10 years ago today!
Topic: Poker
It's the tenth anniversary of the first day I ever played poker in a public card room. On 26th June 1995, I played a #20 pot-limit rebuy comp at the Barracuda and finished second. I had no idea what I was doing. On the way home I laughed about it in the taxi. "It's supposed to be a game of skill" I told the cab driver, before realising I had just committed myself to a more generous tip.

I wish I could remember more about that night. I do recall that when I got heads up with Ray Martin, he leant forward and offered to split the money with me. I assumed that the prize money was set in stone and had no idea that this was allowed, so I got closer and said 'I think they can hear you'. I didn't want him to get into trouble!

Mark Patrick was there (now with Corals) and he started talking about the game using words I'd never heard before, like 'offsuit'. Mick Curran was giving me advice. Ray told me not to play cash games as "they'll murder you". It was another three weeks before I played again, but in the meantime I had read Big Deal by Tony Holden and read a few of the books in its bibliography. Knowing how badly most people play Blackjack in this country (standing on soft 15, splitting sevens against a nine etc), I reasoned that probably the same applied to poker and that I should therefore know the 'basic strategy'.

People might find this hard to believe, but there were very few young people coming into poker back then. I was quite unusual. A few weeks after that first night, I turned up to the Victoria to play its Wednesday night #25 comp and scanned my eyes around the room. I saw a young man dressed very like me (we had both come straight from work and wore pinstriped suits and striped shirts). I recall mentally saying to myself 'please don't draw his table, please don't draw his table'. I was gutted to draw a seat two spaces away from him. I was afraid that placed together we would be the subject of much ridicule because of our youth (26 & 25!) and occupation. We stood out like sore thumbs. To defuse the tension, I said to him:

'What bank do you work for?'. He replied: 'Barclays'.

And that was how I came to meet Dominic Bourke. Read what Negreanu has to say about him:

Card Player article

Tonight we'll be going back to the Barracuda for a drink, along with Allan 'Fred Titmus' Engel. It's a nice casino, but I haven't set foot in it for years. It broke my heart when it closed its card room in 1996.