It's my story

[MPOWER]

This will be an awesome thread.

Pls do a diary simon.

Tikay and red, whilst great are part timers these days, especially since red dog turned into one of the internet kidz

Regards

M

[DTD-ACES]

Ok, here come the first few instalments......

Part 1

Harry was one of those rare larger than life characters that is hard to describe and do him justice . I went to the same school as his son Martin , one year above me and had met him a few times as he was a family friend but we became friends when i was 22 and he used to sell products to the motor industry , for a few months i sold these products during the day while also working in a factory at night , eventually giving up both to work in the drainage business.

Harry had been playing poker since the 60's with the likes of Xanthos Bambos in the back of a cafe in Woking , he was known as Champagne Harry as for years that was all he drank , his drinking club never made a profit ! He used to tell me wonderful stories about his impressario father who aparrently bought Hitlers Yacht and many times we would be out for a curry while he was telling one of these and gradually each table would stop and listen until he would have the whole restaurant enraptured .

Anyway, i digress, the years went by and when i reached 32 Harry went on and on about this poker game in a casino in Reading asking me to go with him, i didn't even know there was such a thing as a poker tournament , eventually i gave in and took him.

It was August 1995 and the game was £10 Pot Limit Hold-em....

Part 2

Harry and i turned up at my first Pot Limit Hold-em game, £10 rebuy !

I would love to say that i took to it like a duck to water and started winning from day 1 but nothing could be farther from the truth.

I had a reasonably successful business and could afford to lose the money i was risking so didn't really take it to seriously playing any two cards and wanting to see every flop regardless of preflop raises.

Little did i know the calibre of player i was up against ! In this small Reading card room were players like Graham Pound, Keith Hawkins, and one player called lucky Bob. He was known by this as he tended to make the final 4 out of the 5 times a week he played. He wasn't lucky !

Over the next few weeks Harry was enjoying himself so much and to be fair so was i even though i never won that we became regulars and i discovered there were other casinos where you could play.

I started going to Southampton with Bob for their Sunday double header which as i recall was a £10 in the afternoon and a £20 in the evening , may have been the other way round, i don't remember. What i do know is Bob used to try to give me advice but like most players i didn't think i needed it or even understood some of the " moves " he was telling me.

One morning in Southampton a player called Mahmood Mahmood had breakfast with me and told me he thought i showed some natural talent, he was going to a place called The Vic the following week and asked if i wanted to come along , that night changed my life........

Part 3


This is totally true and changed my whole perception of poker.

I went with Mahmood to The Vic, this was in the days when the waitresses wore long cocktail dresses and the casino was full of crystal chandeliers with the card room in the corner on the first floor.

I was mesmerised by the place, it had a completely different vibe and feel to the casinos i had played in so far and i definitely wanted to be part of this surreal world.

I have no idea what we played that night but when we got back to Mahmoods he invited me in to show me the book he was writing on mathematical probabilities in poker. At the same time he showed me a computer game he sometimes played called the World Series of Poker and gave me a copy.

A couple of days later i sat down to play.

Basically, you had a character that checked into Binions home of the WSOP, i think you started with $5000 and you had to gamble it up to $10,000 via blackjack, slots etc to be able to enter the WSOP Main Event, but this wasn't what changed everything.

As anyone knows who has played at Binions they have a small shop that sells a few poker books. In the game your character could walk to the shop and buy different books. You then had to take the lift to your room and when the books were put on your bed they opened. Each one was a chapter on strategy. I remember one was the top 20 starting hands and another was about position.

As i read these i suddenly realised why the likes of Graham, Keith and especially Bob were so " lucky " It was of course nothing to do with luck, these guys knew how to play poker, it was like a eureka moment as i suddenly realised that poker is in fact a game a game of skill and all i wanted now was to use this new found knowledge.

Part 4

So armed with my new found knowledge of the importance of starting hands and position i returned to the Reading £10 Pot Limit tournaments expecting to win.

Now playing 10% of the hands i had before, the rest of the table must have thought i was ill and although i was trying to follow the advice it was hard not to get bored and when i did play a hand i got introduced the Mr Variance and Mr Bad Beat. Anyway at first all that happened was i got deeper in the tournaments without winning but the main difference was that if i got knocked out before Harry i would play cash while waiting and my new tight game was paying dividends against the loose gamblers.

Gradually over the next 3 months i also learnt to read situations and most importantly how to change gear and attack the weaker players. I also realised that instead of playing every hand as i had before a calculated aggressive style worked against the mostly weak passive players.

It is hard to believe how ABC the game was 16 years ago, there was very little 3 or 4 betting pre flop. If someone raised they usually only bet when they hit. If they called a bet they were drawing not floating.

As i was a naturally aggressive player i started calling in position with very weak hands just playing my opponent, if they checked i bet, if they bet i raised or called hoping for a scare card to steal, all the things i did naturally i realised were the same as Bob had been trying to explain to me on all the car journeys we shared.

Even with my aggressive play i didn't realise how many pots i was stealing with my style until Graham Pound taught me a valuable lesson. On the river i bet and Graham raised all in, after dwelling i folded and Graham showed the stone cold bluff, this one simple move of his stuck in my mind as i realised that he too was playing the player and the situation and i decided i wanted to develop more " moves " of my own.

