The Casino at the Empire in Leicester Square, which is apparently important enough to have two different web addresses listed on it's boarded-up front, claims to be "a touch of Vegas in the heart of London". It's a construction zone, so it's hard to argue with that description so far.
They've already removed the Empire sign from above the entrance, which is criminal. It's not the original one, but it still feels like it's been there forever. There's no Neon Boneyard in London, so I can only fear the worst and ask for a moment of silence.
...
So now why not go the whole Vegas hog and implode the entire West End? It probably woudn't be out of the question if it was possible but of course the "Vegas-style supercasino" was awarded to Manchester, much to the disgust of everybody in Blackpool - a town which is now ripe for a systematic flattening and rebuilding.
The Leicester Square casino will be the main host casino for the WSOP Europe, but even with a £10,000 buy-in (nearly double that of the WSOP Main Event) it won't be big enough to seat enough the players and two other casinos will be used to whitte down the field. Their announced regular poker tournament schedule boasts an 81-player capacity, and that they will provide dealers for any events with a £100 buy-in or higher. That'll be once a week, on a Tuesday.
Sounds like a long way from the Vegas WSOP experience of a huge, echoing, characterless conference hall. Now, how do I qualify?...
Simon "Aces" Trumper clearly doesn't have a great deal to do until Dusk Till Dawn opens, which will be next month if everything goes to plan. In the meantime he's been staying busy by making hundreds, if not thousands, of thinly-disguised sales calls.
Geoff told me over a week ago he'd had a call from the Late Night Poker champion-turned-commentator (ok I admit it, I put in that second link mostly because my name is on the page). I don't think he was particularly starstruck, but it was definitely something that doesn't happen every day. I've seen various posts to poker forums also bragging about similar brushes with the bald and famous - famous that is among Late Night Poker viewers from getting on for a decade ago - and it's just taken him a while to get around to everyone, but today it was finally my turn. I sent an anonymous call to voicemail - it turns out that TV poker stars do withhold caller ID - and later I picked up this message.
The $5000 added money tournament on sunday sounds good value, but with a $1 tournament don't expect the actual buy-ins to have any significant impact on the payouts, or for anybody to play sensibly in the least. It's may as well be a freeroll for anyone who has made a real money deposit.
This is the picture I was sent by email of what the club might look like when it's finished. Artist's impression, apparently, so looks like there's still some work to be done before they can open.
Trumper is DTD's live poker manager, so it's understandable he might not have that much to do, not actually having a cardroom to manage until the club is granted its gaming license (still not a certainty, although they have pass the hurdle of obtaining consent from the Gaming Commission) and opens its doors in April.
Really though, these personal phone calls are a very nice touch, and I'm sure very effective. Having applied for a license through the same procedures that a regular casino would be required to follow, but remaining firm that they will not offer any house-banked games - a frankly daft decision, when poker generates such little revenue in comparison to any of the sucker games they could also provide - they will need to get as many people as possible through the doors as soon as it opens. I wish them the best of luck.
However, signs suggest their online poker might not be doing too well. This is an email that I received today and it's one of the strangest I ever saw. There's not even a hint of suggestion as to why this is where you should be playing online, let alone any signup or deposit bonuses, or featured tournaments. Is this really any more than just a begging letter?
We are having a big push THIS Monday to try and get the highest level of rake on the site that we have achieved to date.
With this in mind we are all contacting all our poker friends and those associated with DuskTillDawn to ask them to help us in this endeavour.
I shall be grateful, therefore , if you can help by putting in as much effort as you can this Monday (26 March) to play on DTDPoker for as long as possible from 4am Monday to 4am Tuesday.
Thank you in advance for your help
Paul Jackson
Online Poker Director
DTDPoker
I can't quite work out what the incentive is to play, other than DTD wants your money and wants it not now, not over the weekend, but on Monday. I must be forgetting the community spirit when a group of people who don't know each other - and won't recognise each other - band together to boost a company's profits.
I have a confession to make. I experimented with straddling last night. But it was just one time, and I didn't inhale, so that's OK, isn't it?
I wanted to do something to help my solid-as-a-rock image. I'd hardly played a hand for an hour, then when I did, I got my entire stack in the middle with nothing less than a flopped nut straight. I was amazed I got any action even then, but it was only going to get trickier to get a call from anyone who had been playing the slightest attention.
Not only that, the player to my left had remembered me, knew that I didn't fool around and - like most of the players at Gutshot - couldn't keep information to himself. When I first sat down, the dealer asked for blinds and said to me "it's £2 if you want to straddle". I declined, saying "not this time". He piped up, laughing, "yeah, and not any time". So when I actually did stick my two quid in blind, I got a reaction from him as close to a hi-5 as you could ever expect from a young black Londoner wearing a Full Tilt hoodie and an ipod.
With six players calling the straddle, I didn't have the balls to do anything other than check my option when I see an offsuit ten-five. Not a great hand to play ever, let alone multi-way and out of position.
