Devilfish| Click to see full-size image. |
Found myself alone the other night, sipping a glass of wine and enjoying a rare relaxing moment, ended up picking up the Devilfish autobiography and having a little read - half of me rejoiced in the memories of such a fascinating man, the other half felt deeply saddened that i'll never sit in a poker game with him again.
So I thought I'd just write a little about my experiences with Dave "Devilfish" Ulliot, and why both myself personally, and poker on a whole really miss him.
In general terms his poker game over the last decade had been declining in terms of the respect from his peers - I always found it funny his public spats with Phil Hellmuth given there startling similarities, both adore the spotlight, both have an internal rant-tilt switch whenever they perceived they had been done wrong by fortune and both have a deep down "to-the-core" belief in their own ability (a lifetime of winning breeds this) and this lead to a element of dismay that they were not fully respected by other pros/everyone for their ability. Deep down neither of them care, because they passed the biggest test of all in gambling... The test of time.
He admitted to me privately once that he had a huge amount of respect for PH, he stands up for himself and has the record to prove it, I'm pretty sure the feelings were mutual and away from TV poker Im pretty certain they were pals
the oppurtunity to wind Hellmuth up whenever a camera was around though I think was just too much for Mr. Ulliot to ever refuse
I played a huge amount of poker with Dave, and I was the complete opposite, I had a lot of respect for his poker game, that wasn't to say I was ever particularly worried about being in a game with him - in fact quite the opposite I loved playing in poker games with Dave, technically speaking of course he had flaws but he was an absolute master of his image and his style, he always knew exactly when someone was scared of him, or when someone was after him - and he knew the precise spots and cards to take advantage with and knew how to make it pay. I learned a lot from him about this side of the game and it was this skill alone that kept him ahead of the curve for as long as he was. People loved to play with him (despite him being a grumpy bastard 80% of the time win or lose) he wasn't a Jake Cody character, lovely kid from Rochdale, won millions and always with a smile on his face, time for everyone - Dave's character was an old school Rounder, wearing his suit and sunglasses and regaling old gambling stories from smokey rooms mumbled out of a husky south Yorkshire accent, there was an air of mystery around him and people were drawn to it, myself included.
That's something that died with Dave on 6th April 2015, the throwback to the old days of gambling, underneath Chinese restaurants and in rickety old barns, you can count the number of people that survived those times and learnt to grow into the new age of gambling on one hand (one of my hands even!), in swanky card rooms, being served wine and beer by attractive young waitresses and playing with 19yr old Latvian kids with $500k to play with, he was proud of those days, where he came from and loved sharing the tales. He was a proper gambler, before the days of bankroll management and turn raising ranges came in and turned the game into a scientific formula, you got some cash together and you played against whoever was there to play.
The main thing i loved about him though, was that he was just straight up bloody hilarious, I never played a game with him where at some point in the game I didn't just howl with laughter, yep he was borderline misogynistic, could be a tad racist and definitely lacked a little tact from time to time but he did it all with this goggly smile on his face which meant it was genuinely close to impossible to ever be really offended. I remember a game at DTD once, I was sat in between Rob and Sam and we played until ~midday and Devilfish was on such good form, playing his accordian, calling the dealer Rolf Harris (this was before the child abuse cases, and the guy didn't look anything like rolf harris) telling stories in between raging about how unlucky he was getting and the three of us were in absolute stiches for nrly 12 hours straight.
I mean the man used to roll up in a massive Hummer with his name on the side, get out in his suit with sunglasses on play poker for 16 hours then get back in and sleep in it in between burst of accordian playing (occasionally brought his guitar which was always a treat...) there will never be another character like this in poker or any other "sport" for that matter ever again - he said what he thought, did what he wanted and fuck me was he funny.
He was very proud of his family too, and would never pass the chance to show pictures or tell stories of what they were doing.
The final thing I wanna say about him, and this is the main thing that kept him alive him poker all these years was that he just LOVED the game, he loved it, and not only did he love it but it meant something to him every time he played, every win made him happy and every loss made him furious. Of all the people I've ever played with I've never met anyone with as much passion for the game as Devilfish.
I remember once we'd been playing a game in London and he'd won about £25k, which you'd think would have put him in a good mood (i'm sure he is looking down from whatever cloud he is sitting on right now, playing 3 card brag with some suckers and slapping the angels bums as the fly past and would claim he bought the drinks that night! There is never a man who has claimed to have paid for as many nights out as DU
) he was moaning to me about a hand at the start of the night, some young Romanian kid had made a really sketchy turn call early doors and got it in drawing pretty thin and 2 outed Dave, pot was £3-4k maybe, I said to him "Dave that was like 10 hours ago and you won 25 bags it doesn't matter anymore"
He stopped talking, threw his head back - looked thoroughly disappointed in me and replied.
"Kid - it's a poker hand...They all matter"
I think sums up the man's approach to poker really well.
R.I.P Mr Devilfish, you'll be remembered by poker players long after todays superstars are gone.
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