a thousand identical movies of a curtain being drawn are uploaded simultaneously.

It is truly spectacular in the room, and for once I don’t mind poker players wearing dark glasses indoors. However, as soon as the tournament actually starts, the glare of the harsh yellow burning sky-ball (I believe I heard one of the organisers refer to it as “the sun”) is too much for anyone to bear and they have to draw the curtains all over again. It seems poker really is a game you have to play in the dark. Of course, once they draw the curtains again not a single player removes their shades, and I can go back to calling them all ‘losers’. The balance of nature has been restored.

An hour into the game and I realise for the first time that music is being gently piped into the room – not something I think I’ve heard at a tournament before. The weird thing is, it’s a kind of soft, funk… well, porno music. I’m not entirely sure what kind of action this is mean to promote, but I’m secretly praying that the Dutch players all have their iPods on nice and loud. I mean, if any of those crazy guys catch whiff of these arousing twangs all hell could break loose.

Gus Hansen enters the tournament room late and everyone with a spare seat at their table shits themselves immediately. It must be nice to have that kind of a reputation. I personally still think he looks like a potato in jazz shoes, but that’s just me. He leaps athletically towards his table to play his hand before it’s mucked and manages to knock an entire table’s worth of glasses and bottles over. It’s nice to know that even the top poker players are still a long way from cool.

Chad Brown sits two seats to his left, and looks like he’s been working out… a lot! It actually looks like the gym instructor who put his program together got distracted having only written down the biceps exercises and then never came back. He’s like a modern day Popeye. They’re huge! I’m surprised he can move his chips around the table with those ham hocks swinging off his shoulders.

Some of the table draws are fantastic fantasy-poker affairs. Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius are on same table (with everyone else on that table looking like they are about to throw up). Flush favourite, Isabelle Mercier, and the Flying Dutchman Marcel Luske also share a lively table. Marcel is, as usual, busy playing top poker and telling great stories. It’s amusing to see the amateurs multi-tasking; simultaneously trying to 1) ignore him, 2) listen to him, 3) not be intimidated by him, 4) not like him. I must have watched that table for an hour and can barely remember a single hand played. Fantastic entertainment.

Sadly Mr Luske exits the tournament a little later holding A-K after two aces hit the flop and a guy who ‘didn’t believe’ put him all-in while holding 4-5. The turn was a 2 and the river was a 3. You’d feel bad for Marcel, but before they’ve even raked his chips he’s found a nearby camera crew and is busy making the best of it while chatting up a tasty-looking female presenter caught within his charm radius. What a fucking brilliant bloke.

As I wander round the room, I start to feel old and out of date. All the camera crews are crowded around one table filled with what looks to me like a bunch of 16 year old kids. They are clearly Swedish internet poker wiz kids, but I have absolutely no idea who they are. Where’s Doyle Brunson in a mobility scooter when you need him?

Vicky Coren – who I must say looks more attractive each time I see her (and no, it isn’t because she keeps winning more money) - fires off a dazzling smile in my direction and beckons me over. I feel like the cat who got the cream and quickly move towards her (‘sprint’ is such a nasty word). She greets me with: “You still haven’t paid me, Broughton”. Ah yes… The column… Issue 15… Shit! I dribble out some weak excuse and shuffle off like the cat that got no cream, but instead ended the day with a castration under its belt.

Anyway, Vicky remains a fantastic piece of work. Sitting in a room full of old men trying to be young; young men trying to be rich; and ‘cool’ guys in shades/enormous headphones trying to get a sponsorship… it all simply passes her by. Vicky instead is having a nice cup of tea and doing The Times crossword while she plays. I imagine (forgive me Vic) that sexual intercourse with Vicky is either a functional activity involving four minutes with the lights out and a courteous handshake to finish, or the sort of filthy all-night encounter that leaves you blind in one eye, covered in various rope burns and bruises, and sporting a permanent nose bleed for the rest of the week. It’s so hard to tell with these quiet, proper girls. Of course that’s pure speculation, so please don’t quote me on that.

And on that bombshell, I'm off. More from Monte Carlo soon...

Up in smoke

2007-05-29T17:24:00.000+01:00

‘Life’s a bitch, Toti’ I say to my Egyptian friend, increasing my sofa-bound angle of recline to an almost horizontal aspect. ‘Indeed’, Toti agrees, a huge plume of strawberry-flavoured smoke rising from his mouth. The pipe between us issues forth its trade mark “hubble-bubble”.

He had earlier apologised for being a little late in replenishing my charcoal, but I waved his apology away as unnecessary. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I have all the time in the world’. He ginned back at me. ‘Yes. I suppose you do.’

For the record I’m on holiday in Egypt, but it actually feels like I’m in Russia (well, a version of Russia where the entire bar staff is Egyptian and the weather is a lot better). I have no idea why Russians love Egypt so much, but they’re everywhere. Not that I particularly mind - the Russian girls are hardly hideous. However, I can’t help thinking that the part of a Russian girl’s brain in charge of telling her when she’s hot clearly malfunctions. Many have been blessed with super-fit bodies and model-esque faces, but have a habit of trudging around looking like they’ve just been told their home towns have burnt down. It’s a case of bodies like Victoria’s Secret, faces like Victoria’s Arsehole.

If I knew the Russian for “cheer up love – it might never happen” I get the feeling I’d be saying it day and night. (God has also been doing that thing where he gives 16-year-old girls the most perfect large breasts imaginable. I, of course, hardly notice.)

Anyway, I’m staying at an all-inclusive resort in Sharm El Sheik, and it’s lovely. Any drink, any food, any… well, any thing really – it’s all taken care of gratis, just as long as I wear my identifying wrist band. I can see myself going home with nearly as many flaky Egyptian pounds as I came out with, and a big white tan mark round my arm.