When the flop gave me a dreadfully weak top pair though, could I just check-fold? I probably should - the board was T72, all different suits - but I found myself needing to be seen to throw some chips around, and led out for £10. One player re-raised the minimum and another called, so it's £10 back to me for a pot of £64. Now, finally, I change my mind, panic at the prospect of losing all my newly acquired profit with a garbage hand and give up.
In fact I would have been up against T8 and 75, with the 5 on the turn giving me the best hand and another player a decent second best hand, so I could have done very well out of my moment of madness. But that's just some stray results-oriented thinking getting the better of me. It would be a very poor call if I could actually see the other players' hands, and a pretty poor call if I thought I might have as many as five outs.
If I do find a call here, I'm not going to put in another chip unless my hand improves, but I'm still not sure what to do if I do hit a miracle. If I'm counting getting implied odds with a suckout, I have to know where they're coming from. Another ten on board would definitely get me into trouble against someone who flopped top pair, or a flopped set. Improving to two pair gives me not much more than a difficult decision still to make.
I see the potential for only big losses in my future so I fold the hand. So much for making myself appear looser. Now I'm the rock who folds top pair to a minimum reraise, getting better than 6-1 on the call. But looking at the kind of action I was getting in this hand anyway, I guess I can live with it...
Maybe I can't actually lose in the Gutshot £25-£50 game. Five evenings, five winning sessions and nearly £300 up. I have to be running good, the question is just how good? I really need a losing session to keep a grip on reality. I left (relatively) early this evening as I was getting tired (but apparently not too tired to brag in a blog entry) and left with £83 of other people's money in my wallet.
It all started off so promising when I couldn't hit a straight draw in a pot that was just too big to let go. Along with eight (count 'em) others, I'd called a £3 raise from the small blind holding T8 in spades, and the flop brought J93 with two diamonds. Sixth to act moves all in for his remaining £28 and the player to my right throws his last £14 into the pot. It's £28 to call, to win £74, which I can't pass up. I could be drawing to only 6 outs for some or all of the pot, and there's a chance it could be raised behind me, making me play my remaining £40 for not such a great price. But there could also me more callers, and if I can beat one of them I can beat them all.
Then things got good just after the tournament started. Our table had been reduced to three-handed, and after a few £5 pots I somehow managed to win another player's stack with an ace high flush against a smaller flush. If that happened online with just three players dealt in, you'd say it was fixed.
After I got moved to the dealer-dealt table, the only way I managed to increase my stack for about an hour was by adding the change from my burger to it. Tipping waitresses with chips is one thing, but letting them give you chips as change for your twenty feels a little bit funny. Those chips should never have been in play, but nobody seems to care when you bring more chips onto the table, only when you put them in your pocket. What can you do?
My big hand came well after the burger was just another juicy memory. I called a pre-flop raise from the huge stack to my right who had been raising every time he played a hand. KQs was more than good enough to see a flop with, and I was very happy to see five other players join in - had to double check I wasn't actually in Vegas! I flopped the nut straight - ace, jack, ten - and let out a little cheer internally. With two hearts on board and seven players left in, I wanted to find someone who also didn't like the possible flush draw to get it all in against right now. I bet £20 into the £35 pot, and only got one call from the pre-flop raiser. It didn't really tell me much, but at least I'd ended up with position.
I willed for a black card, and the turn obliged. Be careful what you wish for though: it was a king, so I still had the nuts, but you'd expect it to kill my action. How on earth did I actually get a payoff from a worse hand with AKJT on board? My customer went into the tank for a good nwhile and eventally called my last £50, saying "I don't believe you". He turned over king-ten and didn't improve on the river. That king had actually helped me, although I'm still not sure how he could call with a very weak two pair on that board (he didn't believe I had better than ace-nine?) and I was stacking up over £170 as the bully stood up to leave. He still had about £200 to take home, but he was clearly wounded.
Well, it's really not that exciting, because I didn't manage to win a seat for the main event and instead bought myself into two of the other festival events. It's still a couple of weeks away too, but it's going to be my first poker road in some time and the first time I've been to that area of the country since I was about nine. I'm dating that last trip to visit family in Darlington from a memory of my Uncle having some kind of early home computer beast that was programmed in hexadecimal and had a two digit LED readout. He loaded it (by which I mean spent an unfathomably long time for a young boy to type it in) with what was apparently some kind of racing game where the edge segments of the LED digits flashed in a rotation, one slightly faster than the other as we each tapped away at the sort of switch you would expect to use to send morse code. It was pants, but I was fascinated, so it must have been before I got my hands on my first "proper" computer - a Sinclair ZX Spectrum when I was 10.
