So long-term blondeite Stu Fox opened his 2007 WSOP Account with a 2nd in the $5,000 NL, for close to a tidy half a million $$'s. Very nice. In 2005 he had three minor WSOP cashes for about $20,000, & in 2006 he was 2 for $280,000. Impressive stuff for one so inexperienced. Easy to forget, he's not been around long. He began playing Fessies in late 2004, & took a nice win in Luton, but signs that he was special appeared in the 2005 Midlands Medley Main Event, in the February.
A lot of rivers have flowed under the poker bridge since then. This was the first Event ever covered by Poker 425, but the same Team as Poker Week now, & one of the earliest ever blonde Live Updates, conducted, by the way, entirely by mobile 'phone texts! My texting fingers have barely recovered even now. I was texting to a guy called Simon Cook, (jbsc7769) who was in his villa in Greece, & he was uploading it from there, with a bit of help from a bloke in a caravan in a field in Leicestershire - Red-Dog. Bizarre. Simon, by the way, is a Serious Big Suit at PokerStars these days.
The Final was a blonde-studded affair indeed. Dave Colclough won it, & pocketed £70k+, although the very last hand was a cheek-clencher. Runner-up for £39k or so was a young lad who Thewy & I had almost had to force to play a proper Fessie Event, after he'd been burning up the tables in Gala Notts, in those days a real hotbed of up & coming hot-shots. Hello & welcome Greg Hill, aka Junior. 4th was our Foxy, exiting in a slighly odd all-iin pre jobbie with Mr Colclough, the latter with 9-9, Foxy with A-J, first card A, but the blonde one 4 flushed it. Big Trev Reardon, Henning Granstad & Lord Wernick also finalled. (The embarrassingly basic Live Update is here, but fascinating to see who was Posting in those days -
http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=70.0 ).
We watched Foxy in countless Finals subsequently, & he had the twin abilities to build mountainous stacks & donk them off in spectacular exit hands. In the 2005 Grosvenor Grand Prix Final, in which he finished 5th, he somehow CALLED all-in for his pretty decent stack with A-5, with the inevitable results. (It was against Pino Valentino or Mick Fletcher I seem to recall).
And so it went on - Foxy only had 1 gear - flat to the Boards.
But gradually, he learned to vary his game. He could sit quietly for 2 hours, & then suddenly explode with a torrent of Raises & Re-Raises.
In the 2005 Luton Christmas Cracker, I shared a table with him, & he told me he'd learned to slow down, pace himself. Then I watched agog, as he R'd every hand for 3 orbits! He Finalled, & what a Final that was, too. Lord Wernick & Pascal Perrault were neck & neck for the 2005 European Rankings Crown, with whoever finished higher almost certain to win the 2005 Title. Pascal eventually went in 5th, busted by Foxy. Buffenburger was 8th, & one "IrishDenis" O'Mahoney 6th I think, after suffering two seriously ugly beats, & one horrid Pass which went badly wrong. (But my 10% "saver" with Denis was still very handy, & to this day, he & I still swap at Luton. He thinks he'll get even eventually, the fool. Which reminds me, I owe the jovial Irishman £400, oops....). When they got 3 handed, with Wernick safe in the knowledge that the Title was sewn up, there was a 3 way chop - Wernick, Gavin Butler & Foxy, in that order, 1-2-3. Wernick had the big chip domination, but after Foxy had bust Pascal, & thus inadvertently guaranteed Wernick the Rankings Title, Wernick said he'd chop with Foxy if the chance arose, & he was good to his word.
Foxy continued to blaze a trail across Europe, still a helter-skelter Raising machine, & picked up $250,000 in some TV jobbie in Spain in 2006.
Then he took a break, bummed around America for a while, before returning to action quite recently. Unsponsored as ever, he has a trademark BaseBall Cap or Visor - never - until recently maybe - with a Poker Site Badge on it. He sits hunched at the table, shades on, cap pulled over his eyes. And Raises.
And so to last night. Those of us who watched the Live Stream had to pinch ourselves. Foxy would Raise these guys off the table. We all knew that - that's what he does, that's his thing. We waited. And waited. And waited. And he Passed. And Passed. And Passed. Backhand Passes, flick-with-the-index-finger Passes, the two-spinning-card Pass, the occasional Carloesque dwell, then a forehand Pass. And we are thinking - WHAT? Who IS this guy? Foxy don't do Pass. We thought we saw him Pass
UTG without a moments hesitation. We did, I'm sure.
But he does do Pass. And he did. In a lightning fast Final - 42 hands, from Start to Finish, Foxy played, prior to being Heads-Up - let's think - yes - one hand. ONE HAND. An Auto-Call in the BB against Billy Low-Stack. And get this - in the latter stages, Foxy, sat to the right of the Chip Daddy - alll of 7 years old by the look of him - gave up his Small Blind uncontested FIVE times - never even made up the SB. Oh, but obviously, once Heads Up, he had to play hands. Well, one, to be precise. So, he played two hands in total.
So what to make of the new-improved Stu? Well he's clearly added a tactical awareness. Here was a Crapshoot Final if ever there was one. The WSOP Suits have told us loud & often that they've doubled the starting stacks in 2007, bully for them. They musta whispered that they'd also chopped out several Levels. So there they were, in a $5k WSOP Final, & it was Crapshoot City. How does that work?
And Our Hero had it all worked out. The 7 year old was hitting cards like a grown-up (played well, too), the maniacs were getting it all-in with marginals, trying, arguably, to win the jewellery. And Mr Fox just Passed. And Passed. With elegance, with style, with aplomb. But Passed his way to $450,000.
It's good to Pass sometimes.
Arise Sir Stuart Fox, Knighted for Services to Passing.
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