The entertainment is also free, but seems mostly limited to a bunch of dances the hotel’s ‘super-fun’ team has perfected. They call themselves the “Animation Team” which, frankly, I find misleading. It might just be some quirk of translation, but I haven’t seen any of them even open a pencil case, let alone attempt to draw anything.

Though even the youngest member of the Animation Team speaks about seven different languages, I still manage to convince them I don’t understand when they ask me to play water polo every day. I unhook my iPod, adjust my sunglasses and do my best to look both confused and concerned until they bugger off and pester someone else. I do take an interest though when I hear one of the team – a young, blond Russian girl – announce ‘Arabic lessons’. Now I think this is a fantastic idea. Rather than play darts or ping pong, why not take the opportunity to learn the local dialect.

The missus looks bemused when I tell her I’m off to learn a foreign language, especially as she had realised that the Russian girl (who spends most of her life talking in German to Arabs and must get very confused) was actually announcing aerobic lessons. “Aerobic”… “Arabic”… all very similar to the human ear I’m sure you’ll agree. And anyway, I’ve never yet entered a room full of women on their hands and knees in bikinis and been disappointed, so I’m certainly not going to start now.

I return to my sun bed, safe in the knowledge that I’ll always be remembered as ‘that English bloke who couldn’t speak a word of Arabic but made a real effort in the keep-fit class.’

The missus asks me to say something in Arabic with a smirk on her face. Rather than simply tell her to “piss off” I instead take the opportunity to remind her that she was the one who looked at the sign saying “Please don’t bring your glasses to the pool-side area” and asked how people without contact lenses were meant to find their way around. With the scores settled, we go back to ignoring each other…

Sadly some yobbos have ignored the ‘confusing’ sign, and brought hundreds of beer glasses down to the pool in an attempt to make optimal use of the all-inclusive nature of the bar. During the course of the afternoon they manage to knock most of them over, transforming the path to the showers into a shard-ridden route that wouldn’t look out of place in a Die Hard movie. I’m ashamed to find that they are (of course) Brits, and do my best to disassociate myself from them by looking German. This mostly involves hiding my clearly-English reading material and squinting a lot in a ‘German way’. I’d need an extensive series of photos to show you how I achieve this, but can assure you it’s very effective.

When I’m not busy trying not to look English, I’m busy trying not to shit myself. I must be the only person to come to Egypt with a stomach bug already - normally that’s one of the ‘souvenirs’ you get to take home for free. Of course stomach bugs out in Egypt really know what they’re doing, so a part of me can’t wait to release my pasty, half-arsed germs into the atmosphere so they can see what real stomach bugs look like.

In my mind I visualise a gladiatorial arena, where my seven-stone weakling germs – decked out in flip flops, union jack boxers, and wielding small frying pans – shuffle about looking bewildered. They turn to the sound of massive doors drawing open in the side of the arena, as the behemoth Egyptian germs confidently stride into view. Enormous strapping bastards; each over 7ft tall, bald, bronzed and built like brick shit houses - their bodies bristling with armour and weaponry. These boys aren’t going to give you ‘an upset stomach’; these boys are going to have you involuntarily pissing rusty brown shart out of your hole halfway through the evening buffet. Maximus Shitus.

Beyond the inevitable gut-rot, sunburn is another friend of the traveller here. However, thanks to what many might see as excessive use of factor 45 sun cream (I believe the next factor up is actually just a blanket with holes for eyes) we’ve managed to get right through the holiday without taking on that ‘healthy glow’ (a.k.a. skin cancer) that the other Brits are sporting. It confuses the locals trying to sell us things at the beach, because they don’t believe us when we tell them we’re going home in a few days. As far as they’re concerned, any Brit who’s been here long enough to be going home in a few days should resemble something a little more crispy, and they’re having none of it.

In an attempt to get away from the sales reps I decide to take a wander along our private beach. It’s all very nice and I lose track of how long I’ve been walking… until I realise that everyone around me is staring at me. What’s going on? I have all the legally-necessary clothes on. As far as I’m aware I’ve not shit myself (well, not recently anyway). So what’s the problem? And then I notice something... I am the only one with a blue identity wrist band. Everyone else around me has a red identity wrist band. Fuck. I’ve wandered off my private beach onto another resort’s private beach. These people are preparing to form a human barrier around their bar in case I attempt to go for any of their all-inclusive beverages.

It’s like LOST. I’ve gone to THE OTHERS’ side of the island, and am not welcome. I wouldn’t exactly say I sprint back to the safety of my own beach, but certainly one or two camels look up in a ‘fuck me, he goes quite fast’ way.

Back at the hotel and it’s time for the nightly lottery that is ‘guess what’s on the buffet’. It‘s actually been pretty impressive, with all manner of international dishes and plenty of local delicacies. I’m embarrassed to admit that my favourite meal so far was when they put chicken and chips out. How very ‘Essex’ of me.

On my last night I order a ‘Bedouin tea’ and an apple shisha pipe (I did originally show an interest in the coconut tobacco, but Toti - The Pipe Man - looked at me like I was some kind of tourist so I immediately changed to something more traditional). He asks me what I do for a living, and I almost forget what the correct answer is.

Oh, and in case you were wondering if this story was ever going to become relevant to poker, I drove past two casinos on the way to the airport. There, is that good enough for you?

See you next time...

Cheltenham Cherry

2007-05-02T19:12:00.000+01:00

There’s only one word to describe walking through the gates to The Cheltenham Festival, and that’s “Fuck!” I mean it is abso-bloody-lutely huge! Something like 60,000 people are here today (the majority of which have already passed through the Guinness village and emerged the other site - totally shit-faced – before the clock has even struck eleven). Oh, and while we’re talking big numbers, let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of pounds that will be won and lost by the time the Guinness village inhabitants vomit their way back out the gates come 6pm.