I played a satellite at Leicester on Wednesday for the Stockton £500+£50 main event. With a 100 player capacity, the only way to get into this one is to win a satellite, and they're held throughout the country as well as online. There's a little added value here too, as far as I can tell. With 48 players at Leicester putting up £20 each (and there's no exhorbitant session fees for satellite tournaments, just a £2 registration fee) they awarded one £500 seat and split the remaining £460 between second and third place. So who is paying the £50 registration fee on that seat? I did OK but simply ran out of cards at the worst possible time, getting stuck on the four-handed table when we were down to nine players and seeing garbage after garbage. In the end, I had to move all in with some ridiculously poor hand and couldn't get lucky enough to survive.
So off I went up to the cashier to try to register for the other Stockton events, and leaving with a receipt - although I'm not 100% sure it's means a great deal - felt like an achievement. In the afternoon I'd tried caling both the Stockton casino and the Gala national helpline to ask whether I could register without having to travel to Teeside, but as far as I could tell, neither of them had even heard of the poker tour. The girl at Stockton, struggling at times to understand my relative lack of regional accent, told me all about how I had to be there fifteen minutes before the start time or I couldn't play (I've already learned this the hard way) but didn't think I could register in advance. She didn't know anything about a festival coming up, but there was some sort of game tonight if I wanted to play. I thought the GBPT was a big deal for Gala, but it's pretty clear they threw it together in a hurry to compete with the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (and I already know that you can register in advance for any festival event at any Grosvenor casino). Grosvenor admittedly don't have the endorsement of one member of a pop group that didn't win a reality TV show, and played but didn't do very well in their last main event, but they do have twice as many stops on the tour and I can't imagine there's any chance that their casinos won't know when the tour is in town.
Much, much faffing at Leicester finally resulted in me getting registered. Card room manager Steve told me I could do it at the cashier, but nobody at the cashier had a clue what to do. Various people called various people and in the end I walked away £330 lighter to pay for for the £100 and £200 freezeouts on Thursday and Friday, but only after they made sure to note down my phone number just in case. Very reassuring.
The guy in seat ten has just £17 left in front of him in the £25-£50 buy in pot limit game at Gutshot when it's time to pay the £3 hourly donation. Everyone throws in their chips except him. "Let me just see if I can win a hand", he says, "and then I'll pay you". The dealer shrugs whatever - after all the contributions are voluntary, and he's only working for tips. It's just bad karma to mess with the system.
I don't remember whether he sat down with the full £50 but he hadn't reloaded, and I'd be surprised if anyone wasn't aware that he'd not picked up a hand all evening. That's clearly a good enough reason to have a bit of a gamble with the club's money before deciding whether to donate. The times he gets lucky, he pays his dues afterwards but keeps the extra profit he won from having that £3 in his stack. The times he loses, the donation simply gets pushed across the table to another player, who surely won't think to - or see why they should - pay it for him now.
And so it happens. Mr Cheap manages to get it all in pre-flop with pocket nines and is called by five other players. Two others make it to showdown with him, both with undercards to his pair, and 99 ends up the third best hand. Should his hand - by far the best pre-flop - hold up here, he would be £15 better off than he should be thanks to gambling with his risk-free loan. Funny how these things work themselves out.
On the other hand, sometimes it seems like they don't want your money. Tonight I played for four hours and only coughed up the hourly fee once. The first time they came to collect - after a new table had been running for 90 minutes - most of the players stood up and went to another table or upstairs to the tournament. We played a few hands three handed before tournament bustees started to join us (it's freeroll Monday, so this didn't take long) but they didn't come back for a donation for another hour and a half, and after that the next time anyone thought to try and collect some actual revenue from the poker tables, I'd already started to leave.
The player to my right, Chen - a young chinese man who I struggled to understand at times, but due just as much to my cloth ears as to the slight accent adorning his perfect English - asked me how the club could make money. This was after we'd played for over two hours without contributing a penny, so I explained what should happen. I'd already told him that soft drinks were free, but tonight they weren't, so at every available opportunity he'd been turning to me and muttering "one pound fifty!" with a cheeky grin. Hey, tonight you pay for your drinks but the table time is cheap.
I expect that Chen, along with almost everyone else there, probably did not understand the reason for the new sign on the door: "Operated by Clerkenwell Clubs Ltd". The former company is - and there's really no better word to use than this - busto. The question should be not how they make money, but do they actually make money?
Usually the internet room would bring in some revenue, whether it's from renting out workstations by the hour or offering them free to play Gutshot's own online poker. But right now, it's all offline because the ADSL is disconnected. I couldn't possibly believe that this is because they didn't pay the bill, when there's a perfectly good alternative explanation: the change of ownership must have confused their ISP enough to result in a full week of downtime.
Anyway, I'm now four for four (which I just discovered should never be written in words) winning sessions in the £25/£50 game. I'm due a loss for sure, and tonight should have been one. I got lucky at the right time to finish up £56 instead of... looks like it would have been £12 down.