Between September and December i won £3000 but still it was just fun and i used the money to pay for a caribbean cruise. After xmas i didn't even play for a few weeks then in February i won my first Pot Limit tournament and started to make regular finals often chopping the prizepool.

The Vic in London used to host 4 events a year starting in March, having only ever played a £20 tournament so far my confidence was high enough that i felt ready to step up to £100 so i entered the £100 rebuy on March 6th 1996. Next time i will tell you how i got on.

Cheers

ACES

[Cooperman]

Looking forward to this blog one i deffo will follow. I played Reading when i first started poker and it was expensive lesson (lol) so your not alone there simon as some wily charachters there,still pop back there from time to time. Why not pop along again simon bit quieter than your club lmao but still good social eve with money to be won. Gd luck with the blog im sure plenty will follow it.

[pokerfan]

Keep it coming pls.

[FTPlederer]

great read!

BUMP

[DTD-ACES]

Part 5

In March 1996 i travelled to the Vic for my first ever festival event.

In those days the Vic used to have 3 or 4 festivals a year, the Spring Classic in March, European Championships in June and the Christmas Cracker in.... i think you know.

I am sure there was also an Octoberfest.

So March 6th i am one of 122 entries for the £100 rebuy Pot Limit Hold-em, a few hours later i finish in 6th place worth £600.

2 days later i enter the £300 PLO, my first attempt at this format in a tournament and improve to 3rd, good for £2520. In 8th was a player called Dave Ulliott and 2nd Lucy Rokach, little did i know then how these two players would effect my life over the coming years both at the poker table and as friends.

Finally on March 9th i played my first ever No Limit Championship event, the buy in was £500 and it was a 2 day event. there were 93 entries creating a prizepool of £46,500 and a 1st prize of £20,650.

I can't remember any of the event but the records show i finished 4th for £4130.

Other finalists included Alan Betson 2nd, Tom Gibson ( now a good friend and Lucy's partner ) and Bambos Xanthos in 7th.

So in my first ever festival i played 6 events, finalled in 3 in 3 different formats and won £7250, not a bad week today let alone 15 years ago !

I still wasn't hooked but i must have played some events at the European Championships as i finalled the £300 PLO / H-E however my real breakthrough event got players talking and that was the European Chamionships in 1997.

Next time i will tell you why and a great story about John Duthie..

Cheers

ACES

[GreekStein]

Good read simon.

Keep em coming pls

[In Form]

*I


TIA

[DTD-ACES]

Part 6

After my results at the Vic in 1996 i still wasn't swept away by poker and didn't travel anywhere else to play, just focused on my businesses, however this was all about to change in 1997.

In March 1997 i returned to the Vic and played a few events at the Spring Classic cashing 5th in the Stud and 2nd in the PLO winning £7425. I was getting some decent results and making 1 in 3 finals.

You have to remember that at this time there were very few events in the UK and no website or magasines promoting them so all i knew about were the Vic festivals.

On June 24th 1997 i entered the 162 runner £100 Pot Limit Stud, when we got to the final Mike Magee was chip leader and i was 2nd, Mike ended up 5th and i came 3rd for £3532. The following night i was back for the £100 Pot Limit Hold-em, this time there were 175 players and amazingly when we reached the final i was chip leader and Mike was second ! This time Mike finished in 3rd and i was heads up with Simon Eastwood ( known as Clint ) who also used to play at the same casino i started at in Reading, we agreed to take £10,000 each and play for a £1000 and the trophy and title and i managed to win.

Each night i was getting home around 4am, getting up to run my drainage business at 8am and heading back to the Vic for the 7.30pm start. So after making 2 finals in a row i headed back to the Vic on the 26th for the 175 runner ROE, Pot Limit Omaha / Hold -em, this time i only managed 4th place !! and another £2495.

It took me 3 more attempts before i made my 4th final in 6 events, this one was £200 No Limit with 122 runners and i finished 2nd. When we got 3 handed i had the chip lead and locked up £10,000, i knocked out Bambos in 3rd and my heads up opponent said he wasn't interested in the trophy so give him an extra £200 out of the remaining money and i could take the win, i refused so he went all in every hand blind and eventually had all my chips !!

So, out of 6 events played i had won £27,000 and finished 1st / 2nd / 3rd and 4th in 4 different disciplines. Now in my previous blog i mentioned a John Duthie story so here it is.

A few weeks after John won the Poker Million in 1999 ( i finished 9th, another blog some day ) i was having a drink in the bar at the Vic and John came up to me and told me i was the reason he started playing poker. Aparrently he used to play table games at the Vic and during the 1997 European Championships the finalists names were written on a white board. On day 2 he saw i had finished 3rd and 1st, then came the 4th and finally a 2nd and he reasoned that once or twice could be lucky but 4 times he figured proved there was more to it and he decided to try playing, it certainly paid off !

The one thing i noticed that really changed after this success was that the " big name " players started to say hello and knew who i was, it was as if i had become accepted as a player, this increased my confidence but i still wasn't ready to take the plunge and start taking poker more seriously.

Cheers

ACES

The rest of my blog is here : http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/blog.php?profile=2&id=167

[Marky147]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....

[GreekStein]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....

[Royal Flush]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....

[sovietsong]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....

[Amatay]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....

[810ofclubs]

Very enjoyable reading this, more pls....