Continued from Part One…
I disembark at Paddington station a little after 10.30am, which is much earlier than planned. I stroll up to the Vic but decide not to go in just yet but instead look for somewhere to eat. As I mentioned, being a diabetic I have to make sure I eat regularly and having spent a lot of time in and around poker tournaments I’m only too aware how easy it is to forget to eat. I eventually find a café and all they serve until midday is breakfast, so I have a fry-up (brekkie 2) and with the aid of three cups of tea drag it out till 12am and then wander over to the Vic for registration.
I enter the bar situated next to the Vic’s poker room and immediately recognise a few faces from their BBP avatars: Andy Brisland and Mike Carroll to name but two. A few other members warmly introduce themselves but I feel a little bit uncomfortable. I have to attend occasional meet and greets as part of my job and to be honest I’m not great when faced with a room of people I haven’t met before and I genuinely struggle when it comes to the art of casual conversation, I put this down to he fact that I’m just not that interested in getting to know random people.
You might think this makes me sounds a little aloof or maybe even a bit of a tosspot, that’s for you to decide, however on this occasion I can honestly say that I’m almost immediately interested in pretty much everything, everyone in the room has too say, because, well, they’re all talking about something I can never hear enough about, straight from the bat the primary secondary and tertiary topic of conversation is poker!
We file through to the VIP area of the poker room and on time, or as near as damn it, we get under way with the first lecture presented by Alex Rousso, Alex’s presentation is well practised and slick and the subject is meta learning. I first became aware of the meta leaning concept when I attended a junior management self improvement seminar entitled: ‘Upping your game.’ Honestly I’m not making this up! I think John Biggs best summed up the concept of meta learning when he described it as, “The state of being aware of and taking control of one’s own learning.” And that’s Alex’s presentation in a nutshell: take your poker education seriously and be self aware, understand your faults and you can work on them, it’s a good lesson.
We now break off in to groups and start the first of three hand exercises that will run throughout the day. The attendant professionals will be swapping tables after each session so that they spend time with each group. It works by the players at the table playing through a hand and then we flip the cards up and discuss the decision-making processes involved. Unsurprisingly, these turn out to me my favourite parts of the day as listening, discussing and dissecting with other players is always an incredibly valuable learning tool. Add in the quality of the players involved and the professional tutelage and it’s apparent from very early on that this is going to be an immensely valuable leaning experience.
The next seminar is presented by Nik Persaud and the subject matter is David Sklansky’s ‘Fundamental Theorem of Poker’. I read this book many years ago and it was the cornerstone of my early poker learning, but as good an early introduction to poker that Sklanskys book is, it’s very easy to lose your way over the years, isn’t it? And that’s the crux of Nik’s lecture” poker’s a simple game, we might get wrapped up in meta game, levels and the maths but at the end of the day doing the simple things will make us most of our money, most of the time. Nik points out that if you’re making any other move than the most profitable, because either you’re scared of losing or don’t trust yourself to make the right lay down when the scare cards come, well then your game is fundamentally flawed. It’s a really timely reminder and a simple but powerful truth.
More hand exercises follow and then sandwiches are served, I only tried two and they both tasted like feet! So there’s something to work on fellas, get some M&S bought in because the Vic’s sarnies are pants!
Back to work and Hugh Kirton talks us through the concept of adjusting you own play to your opponents playing level. I find the level-by-level dissection of the same hand very interesting. When Hugh’s done it’s on to the last hand exercise of the day and my group’s final tutor for the day is Neil Channing. Neil proceeds to overrun for the final lecture of the day which just happens to be his, this is actually quite an impressive feat as we didn’t even get to a flop!
The final lecture of the day begins and Neil talks us through a number of video clips of hands he personally is involved in and reveals the thought processes involved. This turns out to be as entertaining as it is illuminating and the effortlessly affable Channing provides a fitting end to a very enjoyable and extremely valuable day’s learning.
A quick five-minute break and the Academy’s pupils take their places in the Saturday night £50 freezeout. Eventually, Andy Brisland and I battle through the field and find ourselves three-handed with the sole remaining player a non BBP Academy alumni. Now, if this was a Hollywood film, first of all it probable wouldn’t do much box office as no one’s heard of me and it’s a weak plot, secondly though about now the non BBP player and I would get involved in a big pot and some little gem of information passed from Nik or Neil earlier in the day would play a huge part, maybe Neil would have told me that when any opponent bets two fifths of the pot he’s always got a big hand, or maybe Nik would have imparted the knowledge that when an opponent orders Kronenbourg and not Fosters from the valet, then they’re bluffing.
Of course though in real life things don’t work out that way. Throughout the tournament I played well, made fewer mistake than most of my opponents and won a few races on my way to a tidy cash and third place. I’m sure Andy who did BBP proud and took first would say something similar. One of the things I’m going to take away from this learning experience is that there are no short cuts or quick fixes, there are no great secrets, it’s experience, effort, learning and discipline that wins the day, and well a little bit of luck along the way won’t hurt either.
The tournament ends about 3am and afterwards Andy treats Mike and I to dinner and we talk poker (sick people). I order the Vic breakfast (brekkie 3) and really enjoy sharing opinions with good players, it’s something I don’t get to do nearly enough and Ihope we can continue to do so through the BBP community.
I spend the night in the casino and get to the station at 8am, I quickly realise I’ve made a mistake and the first train to Taunton doesn’t leave till 9am, so kill an hour in McDonalds (brekkie 4) then board my train home.
I sleep most of the way home but wake half an hour before my arrival, I begin to ponder the two questions that had seemed the most prevalent the day before:
1. Can you actually learn much in a day?
2. I play a specialist form of poker, namely heads-up SNGs, will anything discussed be relevant to me?
Now I believe I can answer them both: yes, you can learn a surprisingly large amount in one day, but only if the people you’re trying to learn from and the people you’re trying to learn with are passionate about the topic under review - every one at the Black belt Academy was. As for the second question? Well, one of the key messages of the day was that poker’s a simple game, although there are obvious differences between each variation and format the fundamentals really don’t change that much, after all it’s true that poker is an extremely simple game, it’s just most of us insist on making it so very complicated!
When I arrive home it’s nearly lunch time, my wife can tell I’ve had a great time and, allied with a box of chocolates, a Valentine’s Day card and a nice few quid for third place, I’m assured of a warm welcome and a smooth ride. The wife then suggests that as it’s nearly lunchtime I can make up for missing our traditional Valentine’s Day breakfast. This makes five breakfasts in a row and if I never see another sausage again it will still be too soon!