blonde poker forum

http://thepokerdeck.com/articles/the-poker-deck-meets-kevin-allen

total role model for every young grinder out there, went from quiz machines to fruitys to pro dog punter and now poker player, and has brought up a family of 3 as the only bread winner for the last 11 years. Great interview and one of the guys i respect the most in the whole world

legend

Nice article, Kev is such a hero!

Such memories of the golden days on Laddies :D

Recently got to know him an his brother last few months an total respect for both.

Ladbrokes was my early stomping ground too. I remember when they added these multiple-table tournament things.

20r awesome comp on there. WHO IS THE DADDY ($320??) turning into X IS THE DADDY (where x = the previous week's winner) was too cool. Ran bad in that bad boy.

Fond memories of battling Paul Jackson etc on there. Remember Mafews being EVERYWHERE.

What was Kev's username?

6pm 20r was class and it was 'Actionjack's who's the daddy' on Tuesday nights. He used to do a little write up of the comp every week which was comedy, and I remember when I lost HU in that, I was gutted :D

Remember Mafews went from 50nl-5knl in a short space of time  on there and remember railing him playing high stakes PLO on the cruise in 2006 out of my nut...

Kev's nick on Laddies was Gambling Pays, and his brother was RichieBalboa.

 Knew his bro Ritchie for a while . Played with Kevin in MC this year and think he's very nice guy .
Gl to him in Vegas . Hope he bring home the bacons for his boss .:-)

Laddies was the nuts back in the day, and the Daddy was such a great tourney.

What was Kev's alias?

I believe it was "Gambling Pays" (see Post by Marky, 2 or 3 posts prior).

I agree, laddies was my home for years...started with paradise but found laddies had many characters that made poker fun. ActionJackson being my all time fav player to rail, so so funny against the idiots.

Talking of Paul Jackson, I bumped into him in Birmingham on Friday & had a natter, & I enquired why he had not been at Wembley.

It seems Kelly, his daughter, had a very serious car accident several weeks ago, & was in a bad way, but she is on the mend now. 

I was surprised to hear she is now 24, wow, time flies. I seem to recall she won the Media Comp on the night DTD Opened & developed into a very fine player. I first met her at a dodgy spieler in Belfast a year or two before that, when the Tourney was a £1,000, £100,000 to the winner guaranteed thing. (She was not playing, obv). There were only 107 runners or somesuch, so £100,000 to the winner & £7,000 to be split between the otherr 9 Finalists!

When Paul made the Final, he immediately brokered a deal to introduce a normal payout structure based on a prize pool of £107,000, then went on to win the thing & take home about £30,000. So that deal cost him, arguably, £70,000.   

What with Kelly & Ben, Paul must be some teacher/coach/mentor.

Anyway, get well soon Kelly.

My memory played tricks, I just checked that Tourney that Paul won in Dublin.

It was £1,500 Entry, £100,000 Guaranteed to the winner, & there were 82 entries.

So there was £100,000 to the winner, & £23,000 to be split between the remaining 8 or 9 players prior to Paul sorting it out.

It was at a place called the Cavendish Club. Very reputable venue.

I found Paul to be an excellent teacher and always willing to offer advice...one thing that stuck with me over time was him telling me not to get into situations where you are open to be unlucky in a pot. Wonder how much he made from laddies/daddy comps in those days?

The oft-repeated line at the time was that Paul was the best online MTT player ever ever ever.

That was before the Scandies started to change things, of course, in around 2004.

That club was in Belfast Tikay, unfortunately the police closed it down. Sean Murphy owned it.

Yes, of course, Belfast not Dublin, apologies.

The police raided it and confiscated the tournament prize pool and all the roulette tables I seem to recall.

Cavendish Club it was called.

Yup.

I think that Tourney may have been sponsored by Ladbrokes, which was why the likes of Paul Jackson and Skalie were there for it. Mr Ulliott turned up, too, and Thewy.

Paul is the absolute nuts

I started my life as a degen by playing quiz machines for a living.

Could earn £100 per hour on the right machine in the gold old days.

agreed. he's very, very shrewd (and a top bloke). When I first met him I very arrogantly under-estimated him.

He's soooo dreamy

How did this work?  Did you have to have a very good general knowledge or was there certain questions that would come up again and again?  Was there a specific strategy?

Memory vpbanks were small, was the days just after getting a 16k ram pack for a Spectrum - well I am exaggerating, but was possible to memorise questions - even easier if you acquired the bank of Qs

Loved laddies and who's the daddy plus the tourney in the afternoon , think it was $ 200 ,
lasted about 4 hours , had about 20-25 regs playin it , including the old man.

Happy days

Yep, was ridic.

I've always been pretty good at general knowledge (One of my teachers used to say "Keith is a mine of worthless information") asnd when a new machine turned up I probably knew 60-70% of questions and as there were only a couple of thousand questions, I kept getting repeat questions ands it didn't take more than a couple of weeks to know the lot.

Could literally play the machines until they were empty of cash.

Only danger was getting banned from pubs/clubs/snooker halls. Still in those days, virtually every pub had a quiz machine.

Happy days.

$250+20 @ 1430

Deffo

Thanks

Bingo !!!! Loved it , could play it while at work . Looking back now they were golden days and can't
believe Ladbrokes made such a cock up of a good customer base.