March at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web 2004 at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

Playing: Big Blind Benny, Flopper Felts, JC Cornelia, Paul “Cojones” Carvill, Jamie “Chipsack” Milbourn

Venue: Streatham Spastic Society Community Centre, Liquidation and Closing-Down Sale

“We had joy, we had fun, we could smell Nick Carney’s bum.”

“Goodbye to you my trusted friend”

I drove up here tonight in my Punto, with Jamie in the passenger seat, my plastic poker chips in the footwell, Jamie’s flashy poker chips in their felt-lined aluminium case resting on his lap, and two crates of beer sitting in the back. I was doing a thing where I was trying to avoid traffic near Clapham, but my car is a traffic-magnet and so we got stuck for a while on a road near Wimbledon looking at a shop that sold 35 different types of rum. The route is basically one long road, and I gave Jamie some printed directions, and he still managed to get us lost. Not lost, really, as we hadn’t turned off anywhere, but he plainly had no idea where we were and it was only through my perseverance, enthusiasm and stamina that we emerged in once piece at the top of Streatham High Road. Jamie exhibits a childlike sense of awe whenever he leaves the leafy confines of Hersham. I have a head full of cold and I can’t work out whether to have the window open and the heater on or the window closed and the heater off, so I settle for a constant and annoying winding up and down of the window and flicking on and off of the heater. When we arrive and disembark it looks like we are preparing for a day at the beach. We are carrying beers, bags, cases, fold-up chairs, cd’s and food. We mull over the possibility that House Manager Mr P. Feltham has layed on a finger buffet for his guests tonight. Not a chance. The fashion is currently one metric tonne of assorted crisps, to be eaten as quickly as possible before JC Cornelia turns up and fills his pockets full of them. I don’t think Jim is allowed crisps at home.

“We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten”

No show tonight from The Welsh Wizard who us busy re-editing the history books so he appears, Zelig-like, in every episode of Baywatch as Hasselhoff’s small gay apprentice lifeguard manager. Also not appearing is Kentucky Fried Keggers, who’s decided to stay in and pen his contentious essay “Texas Hold ‘em: Blinds – Wha’ The Fuh’?”. We do have Jamie, who’s put the day-to-day business of managing Sony’s accounts aside, and come direct from a memorial service for his godfather, god bless him. Also showing is Big Blind Benny, who spends his days touching-up ladies legs. Photographs of ladies legs. That lovely shot of Kylie’s bum in the gentlemen’s magazine you flick through at the dentists probably has Benny’s hands all over it. Benny’s on a stinking great losing streak, and everyone knows it. Flopper Felts puts money in the bank by selling snow to eskimos, along with a direct cross-media communication strategy to announce to retail partners and vertical markets the availability and cheapness of said snow should you come to us your number one snow dealer in eskimo country! Like Samson, he believes his power lies in his fiery hair. Then there’s something about lions and bees and honey, but the metaphor breaks down, so…… No Jimbo yet, he’s a mysterious man who moves in mysterious ways and he’s on a crosstown journey, underground and incommunicado like Mr X. Jim is public enemy number one and practically “persona non grata” at the game. I’m convinced he stays up half the night studying all the great poker textbooks and refining his technique, then spends the other half perfecting his ridiculous Chaplin-esque persona. He’s really a poker-playing machine wrapped up in the body of a Chuckle Brother.

“Together we´ve climbed hills and trees”

Tonight is more poignant than usual. It’s the last major poker event to be held at the Streatham Spastics Society Community Centre. The manager Mr P. Feltham has decided that the accomodation and caring costs of live-in registered-disabled mascot Nicky Carney were too much to shoulder, and the enterprise is being sold to the Saudis for a tidy sum. Enough to keep them both in pornos and Pampers for a longtime to come. So it is with a tear in our collective eye that we chink-chink our bottles of beer and hunkerdown for Game 1.