Holding a pair of tens, I raised the pot from the big blind after 5 people limped and I got 3 callers. The flop was jack-high with 2 small cards. I checked as did two others and the last player to act bet £10 into the £26 pot. He only had another £11 left so I made a minimum raise - thinking this would either get me to a fairly cheap showdown against the short stack or tell me for sure that I'm beaten by one of the other players. It's not a great play - I'm still making limit hold'em moves that don't belong in pot limit games and tournament moves that don't belong in cash games - but it did what I wanted, even if what I wanted to do was not a terribly good idea.
In effect I was taking just better than 2-1 pot odds on the chance that he holds a worse hand than mine - possibly a smaller pocket pair, or that he's betting overcards in position as a semi-bluff. In retrospect, as he would have been pot-committed to any raise he almost certainly had to have at least a jack here. And he did, but I somehow spiked a ten on the river to ourdraw his top pair, top kicker. Nice hand me.
I'm not sure how many different B&Bs it took before I started to become bothered by the widely adopted "leave your key at reception when you go out" system. They always tie the key to a larger than usual key fob to stop you running off with it and yesterday's blue plastic tag was eight inches long, not much less subtle than a breeze block. When I returned, it was a different receptionist to the one who checked me in, so I was hoping she'd want me to say a little more than just "room one" to let me back in. But no.
This was Thursday night, and I'd been to Gutshot for the tournament but stayed for the live action after busting out very early. I played the hand that crippled me dreadfully, check-calling on the river for most of my stack with just an eight-high flush on a paired board. I was out of position and any hand I could beat would have been silly to not check behind. After much palaver over whether one player should deal for everyone - in theory to keep things moving more quickly - but then finding that he was not really that great (beginning with a misdeal on the first hand, and not really improving) we'd reverted back to self-deal just in time for me to bust myself with 22 against AT for what few chips I had left.
So by 8.45pm I was in the £25/50 game. Played for nearly 3 hours, came away with £99 profit. Yes, triple digits would have been a nice achievement but I wasn't going to chase it, especially as I wanted to catch the last tube. I started off buying in for £60 because I didn't have any tenners, and that's OK apparently when one of the regulars already bent the rules, topping up a few minutes earlier to £100 because "there's a lot of money on the table".
I got lucky with QQ early on, turning a set and doubling up, funding some of my future donkishness. I still have too much of a limit hold'em thinking, but at least I'm recognising that, even if I'm not doing enough about it when it matters. For example, calling a river bet after the turn was checked through, holding just AJ on a board A7472 with three hearts. Just because it wasn't a pot-sized bet doesn't make it worth the call, like it does in the fabulous $2/$4 games in Vegas.
There's only really one winning hand worth relating. It earned me two players' stacks, as well as plenty of abuse from Goscars "Best Moody" winner Feroz, who had delighted us all with a bad beat story before even sitting down. I was happy to give him another. "What a fish. I hate bad players. How could you think you were winning?". After taking his stack, I took great pleasure in simply telling him, "I didn't".
I have Ace Ten in spades in the small blind, but it's £1/£1 blinds so it doesn't even cost half a bet to play. After four limpers, I just check and the big blind raises the pot - five quid more. A passive player trapped in middle position calls, so the pot is £21 and it's £5 to me. It's worth seeing the flop for sure.
Ace Seven Four. Top pair for me, but there's no spades so I don't have any redraw and I probably need help already. The big blind bets £10 after I check, and the middle player calls. I'm facing £10 for a pot of £41, and though I'm probably not ahead I figure the "worst call I ever saw" is actually worth it here for a combination of reasons.
There is a small a chance I'm actually ahead, against some combinations of pocket pairs, aces with poorer kickers or even worse. A pocket pair 88-KK for the big blind is very possible, and so I'm more concerned about whether the caller slowplaying something much stronger, or just coming along for the ride with any pair. I also have a chance to improve to a hand that's most likely a winner. It's only 3 outs at best (assuming nobody flopped a set) but it will make top two pair which should get me paid off by a big ace or a worse two pair. My call closes the action, and it gives me enough information to tell me how to proceed. The original raiser would have to suicidal to bet out again with any hand worse than a pair of aces after facing two calls with an ace on board, and I'd have to respect any bet from the middle player. I can easily fold on the turn without losing sleep if I'm facing a bet, so I think it's £10 well spent.
The turn does brings a lovely - some might say miracle - ten though, and the big blind moves all in for £24, out of turn and without even looking at the next card. Really, what does this achieve here, except letting me make the easiest trap-check ever? The other player calls, which worries me a bit, but not enough. I'm ahead more often than not here, and the pot is huge. I push for another £27 and get called, they both table Ace King and don't improve on the river. The small flop bet and middle player's smooth call cost them both the pot - it was just cheap enough for me to get a little bit fishy, so I did.
I make it £160 to me and £8 in "donations" to the club. Everyone's a winner. Nearly.
It occurred to me after walking back to my hotel from a night at Gutshot that one of the major differences between playing poker in London and playing Las Vegas is that in Vegas you will never, ever be walking back to a hotel room that is numbered with a single digit. Yesterday, I was in room 4. I also hit the trifecta - a working TV with all five channels, a kettle and a fridge. Luxury indeed.