With poker being my only real gambling vice I really am a fish out of water here, and don’t recognise a single person regardless of their possible horse racing-related fame and/or fortune. There’s a panel of experts at the top table talking through each race, and while each one drops in some subtle link to a channel they present on or newspaper they write for, they might as well be contestants on Strictly Songs of Praise for all the chance they have of being recognised by me.

One face I do recognise, however, is Raj Modha – the winner of the Ladbrokes Million. How nice - I think - that Betfair would invite him into their private marquee. Of course there really is no such thing as a free lunch in the gambling game, and it turns out that Raj is here because he managed to clean up on the Betfair Casino site, scooping 3 jackpots on the slots for £120,000. I wouldn’t say the people from Betfair are manhandling him over to their betting booths to gamble, but let’s just say they wouldn’t mind it if he chose to have one or three ‘harmless flutters’ while in their company.

The most interesting activity for me right now is trying to suss out the people around me. I can’t help thinking that if only I was a degenerate gambling Irish alcoholic I’d be having a much better time. Oh, and before you stand up and shout “racist!” my previous comment is based purely on the simple fact that 95% of the people I have so far met have been 1) Irish, 2) Drunk, 3) Gambling. I’ll leave the rest of the maths to you.

The other observation is that everyone has a friend who has some ‘insider information’. Scribbled notes, beeping pagers, and hastily printed emails are strewn about the place, as various ‘friend’s dad’s mate’s daughters know someone who knows something about a nag that may or may not be in form for the 3:30pm’. I chortle in a smug fashion at their folly… just as my mobile beeps with a text from a friend who has discovered ‘something’ about one of the 2:35pm runners from a forum. Hmm… secret information, you say? Perhaps I’ll give it a go…

Heading outside for the first race of the day I’m struck by the fact that this is really just like being at a big fireworks display. There’s lots of standing round in the cold wishing you were at home, followed by brief bursts of interest accompanied by ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s. Ultimately, once the show is over, the mostly disappointed crowd shuffles off for a consolation burger (which in this instance I’ll wager probably contains a fair amount of last year’s winner).

It instantly reminds me of the losers’ walk from the WSOP main hall to the Rio exit. A shambolic parade of broken souls trudging along; their dreams in tatters – much like the discarded betting slips that pile up like ‘sad snow’ as the races tick by. However, rather than a never-ending stream of bad beat stories, the air here is filled with far more positive self-deluding statements, including such classics as, ‘I was winning until it fell over’ and ‘There’s always another one’. Indeed there is.

Back in the hospitality marquee things are deteriorating. Even though all drinks here are free, I still catch one particularly fat patron stealing my seat and surreptitiously tipping the remains of my lunchtime champagne into his own glass. Gypsy.

I’m trying to look and sound like I know what I’m doing at all times, and when a passer-by casually asks who I have in the next race I confidently reply, ‘Opera Mundi’. I say this because it was one of the horses mentioned in my recent text tip. He smiles, wishes me the best of luck, and staggers off (no doubt looking for some free champagne to ‘steal’). I feel rather pleased with myself… a sensation that lasts exactly three minutes, at which time I realise Opera Mundi ran in the previous race. Piss.

Having decided to discard the façade of knowing or caring about what’s going on I sit with a chap sulking in a corner. It turns out he is French and really wanted to bet on a horse called L’Antartique just because ‘it is French like me’. He was berated by his peers for such a childish reasoning, and told he should base his bets on form, previous form, the weight of the jockey, the weather, the ‘going’, and various other very important factors. Anyway, despite all that bollocks the French horse did win and this chap was feeling like a right Pepe Le Ploker who should have followed his heart and by rights should now be fanning himself with a wad of £50 notes. So much for form, eh?

A make a ‘horse radish’ joke that goes down so badly I’m not even going to repeat it here, and move on to annoy a different group of people. On the way across the enclosure I bump into a small child and turn to apologise, ruffling his hair in a playful fashion as way of apology. The surprising news is it’s not actually a small child, but Willie Carson – a jockey with an amazing tally of wins to his name. In the name of research I find his web site, which features so many impressive records and facts about the man that I couldn’t possibly list them all here. I can however tell you that he is available for corporate hospitality, weighs only slightly more than half my own weight and is – in my opinion – too small to exist. “Fuck me, that’s small for a human” offers a chap to my right, and I have to agree. The thought of him riding one of the magnificent beasts I’ve seen trotting around the paddock brings up only one image: that Ewok hanging off the back of an out-of-control speeder-bike in Return Of the Jedi. I’ll say no more on the matter.

It’s been an interesting day to be sure (see, I even sound Irish now) but the thought of the three-hour drive back to Essex, not to mention the additional hour finding my car in a field in a field in a field is going to take, sees me bow out before the final race kicks begins.

Before I leave there is however one thing left to do, and that’s to check my online Betfair account and see how all those tips panned out.

Good lord. I managed to turn £4 into £12. This time next year Rodney… this time next year.

A death in the family

2007-03-19T11:57:00.000Z

When your missus shouts "I think you've just done something stupid!" from the kitchen, it's odds-on favourite that a 'slight mis-truth' has just been delivered by said spouse. I generally find that this kind of statement falls into much the same category as "Now look what you've gone and made me do," or perhaps that age-old classic, "Well it was your behaviour in the first place that led to me sucking that other man's balls while fingering his anus."

Now I'm fortunate enough to have never heard that last phrase (well, not since my history teacher died, anyway), but the first statement was recently thrown at me, accompanied by the delivery of what can only be described as a small, damp wad of 'something blue'. [See below].