“Learned of love and ABC´s”

-Boom! Game one, hand one goes to Felts, a sure sign that tonight he will either win, lose or break even.
-Felts takes the second hand too, with pocket Q’s trumping Ben’s pocket 2’s – always risky.
-I win a hand with my patented “big quid” bets pre-flop and flop. Nervous folds all-round.
-Me again, just me and Felts on the flop but he loses his bottle.
-Felt’s takes the next one, scaring Jamie off on the turn with a £2 bet.
-First BIG hand, me and Benno in a showdown. He’s called me all the way through to the river, and darn it if Kegger’s bluffing accusation is ringing in my ears as I flip a pathetic Ace high against his two pair. Nice £16 quid pot.
-I steal the pot from Jamie when he pulls up in front of my £4 bet.
-Ben and Jamie are stack chips up against each other until theshowdown brings the inevitable shared pot from their two pair A’s and 10’s.
-There’s a lesson to learn in this next hand. I’m holding 7 and 8 of clubs. Flop brings 10 clubs, J clubs, K diamonds. I put in a £4 bet and everyone folds. A wasted opportunity. We turn the turn (a contentious issue which a later vote will put a stop to) and it’s the A clubs! The nut flush! Judging what people will and won’t put into a pot is a fine art and one that need’s attention. For a couple of fine examples keep reading, whereupon you will discover some outrageous manoevres by that lying cheating bastard Feltham.

“Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees”

The board reads A J 6 7 and Felts places a £1.80 bet which secures the pot.
Benny wins with Q Q 6 6 versus my miserable Ace high. Again. I was chasing a straight draw like a salivating punch-drunk idiot and Benny’s two pair was the one-two punch that knocks me to the canvas, unsure whether to stick my head up again for another pummelling. Felts reaches over to a side-table and peels back a sheet of kitchen-roll to reveal a scooby-snack-sized stack of ham sandwiches, expertly made with his own massage-parlour-trained-and-manicured hands, the dainty hands of a lady. In fact when he’s holding 2 aces you’d be forgivne for betting into him because you’re admiring his nailpolish handiwork. The mustard is strong enough to blow your head off, and the boys are happy. Feltham came through for us, we say, my hunger is sated and I’m ready to play cards some more!
Benny bags pocket rockets but they’re not good enough to beat Jamie’s craftily hidden 2 pair!! Can’t fault the man for trying, but Big Blind Benny’s been stung before when he’s on the make.

“I’m really naive, but what are pocket rockets?” says Jamie.

“A losing hand” replies everyone in imperfect unison.

Board reads 4 K 8. Jamie, on the wrong side of a short stack, goes all-in!! Ben calls!! Showdown!!! Jamie has 9 K, Ben’s got A K!! Turn comes a Q, helping no-one. River is a 6 and Benny has wiped Jamie out with a pair of K’s with Ace kicker!!!

At that moment the wind whistled through the hallway, a shadow crossedthe threshhold, and the creamy marshmallow that is JC Cornelia’s hair came into view.
“Howdy boys!”
he says, and our heads spin and our stomachs turn to mulch.

“Goodbye my friend it´s hard to die”

Still to come…

Game 2, wherein I lose my shirt, and James Cornelia gets a new coat………….

Playing: “Horseshoe” Benny Binion, Mr K. Keggers Esq. – C.O.O., Jimmy Cornelia – The Smartest Kid On Earth, CarrotTop(tm), and everybody’s buddy – “Chip” Carvill

Venue: Benny Binion’s Private Members Club, 3rd Floor, Binion Towers, West London

“We hope it’s chips, it’s chips!”

8pm, running late, the boys aren’t happy. I’m sitting in traffic in Southall, a small suburb of Delhi, transported magically to the subcontinent by the A4020. Hurricane Feltham is rumoured to be hitting Ealing tonight so I brought a waterproof. They say if you spend twenty minutes looking around the table trying to figure out who is the mug, then it’s you. I’ve kept them waiting for 40 minutes so I’d say it’s the whole lot of them.