I was a bit worried about how my luck would hold up, after having to walk from the office in a horrible February drizzle and leaving my umbrella up to dry in the ensuite whilst I went out. Is that unlucky? I really don't know.
I did crash out of the tournament early, and in spectacular fashion. With T6 in the big blind and no raise, I was pretty happy to see a flop of 789, then two players getting their chips in the middle after I checked. However a two pair 78 became a full house on the turn and I was done. This was a freeroll WSOP satellite with £10 rebuys, but I wasn't particularly bothered about playing in the first place, let alone rebuying. The £25-£50 table I was on had broken up just before it started, when the dealer announced "Right, it's my last hand, I'm off to play the tournament". We did get our voluntary donation table fees back though.
I was back in the action straight away after busting. This table was proper dealer-dealt and I learned that if the dealer wears a Gutshot top, the voluntary contribution is a rake from each pot rather than a time charge. Nobody didn't volunteer. From next month, there will be a compulsory daily membership fee introduced - £2 from noon to 6pm, £5 from 6pm to close. Not yet sure how this will affect donations, but it's good to see they have a plan to keep the club running.
"What's that funny looking chip in your stack there?" someone yelled across the table after I took down my first pot. I flipped the El Cortez 50c chip I'd been using as a card protector across to him. A few seconds later it came flying back. "Nice colour", he said, implying "gay colour" I'm sure. It's pink, what bits of it you can see through the lovely downtown grime.
I finished the night up £38 and change after about 5 hours. Gives me a little confidence, considering it was a pretty solid game all night. I still have the change in the form of three 25p chips. They have an endeering home made quality to them. Presumably for such a low value chip it wasn't worth having any specially made (the £1 and higher are Chipco style chips) but the quarters - that sounds so wrong when talking about English money - look like a set off eBay with some custom stickers. The tell tale sign is the "Las Vegas Nevada" edge marking. If I ever get to play poker at the El Cortez with Jackie Gaughan - which might even trump Claire's game with Oklahoma Johnny last summer - this will be the cheap and nasty chip I use for a card cap.
As I was working in London yesterday and it was somehow easier and cheaper to stay the night and get a train back saturday morning, I decided to take a look at how Gutshot was doing after the court case, and take my first crack at the cash tables there. Something I decided I had to do before it's too late, if there's any chance the club won't survive much longer. It took me a good half an hour to get a seat. I was third on the list for the £25-£50 game (that's the range of allowable buy-ins, not the blinds) and I saw about three hundred people come up the stairs whilst I was waiting but never heard a seat called. Turns out the waiting list doesn't actually mean a whole lot, and the more practical way to get into a game is to ask one of your mates already at a table to throw a chip at a seat as soon as somebody leaves, and then it's OK to jump the queue.
The tournament arena in the building next door has been closed down - a real shame - so space is at a premium. The new arrangement is for cash tables to run around the clock (as late as the players want to stay) and tournaments go upstairs in the bar area on circular self-dealt tables. I'd only played in the "old" club a couple of times before, and once was a £5 pack-em-in-get-em-out rebuy, which was horrible. Rebuy tournaments are off the menu now, on account of the new "donation" policy. Since Derek Kelly was found guilty of charging a levy on gambling activities, the club runs rake-free and any money you wish to contribute towards the facilities when you play is optional. For freezeout tournaments, the suggested donation is be ten percent of the buy-in, just like the old registration fee. In rebuys they used to take a percentage out of the pot instead, so the easiest thing was just to stop them.
In the case of the £25-50 game, the suggested donation was £3 every hour. A somewhat bizarre way to collect a very reasonable (it's that phrase again) service charge. I only saw one person opt out all night, and he didn't get any grief about it from the players or staff. But he did have aces cracked brutally in a large pot and then steam off another couple of buy-ins before leaving. Funny how things turn out.
Although the hourly charge is decent, tipping the dealers was also expected. It's illegal in a casino, but perfectly fine in an illegal card room. Half the dealers working were there for tips only, which wasn't a bad gig really (I'd love to do it!) but they only got to work one hour on, one hour off which slices your pay in half and leaves you hanging around in the bar for long stretches.
You have to sign a sheet of paper to say that you agree to make the voluntary donations, and the very presence of paper on the table let to an outbreak of players attempting to remember the fantastic paper folding skills they had when they were younger. One guy did manage to construct a paper cube, then wrote "fold", "call", "raise" and "re-raise" on four of the sides. The other two sides stayed blank, depsite calls for "trap check" and "check-raise" to be added from players who hadn't quite thought it through. Of course I managed to get involved in the first hand where he decided to use this.
