British Championship of Blackjack

Last night I played in the British Championship of Blackjack at the Vic. Obviously I'm giving this tournament its full title with a huge dollop of irony and hope you can all picture the smirk on my face as I type it out.

This tournament was in the card room and cost £100 to enter (3 rebuys and an add-on were allowed too). There was no juice which was about the best thing going for it. Because it was run by the Vic and was aimed more at their regular punters from downstairs as opposed to the poker players it was complete chaos with absolutely no regard for any kind of "rules". I put that in inverted commas as I doubt there exist any rules for a BJ tourney in Britain. I'm sure if one played in the Million Dollar BJ tournament at the Hilton in Las Vegas there would be plenty of rules regarding asking other people for advice, speaking in other languages besides English at the table whilst bets were being made and so on.

Besides all that it was still exceptional value; the amount of dead money compared to a poker tournament was through the roof. I think the only person who knew what he was doing in it was Shoreman (luckily I had a 20% saver with him as he came second, well played Jon). I have to say the skill involved in this is probably a lot higher than in a poker tournament. Tournament BJ strikes me as extremely technical and I know I must have made plenty of mistakes. Of course, everybody else in the competition played even worse so I guess I had a vague edge.

The ability to come up with the right bet size at the end when you have to not only try and catch up with the chip leader, but also make sure the players close behind you don't overtake you is a real headfuck, let me tell ya.

The small amount of literature I had read on the subject was helpful, but tended to be based on BJ tournaments which have rounds of 30 hands as opposed to 12 hands like last night. Also, the Vic had a secret bet which really puts the cat amongst the pigeons.

I was reminded of when I first played poker and the only game at the Vic was 7-card, pot limit. The only book I could find was Sklansky's book on stud which of course was all about limit poker, but I had no idea how the different betting structure made an impact on the game so I was completely at sea.

Anyway, I made it through to round two, but busted out after 6 hands in the second round. There was an amusing moment in the first round where I had 675 chips on the 10th hand. After hand 10 players were allowed an add-on of 1,500 chips (rebuys got you 1,000). Anytime you had 500 or less you were allowed to rebuy. Wanting to be able to rebuy and add-on I made a bet of 175 and proceeded to hit on 18 purposely busting my hand, much to the consternation of the other players at my table.

If I hadn't done that I would only have been able to take the add-on which would have meant that going into the last two hands my chip stack would have been 2,350 as opposed to the 3,000 I had after my seemingly crazy play. And believe you me I needed that as I squeaked through by three chips.

Shoreman nearly got himself barred by constantly trying to impose some semblance of order on the proceedings. He had to tell the dealer and the floorstaff not to turn the secret bets face up, constantly remind the floor to enforce the English only rule and also ask for players not to get advice from railbirds watching the action. He also got reprimanded when he tried to stop a string bet from the player in front of him who wanted to add more to his stack after he saw that Jon was min-betting.

As they pulled him aside Shoreman was even told he was right, but to keep his mouth shut. If the Vic are going to run more of these tournaments, and I would imagine they are as last night was quite successful, they better get their shit together. They wouldn't let those sorts of shenanigans go on in a £10 poker tournament, so why is a BJ competition exempt from the normal codes of conduct in a tournament setting?

Another interesting moment occurred when all the dealers shuffled after hand 6. Completely pointless and time consuming although a decent red herring for those players who thought counting was a useful skill in this format. Anyway, Jon and I asked the dealer why she was shuffling to which she replied, "So nobody can cheat".

"Eh? How are they cheating?"

"Card counting, that's cheating"

"Er..., no it's not"

"Yes it is, card counters are cheaters and we don't want them here"

Wow, management did a good brainwashing number on this one, didn't they?

The Golden Rule

He who has the gold makes the rules.

Or, if you're playing poker, don't ruffle the feathers of the star.

So I'm in a great £250 NL game at the Vic last night, mainly because of one player, an Italian businessman who is happily blowing off steam. You know the sort, raising every other hand, making big bets with not much and so forth (not that these players aren't dangerous; you can suddenly find yourself under a lot of pressure against one of these types).

Anyway, he's losing about two grand when it's all folded around to him in the small blind. He puts out a £25 chip with the intention of raising. The big blind, Colin (not Gill or Kennedy for all you Vic regulars), one of those annoying idiots who never knows when its his blind or how much the bet is or even when the action is on him, now makes a fuss that he didn't hear the Italian say raise.

To be fair to Colin the Wanker, Paul Parker was having a noisy conversation with Rick Gladding in the next seat (is it possible for Paul not to have a noisy conversation?) so it was hard to hear what was going on. But then again this Colin the Cretin never ever knows how much the raise is or that it's up to him or anything, so what difference?

The Italian insists that his intention was to raise, but, oh no, Colin the Dick is having none of it, rules is rules. Technically Colin the Fuckwit is right of course; the Italian only put a single chip in which constitutes a call (nobody was sure whether the Italian said raise or not and the Italian himself didn't seem to mention this factor).

So now the Italian is made to call, they end up checking down the pot which Colin the Shithead wins by making a pair and now the Italian has the hump so he gets up and leaves. Nice one Colin.