Benny comes to the table eager after three straight losses. He’s in danger of going on tilt soon, and he’s been overheard praying to God, Allah, Buddha and anyone else who will listen. In addition he’s dressed head-to-toe in a custom-made fur coat consisting entirely of hamster fur (his Eastern European supplier having temporarily run out of Lucky Rabbit’s Foot pelts after the Rabbit’s Foot Tanner and Curer Expo 2004 in Minsk last month). And he’s off to a flying start with a first hand win. The flop comes 8 2 6, and a big Benny bet causes a fold that ripples round the table and nets him a couple of ceremonial quid. He’ll come to wish he’d preserved those chips in amber, because the next hand I take them right back off him, using the pair of 8’s on the board and my Ace to win with a cheeky Ace High against his lowly King.! The hand sets a pattern for things to come, Benny repeatedly scaling the sheer rockfAce of Mt. Probability, only for his ropes to fail as he reaches the summit, sending him tumbling back down the mountain, our cackling fAces peering over the cliff are the last thing he sees before he splashes down and the river carries him away to Losersville.

All eyes are on Jimmy tonight, the Smartest Kid On Earth and the Luckiest Man Alive, capable of clearing a casino floor with a well-aimed pair of 2’s. He’s a giant of the game, a talisman and a terrible destoyer of worlds. He even sweats like a superstar, a fine sheen of healthiness on his skin. His hair sits tightly coiled atop his head like a 99 ice-cream, smooth and synthetic. Men have acquired new passports and fled the country to avoid facing him (cf. Garthy “O.G.” Williams, in self-imposed exile up a Swiss Alp with only a fondue-set and a cuckoo-clock for company). But he’s yet to play a hand. Super Smart Jimmy. Jimminy Smartpants. Show us what you’re made of, James! Balls like mahogany. Chuck down a three-high like it’s the best hand you’ve ever been dealt! No. He folds.

Mr Feltham beats Ben by a number. With 7 7 8 9 on the board Felts swipes it with a 9 against Ben’s 8. £6 pot. Mr Feltham asks us to sit back and admire his well-honed sucking action. Years of practice, we presume, servicing the needs of Streatham’s answer to Ironside, his lover and business-partner Mr Carney. Mr Feltham lets these insults fly over his head and float upwards with the sweet yellow smoke from his cheap Honduran cigar.

“Value for money!”

he says as he wraps his lips around it once again. It’s almost obscene.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Flop comes A 7 10. Jim bites. We go back and forth until the board reads A 7 10 4 2. There’s £10 in the pot. Showdown. Jim flips his cards – he’s got a pair of 2’s. AND ONE OF THOSE 2′S CAME ON THE RIVER!!!!! Jim played a nothing hand all the way to Nowheresville, and he paid for the privilege. His maverick ways will support him no longer. His wingman Goose has long since dumped him and moved on in search of another fresh young dude willing to turn the gambling odds upside down and inside-out. My pocket 5 5’s win the hand, the pot, and the goddamn respect of every miserable soul at the table that night. Jim reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a contract signed by himself and El Diablo, the signature fading fast but the clause concerning the ownership of the co-signees soul still intact and very much a legal obligation.

Enter Mr K. Keggers Esq., ready, willing and able to espouse his crackpot theory of poker, popular psychology, eyebrow mechanics and the science of the mind. In a step exponentially more believeable and thus more truly frightening than Ben’s claim to have compiled a detailed and possibly erotic dossier on each player before the game, Mr K. Keggers Esq. performs a feat of Paul McKenna-esque mind-mystery-trickery. Pointing a long, slender finger at Mr Feltham he says

“He only plays if he knows he can win.”

No-one moves, no-one takes their eyes off him. We can hear Felt’s heart do a little hiccup.

“Jim’ll play anything, Carvill’s a blagger and Benny’s desperate.”

What about you Mr K. Keggers Esq.?

“I don’t know what I’m doing…”

As if to prove this point Kenny J. Keggers III goes belly-up over the next few hands. He really doesn’t know his arse from an Ace…

BONG! It’s the final hand of this game. BONG! It’s the culmination of 6 weeks of intensive training by Ben (staying up late, dealing himself hands, memorising the odds, committing burglary to cover his bankroll). BONG! It’s all 5 of us in. BONG!

Flop comes 6 8 9

Ben shoves in £2. Keggers folds, Jim folds, Felts meets him. I fold. This is some serious action.