With a straddle and 3 callers, I find AJs in the blind and raise the pot to £10. The dice's creator rolls a "fold" and throws his cards away. The next player rolls a "call", chuckles and throws in another £8. The next player throws a "re-raise" and bets the pot. £36 more to me, and what can I do? I could push for the remaining £70-odd I have left. However I doubt I can make him fold anything now, and I'm either slightly ahead or way behind. Do I believe he really just did what the dice said? Or I can call and play out of position against two players, with not enough left to make a pot-sized bet, so I have to hit the flop. Is folding here mandatory, or just weak? I folded, he showed 9Ts and I started plotting to destroy the dice the next time it came near me.
The players were pretty solid on the whole, but I did manage to spot some value in this game - mostly it's the habitual straddlers that provide it. There were usually four of five straddles each round. The dealers encouraged it with cries of "small blind £1, big blind £1... its £2 if you want to straddle". Obviously bigger pots mean bigger tips, so who can blame them. But straddling is one of the worst moves in poker. You're paying a big premium to see a flop with random cards out of position, and I figured that having £10 of almost dead money in the middle for every £2 I paid in blinds was a pretty good deal.
Anyway, the result of my six and a half hour session was an overall profit of £17. Which is not a great hourly rate, but at least it's profit. Although this really sounds more impressive than it actually was. I only stopped from going bust, in for £120, after I got a three-way all in with QQ against KK and AT, and hit the miracle queen on the flop. I'm back down on Thursday, think I'll try again!
Whether or not the Gutshot verdict will spell the end for Europe's Busiest Card Room remains to be seen. Following the trial, Derek Kelly announced, "There will be poker played at the Gutshot tonight - but we may have to change the way we do it". He went on to finish in the money in a £5 rebuy game of chance and skill.
Clearly many Gutshot regulars, as well as other keen poker players throughout the UK, are disappointed by the guilty verdict. Amongst the comments of appreciation, sympathy, disbelief and outrage on their forum are calls to arms - write to your MP, or let's start a petition and see what we can do. Even if there is no court appeal, there is still a fight to be fought, and it will be fought by more than just one gallant Irishman.
Boycotting Grosvenor Casinos is another suggestion. This is the organisation that commissioned the investigation that ultimately led to Derek's prosecution, after the police were uninterested in taking matters any further. They have, effectively, outlawed private poker clubs (except for clubs that can somehow cover their costs by charging the 60 pence per player per day allowed by law) whilst also hiking their own charges earlier this year. It is only an interpretation of the Gaming Act that allows them to call their a registration fee a "session charge" and charge more than the permitted 10%. The Gambling Commission approves of this loophole, however, and I cannot see it being tested in court.
We eagerly await a formal statement from Gutshot to see just how they intend to proceed.
I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but this will change everything, one way or another.
Gutshot's trial kicked off this morning at Snaresbrook Crown Court. Although quickly adjourned because of some kind of legal thing that I won't pretend to understand, it's still very much game on for the CPS and the UK casino industry vs a bunch people who just want to play cards. No more delays - this is all expected to be settled, one way or another, in eight days.
Derek Kelly, who is facing criminal charges under the 1968 Gaming Act, published an article on Gutshot.com this morning, confidently looking forward to the challenge ahead whilst also taking time to reflect on how things had come to be this way. In a week's time, it may be looked on as the first eulogy for what was once Europe's busiest card club. Meantime, this along with the expected daily updates is essential reading for anyone who gives a shit about poker in the UK, not just the twenty thousand registered Gutshot members.
I still can't see any result being a good result. If Gutshot win, it's also an easy victory for all of the imitators that have been springing up around the country playing the "if they can do it, so can we" card. Unlicensed, unregulated, law-unto-themselves card clubs will spring up almost as fast as Subways (can you believe that even Stoke - surely the only city in the world still without any kind of franchise coffee house - has five Subways that I'm aware of, probably more, and another is apparently opening opposite the train station soon). It's difficult to see whether that's much better - not taking into account, of course, the consequences for Mr Kelly - than if they lose. The game - for those not wishing to play bingo poker at the major casino chains and pay a 25% rake - simply becomes underground, unlicensed and unregulated.
New Year sucks. Christmas is over (well, actually that's not such a a bad thing). You've run out of turkey recipes, and still have half a bird left. It's starting to smell a bit, too. You can, if you wish, queue for hours in the freezing cold to stand a small chance of picking up a genuine bargain in the sales. Although I'm sure it won't be as bad as the insanity and violence of the PlayStation 3 queues in America last month. This year, I'm spending midnight at New Year's Eve on a plane. I know I won't care.
Oh, and all new for 2007 - the price of poker is going up again. All around the country this time, too.
Grosvenor Casinos have announced a new schedule of "session charges". Whilst they've had the sense to tier the fees so you pay less for a cheaper tournament, the attempt to justify it as the "true reflection of running costs of cardrooms" is unconvincing. I'm quite pleased that I managed to delete the word "bullshit" just then, very disciplined of me.
It's a £2 charge on a £5 tournament, but £5 on £20. Does one game really cost two and a half times as much to run as the other?
