EPT London and Hold’em 100 Report Part 1

Following a long week on the road I was not going to bother writing up my trip, but it’s been a slow day at work! I was working for poker news and it makes a nice change to get away from work for a week to do something I enjoy. It’s a long post so if you’re easily bored then switch off now.

The Vic and Hold’em 100 at Loose Cannons

My trip started on the Friday when Karen (my wife) Becky (4 year old daughter) and I made the journey down from the Midlands to stay with the in-laws in Essex. We had a nice relaxing weekend planned and on Sunday I was scheduled to interview Daniel Negreanu and John Duthie at Loose Cannons prior to the Charity Hold’em 100 game. Unfortunately on Saturday morning I discovered I had saved my pre-prepared interview questions for Messieurs Duthie and Negreanu on a drive at work and not on my lap top.

We where due to spend the day in Southend (Essex seaside town) so I had to frantically re-write my questions in the car on the trip down to the coast, I had to think up of plenty of new ones as I had forgotten most of my original questions (probable not that good then!). We had a nice day on the coast and Becky really enjoyed Peter Pan’s playground which is a smallish and cheap amusement park on the sea front. If you think Disneyland but built for £100,000 and populated by Chav’s you’re on the right lines

As planned on the Sunday I said good bye to wife and daughter and headed into London with my best friend and photographer Matt. When we arrived at the Loose Cannons club we had to fight through thousand of spandex clad cyclists as the centre of London had been closed for the “Free wheeling” event and the tournament was obviously going to have be delayed. The waiting played havoc with my nerves, this was my first face to face interviews and I was really on edge. I quickly discovered there was a free bar and a few gratis cerveza’s soon took the edge off things. Al Laycock from PokerStars PR agency had arranged the interviews and when he introduced himself he instanlty reminded me of an old colleague of mine called Andy Bailey, they are both unfailingly nice chaps and the sort of person you immediately warm too. Al ushered me through to the VIP area to begin my interviews, I had worked very hard on a list of questions for both Daniel and John and I hoped the questions would be relevant and interesting to poker players.

So Al introduced me to my first interviewee, Gavin Griffin! Now I’m a huge admirer of Gavin Griffin, I thought he played amazing poker to take down last years EPT grand final and am incredibly impressed by the sterling work he has done for charity, also he carries himself with an air of dignity and is polite and friendly but having stated all this I still did not really want to make Gavin my first professional face to face interview when I have no questions pre-prepared. It was a real curve ball, but I seemed to manage OK and Matt said he was impressed at how I responded of the cuff.

So when that interview was done Matt went outside and took some great shots of Gavin and then we where called back to interview Daniel. I must admit to being a bit of a Negreanu fan boy and meeting him in person was really affirming, he was a class act and was very open during the interview. When the table draw for the tournament was made I was delighted to be placed on Daniels table. It was great to play with him for a few hours and he was friendly and welcoming although you could tell he was very tired having flown in from Vegas and traveled straight on to this charity event, his a top bloke.

In the tournament I doubled up early by winning a race and stole steadily enough until after the re-buy period to be slightly above average. A great hand came up just before the end of the re-buy period, DN in the big blind re-raised two late position limpers. One of the limpers called and the flop came A, Q, 8, DN moved all in for his last 2,000 or so and his opponent insta called, DN groaned and when his opponent turned over Q8 for two pair. DN then said, “I have not even looked!” He turned over one card and smiled when it was and ace, he nearly fell out of his chair when he turned up the other card, it too was an ace. He honestly had played the hand blind.I had been watching him and there is no way he would have shoved that flop with a set of aces anyway.

I bluffed of a lot of my chips and then played a hand that I would not have if I had not been looking for a quick double up and Matt had not been moaning about wanting to go to the pub! Anyway DN raised, I called of a third of my meager stack with QJ diamond, Flop came K,Q,10 I moved in and Daniel called with trip kings! I missed the up and down and I was on my way to the pub.

The Vic

The next day I meet my Dad for Breakfast and travel back to stay with him in Hertfordshire for the night, I felt guilty because I spent most of the day typing up the Negreanu interview and in the evening I had to meet a friend at the Vic to talk business. These two trips shuffling into London via train and tube through the east end really took me back to what seems like another life. I spent a large part of my life as a city boy but I had forgotten how truly terrible these journeys are, I don’t miss it a bit. I get to the Vic with plenty of time to spare and have my first taste of the Rulelishness of the Victoria Casino. I want to order a pint of Lemonade but the bartender won’t let me, because they only sell small lemonades. He will however sell me two small Lemonades and give me a pint glass to put them in.