Now I'm not an expert in damp artifacts or anything, but it didn't take me more than a nano-second to realise that this was (or at least had once been) nothing more than the total fucking record of everything that had happened to me for an entire fucking year of my life.

So... nothing major then.

Yes, the infamous "gay book" that I took with me everywhere had been murdered.

It was - obviously - my fault. Well of course it was. I mean, how silly of me to have not realised that the task my other half performs every single Monday of every single week of every single year (i.e. checking my pockets before putting things in the wash) was actually MY responsibility on this particular random Monday.

How foolish of me not to have checked that the single-most important item I owned - filled with a million concepts, inventions, ideas, observation and potential fortune-making thoughts - wasn't about to be eaten by an Indesit 1300.

If people thought I was shit at updating my blog before this happened, just imagine how bad I'd be now the 'source' had been destroyed!

However, I didn't spend my extended youth watching Indiana Jones over and over for nothing, so I set about recovering this lost treasure with nothing more than a steely determination and a set of tiny tiny tweezers...

Each sodden "page" (if indeed the word "page" can be used to refer to something that looked more like a piece of sponge cake than stationary) was gently peeled away from the the main wad, hung from a miniature washing line, and then gently caressed with a hairdryer on the minimum setting. This basically produced some kind of bastard child of a note pad and a bag of crisps, but some of the text was vaguely visible. Now all I had to do was piece it all together in some kind of order so that the contents made sense. However, considering most of it was utter bollocks before it went into the washing machine, this would be no mean feat.

Anyway, I have to abandon this entry now because I'm still trying to put together a story that currently appears to involve an old man moon-walking, a woman who puts all her chips in the pot with a pair of cats, and someone called 'Donald' who is either an ex-Cheltenham jockey, or possibly a dachshund. I'll keep you posted.

Poker: The doorway to hell

2007-03-02T16:38:00.000Z

Poker has opened many doors in my life. It’s put me in situations I wouldn’t have been in otherwise; introduced me to characters I would never have met otherwise (have you noticed in poker you never meet ‘people’, only ‘characters’); and exposed me to tales and stories that often took the hair off my arms.

One such story was about a seasoned poker pro who enjoyed himself while on tour by hiring a prostitute to travel round with him. She would keep him company, be his portable rail bird, and – of course – make sure he had something to smile about at the end of each day.

As the story went on, this particular player had a pretty bad run and ended up out of money. He managed, however, to find a hooker who was prepared to render her services for a percentage of his potential winnings. All it would take was 20% and she was onboard. And so it was that “John” took to the tables with a new kind of pressure weighing on his shoulders: if he didn’t get any action at the tables, he wouldn’t get any action off the tables.

Poor old John... He bust out of the main event, crashed out of a side tourney, and finally died horribly in a sit ‘n’ go he entered in one last desperate attempt to secure some poker-fueled jiggy-jiggy. And throughout each and every dreadful performance, his lady of the night glared at him from the rails, adusting her ample busom, applying gloss to her pouting lips, and eyeing up the guys on the final table...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not really big enough for a seperate entry, but another story was with a well-known figure in poker who declined a drink, explaining that the last time he had a drink (many years ago) he went out for "a few" down the Kings Road and woke up two days later in Dusseldorf. Lightweight...

NEWS: Moneymaker less capable than own watch

2006-10-25T10:01:00.000+01:00

Friends and colleagues of the former WSOP champion have stepped forward to say that Chris Moneymaker, 30, is less capable in his day to day activities than his own wrist watch. Greg Raymer has worked along-side Moneymaker for the past two years: “It’s sad to see someone get outperformed by their own watch, but there’s no denying that this watch has about three times as many features as Chris.”

The watch, a Suunto Vector, was a Christmas gift from his parents, and delivers flawless precision and style, standing in sharp contrast to Moneymaker; a man with neither a scratch proof face, nor the ability to withstand a depth of 100 feet underwater.

A warm tide

2006-10-13T11:29:00.000+01:00

I won’t pretend I wanted to get knocked out of the Ultimate Bet Aruba Classic after only 10.5 hours, but suffice to say the thought of having to spend the rest of the week on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen was hardly killing me.

Having arrived many days before the main event began, I was already more than familiar with the beach and happy to be back there after the event; bobbing in the sea and mentally rehearsing my new bad beat stories. A few days earlier a bunch of us had leaned on our UltimateBet host to finance some shenanigans, and we’d sampled the delights of the banana boat (and by ‘sampled’ I mean involuntarily consumed 9 pints of sea water, and by ‘delights’ I mean having been rendered blind). Another member of the gang and I were ready to take things to the next level, and opted for the deadly ‘Ringos’. You could tell these bits of tubing were going to be more intense than the banana boat simply because you had to sign a piece of paper that said “If you kill me, it’s my own fault”. Oh, and if you’re wondering who the other player in this story is, I can only refer to him as “21” because he asked me not to use his real name in stories unless he looked ‘cool’. However, chances are you’ll never find out his real name because I’m struggling to think of any stories involving him where he looked ‘cool’. He has a perm you see.

So, anyway, we found ourselves back at the water sports hut, where some 19 year old local lad (with an obvious hatred of “Englishers” who eat all his mangos and shag all his sisters) seemed far too happy to accept twenty bucks to drag us along behind his boat. As we stood there waiting for said boat to arrive, 21 asked me how long I thought they’d be. “I don’t know... Why?” I asked. “Well, I think I need a piss." he replied, "I'm wondering if I have enough time.” However, don’t be fooled into thinking 21 was calculating how long it would take him to make a return trip to the pool loos. Oh no; his gaze was fixed firmly on the azure sea.

