Tony's Life Story (there is some poker in here somewhere) - Warning ! Do not read without a dry handkerchief to hand'
Central Middlesex Hospital, 10th September 1947, was when life's adventure began for yours truly, Anthony James Kendall, aka tikay, and it was outdraws & re buys all the way until the last 20 years. Mum never left hospital after my birth, & succumbed to the big C 4 months later. My Dad worked shifts, so could not look after my 5 year old sister & me, but he had 11 brothers & sisters round the country so they became my mums & dads for the next 5 years. So my early years were spent in Preston, Wiltshire, Portsmouth, and 4 or 5 parts of London. I would spend about 3 months at a time with different Aunties & Uncles, doubtless spoiled something rotten. A toddler who has lost his Mum gets plenty of the "ah" factor!
Eventually we settled with an Auntie in Surrey, and they were easily the happiest days of my childhood. But "out of a clear blue sky" as the saying goes, Dad remarried, & my new stepmother was a horror. These days she would have been jailed for child cruelty, but times were different then. So the next 10 years were quite awful, & the result was all sorts of psychological & learning difficulties, and I could neither read or write at the age of 15. But the resilience of children is awesome, & in my mid teens it all clicked for me. After years of being bottom of the class, and a spell at a "special school", I suddenly became ultra proficient at reading & writing, it was a miracle, it just seemed to happen overnight. I think I had absorbed all I had been taught, but could not express it until then.
So life looked better all of a sudden, & I started reading books. No fiction, just true life stuff, & I reckon have read a book a week during my 57 years - and still got all of them.
Work began as an apprentice builders merchant - you want to know how many bricks in a ton? Tikay's your man. £5 a week was the wage, so when I got "poached" by a customer who said "come & join us, you could eventually earn £1,000 a year", a star struck tikay went to work for a bunch of guys in East London, Krays territory.
20 years there, a real workaholic, then two huge outdraws in one year. Dad - my best mate, my pal, the greatest man who ever lived, died aged 62. No point in continuing to live with my step-mother, so the day after we buried him, I moved up to rented accommodation in Derby. And then the company went bankrupt, and somehow, in a last ditch attempt to keep the company afloat, I was persuaded to loan them my life savings, £22,000. All lost, the lot. So, no Dad, no money, no car, no home. Re buy!
Then I got lucky & went to work for a guy called John Kirkland, who runs the UK's largest privately owned construction company. He - almost literally - pulled me out of he gutter, & gave me a chance. He invests in "people", & he allowed me to start up a company which was owned by his Group, but which I ran within Group disciplines. 20 years later, that company - "my company" as I saw it - turned over £53 million in a year, & made a tidy profit. So I was well proud of my 18 years or so as Managing Director. But it had outgrown me, I was burned out, & felt I could not give John the effort he had every right to expect of me, so I decided to retire early. My dad's family had all died young, so it was time to have fun now, before it was too late. John was magnificent, and looked after me with a handsome retirement pay off. How lucky I was to have met John Kirkland who, in my opinion, is the UK's greatest businessman, having built The Bowmer & Kirkland Group into a hugely successful & much envied family-owned company.
And so to Poker. I have been playing for about 4 years, mainly in Nottingham & Derby, & turned a small profit from day one. I hooked up with 2 guys, Julian Thew & Ian Oldershaw, almost from day one. We swapped 10% at the beginning, & still do to this day, but there's is no soft play between us, the bragging rights are FAR too important!
We were convinced we were as good as the "big boys", & wanted to prove it. In the £20 & £30 local comps in the Midlands, we all had a final ratio of at least 25% - that's Finals made to comps played. In fact mine was the best, 35% overall up to the end of 2003, (42% at Notts in 2003, but a miserable 11% in 2004!), Julian & Ian were in the mid 20% region, but they won a lot more comps & money, they were & are far better & more adventurous players than tikay will ever be, I am just a grinder.
So in November 2003 the three of us, encouraged by Thewy, trotted off to Amsterdam to take part in the Master Classics. Could we sustain the 30% or so Final ratio in a big Festival? Julian believed we could, but Ian & I were not so sure. Well, I made the money twice from 4 attempts, (including my only attempt at Limit), but no Finals, and Julian made one Final & another money finish, so that was a great thrill. Ian meanwhile, was having a mare. He exited first from the Limit, not much better in the Omaha, and was physically sick before the comps due to nerves. But he blitzed a strong satellite, took his seat in The Lido, & copped 2nd for 120,000 Euros - Bingo! And no easy Final - the last 4 were Johan Storakers, Marcel Luske, a chap called Devilfish, & our Ian. And there was Ian, R-ing & RR-ing these icons of the game - breathtaking stuff!