Turn brings a Queen. Feltham’s hair is, I’m suring, glowing a deeper shade of crimson than normal. The opening chords of “Wild Wood” start strumming on the stereo. Feltham checks. Ben bets into him with £2. Feltham pulls the dagger from his sock and re-raises £4!! Benny calls and Jim peels the river from the deck and lays it down:

Queen

BAM! There’s a sweat on Feltham’s fAce. Ben sits. And waits. You could cut the tension with a knife, as if the tension in the room was an actual, physical object like a rope, pulled taught, as if Ben and Felts were each holding an end of the strained, quivering rope, wondering who would let go first, who’s hands would start to chafe first, who’s beads of sweat would start to run off their fAce anddown their arsm on an inexorable mission to loosen their grip on the fibres. Feltham knocks on the table with his knuckles. Check. Benny grabs his stack, about £4, and declares all-in!!! The air around us is buzzing, as if the air were filled with an actual buzzing thing, many tiny little buzzing things!! Feltham calls quickly and gentlemen – we have a showdown.

Benny flips a Queen Seven!!! Trips!!!!! Mr Feltham stares for a moment, as if reliving a fond memory of a time before cards, before cigars, and gambling and money and instead a time of skipping through the daisy-filled fields around his house as a boy. Then he turns over his Five Seven and rakes in about £16!!!!!! Straight to the 9, on the flop!!! It’s all over for Benno, he’s wiped out. Cash me out and cash me in!!!!!

At this point Mr Feltham picks up my notes, squints, and says “Remember the good ol’ days of ‘Benny wins 1st hand’!?” What a bitch.

Game 2

Board brings 5 2 K K 3. Kaptain Keggers hangs in till the river, and steals and average-sized pot with his pocket 3’s making a fullhouse – Ks full of 3s! I win the next hand with a giant pre-flop £1 bet. everyone topples like dominoes on an old Blue Peter domino-toppling world-record attempt. I take the next hand as well when a Q on the river pairs my pocket Q to outrank Feltham’s pair of jacks.

Keggers gets out his accusatory finger again and declares, somewhat incongruously, that I am one heck of a big bluffer and shouldn’t be trusted further than I could be thrown. I exhale what little breath there is from my post-win breathless lungs, gulp some air down and try to speak. But there’s nothing there. I can’t form a word. Korragious Keggers has knocked me down with a feather, Trevor. A pair of Qs, sensibly gambled, statistically computed, watermarked, stamped and cross-checked by my team of researchers, and he calls me a big bluffer?! I suggest you take a long, hard look inside yourself, Mr Bigshot Corporate Fat-Cat, next time you’re making ITPR clerk Bob Cratchit redundant, probably around Christmas-time. Then we’ll see who’s holding the cards. It’ll be Bob, on the way home to his poor crippled son and meagre Christmas dinner, while you chomp on your cigar and relate the story, for the umpteenth time, of the card game when you won £3 with a full-house.

Ben mounts a campaign! Can this be? Yes, Benno wins a nice pot when someone (not in my notes but probably Krazy Keggers) foolishly piles money in when the board reads A 6 7 8 9. Ben flips his 10 and he’s on the comeback trail!

Meanwhile Jim has munched his way through a year’s supply of spuds. Pringles, Sensations, nothing’s safe from his gaping maw. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him drive home in an Irish Potato Board van. Crunch, crunch, giggle, crunch, giggle, giggle, crunch. Only a £10 win on the next hand with 6 6 6 7 7 takes my mind off his incessant crunching.

During the next three hands, Ben will lose an astonishing amount of money. Talk about bad beats. He got beat by Bad Bad Leeroy Brown. Got his arm ripped off and got beat around the head with it. He got beat like Bad Religion, beat like Bad Medicine. Ben got beat like a bad babysitter with his boyfriend in the shower, losing 50 bucks an hour. First to tan his hide was me. Ben is sitting on 9 9 and the flop comes A A 4. Ben’s on the button and raises, everyone else drops out and I re-raise. Ben gets duped like a faulty photocopier and my 10 10 rakes in about £20. Next up is Korporal Keggers. Ben bends over and takes it while the K-Man slaps him this way and that. Ben’s holding pocket rockets! The board was showing 2 Q 10 Q J. Krafty Kieran could have hung on till the end with a pair of 2’s, judging by past form, but on this occasion he let’s rip his Queen to blow Ben away with Trips and take a £10-er from him!!! By now we’re all quite sure that Ben is drowning, not waving. With fire in his eyes and the tilt alarm going off full volume he tries to scare me out of a pot, but we both stay in till the end. And the end shows 4 spades on the board, 8 4 6 10 J. In a re-run of my greatest triumph at the Hersham Bowl I steal the £10 pot from out of the big man’s hands with my flush to the King against his flush to the Queen!!! A devastating blow for any man, and especially worse for Mr Summersby, still on the lookout for his first poker title of 2004 and a seat at the inaugural Hersham One Hundred tournament later this year.