It's actually great for the game that the major casinos are finally starting to treat it as a game in its own right, and not simply something in the same league as £5 in free slot play or a complimentary drink. If they have to charge a little extra to do justice to their tournaments and keep the guys upstairs happy, then so be it. But c'mon, call a spade a spade. Call a service charge a rake (unless you're not allowed to). And acknowledge this session fee what it is - a way for casinos to begin making money from poker directly, rather just using it to try to bring in pit game suckers.
I've never bought or traded a percentage in another player before, but now I have ten percent of David Buckle in next year's WSOP Main Event. Not a big name player, I grant you, but it's got to be better to walk away from a tournament with a lottery ticket than a big fat zero. So that's what I did.
Last night was the £150 WSOP super satellite at Gutshot that I won entry into last week. With 33 players and a handful of rebuys, the prize pool just topped the £6500 mark - just enough to award one Main Event seat with flights and accomodation.
The complete prize structure looked like this:
1st: £6500 package 2nd: £115
Somewhat top heavy. With one buy in less in the prize pool, we'd have been playing for three packages with a $1000 super-satellite at the Rio and some spare change for 4th place. Despite almost everyone in the tournament preferring to play for three places, the prize structure stood and we weren't able to chop the package. The final add-on was actually taken by someone who wanted to play all-or-nothing for the big one, knowing that paying the extra £150 would be enough to create the seat. And that was that.
So with twenty-something players remaining and just one prize greater than the price of a buy-in to play for, I wasn't going to hang around. Looking down at AK and having a below average stack, I figure I have to take a shot, even facing a raise and a reraise that already covers my chips. I'm hoping to run against two smaller pairs, or one smaller pair and a worse ace. In either of those spots, I'm about one-in-three to triple up and that's plenty good enough. In fact, I end up drawing a bit thinner, against QQ and KK. When the KK is slowrolled after seeing both the other hands, karma kicks in and sticks a queen on the flop right up his arse. There's a jack too, so I'm calling for a ten to make a winning straight, and the turn card dutifully obliges.
I should have tripled up here, but somehow I got stiffed on the pot. I moved in for 3200, but ended up with 7300. It should have been virtually 10k, but thanks to the excitement of actually still being in the tournament, I didn't notice until half way through the next hand. All I can think is that my side pot was only awarded the first player's original raise; whatever happened it was too late to do anything and I had to try to convince myself that it wasn't going to matter that much.
Actually, it was about as insignificant as you could hope for. From that point on, I only committed all my chips twice; once defending my blind with A2s (my reraise was called after an eternity by 35s, and I still don't understand why but it made breathing difficult for a while) and then when I was actually eliminated in fourth place, with my AJ losing to K9.
With four players remaining and the cardroom still unwilling to chop up the prize the best we could come up with was for the winner to give 10% of any World Series winings to each of the other three. We hastily scribbled an agreement which the club are keeping in their safe; far from perfect but even a forum post is more than anyone claiming to have a piece of this year's winner had. Even though the deal really probably isn't worth much (although, of course, it could be worth 10% of $12m...) it no longer felt like I'd been playing for six hours with still a chance of going home with nothing.
I was pleased with my performance, and definitely got more out of this tournament than I expected. Most importantly, I got a lot of high-pressure final table experience. The stakes were way out of my comfort zone (my seat was worth over £1700 before I busted, and I couldn't lock in any of that equity) but I didn't choke. I stayed patient and made good decisions. I'd built a table image that I could take advantage of. I always believed it when I told myself I had as good a chance as any other player to take first place.
I was also very pleased that I managed to walk directly back to my hotel without passing any places that I'd only ever seen on Monopoly squares! This is a first for me, and although it's nice to see London by foot, it's not ideal when you're alone at 3am and are a little unsure of the way. Plus, I was disappointed last week when I discovered, by accident, that The Angel Islington was just another Wetherspoons.
I've left it a bit late to write up the tournament I played at Gutshot on Monday, but I did win... so I think I should still make the effort to recount my moments of greatness.
Clearly I rock. I picked up pocket aces three times in the first hour. Bad players just can't do that, it's the reason they suck. This was an unlimited rebuy tournament, so I didn't even need to find opponents with much of a hand to get action. It's a satellite into the WSOP qualifier next Monday (a £150 ticket), and actually a freeroll. You start with 500 chips for absolutely nothing. Then every time you need more, £10 gets you an extra 1000 and there's an add-on after an hour where your tenner gets you 2000 more chips. 148 rebuys and add-ons created 10 seats; in fact the cardroom added £20 to the pot rather than create a cash prize for 10th. ty.
Aces #1: There's an all-in from early position by a player who has made it quite clear he isn't going to rebuy. He's been playing it, well, like a freeroll. His bet is called by the player to my right who had taken one rebuy to start with 1500 (as had I) but now has a little less than that remaining. I move all-in over the top - no point being fancy here, and there's no real downside to showing strength now. If the guy stuck in the middle likes his hand, he'll call. If he doesn't, we have a chunk of dead money and a better chance of winning. I'm not letting anyone else into this pot for cheap. Turns out he did like his hand: 9Ts. The freerolling maniac flips up AJ and I take it down. One player rebuys, the other makes his way downstairs.