Now we’ve all pissed in the sea folks, but if you’re a half-decent human (well, the sort of half-decent human that discharges themselves in large bodies of water anyway) then you at least have the class to swim out a bit - away from others - and do your best not to look like you’re having a slash. It was with this thought in mind that I looked over a scant minute later to find 21 standing, as a man might at a urinal, hands on hips, obviously topping up the sea. He’d gone in just deep enough that the water was above waist-level, but… only just. Take the ocean away and he’d have just been some bloke standing in the middle of a field proudly wetting himself.

Returning from his mission, clearly relieved and smiling like some demented incontinent, I was glad we’d opted for the individual Ringos rather than the two-man version. These puppies had linings, and the thought of being dragged behind a boat in an inflatable bucket filled with someone else’s piss (or my own, for that matter) was hardly after-dinner speaking material.

Ultimately I found out why the disclaimer sheet I’d been asked to sign was so necessary because, as I sit here some three weeks after the event, I’m still in agony every time I sneeze thanks to two cracked ribs. They say that hitting the sea at 30 mph is much like running into a wall sideways at 20mph. I’ve no idea who “they” are in this case, but they aren't fucking wrong I can tell you.

And the worst thing about my injury was that I was now much slower on both land and sea, and 21 – the bastard - knew it. Which is why, for the rest of the trip, he’d stand close to me in the ocean with his hands on his hips and a smile on his face, laughing as I flapped and yelped in pain, desperately trying to get away from the expanding cloud of warmth that enveloped me.

Not waving. Pissing.

Joe Le Taxi

2006-09-12T14:43:00.000+01:00

If you can remember back far enough, I was telling you about a trip with the poker lads heading to Deauville. As I signed off last time we were just arriving at Paris on the Eurostar…

Having enjoyed the wonders of the modern railway, we [myself, Ali Masterman, Ben Grundy, Pommo, Dubai and Ben Mayhew] fall out of the station and onto the filthy Parisian streets. Ooh la la. Just breathe in that… stench. This truly is the city of love. If it wasn’t for Dubai pulling his pants out of his arse crack in front of me as we trudge up the rue, I’d be right in the mood for it.

The instructions for our journey become complicated and painful-looking at this stage. A taxi is required across the city to a different station, where a train (that I have no doubt will make the Eurostar look like a palace on wheels) will take us down to Deauville.

I now know this group a little better, but back then this was my first time meeting them, so I really just expected us to act the way we looked (i.e. like a bunch of poorly-dressed gypsies) and follow the travel instructions to their ultimate conclusion. The fact that my arse was attempting to detach itself from my body [you might remember I was paying the price for a half-cooked steak on the George Forman] made this a less than slightly appealing idea, but what can you do? I mean, it’s not like anyone is going to have such a disregard for money that they’d just pay for a taxi all the way to Deauville is it!

Ah…

...and then I got my first glimpse of the Pommo bankroll in action.

We shuffle like jawas across the road to a sniffy-looking cabbie who has the misfortune to be the only one we can see with the capacity to carry all of us and our bags. He doesn’t look happy, but then again he is French. I’d be miserable personally.

I’m struggling to remember exactly who did the talking (I was busy hiding behind a lamppost in case it all got embarrassing) but I believe it was Dubai who took the reins, using his trademark charm and international communications skills. Either that, or he spat out, “’Ow much to Doughvile mate?” I forget now.

The cabbie looked relieved… “Oh…” he said, “zat’s a ver long way.” Now the French cabbie had made the text book error of thinking Dubai would give a shit. It’s easily done - I myself have had many conversations with Dubai expecting him to give a shit. “Yeah. I know mate. ‘Ow much?” A look of panic spread across the cabby’s face, until he realised that his way out of this was simple – just price himself out of the game. Totally unaware of the poker player in front of him, Joe Le Taxi pushes €600 out, confident it'll get Dubai off the pot – so to speak. He really has picked the wrong crowd for this play. Dubai calls the twat’s bluff with a “Come on boys – we’re in.” The cabbie literally shits his pants. I mean actual shit flies from his pantaloons in all directions.

I am, of course, speaking metaphorically. I pride myself on being the only man in Paris at that exact moment who could shoot an apple of a child's head with a stream of pressurised rusty cack.

A moment of inspiration sweeps over Le Cabby, and he blurts out “CASH! It has to be cash!” I mean, it’s brilliant. What are the chances of finding a troupe of travelling poker-playing gypsies who not only find €600 acceptable, but happen to have it on them in cash? Well… needless to say the driver’s face slumped in final defeat as Pommo plucked out his “ready-for-Deauville bankroll” of which €600 really was only a very very small percentage. Frankly, I get the felling Pommo had enough to buy the cab company let alone pay off this fella, but I was grateful for the ride as my arse was heating up like some faecal kiln and could deliver a ‘hot sculpture’ at any time regardless of my plans or wishes.

And so thus it was that we pilled into what was to be our chariot for the next two and a half hours. Smug, relatively comfortable, and trying really really hard not to shit myself in front of my new friends.

Ali attempts to bond over a cigarette, whille Le Cabbie pretends to enjoy his company, grimacing all the way.

Holding the nuts

2006-09-10T14:29:00.000+01:00

Having recently attended a Full Tilt press event, I was chuffed to finally interview a couple of my favourite poker personalities; namely Howard Lederer and Mike Matusow. The most interesting event of the day, however, came later that afternoon as I stood by the bar, shooting the breeze with a group of journalists. As we chatted away, I absent-mindedly clasped my hands behind my back. Now, unbeknownst to me, Phil Ivey had chosen that exact moment to squeeze between me and a pillar in the room. It’s the sort of thing I couldn’t do if I tried, but I somehow managed to perfectly cup Ivey’s balls in my hands. Neither of us acknowledged the testicle cupping, but I immediately felt imbued with magical nut dust from the poker wizard’s pods. I said my goodbyes (without shaking hands, obviously) and hurried home to log-on for some heads-up action. I won 7 out of 9 games. The mystical knackers of Ivey were indeed the source of all things good in poker. Frankly, I regretted not having rubbed them three times.

