Autumn 2011I have a bit of a blur right now, as to exactly what happened in Autumn 2011. I remember coming home from Vegas and getting back into the swing of things in Leeds live games, and I started again playing on Betfair. I was still living in our penthouse flat with Jamie and our lease was due up in October and we had decided against renewing it, Jake had, iirc just bought his house in Leeds and Jamie had decided to move in with him and I had decided that I would do some travelling - Vegas October, and then L.A in Feb. We ran down the lease, I have zero idea how I did at poker in that time, I got an invite to a private game in Yorks that was ridiculously swingy, and I had some big losses there, my up to that point biggest pot of my life occured with 99 vs
on
, just over £45k. I had an exciting spin on betfair and from $2,000 deposit was at nearly $100k before losing most of it 25/50 HU to Rui Cao (pepperoniF) mostly those games were 10/20 and 25/50 6m and Chufty used to absolutely BOSS them, I've never quite worked out how he did this, but man did he send me to sleep shivering some nights! I ended up cashing out $10k off betfair for all the excitment*
*note, that might have been early of the following year, im not so sure.
October rolls around and I planned once again to go to vegas, me and Rutter had big plans for halloween - if you've never been to Vegas in Halloween its fucking incredible, they go beyond mental for it the yanks do, all the clubs are barmy and you have costume contests with $10-$15k up top! Me and Stu were determined to win, and set about planning the perfect costume...after some planning though we realised that with the best will in the world, we were never going to win!
I went out 3 weeks before and got an apartment over there with Dan Morgan - who was living in Barca at the time and taking a rather hilarious detour through Colombia (Try moving from barca->colombia->miami->vegas with a bunch of $ of you and seeing what happens
poor Dan!) Stu was due to join 2 weeks later and set me the task of winning enough money to fund halloween shenanigans...
I started off solid, at $10/$20 NL and after winning a fair bit ended up in $25/$50 nl/plo games which went pretty well, the day before Stu was due to arrive I wound up having one of the most mental days gambling Iv had...
it started at about 11am, I rolled into Bellagio card room and sat down at $10/$20 nl as per usual, this really nice Korean (I think Korean) guy was playing and he said do I wanna play $100/$200 HU, Rounders style...we play $20k stacks with frozen blinds until "someone has it all." I agreed, why the fuck not
I won the first one very easily, and at 11.40~ he shook my hand took my number and said he'd love to play again but he needs to go for lunch with his wife. It's not even midday and im up 20 grand, I think a trip to the spa, nice spot of lunch and a relax before coming back tonight! As im leaving, he walks back in and asks for a re-match, I accept ofc and we play. This one takes 2.5 hours, this guy is actually pretty decent and if it wasn't for crazy high stakes I'd be having a really fun time as he was a lot of fun to both play with and sit at a table with, however its too big to really enjoy and I just wanted it to be over! He won a big hand, where basically he could only have 1 of two flop straight draws, one has hit, one has missed. I elect to fold and he shows the missed draw, my heads a bit spinning now and soon enough he beats me. Now he has to go, his wife has been sat patiently behind him for 90 minutes but we arranged to play again* now Im a bit steaming and a $50/$100 NL game sparks off which is an excellent game, so I sit.
*We ended up playing again 1 yr later at various times, we played a total of 15 matches in total and it finished 8-7 to me
(I won the last 6) the hardest $20k Iv ever won, wouldn't do it again for 40 lol, he told me I was the best HU player he'd ever played, which I don't believe for a minute given the names he said he'd played vs, but that was a good feeling, I really was on the absolute top of my game back then, would love to be back there!!
Within 1 hour of the 50/100 game I am winning nearly $50k and life is, once again fairly delightful, I remember ordering sushi from yellowtail and was generally just having a whirl of a time...
Three hours later I am now losing again and once again life is terrible. The game looks as though its about to break when a new player sits and asks if the game can become PLO/NL, which everyone keenly accepts. 2am and I am losing about $50k and as you can imagine, fairly fuming and the game breaks, with one player saying will likely return in 2 hours, it breaks to me and a guy who I consider to be one of the best live players I've ever played with, and a really awesome guy - he asks to drop to 25/50 and play HU till the guy comes back. Obviously at this point having people with pieces of me in this fairly bad spot (Iv been playing 15 hours and playiong vs someone very good) I msgd ppl to say I have $11k in front of me and gonna play just that, yay or nigh on keeping the piece, obviously all but 1 person (a regular blonde forum user as it happens
) said GL but im out. I went on top god mode and ended up winning nearly $100k from the HU game and finished the day SOMEWHERE near peak, and with the lions share of my own action
- NO CRIME AGAINST GETTING LUCKY EH?
Rutter arrived to the good news and we ended up having a really degenerate week with me, him, my friend Kayla (partner in the destroying of the crystal stand in Luxor! I wish I could post some Kayla stories...) and his 2 lunatic friends from L.A.
The actual halloween night out was close to amazing, I can't really remember why - I remember we had a mental good table, risen up higher than most other tables. Stu introduced the "im not hungry" game, in which if you are ever handed aNYTHING from ANYONE playing the game you must respond immediately with "I'm not hungry" - failure to do so resulted in selected a forefeit card from Stu, which mostly involved doing X amount of shots. Dom Kay, also out in Vegas was with us and he was the worst at the game there has ever been, the highlight of the night was him sneakily approaching Gena, one of the girls with us, and asked her to hold his drink...she agreed, told him she was not hungry and took the drink. He shook his head, oh well Dom, good try, she then handed him the drink straight back and he didn't say a word. "YOU'RE NOT HUNGRY!" she shouted gleefully, to which Dom who had finally had enough smashed his drink on the floor and stormed off
I love watching that moment of pure rage in someone when they just want the whole world to burn!
This is all well and good, but then a night or two later is when the real fun started...
We were in Tao and Stu had met a man from the midlands in the toilets who he had excitedly dragged to our table, "This is Paul!!" Stu screamed, literally unable to contain himself.
"He wants to get married, he wants to get married!!!!"
"BUT HE NEEDS WITNESSES!!! HE CANT DO IT WITHOUT WITNESSES"
At this point, I think one of us needed to sit Stu down as he was seconds away from having a stroke, but this sounded like the start of something with some potential...
True enough, Paul, here on a holiday with his GF of 3 months had decided to marry her, on the spot - just like the do in the movies, however it's not FRIENDS, you cant just rock up you need some official witnesses, would we, friendly brits, be interested in witnessing his impromtu, horribly ill-advised wedding to a girl he doesn't really know?
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!! WOULD WE!!
We calmed Stu down, exchanged numbers and went to bed that night, assuming that it was all a drunken wind up.
But the next day, the call came - Saturday at the "little chappel of flowers" if you still want to?
Oh don't you worry Paul - WE'LL BE THERE!
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