I spend the night at my Dad’s and trek back into London to meet Nicky O’Donnell at our hotel. Nicky is a very talented reporter and is undoubtedly the senior member of them team, I will rely on him a lot over the next week. We will be sharing a room for a week in a hotel located about half a mile from the Vic, this is a necessary cost cutting exercise considering the overall ‘Near charity’ status of poker news updaters pay! I find sharing a room with another man a bit weird, I have only met Nicky once before, at this year Irish Open and the room, although clean and nice is tiny!

We get to the Vic at 11:30 and the doors are locked, I find this strange with a planned start time of 1.00pm and feel its bit awkward of the Vic that they have not bent the rules a little and opened up for the media early. Outside the Vic there is a throng of forty or so Media types, some I already know and the rest I will get to know over the course of the next few days. Every morning we all arrive ten minutes or so early and the same thing happens, some one ignoring the throng of people waiting walks up to the obviously secured doors and tries to gain entry. Really what do they think the rest of us are waiting for? Maybe we just like to hang on the Edgware road looking cold, tired, and bored.

We get our press passes which are extremely annoying wrist attachments that once attached you can’t remove in any other fashion than permanent and it drives me near batty over the next few days. We are shown to the press room which is located at the back of the casino. I’m mortified at the placement, to get to the card room you have to go down two flights of stairs, walk through the maze of corridors that make up the back of house offices, cross the gaming floor, climb two more flights of stairs and walk through the bar into the card room. What makes this more frustrating is that from where we are physically located the card room is probable the room next door!

Day 1A

The card room is crowded and the tables are very close together when Day1 A finally starts an hour later than scheduled at 2pm, 174 players have stumped up the money and make there way to the hallowed felt of the Victoria casino London. Such poker luminaries as Chris Moneymaker, Jeff Lissandro (comically called Jeffy on the table draw sheet, he really looks like a Jeffy to me), Johnny Lodden and Andreas Hoivold are in attendance on the first actual day of play. Moneymaker is one of the stories of the day, due to a combination of good fortune, good play and good cards Moneymaker gets chipped up very early and quickly hits the front of the field with a huge stack.

However as the day progresses his smooth path becomes much rockier when he is moved to a new table featuring some hyper aggressive players and the always active Dave ‘The Devilfish’ Ulliot. Moneymakers stack takes hit after hit, and from watching the table you get a good idea of how difficult it must be for Moneymaker, Players seems to love re-raising him and showing a bluff, I’m not sure why this is the case. At the tables Moneymaker is a very polite courteous guy and seems quite affable away from the table too. I guess people just like pushing around a world champion.

At one stage Moneymakers stack was below his original starting allotment and he was under immense pressure, he is clearly a player doing everything in his power to play his best poker and that has to be admired. More admirable though was the way he absorbed the assaults and fought back, taking out Ulliot along the way with AA V’s JJ. At the end of the day he was third in chips with Frenchman Nicolas Levi and Spaniard Daniel Mangas leading the way,

Day 1B

Day 1B again starts late and see’s some of pokers big guns come out to play, Daniel Negreanu, Liz Lieu, Roland De Wolfe, Andy Black and Patrik Antonius to name but a few. Antonius must be a freak of nature as he plays cards all day and just never stops eating, yet he still looks like Adonis. My wife has admitted to me she has a big crush on him so I can’t resist the opportunity to get our photographer to take a picture of him during his latest snack with spaghetti hanging out of his mouth.

Daniel Negreanu was seated next to Lieu and he seemed particularly focused and doubled up early with a straight flush. Shortly afterward Roland De Wolfe was moved over to sit next to Lieu so we had arguable the three biggest names on Day 1B all sat next to each other! On this very tough table it was young Tony Phillips who was accumulating chips and talking trash!

Daniel kept saying hello and stopping for a chat, remembering my name in the process, this freaked me out a little. It’s a bit strange when someone from “off the telly” you admire starts calling you Kev! Lieu and Negreanu never really seemed to be in any trouble, which was the polar opposite of Roland De Wolfe; he never got hold of any chips and was fighting hard to stay in the tournament. Stay in he did and this is a side of Roland’s Game that does not get much attention, Roland grinds it out and survives the day, oh and one other thing that impressed be. I saw him lay down AK pre-flop to a re-raise when he was a bit short. A correct lay down as his opponent showed kings, this can’t be an easy lay down when you have Roland’s reputation though.

No one really builds a huge stack like Mangas and Levi did on Day 1A and whereas the conclusion to Day 1A had seen some big all-in clashes the end of Day 1B seemed an altogether much more subdued affair with most players content to survive the day rather than accumulate a monster stack, Frenchman Antony Lellouche and Lebanese property developer Joseph Moauwad are our day 2 leaders on the 70,000 mark.