2004, in terms of our little "Notts Mob", has been Julian's year. He has won decent comps all over the UK, and performed heroically in the last 2 EPT's, gaining top 10 finishes in both. As a result, William Hill gave him a sponsorship deal in early November - could not have happened to a more deserving, or nicer, bloke. I have always believed Julian will become world-class - watch out for him in '05, he has a helluva game.
And Tikay's 20004 poker year? Well, after retirement from work in April I became a poker tourist. Festival Finals in St Petersburg (2), Barcelona, Jesolo (2), Paris, Blackpool, Walsall (2), Brighton, Sheffield (2), and Luton (2) were not enough to prevent this being my first losing year at the live game, though an amazing run in the SNG's on PokerStars has kept me in profit overall for the year. And the bonus of visiting those beautiful cities I had never seen before was worth every penny - & no, I do not mean Luton! I endured 6 months of bad beats, but it all levels out in the end, & the last month has proven that case.
A sudden return to form at the table, & out of the blue, the chance to work with, Julian Thew apart, far & away my favourite player, Mr Dave Colclough. I admire Dave as much for his demeanor as for his play. Perfect manners & table etiquette, no rub-downs or table banging, and takes defeat like a man. I don't think I have ever heard a bad word about the fella, so what a bit of luck to end up in partnership with him & his beautiful partner, Rhowena.
I live in God's country, Derbyshire, same little house I have lived in for 20+ years, & I shall spend the rest of my time here. I live alone, except for the 2 cats. Charlie I rescued from the RSPCA sanctuary, she's very old, arthritic, psychopathic, feisty, & dribbles for England. And young Angel, a beautiful pure white specimen. He roams the streets at night, shades on, baseball cap on backwards, a real cool dude, though I have a hunch he's gay. My only blood family is my Sister & her kids, they are over in Aussie, and I have a half-brother in Milton Keynes.
I am working my way through life's wish list, & most of the tick boxes are filled in. Just a few more, and I'll have the set. Poker is so much like life. Take the bad beats& the luck in your stride, 'cos plenty worse happens off the table. I try to lose with dignity, & win graciously. Well, I will if I ever bloody win......
Central Middlesex Hospital, 10th September 1947, was when life's adventure began for yours truly, Anthony James Kendall, aka tikay, and it was outdraws & re buys all the way until the last 20 years. Mum never left hospital after my birth, & succumbed to the big C 4 months later. My Dad worked shifts, so could not look after my 5 year old sister & me, but he had 11 brothers & sisters round the country so they became my mums & dads for the next 5 years. So my early years were spent in Preston, Wiltshire, Portsmouth, and 4 or 5 parts of London. I would spend about 3 months at a time with different Aunties & Uncles, doubtless spoiled something rotten. A toddler who has lost his Mum gets plenty of the "ah" factor!
Eventually we settled with an Auntie in Surrey, and they were easily the happiest days of my childhood. But "out of a clear blue sky" as the saying goes, Dad remarried, & my new stepmother was a horror. These days she would have been jailed for child cruelty, but times were different then. So the next 10 years were quite awful, & the result was all sorts of psychological & learning difficulties, and I could neither read or write at the age of 15. But the resilience of children is awesome, & in my mid teens it all clicked for me. After years of being bottom of the class, and a spell at a "special school", I suddenly became ultra proficient at reading & writing, it was a miracle, it just seemed to happen overnight. I think I had absorbed all I had been taught, but could not express it until then.
So life looked better all of a sudden, & I started reading books. No fiction, just true life stuff, & I reckon have read a book a week during my 57 years - and still got all of them.
Work began as an apprentice builders merchant - you want to know how many bricks in a ton? Tikay's your man. £5 a week was the wage, so when I got "poached" by a customer who said "come & join us, you could eventually earn £1,000 a year", a star struck tikay went to work for a bunch of guys in East London, Krays territory.
20 years there, a real workaholic, then two huge outdraws in one year. Dad - my best mate, my pal, the greatest man who ever lived, died aged 62. No point in continuing to live with my step-mother, so the day after we buried him, I moved up to rented accommodation in Derby. And then the company went bankrupt, and somehow, in a last ditch attempt to keep the company afloat, I was persuaded to loan them my life savings, £22,000. All lost, the lot. So, no Dad, no money, no car, no home. Re buy!