Around this time my notes traditionally get a bit vague, and this is the case now. I’ve got entries for Felt’s going all-in with 10’s and 2’s against Jimbo’s 4’s and 2’sd. A remark about Feltham’s truly audacious yet still fallible bluffing system. But look, what’s this? In a tired scrawl near the bottom of my scrap of paper, the simple entry “Ben wins big”. The big man claims he made back quite a wedge of his losses, and I certainly remember some big hands coming good for him. So when he moves into the other room, wields his acousic axe and performs the musical equivalent of the ancient art of Chinese weaving, he let’s emotion speak it’s deadly truth. And what we all bear witness to is a primal howl of despair tempered by hope. Loss balanced by opportunity. Oblivion crushed by a bright, shiny new future where the odds were forever stacked 51:49 in his favour.3 with a full-house.

Ben mounts a campaign! Can this be? Yes, Benno wins a nice pot when someone (not in my notes but probably Krazy Keggers) foolishly piles money in when the board reads A 6 7 8 9. Ben flips his 10 and he’s on the comeback trail!

Meanwhile Jim has munched his way through a year’s supply of spuds. Pringles, Sensations, nothing’s safe from his gaping maw. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him drive home in an Irish Potato Board van. Crunch, crunch, giggle, crunch, giggle, giggle, crunch. Only a £10 win on the next hand with 6 6 6 7 7 takes my mind off his incessant crunching.

During the next three hands, Ben will lose an astonishing amount of money. Talk about bad beats. He got beat by Bad Bad Leeroy Brown. Got his arm ripped off and got beat around the head with it. He got beat like Bad Religion, beat like Bad Medicine. Ben got beat like a bad babysitter with his boyfriend in the shower, losing 50 bucks an hour. First to tan his hide was me. Ben is sitting on 9 9 and the flop comes A A 4. Ben’s on the button and raises, everyone else drops out and I re-raise. Ben gets duped like a faulty photocopier and my 10 10 rakes in about £20. Next up is Korporal Keggers. Ben bends over and takes it while the K-Man slaps him this way and that. Ben’s holding pocket rockets! The board was showing 2 Q 10 Q J. Krafty Kieran could have hung on till the end with a pair of 2’s, judging by past form, but on this occasion he let’s rip his Queen to blow Ben away with Trips and take a £10-er from him!!! By now we’re all quite sure that Ben is drowning, not waving. With fire in his eyes and the tilt alarm going off full volume he tries to scare me out of a pot, but we both stay in till the end. And end which showed 4 spades on the board, 8 4 6 10 J. In a re-run of my greatest triumph at the Hersham Bowl I steal the £10 pot from out of the big man’s hands with my flush to the King against his flush to the Queen!!! A devastating blow for any man, and especially worse for Mr Summersby, still on the lookout for his first poker title of 2004 and a seat at the inaugural Hersham One Hundred tournament later this year.

Around this time my notes traditionally get a bit vague, and this is the case now. I’ve got entries for Felt’s going all-in with 10’s and 2’s against Jimbo’s 4’s and 2’sd. A remark about Feltham’s truly audacious yet still fallible bluffing system. But look, what’s this? In a tired scrawl near the bottom of my scrap of paper, the simple entry “Ben wins big”. The big man claims he made back quite a wedge of his losses, and I certainly remember some big hands coming good for him. So when he moves into the other room, wields his acousic axe and performs the musical equivalent of the ancient art of Chinese weaving, he let’s emotion speak it’s deadly truth. And what we all bear witness to is a primal howl of despair tempered by hope. Loss balanced by opportunity. Oblivion crushed by a bright, shiny new future where the odds were forever stacked 51:49 in his favour.