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Tuesday, July 24, 2007 

The Education of A Poker Player

The urge has returned - no, not the urge to study the Rhino in its natural habitat, although that did take a while to shake (plenty of willing hand-maidens to help me shake, but I declined, opting instead just for the rattle and roll - thank you to Johnny Vegas for your assistance). I have been back in the Wetlands a week and have notched up many hours of poker beside the River Severn, and the urge is back. The lower levels of the garden are four feet under, my poker dreams are six feet under.... at least til next summer and these two feet are under the writing desk where they ought to be. This is the urge to write, not to wring with the right but rather to right a few wrongs.

Money: makes the world go round, the love of it is the root of all evil and spending it is great fun until the statement arrives. Well the statements have arrived in droves and I have been doing some navel-gazing, considering my future. My bridge-teaching will not start again for a couple of months, the puzzle-cutting likewise. So right now I have writing - unfortunately my fanbase (hello to you, my friend) is not reaching for the cheque-book, so that leaves me with the poker. Returning with absolute zero (the freeze-out was total) in my Full Tilt account, I topped up to the max with $600 on jet-lag Tuesday, and had notched it to $800, then $1700, then $2700 and for a moment on Thursday I touched the three thousand mark, and it was looking great: A thousand quid in under a week meant I should see credit sometime in November (you do the maths - I'm not going to spell it out) but I hadn't reckoned on daytime poker mania along with the inherent variance of aggressive Omaha and by the end of the same day, my $3,000 watermark was back to a few bucks over $600 - oh dear! I patted myself on the back for stopping when I did (excellent bank-roll management, my son), rolled another fat one and went to bed, dreaming of Aquarius and Lace (try saying "Shadow to the main stage" in an American movie-trailer voice and you'll get the picture).

Waking up, I looked again into that navel, and came up with a few conclusions: Firstly I needed a bath (the age of Aquarius had come and gone), secondly I should play less poker and actually begin writing the book, thirdly I should get out of Dodge, and lastly I should play more poker. So I hot-footed it to Yorkshire, with my children Max, nearly seven and Laptop - one today in fact (happy birthday to you and also to my granny a mere 89 years older). Logging on at one in the morning after a 90th birthday is not recommended in the bankroll management handbook, so I did it anyway, and emerged at nigh on seven a.m with some tidy profit. Two dawns later, I have remembered what sunshine looks like, my account is just under $3,000 and I have tidied away $1,300 into the coffers of Bwarclays Bwank (said with a slight Ho-Chi-Minh): so spirits are up. I ventured last night into the $2-$4 game on the Omaha, where icebergs lurk round every corner. After half-an-hour imitating the Titanic my flopped sets started to hold up and despite the Russian Roulette of the Stubbs Walden internet exchange, the money started to come in. The difference between the $1-$2 game and the $2-$4 game is way more than double: The action is faster, the players looser, and the rewards potentially much richer. I was disconnected for the 11th time at 5.25 a.m. and made the great decision to stop on the back of doubling my $300 stack when holding nothing more than pocket 6s. I flopped a rainbow (all different suits - you should know that by now) Q-8-6 and checkraised the bettor and his caller with my bottom set. He put me all-in holding a wrap (not the Johnny Vegas variety - shame) but rather 10-9-7 and received no help. There is no better feeling than quitting immediately after a win. The number of times I have continued and lost some/all of my profit outnumber these joyous occasions by at least ten-to-one. You go to bed feeling great, you sleep great and you wake up great (reminds me of a joke "How did you sleep?" "I slept like a log, woke up feeling grate" - ha-bloody-ha). I have also been looking for the big score and playing the multis - the big tournaments with the big money. I have finished in the money two out of three, both times committing hari-kiri with KQ suited, calling raises with them: the first time on a flop of A-8-8, we check to the river, by which time I have made a runner-runner flush and the money goes in only to discover his nuts are gleaming and my nuts need polishing - yes he was a pilot for American Airlines, flying the standard proudly with his two black aces in his hole.

