It's been like the Twilight Zone for me this month. My annual pilgrimage across the Atlantic normally means I miss the one week of sun the non-Poker Gods bless the UK with, but recently I've been forced to blow the dust off my Speedos and showcase my ab-fest to the ladies of Camden.
Well, that's not quite true. Being the pale-faced, hunched Twiglet I am, heading to Nottingham to spend 24 hours in a dark, dingy TV truck staring at a tiny monitor with just a Twix for lunch, was clearly the more sensible option. I just wish I'd known that motorways could have fires before I left, especially ones that stretch four junctions.
With only fleeting appearances of late, I seem to have become the Tony Bloom of the updating scene. I won't lie; it's hard to motivate yourself when you've been reporting poker hands for six years. Life tends to get a little tedious, and every time someone beckons me over like a waiter and claims, "Snoops, you won't believe this hand," I become hit with a sudden bout of narcolepsy. Although I try my utmost to sound fascinated, what I hear in my head is: "I raised with a rubber chicken and the flop came orange, apple, pear." As long as the final words aren't, "So, how would you have played it," a nod of the head and a feigned 'Wow, that's amazing' expression normally does the trick.
Having said that, there's something about the Big Game which lures me back on an annual basis. Maybe it's the eclectic line-up, the clash of styles, or big characters, but it's probably the access to the hole cards and opportunity to watch every hand they play that interests me the most, especially as a fellow cash player. It was therefore with great chagrin that I found out a couple of days prior that PokerNews were doing a live feed, and that my written reports on the PartyPoker blog had to be delayed by 30 minutes so they could appear in conjunction with the live broadcast. I didn't see the point and felt a little demoralised; to quote DrPauly, I was "screaming into the empty chasm of the Internet", which always makes it difficult to find that 'A' game. Fortunately, my shift was preceded by Lee Davy, a new blogger to the scene who's arrived armed with more enthusiasm than a kid on Christmas Eve. His work ethic meant I had to follow suit, and like a rock band playing to a crowd of two, I had to try and do my best.
It didn't take me long to find my home for the next 12 hours; the TV truck was lurking in the car park and there was a nice, dark spot in the corner ready and waiting for me. Watching that door close felt like when they forced Andy Dufresne into solitary confinement in Shawshank Redemption; I was in for the long haul, and it didn't matter whether it was 8am or 8pm, I wouldn't notice the difference. I was actually told in a serious tone that I couldn't talk about anything that happened in the truck, which is a shame because it's an intriguing process, and you’d be surprised how much work goes into the show, but I guess what happens in the truck stays in the truck and I’m just not at liberty to go into detail about the hookers and cocaine.
One aspect that I love about the Big Game are the entrances. I’m a real sucker for pomp and circumstance and I tried in vain for years to get Jonathan Raab to shout, “Let’s… play… poker!” at the start of each GUKPT. Like darts, boxing and, dare I say it, WWE wrestling, an entrance creates a bit of buzz and naturally becomes part of the show; it’s just a shame that poker players have a tendency to take themselves too seriously and enter to some gangster rap nonsense. On the flip side, Robert Williamson III (has anyone ever met the other two?) made my day when he reached the top of the stage before commencing a bizarre jig that involved lots of pointing and wiggling and can only be compared to a drunk uncle at a wedding.
Devilfish did something similarly amusing, and when he bust a groove, Roland De Wolfe inquired with a smirk, “Is he having an epileptic fit?” Devilfish’s song was “Stuck in the Middle With You”, which seemed to a bit ironic considering he sat down in Seat 1. Still, it was good to see him suited and booted; grease back the hair and we’ve got the Devilfish of old back. Regression can only a good thing in this case.
During one of my darker moments, I began to wonder what song I’d choose if I ever found myself with a spare 10 bags. This was, naturally, a tricky, but crucial decision that couldn’t be rushed, and after much deliberation, I decided that I’d take the comedy route (although coming into N.W.A. dressed in bling could be amusing in an ironic way) and enter to Shawn Michaels' entrance theme, ‘Sexy Boy’. I’m pretty sure I’d be unable to resist the HBK pose once I neared the table, and a kiss of the guns would probably be the order of the day. Not too sure about the chaps, though.
The line-up for Big Game V lacked a few American names that appeared last year (no Haxton, Laak, etc), although the injection of online players certainly added a different dynamic. The game is advertised as £25/50, but it doesn't stay that way for long as there's more straddling than a Texas ranch and Tony G later requested blinds of £50 and £100 with a button ante of £200, even saying the words, "It's my game and I want a £200 ante." Soon after, William Fry set a record for number of hands played when he stumbled in with £10,000. He folded one hand, noted the new blinds, then trundled off while mumbling that the game was too big for him. I quite admired this in some way; with the poker community watching online, most people would have tried to save face by staying and playing out of their depth, but Will didn't fancy risking his £10,000 for that reason alone, and made the wise choice to exit stage left.