Now it might strike some as an unorthodox approach to ‘winning poker’, but if you ever have the opportunity to fondle Ivey’s bollocks before a big tournament, grab the opportunity with both hands. Literally.

I’d also made another observation as I walked out of the venue with Shelly Rubenstein. Ivey was climbing into a car just in front of us clutching the “How to Play Poker” supplement I helped the Poker Player Magazine boys write. Shelly and I looked at each other in a ‘did you just see what I saw?’ way. “You’d think he was a bit beyond that.” Shelly ventured. I agreed, but couldn’t help thinking that if Phil Ivey spent a little less time reading books and more time fiddling with his genitals he’d be unstoppable.

Almost there...

2006-08-15T11:39:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I made it sound like I was about to start daily installments. I know. Ain't I a disappointment. Anyway, I've been busy. The good news, however, is that I've nearly caught up with all my post-WSOP work, and will be making a proper blog entry later this week, followed by - I promise - regular entries. Meantime, I thought I'd post this little WSOP 'diary' I was asked to do for one of my newspapers. I know it's cheating, but it's better than nothing. Maybe.

Anyway, here it is:

Of all my poker-related regrets (which we don't have enough pages to go into, let alone words) my greatest is that I didn't get into poker when I got into poker. When I played my first hand of Hold 'em back in 1995 if I'd only then followed that up with a trip to Las Vegas I would have found myself with only 273 players to battle against for the chance of winning a million dollars. In its day the WSOP was the biggest poker tournament in the world. It's amazing to now think that most lunchtime online 'fun' tourneys have more entrants that the WSOP did ten years ago.

The sad truth is that it's taken me this long to make poker a big enough part of my life to justify heading out for the WSOP, but not as a player' yet. Unless you fancy dedicating weeks of your life to one single game of poker, with about the worse odds you'll ever face, the main event is hard to see as a 'value' event. And yet they came; all 8,773 of them, armed with $10,000. Once Harrah's had taken their cut, the prize pool stood at $82,466,200 - not bad for a little game that started up in 1970 with 38 players. Someone would walk away with the winner's gold bracelet and $12 million. And I was there...

Arriving in Las Vegas in July is a bit like turning up at a tropical hair-dryer convention - and that's just the weather. Once you feel the oppressive 109° heat smack you in the face like a big hot sponge, you realise that spending the entire seven weeks of the WSOP in a big air-conditioned room isn't such a bad idea. Pulling up at the convention side of the Rio there's nothing to do but marvel at just how big this event has become. The main room holds 2,000 players and is an absolute hangar of a room. Two hundred tables, two hundred dealers and fleets of floor managers and waitress staff fill the room... and then the players arrive. Imagine an insect war to end all wars, fought between crickets and grasshoppers. THAT'S the sound 2,000 players collectively shuffling $20,000,000 in chips make. It's ludicrous and wonderful all at the same time.

Each of the four "day one"s required to accommodate the number of entries is a fan-boy's dream. I stand in the centre of the room, spinning around in the middle of this madness, clutching onto my press credentials and the privileges they bring as if my very life depended upon them. Every table seems to home a player you've seen somewhere before. Chan, "Jesus", Brunson, "Devilfish"... the list goes on and on. In conversation, they all say they have absolutely no expectation of wining, but some aren't as convincing as others. Especially Helmuth.

One thing I'd not prepared myself for was the amount of spectators. They fill the isles and roped-off areas, line the corridors outside the main hall, and gather in autograph-hunting packs as soon as anyone vaguely recognisable steps outside the protective barrier of the players' area. On the first "day one" the organisers end up kicking all the spectators out for the first few hours as the players are unable to climb over the crowds to their tables. I now receive filthy looks from the 'normals' every time I flash my press badge at the security guards for entry, while others smile at me and pass me their cameras, asking if I'll take some pictures of all the players they've seen on the TV.

In addition to the players and fans, drop-dead gorgeous dolly-girls from Bodog, Doyle's Room, Ultimate Bet, Full Tilt et al line the corridors, dressed in very little and handing out the sort of tat that wouldn't be seen dead in your local chemist but seems very popular in the USA. I can't imagine that these overweight, 50 year old lawyers would ordinarily go quite so mental over a free t-shirt, but here they are prepared to whoop, dance and generally humiliate themselves for even the smallest of key rings.

However, a battle of this magnitude produces a steady stream of casualties, and the 'walk of shame' from the tournament room to the exit is like a long military hospital ward, with the walking wounded shuffling towards the light like the ghosts of the deceased. Cell phones that had been forbidden are switched back on, and a stream of bad-beat and hard-luck tales fill the corridors. Walking along-side them, I feel I'm learning more about the WSOP in this short trek than I would watching pocket kings crack pocket aces for 15 hours straight. As I hold the door open for a weeping 60 year old ex-WSOP competitor, I'm just glad I'm only here for the taxi stand. See you next year.

Superham Returns

2006-08-02T19:46:00.000+01:00

Ok - I apologise...

I went to all the trouble of getting you to come read my blog and then abandoned you like a Polish child. Can you ever forgive me?

The good news is that I've been so encouraged by how many people out at WSOP asked what happened to the blog that I plan to get back on the case ASAP.

The honest truth is I've just been so busy with things that generated an income, any 'non-profit' projects got relegated to the very bottom of the to-do list.

My first book (co-authored with Poker Player Magazine's Editor, Dave Woods) has turned up in the post and comes out in September, and I continue to write for Flush, Poker Player, The Sportsman (Christ, I hope they pay me) and various other poker publications; not forgetting the VirginPoker.com blog.