Enough poker - it is very addictive. The only way to wash away those memories of what could have been is to play more poker, push those bad-beats off the memory shelf and replace them with tales of winning.... alternatively you can visit your local wildlife park and observe the Rhino in its natural habitat..... My failure to play K-8 of spades in the main-event still haunts me. I did talk about this hand but it will be helpful to relive it once again. When the antes kick in and each round represents around a 20th of your stack, you cannot afford to wait for premium hands. Sitting three off the button, with an average stack, this is a hand that needs to be played if you are first in, provided you have built up your fold-bank. My fold-bank was in the black as I'd not been seeing many cards, I'd been playing tight and folding a lot, so opponents would give me credit and the most desirable result would be to pick up the blinds and antes. Okay the second most desirable result. Getting a call from the blinds and winning with a continuation bet would be better still unless....okay the third most desirable result: getting calls from both the blinds and flopping 8-8-7 which is what actually happened in the hand (except I was grinding the Rhino-horn with my cards only a memory). The small blind had pocket 10s and the big blind pocket 7s - they went to war on the flop, the turn being the King of Diamonds (giving me the bigger 'boat' - full house to you and me) and I was looking for Shadow on the main stage. The ramifications of not playing this hand can all be included in the 'if-only' chapter. I would have ended up stacking the Stealing Swede for his entirety when I trapped him with my pocket aces versus his AK and I would have been showing Mr Yang a bit of my Yin six days later - Jerry Yang went on to win the main event and eight and a quarter million bucks, which turns into considerably less once you divide by two (for pounds) and give 40% to the US tax-man. Anyway I am almost done with regrets - that dance with Aquarius would have been nice, especially as my mum (where the fuck is this going?).... especially as my mum found $115 in the top pocket of my shirt. The bucks have now been laundered and feel ever so slightly symbolic. Aquarius, real name April (who are you kidding my friend?) will have to wait til June comes again - June is a month of the year by the way, real name Summer although you'd be forgiven for the confusion. So its $20 for one song, and its $100 for three songs - we're back exploring the contours of Las Vegas by the way. It took me two cracks of the whip to realise this was bad math. Okay so the hundred gets you to a 'private' room where three or four other cavortions are being convincingly coerced, but you have to contend with Pauly the Pervert who is keeping an eye on progress. You got to stay away from the T-zone, baby or Pauly will be over. Well after a couple of visits from Pervy, I reverted to the main stage - does anyone else have that urge to get up there. I class it in the same bracket as that weird lemming urge, when you are on a clifftop and you want to fly. It is deeply primordial and deeply dangerous - you will be disappointed to know I never made it on-stage. I have resolved however to have a silver pole fitted in my new poker-room. So beside the stage I was busy tucking greenbacks into the backs of green lace knickers and admiring their art-work. They were admiring my grin or more likely my wallet - "You wanna come VIP, beardy?" - like fuck I do, and get metaphorically spanked by Pauly the Perv? You got to be joking baby. There was always the $200 room for half an hour or even the $400 for the whole hog, one hour - these I declined. They probably had two-way mirrors and sell the video at the airport - "Hey kids, I got you a souvenir from Vegas - Daddy's been playing no-limit Hold'em". This is probably where Pauly and Stiffo Stevey hang out in the breaks. Also I think you need a hard-on to enter these rooms and I think I set a record on that one. The only man to have spent fourteen and a half hours in The Wildlife Park without once experiencing that rush of blood to the head - if only it could be that way at the card-tables. So what the fuck was I doing, you may well ask? Kahluas, Chocolate Ladies, Irish Coffees, some great value dances - a snip at twenty bucks and making new friends (like on the telly but you don't need a telephone)....by the time the third shift had kicked in around noon, the graveyard shift had departed heading to make porno-horror chick-flicks no doubt and I was rolling. A chance encounter with a Spaniard, known as Johnny Vegas, (after whom the English version had taken his name, he claimed and I believed him....) meant there was some stimulation to be found. The girls were more relaxed - not so much business and I certainly wasn't paying their mortgage and besides, research is important once you take those first few tentative steps to being a writer. So there it is, the research is not yet complete, I feel, but the bones of this book are taking shape. Thank you Vegas for all your delights. I will be playing next year, hopefully in the 10K Omaha event too - this year's participants read like a poker roll of honour, and to play against them is the fastest learning curve there is. The education of this poker player is far from over - I have a long way to go and god-willing I shall go far. Thank you for your comments - the triumph of hope over experience will continue unabated, and keep them coming - each one is manna from heaven. I sometimes feel I could be in outer space, sending messages to Earth, which may or may not have struck by a meteor. Is anyone out there?

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