Then I got lucky & went to work for a guy called John Kirkland, who runs the UK's largest privately owned construction company. He - almost literally - pulled me out of he gutter, & gave me a chance. He invests in "people", & he allowed me to start up a company which was owned by his Group, but which I ran within Group disciplines. 20 years later, that company - "my company" as I saw it - turned over £53 million in a year, & made a tidy profit. So I was well proud of my 18 years or so as Managing Director. But it had outgrown me, I was burned out, & felt I could not give John the effort he had every right to expect of me, so I decided to retire early. My dad's family had all died young, so it was time to have fun now, before it was too late. John was magnificent, and looked after me with a handsome retirement pay off. How lucky I was to have met John Kirkland who, in my opinion, is the UK's greatest businessman, having built The Bowmer & Kirkland Group into a hugely successful & much envied family-owned company.
And so to Poker. I have been playing for about 4 years, mainly in Nottingham & Derby, & turned a small profit from day one. I hooked up with 2 guys, Julian Thew & Ian Oldershaw, almost from day one. We swapped 10% at the beginning, & still do to this day, but there's is no soft play between us, the bragging rights are FAR too important!
We were convinced we were as good as the "big boys", & wanted to prove it. In the £20 & £30 local comps in the Midlands, we all had a final ratio of at least 25% - that's Finals made to comps played. In fact mine was the best, 35% overall up to the end of 2003, (42% at Notts in 2003, but a miserable 11% in 2004!), Julian & Ian were in the mid 20% region, but they won a lot more comps & money, they were & are far better & more adventurous players than tikay will ever be, I am just a grinder.
So in November 2003 the three of us, encouraged by Thewy, trotted off to Amsterdam to take part in the Master Classics. Could we sustain the 30% or so Final ratio in a big Festival? Julian believed we could, but Ian & I were not so sure. Well, I made the money twice from 4 attempts, (including my only attempt at Limit), but no Finals, and Julian made one Final & another money finish, so that was a great thrill. Ian meanwhile, was having a mare. He exited first from the Limit, not much better in the Omaha, and was physically sick before the comps due to nerves. But he blitzed a strong satellite, took his seat in The Lido, & copped 2nd for 120,000 Euros - Bingo! And no easy Final - the last 4 were Johan Storakers, Marcel Luske, a chap called Devilfish, & our Ian. And there was Ian, R-ing & RR-ing these icons of the game - breathtaking stuff!
2004, in terms of our little "Notts Mob", has been Julian's year. He has won decent comps all over the UK, and performed heroically in the last 2 EPT's, gaining top 10 finishes in both. As a result, William Hill gave him a sponsorship deal in early November - could not have happened to a more deserving, or nicer, bloke. I have always believed Julian will become world-class - watch out for him in '05, he has a helluva game.
And Tikay's 20004 poker year? Well, after retirement from work in April I became a poker tourist. Festival Finals in St Petersburg (2), Barcelona, Jesolo (2), Paris, Blackpool, Walsall (2), Brighton, Sheffield (2), and Luton (2) were not enough to prevent this being my first losing year at the live game, though an amazing run in the SNG's on PokerStars has kept me in profit overall for the year. And the bonus of visiting those beautiful cities I had never seen before was worth every penny - & no, I do not mean Luton! I endured 6 months of bad beats, but it all levels out in the end, & the last month has proven that case.
A sudden return to form at the table, & out of the blue, the chance to work with, Julian Thew apart, far & away my favourite player, Mr Dave Colclough. I admire Dave as much for his demeanor as for his play. Perfect manners & table etiquette, no rub-downs or table banging, and takes defeat like a man. I don't think I have ever heard a bad word about the fella, so what a bit of luck to end up in partnership with him & his beautiful partner, Rhowena.
I live in God's country, Derbyshire, same little house I have lived in for 20+ years, & I shall spend the rest of my time here. I live alone, except for the 2 cats. Charlie I rescued from the RSPCA sanctuary, she's very old, arthritic, psychopathic, feisty, & dribbles for England. And young Angel, a beautiful pure white specimen. He roams the streets at night, shades on, baseball cap on backwards, a real cool dude, though I have a hunch he's gay. My only blood family is my Sister & her kids, they are over in Aussie, and I have a half-brother in Milton Keynes.
I am working my way through life's wish list, & most of the tick boxes are filled in. Just a few more, and I'll have the set. Poker is so much like life. Take the bad beats& the luck in your stride, 'cos plenty worse happens off the table. I try to lose with dignity, & win graciously. Well, I will if I ever bloody win......