I mean, what a nit. All so he could save £15 and see a flop. The irony was that Colin the Moron was one of the big beneficiaries of the Italian's lively play. I guess he wanted to lock up the win and piss everbody else off. Job done.

Some poker players put on an act and maybe this Colin the Twat is like that, but he seemed genuinely unaware of what a stupid thing he'd done.

Oh well, rant over; maybe I'm being a little excessive with my vitriol for Colin the Stupid Motherfucker, but I can't help it. The whole table was dumbfounded and it wasn't long before the game broke up.

Surely It's A Split Pot - Oh, It's Not...

So I'm playing in a lively £250 PLO game at the Vic when the following hand occurs.

The guilty party in this coup is a veteran of the Vic, definitely a player who should know better.

I raise UTG with some sort of double suited rundown hand, the veteran calls and now the star re-raises the pot. This very much looks like aces; both me and the veteran call as well as another player I think. Whatever, there was about £480 in the pot. BTW, the effective stack size between the veteran and the star is about £3k.

Flop comes down K Q T. I check, the veteran checks and now the Star bets £250. I fold and the veteran makes it £750. The star now calls that raise and re-raises the pot. The veteran now goes all-in for a little over 2 and a half grand which the star calls.

Sitting there watching the hand play out I figured that both players had the nuts at that point (A J - as if you need me to tell you) and that the veteran had the freeroll, two pairs or trips to go with his Broadway.

But no!!! The Veteran turned over J9xx (can't remember the other two cards, but they were in the region of the flop so he did have outs). Considering that it was highly likely that the star had aces, surely it wouldn't have been too hard to imagine that a Jack was one of his sidecards?

I don't know, I've been guilty of some terrible plays myself, but getting it all-in with the sucker end of the straight in PLO? Sure, the other player was a star, but you just have to wait until you have the goods against these types (btw, the board blanked off and the star won a nice pot). I'm sure I wasn't the only "local" who felt a bit embarrassed for the veteran.

This brings me to another matter - as you can see above, I have been pretty quick to criticise a horrible play where another player has seemingly slaughtered his money senselessly. But the truth is in poker, we sometimes do some fucking idiotic things in the heat of the moment. I always think that at least for a nano-second there, we figured it was the right play.

Anyway, the reason I'm suddenly being so fair to the veteran (and believe me, there are many Vic regulars who would enjoy a delicious helping of schadenfreude if they knew who I was talking about) is because, like the idiot I am, I posted what I thought was an interesting hand that I played in the £250 NL game on the 2+2 strategy forum.

There were a couple of reasonable responses, but most of the thread ended up saying what a complete donkey I am etc etc. Now of course I expected that, but it made me think how quick poker players are to just slam other players and so on.

The amount of times you hear people cunting off other players or somebody gives you an incredibly forceful and emphatic opinion on how badly a certain hand was played. You'd think that none of these fuckers ever played a hand badly in their life, when in fact quite the opposite is true.

I Love L.A.

Good games at the Vic are a bit like buses - you're waiting and waiting and waiting; just when you've given up along come two or three all at once.

I played in a good £250 PLO game last night and then sat in a blinding £250 NL Holdem game. The Holdem game was great all because of a super spewy bluff station from L.A. When I got in the game this guy had about £8k in front of him which steadily decreased as one by one the different players at the table picked off his bluffs.

To give you an idea of how good the game was I experienced a 3 grand swing from winning to losing back to winning which is unusual for me. I played KK really badly out of position at one point and lost a big pot to this guy, but still managed to come back and end up winning on the night.

This guy said his regular game was the $20/$40 NL at the Commerce. I've never played there, but my experience with this player only confirms all the good things I have read and heard about the Commerce. He's probably a winning player in L.A....

As an aside I noticed Gary the Armenian was collecting the £2.50 chips (these are for the half hour time collection of £7.50). Of course it slowed down the time charge as now the dealer had make change etc and at one point even had to ask another dealer to go to the desk and get us some more £2.50 chips. What reason would somebody have to take these chips and put them in their pocket?

I wanted to call him out on it, but Gary is a bit of a hothead and I didn't feel like getting into an argument. Instead I mentioned it to a couple of other players and a few of us "innocently" asked where all the £2.50 chips had gone when the collection came around.

Also in the game was Neil "Bad Beat" Channing, fresh from his Irish Open victory. It was nice to play with Neil again seeing as recently he has been playing only the monkey game or higher (the big games have been his regular feeding grounds for a quite a while now, not just since his Irish win btw).

I think Neil was a bit disgusted with me when I ironed out the L.A bluffer at about quarter to 3 in the morning and then immediately got up and left. To be fair to myself the L.A player got up as soon as he lost the hand and looked like he wasn't coming back, plus I had been intending to go at about 1.30 originally, but the game was so good I decided to stay another hour (I must stress I wasn't staying on just to "get out of it". I broke that bad habit long ago). Also when you have a 16 month old baby at home whom you have to look after in the morning it makes it tough playing til 5am like the old days.

Kenny Wong was also in the game and it was great to have him back and hear the banter between him and Neil about who was the better tournament player.

