I'm told that Jeff Burke passed away yesterday, which is very sad news indeed.
He genuinely was years ahead of his time, & his looks belied a very fine poker player indeed.
I shared many a table with him down the years, but none more memorable than on a Ladbrokes poker cruise in around 2005.
At the time, the Scandies were all the rage and getting the lot, & Jeff & I ended up on a cash table with a bunch of drunken Scandie players who were being a bit too chirpy, taunting us by showing bluffs and generally being arses.
When they did it once too often, Jeff turned to me & whispered "keep out of this hand", & proceeded to take down a £6,000 pot by betting 3 of them off on the river, & then showing the old 4-2 which could not even beat the board. Not a man to mess with at the tables.
He was with one of the early staking operations, run by Conor Tate if I recall correctly, & I think he was with Bad Beat too.
They used to move players up when they proved they could beat a level, and Jeff was blitzing the £1 £2 game, but repeatedly refused to move up the levels. "This is my level, & I'm not moving up". God knows how much he won, but he seemed to print it.
Not a great MTT player, his best result was probably down at Brighton in 2004 - how about this for a Memory Lane of names from back in the day?
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=8324Proper bloke, Jeff.
RIP mate.
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