I'd been sitting tight for a good 20 minutes. Usually not even worth thinking about, but in this game chips were flying and dudes and dudettes were gambling. Everyone except me, that is. I feared I may have too much respect, so when I looked down and saw the Gutshot Powerhouse, I thought I'd check my table image. I raise, and all fold to the big blind who thinks for an age and eventually passes. I throw the mighty five-high face up, and nobody looks impressed. Yet when someone folds the same hand face up from a blind later in the tournament there is much talk about how they were way ahead, it never loses, how can they fold that, etc. I'm dealing that hand, so I cheekily rabbit hunt and make him a one card, five high flush to beat the raiser's pocket tens. Ahead the whole time, indeed.
It couldn't get more perfect when the very next hand ...
Aces #2: Kerching. AA. Let's see how much respect I have now. Hopefully none. Blinds are up to 50/100 so I open with a raise to 300. A newly rebought 1000 chips comes over the top and my hand holds up against another AJ. Rebuy in seat.. well, who knows what number the seat is in these self-dealt games...?
I'm then moved to another table, and having lost one small pot and a couple of rounds of blinds I am sitting behind a stack on 3300 when the last three hands for rebuys is announced. Two hands pass uneventfully. Last hand before the break, and wouldn't you know it...
Aces #3: Woohoo. There are two limpers ahead of me, and I make it 300 to go from the button. I haven't needed to rebuy yet and I'm feeling a bit frisky, hence the small raise. I'd like some action please Bob. It's not very often you'll see me trying to build a pot with one pair, but right now I can still pay £20 if it all goes wrong and be back to 3000 chips, roughtly where I started. The blinds quickly fold and the two limpers call. These two limpers had history. The guy in early position had been frustrated by the girl in between us twice since I'd been here, with her moving all in over the top after he bet. Both times he folded a medium strong hand face up (whereas she showed nothing and just grinned), and though he was probably correct both times he was clearly getting rattled. So with me last to act behind these two, I have to hold my breath when there's a bet of 500 and an immediate all-in on a Q-high, fairly raggy board. Had she not seen me here? I don't think the other guy had, as he announced "call" before I had chance to do anything. Two nits at the table convinced him that the call stood because I had ever so slightly less chips than the raiser. Which I think is correct, but instead of calling for a ruling he just threw in his remaining 500 with bottom pair (45s) and started berating the nits for getting involved once his hand did not improve (compulsory call for him though anyway in that spot). QJ also did not improve, and I'm up to about 10,000 at the break after I take the add-on.
The girl does not return, so there's 125 chips with no owner at the table when we come back from break. The table gets broken quickly and I have no idea where those chips end up. Surely they won't have reseated her with a dead stack for three or four hands? Wasn't at my table anyway...
The streak continues at my new table. I get one customer when I raise with AQ, the flop comes Q-high and he check-calls all in on the flop with 66. Not exactly pot-committed (the bet was about the size of the pot) but he must not have believed me. Doesn't he know how powerfbloody lucky I am tonight?
From then on it did get harder. Can you believe I didn't see aces again all night? Sometimes that really makes you question how good you are... I was glad to have the big chip advantage because the blinds got silly pretty quick. I'm still not convinced by the 250/500 and 350/700 levels. They are uncomfortable numbers, and really just serve to skip three levels for the price of two. About half the players were pot committed on every hand they played, so I mostly just stayed out of trouble. No need to win this one, top ten will do fine. I manage to maintain and creep my stack up a bit to 16k before we are down to two tables.
Playing some great push/fold, crapshooty, throw-it-all-away-on-one-hand poker, I see AJ and have to move in from the cut-off. The small blind likes his hand. He thinks for a while and says "I have a pair". Bad small blind - if he calls and shows a pair, he can't win this pot. They only recently allowed any speech play at all at Gutshot, but you still can't talk about your hand whilst there are other players to act. Heads up it seems you can do what the hell you like... So do I actually want him to call, then yell for the floor and let them decide whether I just get his blind or the whole pot? Or do I say something now, and make him pass whilst also letting the other player still in the hand know that I'm not particularly keen on getting action here? I decide to keep quiet and fortunately he folds what he says is a pair of sixes.
From then on the remaining players dropped like flies. I still had to take a 50/50 with my 55 against AT to ensure safety, but I stayed lucky and didn't finish 13th. Two simultaneous bustos, one on each table, took ten of us into the next round. One winner even got all the way without paying a penny. Living the dream baby!
The £150 satellite is next Monday. It's costing me £88 on the train (they just got expensive for Christmas) and £34 for a hotel (and yes, you get what you pay for) to be there. With my £20 investment, I guess I'm about £8 up...