A New Low

So I'm playing in the £250 No Limit Holdem game at the Vic when the following occurs. One of those non-pots happens, one where the players check it down and basically there's a bowl of rice out there, or, in this case, the grand sum of £40.

With a final board of K Q J 3 3 a young American kid (good player btw) declares, "Nothing, I have 9 high". His opponent, a middle aged South African gentleman says, "Oh, I have 10 high". They turn their cards over and the dealer pushes the pot to the South African.

Of course all of you lot out there reading this have already spotted that both players are actually playing the board, so therefore it should have been a split pot. Why the American kid didn't notice I don't know, but if you've been playing for a while you get tired. The South African gentleman is one of those types of players who would have to be told. As for the rest of us at the table I guess we weren't paying much attention (any internet players reading have got to love that don't they? So much for live players being such keen observers...)

In fairness to the dealer, who should have noticed immediately, he was actually requesting to be taken off the table as he had already been dealing for two hours without a break in this particular game.

Anyway, as the next hand is being dealt somebody at the table now realises what happened and mentions that the pot should have been split. Everybody else at the table including the dealer realises too and he now informs the South African that he owes the American kid £20. In fact, the only player who is utterly oblivious to what has happened is this South African guy. He says that the hand is all over and that's that. Fair enough I suppose; it was a dealer error and he doesn't have to give the kid any money if he doesn't want to.

In fact, the American kid was kind of taken aback so I told him to get a ruling, because it also seemed like the South African wasn't taking the situation seriously at all. Unfortunately for the Kid the dealer called the wrong floor person over (wrong in the sense that he called another dealer over as opposed to an actual floor person who is properly authorised to give rulings) who then gave a ruling in favour of the South African (probably the correct ruling as it happens).

Anyway, the point is, to me, that it doesn't matter what the ruling would be, but basically everybody else at that table (Russian Alex, Fred, Gary Mills, Rick Gladding, a young Greek kid whose name I can't remember, and of course, myself) would have given the American Kid the £20 without another thought. I mean, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but that South African behaved like a total dick, didn't he? (Just to make it clear - there wasn't a huge argument, the South African or the kid didn't make a huge issue out of it, there were no raised voices and all blood pressure remained stable etc).

I dunno, I was dumbfounded that somebody could be such a nit over twenty quid.

On a slightly different note, does anybody out there know why the blinds in the £250 Pot Limit game are £5-£5 with an optional straddle of £10 whereas the blinds in the £250 No Limit are £5-£10 with an optional straddle of £25? How come both games don't have the same structure? I don't get it. As you can tell, the no limit game plays a lot bigger than the pot limit game.

Progress, sort of....

Wow! The Vic has installed a shuffling machine (I only saw one and heard it cost about £8,000, so it's very likely they only have one). The bad news is that it will only be used in the raked game. No surprise there really.

I reckon it'll take about 10 days for that machine to pay for itself...

Edit: They have two shuffle machines and DY tells me he actually played in a non-raked game with one of the machines in use.

Declan

I have played poker for many years with Declan from the old £50 Seven card and £50 Round of Each days up to £250 Dealer's Choice and all the pot limit and no limit Holdem games these days. He was the first pro I remember being aware of - his tight aggressive style and table presence was certainly intimidating back when I first started going to the Vic.

What has always impressed me about Declan is his versatility and ability to change gears. Many players would probably just say he's tight and while he is pretty granite I've also seen him play pretty open. I remember a £250 DC game where he raised or re-raised pre-flop almost every hand (especially if Hyder had limped in or raised). I know a lot of the locals would find that hard to believe, but it's true.

Declan also has no problems grinding at smaller limits. While many players would feel embarrassed at having to drop down after playing big Declan feels no shame in having to play "smaller" if he has to. I can remember him playing the old £1,000 game (at one time the biggest game in Europe alternating between a round of PLO and London Lowball) - after winning a load of money for himself and his backer Declan was back to the coalface in the £100 and £50 games. It's this ability to grind which sets him apart from a lot of players.

One of the greatest strengths of Declan's game is the way he makes the stars feel good about playing. I've seen him fold for about two or three hours straight whilst all the time making jokes and wisecracks. All the stars seem to love his company and somehow they always pay him off in the big pots too.

Last night I played in a blinding £100 No Limit game with Declan which featured a Norwegian gentleman who routinely made it between £50 and £75 to go before the flop. Remember, the blinds in this game are £1/£3. Post flop the Norwegian would then continue to just bluff off his chips with hands like queen high etc.

I have to specify that this particular player was not some young internet hotshot typical of Scandinavia, but a drunk businessman who was just enjoying himself. I managed to win a pot with 9T clubs when by some miracle he forgot to raise before the flop and I was able get in cheaply and flop a flush.

Anyway, Declan pretty much folded every hand and somehow this Norwegian was completely oblivious to it and enjoying Declan's many witticisms during the course of play. After yet another hand where the Norwegian bet on the river and got called down by bottom pair (miles ahead of course) Declan looked at this fella's cards and said , "Hold on, you've got a straight - straight in the dustbin".