On average, the online qualifiers didn't fare too well, not because they weren't any good (the opposite in fact; I believe they won rake races), but rather they were limited in terms of their stack. Considering the blinds and straddles, £8,000 doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre if you're unable to top up, so there's an argument to just gamble as soon as possible, especially if there are quadruple straddles as occurred on one memorable occasion.
I’m not sure if I like the voting system. The players’ one involves too much politics and quiet ‘chats’ during breaks, and the online vote is mainly a popularity contest, meaning that action players like Viffer can still get voted off. They had this problem on Big Brother whereby only marmite characters were evicted, which left them with the boring contestants who didn’t influence people either way, so what they did was modify the voting so that you had to vote for who you wanted to stay in rather than who you wanted out. The Big Game should probably do the same. I did feel sorry for Neil; he really wanted to play, yet was evicted early doors after a long period of being card dead, and to make things worse, he received a rub down from Luke Schwartz who wrote down his name even though Neil was no longer at the table.
As a result of some of the evictions, the here-today-gone-tomorrow seven-deuce stipulation, and overly snug play from some of the players (Devilfish wasn’t as entertaining as I’d hoped), the game was rather lacklustre for long periods, especially in the final few hours where it died an absolute death. There were a few amusing moments: FullFlush’s expression when rival Andrew Feldman called his bluff-raise on the river after dwelling for longer than Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’; Mike Matusow assuming England was the size of the Vatican City and taking a cab from Heathrow to Nottingham; and JerseyShore.com sponsored pro Alec Torelli trying to outdo Tom Jones on how many shirt buttons he could leave undone.
The saving grace, I must confess, was Tony G. For the first time in a while we saw genuine glimpses of the boisterous, outspoken, larger-than-life character that first caught our eye those many moons ago, and there was certainly a surreal sense of nostalgia as he exclaimed, “Only Tony G can do this!” “Give this man a refill!” and, “Bring on more… players!” while only just evading the use of the word “Russians”. “This is the greatest show in the world!” he boomed. I don’t know about that, but it was certainly the Tony G show, and he will definitely be dominating once the film hits the editing room.
During the Big Game, the Monte Carlo £1,000 had been tootling along in the background as if it were a £20 freezeout. It was great to see Julian Thew back in form after being released by PokerStars, but I was especially pleased for Sunny Chattha. He’d been missing from action for well over year, and it seems to have done him the world of good. I spoke to him on Day 2 and you couldn’t prise the smile from his face. He’d lost an incredible four stone and looked like a different person, although I did that polite thing where you ask, “Is there something different about you, I can’t quite put my finger on it?” even though I knew full well that he’d shed half his body. In the end, he dealt three-way and took away a juicy £52,000, which was a great result for someone who was once a BBP Grader. We obviously taught him well.
The Internet is flooded with talk of Black Friday (including, I expect, future blog entries from our pros), so I didn’t want to focus the entire blog on it, but I definitely owe it a mention. I couldn’t help but notice that Dusty Schmidt was in town. As a PokerStars Team Online Pro, recent happenings would surely affect him more than anyone. Would he lose his sponsorship? Would he have to start playing live? Would he emigrate? PokerStars weren’t allowing him to discuss the topic in depth, which is understandable, but he didn’t seem too unnerved by the whole affair, and simply expressed his relief that he’d kept up-to-date with his taxes. Being organized and knowing how to Treat Your Poker Like A Business might be considered dull and lacking the ‘cool’ degeneracy factor of some of the young poker upstarts, but it clearly has its advantages in times like these. Some kids who left college early to be poker pros and then blew all their winnings on fast women and cars might be panicking with the decisions that lie ahead, but something tells me that Dusty already has it all planned out, and won’t be living out of a box any time soon.
Black Friday brought back memories of a black day in my own life almost a decade ago, except we called it Black Monday, because it wasn’t on a Friday, it was on a Monday. A group of us went to the Gala Casino in Nottingham and we all did chunks; I lost £550 on the wheel which accounted for over half of my student loan for that term. I remember sitting on the curb outside with my fist in my mouth wondering how I was going to get it back (drinking copious amounts of the free soft drinks just wasn’t going to cut the mustard this time). I felt so sick, but the next day the world was no longer black and everything was peachy again as I awoke with a renewed determination and the will to move on undeterred. My pockets were empty, but I’d survived my darkest day in the blink of an eye.
Somehow, I don’t think a good night’s sleep is going to fix this one.
Sam Razavi - Year of the Monkey
Neil Channing - All Let Us Rejoice
Kevin Williams - Big Time
Gavin Hall - The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
David Docherty - Coffee's for Closers Only
Jamie Burland - Bubblin'
Sam Razavi - Perth? Don't Mind if I Didgery-Do
Rob Jarrett-Smith - Marching to the Beat of a Different Drum
Tom Drew - Lost for Werrrrds
Jerome Bradpiece - The Times They Are a-Changing
Joe Roberts - First Place Bink
Gavin Hall - Green & Blue
Kevin Williams - TV's
Richard Ashby - Mixing It Up
Ben Meredith - The Beginning: Drive (To Make £££)
Simon Mairs - Risking Run-Good
Neil Channing - All Horse Players Die Broke
Hugo Martin - London Live II