I'm still presenting and appearing as an 'expert' on Poker Night Live (now from 9pm-1am every night on ch. 843) as well as ticking over with my events company (www.pokerevenings.com) and poker tables company (www.silversunflower.co.uk ).

There's also a web site project that I'll tell you about soon.

Meantime, I know most of you are waiting to hear more adventure with Poker Generation X, so that'll be where we kick off next time. The blue book was with me for WSOP (just got back today) and is full to brimming with 'hilarious' antics that make an episode of Terry and June look like a staple-gun enema. I can't wait to tell you about Pommo buying a pair of shoes off a loser in a Vegas Sports Book. Quality.

Stay tuned, true believer.

Careless memory

2006-04-21T14:20:00.000+01:00

I take a lot of stick out on the road thanks to something that has come to be know as Matt's "gay book". My "gay book" actually likes girls as much as it likes boys, but because it's only tiny (and a nice pastel blue) people seem to think it's sexuality is in question.

Truth is, it's a godsend. It comes with me everywhere, and every anecdote, comment, gag and gaff is captured within. Problem is, as I myself have often had a couple of snifters when making use of the "gay book" I'm not always sure what the hell it all means when I come to look back through it later.

Random comments recently discovered:

Author to remain anon: "We bought two bottles of booze for £15,000 each and took three girls back to our room. One passed out, one just sat in the corner of the room crying, and no one can remember what happened to the third."

Entry under the heading of RANDOM FACTOID: "John Duthie has a VERY BIG face."

Pommo: on being one of Company Magazine's Top 50 Batchelors. "As long as I'm above Dean Gaffney and Sid Owen I'll be happy."

Some yank: "Oh I love Europe, especially Australia."

Pommo: "Get pissed the night before a tourney. You feel so shit in the early levels you can't be bothered to play and don't knock yourself out."

Gus Hanson wears 'Jazz Shoes' and walks a "bit funny".

So, as you can see, the "gay book" is not to be dissed. And next time, we shall plunder the "gay book" for what it has to say about the continuation of the Eurostar journey we followed previously.

Be seeing you...

Also does girls

Liar Liar!

2006-04-18T14:54:00.000+01:00

This is a preview of my next poker column written for FLUSH magazine.

The best lies are the believable ones...

One of the things I love about presenting Poker Night Live is the contact we have with newcomers to poker when broadcasting our amateur nights. The other evening I received an email from a new player saying, “My game is coming along nicely, but I still don’t know how often I should be bluffing. I feel it’s a real weakness in my game.” Now then… the following announcement is VERY important. There’s no law that says you HAVE to bluff in poker. Bluffing is a skill that bubbles away in the background and should ONLY be used when the situation calls for it. Now I know that was a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS but it’s an important point that needs shouting.

To expand upon “when the situation calls for it” here’s a quick example of rubbish bluffing for the sake of bluffing. Steve gets dealt 7-4 off-suit. It’s a dog of a hand. The blinds and antes are huge and he’s under the gun (i.e. first to act). “I’m all-in!” Steve declares, pushing all his chips in and staring down anyone insolent enough to look at him. He is “Mr Bluff”. He is a warrior. He is a wild card. He is also called by Dave with pocket kings who busts Steve out of the tournament like the chimp he is.

The key thing to remember is that bluffs should occur as a reaction to a situation. They also need to be misleading, not confusing. You don’t want to baffle your opponent; you want to sell them an untrue story that they will believe. Treat bluffing like lying to your wife. When do you do that? Answer: when it will be believable and get you what you want. You’re late home because you were enjoying yourself and didn’t want to leave the pub/footie/mistress. Do you call and say, a) I lost track of time and the tubes are up the spout so I’ll be home late, or b) an eagle stole my trousers and I tripped over playing cricket on Pope Gregory’s yacht in Africa and punctured my spleen?

Remember; misleading, not confusing.

Imagine you have a small random hand and limp into a pot only to see an ace fall on the flop. If no one takes any action before you, making a decent-sized bet yourself is selling the story “I have an ace”. It’s not confusing; it’s a deliberately misleading lie. If people buy into your story, you’ll get what you want (i.e. they fold and you take down a pot that you wouldn’t have won just by playing the cards).

So remember, bluffing isn’t just about making random moves in the hope of scaring people away; it’s about reacting to specific situations, and selling stories to get what you want. Don’t feel you have to bluff to succeed in poker, but realise that others will bluff against you, and it’s a very useful weapon to have in your poker armoury. Oh, and NEVER lie to your wife. She’ll see through it every time, guaranteed.

All aboard

2006-04-11T12:02:00.000+01:00

The Scene: Eurostar to Paris, heaving to Deauville EPT.
The Players: Me, Ali (Virgin), Dubai, Dpommo.

The Eurostar 'port' at Waterloo is hardly the most glamorous lounge I've ever waited in, but my guts have been complaining about a steak sandwich I fucked up on the George Foreman yesterday night, so I'm just glad to sit down before gravity has the chance to force anything out of my arse unexpectedly. I don't know why I bought the bloody thing to be honest (the grill, not my arse). Like I need another cookery toy in my kitchen. Anyway, I suppose it'll look nice next to the blender (never used) the sandwich maker (some of the residual cheddar dates back to 1998) and an Ideal Home Show slicing machine I haven't touched since I nearly lost a finger just trying to get to the instruction book out back in 2002.

The Bagel Factory is advertising "Hot and Crispy" bacon bagels, and though the doc recommended I avoid eating and starve out whatever weevil rode into my stomach on the Foreman express and started partying, I'm starving and can't resist. Sadly, a more accurate description than "Hot and Crispy" might have been "Microwaved to the temperature of the sun and flaccid like John Pertwee's cock," but I imagine that probably wouldn’t look so good on their poster. It is, frankly, disappointing, and I think I just heard the weevil downstairs cheer at the arrival of breakfast. He certainly just opened another bottle of champagne if the pressure in my sphincter is to be believed.

