#166: “My Poker-Tilted Soul is Sadder Than All The Euthanised Puppies of the World”

I really don’t want to write this blog but I think it will be cathartic and it might also stop me from strangling a trouserless Dara O’Kearney who is lying on the adjacent bed surfing poker sites like a teenage boy on You-Porn. I’m not going to lie – it’s a disturbing sight, made all the more unpalatable by the stupid grin on his face as he delights in trivial shit like who has the most Hendon Mob cashes this year or how low my Pocket Fives rating is.

I’ll get the positives out of the way first. The Aspers Casino is a great venue for poker and the sober people of Newcastle seem like a really genuine friendly bunch. Throughout the weekend, several people I didn’t know or only knew by reputation introduced themselves, offering kind words about this blog. It is always nice to know people enjoy reading it and I take it as a bigger complement when those people are strangers, implying that they got onto it by some positive referral. I hope you will all continue reading it despite the fact that the proceeding paragraphs will undoubtedly test your willingness to indulge my fury and moroseness.

Day 1 of the UKIPT Main Event went brilliantly. I had very few premium hands but I played several like I did, bluffed a lot, got paid when I had it and made some sick calls. I ended the day with 58K and like a true grinder, hopped straight into the Turbo Bounty where I had the pleasure of playing with one of Britain’s best tournament players. ‘Who was this?’, I hear you ask. Why Peter Wiggleworth of course. ‘Sorry David, I have never heard of him’, you say. Well neither had I but he assured me he was as he went into bravado-overload for the donks at the table. He told them that he was a sponsored player, prompting me to give him the third degree. It turns out that by sponsored, he meant staked, which of course begged my question, ‘Why is one of the best tournament players in Britain not playing on his own dime?’ The conversation ended there so I sat back and watched a Wigglesworth masterclass of 6x opens and an especially peachy UTG limp with Kings which he followed up with a 15x pot shove into 4 players. I Hendon Mobbed Peter later and to be fair, he has cashed 8 times in the last 10 weeks including a 60 pound min cash in a 75 pound side event at the LCI 2012 UK Poker Tour in Leeds. Overall, his stats were less so those of one of the best players in Britain and more those of a washed up ass-clown; that’s right, a man whose ludicrously false sense of his own place in the poker world truly exceeds the descriptive potential of the terms ‘ass’ and clown’ in isolation, leaving me with no option but to refer to him as the conjugate of the two.

I eventually succumbed in the Turbo Bounty just four spots off the money with precisely zero bounties collected, quite an achievement given that I had at one point octupled my starting stack. Day 2 of the Main started well as I added 40% to my overnight stack after probably the sickest call of my live career. A shorty with 14bbs opened UTG and was called by the HJ and SB. I completed from the BB with 69s, figuring the raiser to be loaded but hoping to flop a monster and get paid by the other deeper stacks. The flop came A-10-5 with 2 spades, the SB check, I check, the original raiser checks and the HJ bets 3K into an 8k pot. I was the only caller and the turn came a non-spade 7, giving me a gutter to go with my flush draw. The villain bet 8k, offering me almost the correct pots odds with 38K behind. I called and the river came a 6. I checked and he bet 16k. I replayed the hand in my head. The UTG raiser was short so surely he would have 3bet isolated with AK/AQ/1010. That left marginal hands like AJ and A10, the former of which I felt was too thin for him to be value-towning. It also left AA and 55. I discounted Aces as the table dynamic was very passive so his flat was very likely to trigger a chain-reaction of calls. So, with only two possible hands in his range as I perceived it, he was pretty polarised. I called and his face dropped. He mucked his hand and I was back among the chip-leaders.

Two orbits later, I was on life support as four consecutive flips went against me. I got my remaining chips in with 40% equity and lost that too. It was a fast and brutal fall from grace but I picked myself up and got into 300 side event. Progressing to Day 2 with 35K from a 10K starting stack, I was optimistic for a deep run in a small field. I chipped up to 48K and then made a marginal all-in 5bet with QQ and no fold equity versus a maniac which on paper is justifiable and +EV if his range is JJ+/AK which I think it was. That said, I place a huge amount of emphasis on small-ball navigating through this type of tourney and in retrospect, I think I can give up my small edge versus his range for the sake of variance. As it happened, he had KK and flopped quads.

So my last hope for some glory was the Turbo Deepstack, a tournament with an absurd structure. I registered late and was instantly gifted a couple of stacks by players who were married their under-pairs and bottom pairs on scary-ass boards. Through the middle portion, I won some flips and held twice to amass a big stack but the insane structure meant that a big stack was just 20bbs with two tables remaining. As the bubble approached, (12 were paid), I folded my rags and only found one spot where I squeezed shoved AJs for 9bbs and inexplicably got it through. As we went hand for hand, I was sitting with 12bbs, roughly the average stack. Three consecutive all-in and calls on the other table saw the short-stacks crack AA with 77, AK with QJ and 99 with AK.

As the TD ordered the synchronised dealing of the next hand, the UTG player on the other table announced he was all-in blind for his 1.5bbs. I asked the TD what would happen if there was a bust-out on each table simultaneously. He told me that the bigger stack would make the money (which I believe is an incorrect ruling). I looked down at Aces and min-raised. It folded around to the blinds who both had me covered. The small blind, a good German player, went into the tank before eventually folding (I sensed smelling a rat). The big blind, a bad German player, furrowed his brow. ‘All-in and call’, was announced by the TD from the other table. Immediately, he shoved and I snapped. He showed an offsuit K3 and I was an 89% favorite for a pot which would give me the chiplead.

Both flops were dealt simultaneously. On the other table, the 73 offsuit of the player all-in was in bad shape versus the K10 of the caller on a 10-9-6 board. On our table, the dealer fanned an all-heart flop. I looked down at my hand – No heart. I looked at the villain’s hand – the King of hearts. The turns were dealt – a brick on both tables. The all-in player started yelping ‘Eight! One time, eight!’ Our river came first: the 9 of hearts. I shook my head in disgust and glanced over to the other table. ‘BOOOOOM! 6-7-8-9-10 baby’. All I could do was laugh. ‘Wow! Did that really just happen?’, I thought. Stumbling though the casino like an extra from ‘Dawn of the Dead’, I met with Dara who had returned after his own bust-out to rail his 10% swap on an anticipated Final Table. ‘Tell me you’re on a break’, he said. ‘Nope’, I responded and gave him the bad-beat story. He was momentarily sympathetic or at least he pretended to be but by the time we got to the escalator, he was already making jokes about it and telling me about the worst beats of his career. For once, I didn’t have the energy to tell him to shut up. I just walked solemnly, ‘sulking’ as he put it as he shat on about his WSOP Main Event exit.

Truthfully, though, you need friends like that in poker – guys who will insensitively mock you when you are at your lowest. While it seems cruel, it really isn’t. Gallows humour is all you have in situations like that; moments that are so retardedly unfair that you must either force yourself or be forced to see the hilarious absurdity of it all.