In a move that I've since come to expect with this bunch, we upgrade to the highest level of travel possible. Pommo is small enough to look comfy, but I know Ali and I are going to have to be careful not to spend the next few hours cracking shins like horny boy elks fighting over lady elks. Exactly what makes this seat "1st Class" I really don't know, but Ali almost immediately pulls the arm off his chair for no apparent reason. "If you're looking for the 'in-flight' movie screen, I think you're fucked son."

A reasonably pretty waitress appears, prompting Dubai to sit up ever so slightly and remove his headphones (which are - just to give you some colour - larger than many family cars currently on sale). "Hope the lobster's fresh." he quips. "Yes," she replies, "Straight from the Thames." Touché. Dubai retreats back into the relative safety of his Craig Davids. "I'll pass on the lobster."

Thankfully, being the resilient chap he is, Dubai is ready for round two as the 'main course' arrives. It's the Eurostar's take on a full English, and Dave ventures a "Sausages medium please". She rewards him with total silence - as if he doesn't exist. I think he could be in here. Apparently Dubai recently turned up at a MacDonalds and asked for the fries to be lightly salted. The spotty underachiever at the till turned to the 'oil monitor' and shouted "FRIES LIGHTLY SALTED!" God only knows exactly how much phlegm his burger contained by the time the youths had had their way with it.

NEXT TIME: Desert

Gloat!

2006-03-22T11:57:00.000Z

OK - not necessarily a relevant report, but I had to share a glorious moment.

Isabelle Mercier.

Originally I thought she was quite atttractive, but I think there lurks a manipulative skank behind the 'pretty poker' facade. I've interviewed her a few times, and know her on a 'nodding at each other and smiling' basis. However, I found myself in a tournament in Monte Carlo with her to my immediate right. With her 'No Mercy' moniker, agression was very much on the cards, so - as I would with any hyper-agressive muppet - the plan is to allow her to steal lots of little blinds, and odds-and-sods hands, and then - when i get a hand - milk her back for everything she's nabbed, with interest.

I just seemed to keep getting involved in one-on-ones with her (and not in a naked good way, sadly) but no one else at the table was getting too involved, simply because i don't think they thought they could go up against her with anything other than aces or they'd lose their bottle.

Blinds are 50/100. She raises pre-flop to 250, I call with poket nines. Flop comes 9-2-5 which must look good to her pocket kings, because she does one of her 'special' chip flips, and dumps 500 into the pot and stares at me. I do a little bit of acting, a little "hmm"-ing, and then look at her chips. She has 650 left, so 1150 to me if i want to get her all-in. I raise her everything she has and she looks at me and smiles. "I think you might not like this" and very proudly plumps her kings down. "That's nice dear" I offer as I show her my set of nines. She starts squirming and sitting on her feet. Strange girl. No help comes and she is just bursting with reasons why she was so right to do what she did.

I'm already bored of my story. But you get the point. Note to self: Don't be an arrogant twat. Ever.

Rakeback

2006-03-13T12:58:00.000Z

If there's one thing I've learnt from talking to the guys and gals that are already playing online poker for a living, it's that rakeback should be a big part of your consideration when selecting a 'home' for all your dosh.

Up until now the only addition to my actual winnings have been fabulous 'loyalty points'. You might not be surprised to hear that so far I nearly have enough points to buy 1/9th of a shite baseball cap. Yehaw.

I decided to contact all the big sites, essentially just saying that I plan to start playing seriously, and asking why I should give them my rake. I guess it's not too surprising to find that the big boys didn't want to offer me anything; suggesting that just being allowed to play on Poker Stars should be enough to make me happy. Others suggested I contact them after a month of playing "as i mean to go on" so that they can appraise my play. Yeah, and get a month's worth of dosh for free. Do I look like Johnny Bananas.

Ultimately I found a bunch of guys that broker rakeback deals. Just to name-check the guys that have been most helpful: www.fishypoker.com and www.rakebackdeals.co.uk

So... after much deliberation, I'm down to Littlewoods or William Hill. I think.

More soon.

Preparation H

2006-02-26T19:43:00.000Z

As previously mentioned, this blog is here to record journeys. Not necessarily only the journeys of others; just journeys. Initially the plan was to use this as a place for me to post the stories too grim or rude to be used in any of my published writing - an idea that became even more tempting once I started traveling more with the young poker players that are tearing up the scene right now (on and off the tables). However, the more I travel with them, the more I realise that I want to be one of them! I'm not too old to tear it up, and I certainly think I'm good enough to take them on over a table... so what next?

The first course of action - preparation and research.

First up is to work out just how much money I have spread around the 12 different poker clients that I somehow seem to have ended up donating to, and consolidate this as my starting bankroll.
Secondly I need to work out who is going to offer me the best deal to pump this bankroll.

Wish me luck.

And so the journey begins

2006-02-14T10:55:00.000Z

Welcome.

I'm no stranger to writing, but I'm new to writing without some editor then removing all the swearing and juicy bits. I'm the poker columnist for FLUSH, as well as a regular contributor to POKER PLAYER, COOL PLAYER and the official WPT magazine. If you're the sort of sad git that likes to watch obscure late-night TV you might also see me presenting or commentating on the award-winning (ahem) POKER NIGHT LIVE.

My involvement in poker stretches back some ten years, but it's only in the last six months that it's become my life. I travel where the cards take me, participating in and reporting on some of the great tournaments. I also get to meet and travel with a host of great and not-so-great poker pros and wannabies.

Here, in this blog, we will see what trouble we can get into.

Welcome again...