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

I came 2nd in the 3rd monthly Chertsey PokerSlam. I am officially the 2nd best poker player in Surrey and Hampshire.

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Playing:Carvill, Banat, Williams H., Summersby, Malloy, Ring

Venue: Banat SouthEast Regional PokerBowl

# Snackage: The ever-expanding Walker’s Sensations range (controversial, in the middle of our Walker’s boycott)
# Hot dogs, with onions (allegedly) – 2 each (count ‘em!) Approximate length of time the crisps lasted on the table: 27 seconds.

Of Luck and Loss

The list of quotations available on the subject of luck is endless, but one of my favourites, and most revealing, is from the French poet, artist and film maker Jean Cocteau:

“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?”

I like William, don’t get me wrong. I like him a lot. But he is one lucky, lucky bastard. We’re at the Banat SouthEast Regional PokerBowl. Me and Benny are guests of an increasingly civilised Ashford Amateur Poker Association (AAPA). Benny’s on the up after his dramatic break-even at Jamie’s, and I’m looking down the barrel of a £30 loss.

The AAPA play their game on an upturned Subbuteo cloth. There’s an argument that says they shouldn’t bother upturning it, thereby allowing a player to surge up the wing and cross in a pair of Kings, only to find whoever’s at the end of the table blocking the goal with his pocket rockets. But there all analogies with football must end, as the game is much longer than 90 minutes, there’s only one player per team, and we don’t all jump in the shower together afterwards. Not all the time, anyway.

In seat one is our host Banat, playing as passive as a sheet of blotting paper. By the evening’s end he’s still got hold of all his money, but he’s mysteriously lost a couple of bottles of wine. Hic!

In seat two Howard’s rocking a funky metal-hip hop hybrid Fred Durst look, but by hand eleven all he’s got left to bet with is his chocolate starfish, which he puts on his A J. The board reads Q 5 Q 10 9 and Howard gets well and truly fingered when William makes his straight on the river with J K, forcing him to re-buy. Thirteen hands later he’s out of chips again, at the hands of his tormentor William. The flop brings 2 2 9, Howard’s holding A 3. William’s winning with his A K, about a 70% favourite. Turn brings a 4, and now Howard’s four cards to an ace high straight. He’s still only on a 15% chance of winning when he goes all in, but no amount of prolonged and persistent betting can scare off the unusually obstinate Ringo, his fingers crackling tonight with electricity and eager anticipation, with bass notes of cigarette tar. The river brings a 6 and it’s all over. Howard’s £40 down but eager for more punishment, so William shunts a stack of chips back across the table. At some stage after my notes run out he shunts that stack straight back to where it came from to end up 60 quid down.

In seat three, Benny didn’t see past the flop for the first fourteen hands. His subscription to Inside Edge gambling magazine seems to have brought out the zen buddhist in him. The man who previously had an insatiable thirst for action sat focused in the zone and waved away the first 28 cards that were put in front of him. On hand fifteen he makes a well-timed big bet from the button to steal the pot. He’s back again a hand later with another big bet, and another win, safely sliding his cards back into the deck afterwards. We don’t see him again for thirteen hands, when he his A 4 beats my pocket 3’s with the board reading 6 6 A A 4.

Malloy in seat 4 makes some bucks, and William goes home with upwards of 100 quid in his stonewashed pocket. Somewhere in the middle of all this I got caught in a mudslide, so far onto a tilt that the balifs came and reposessed the pinball machine. Trying to win a hand was like nailing a jelly to the ceiling. Going for an Ace high flush with pocket rockets I thought I was on a winner. But William was using a sledgehammer to crack my nuts and with the board showing K Q 5 he kept coming back at me. Turn and flop came 6 5 and I missed my flush but still had the trusty rockets as backup. Until William flipped over his trips 5’s to take my last penny, my shirt, my housekeys, my woman………………….

Playing:Peter Blackburn, Gerard Scott-Brining, Chris Forrest, Paul Carvill

Venue:Elateral Hi-Tech Arenabowl, Farnham

Gambling investor’s money since 2003

A slow game of poker is a dead game of poker, so for the inaugural Elateral Hold ‘Em comp we crank our hi-tech cogs and step the speed up to about 75 hands an hour. Steroid-pumped Gerry slumps in his chair guzzling Tenant’s Super, but his maverick rocket-fuelled approach sees his knuckles close to the laquered pine after only half an hour. Chris squints, shades his eyesfrom the light that’s shining down on the table, and tries to make sense of what’s going on around him. Pete would probably prefer to play with one huge chip, to make it easier for him to repeatedly go all-in. He’s got a worrying penchant for the big gamble – remember, this man is in charge of a multi-gazillion dollar budget. I played it steady and cool like I always do, and steadily lost like I always do. I need to stop needlessly provoking action, let the game come to me.

So for the statistically-minded here’s the rundown:

I: dropped two quid
Gerry: picked them up
Pete: got wiped out, a fiver down
Chris: went home six quid up, the schemer…..

Playing:Cowboy Carvill, Tallboy Ben, “Pintsize” Howard Williams, Banat “Origami” Banat, “Ginger” Paul Feltham, Tits Milbourn, Giggling Jim Cornelia

Venue: Jamie’s Poker Palace, Hersham

Spilling wine on the felt since 2003.

“Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving
Is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep,
‘Cause very hands a winner and every hands a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

Christ, it’s still light outside. There’s a blanket up at the window and the sun is pounding on it. We’re squeezed round the table at Jamie Milbourn’s Poker Palace in Hersham, slogan – “Suckers Welcome”. We’re shoulder to sweaty shoulder. The place is a sauna, and there’s more people expected. Worse, it’s two representatives from the Ashford Amateur Poker Association, a more boorish bunch of chancers than which you’d be hard-pushed to find this side of goldrush-era San Francisco.

Gambling in the daylight feels like drinking whiskey at the breakfast table. There can be no hiding of dark motives, stealth must take a back seat. It’s as if someone has lifted the rock we’re hiding under, and here we are – seven sorry gamblers, yes gamblers, squinting and exposed. In this month’s Inside Edge magazine – a magazine devoted to gambling in it’s myriad forms – “Barmy” Barney Boatman makes the case for poker players to be considered athletes. One look around the table tells me he’s definately never seen us play.

In seat one, Paul Feltham, slightly frayed around the edges after an afternoon spent wine-tasting. He’s sporting a shirt that can best be described as second-hand, and a spanking new set of ginger-coloured clay chips. They’re not actually clay, as Paul found out after a prolonged argument with the poker shop proprietor, but high-impact plastic composite resin. But, like Paul, they are ginger and they don’t mix well with others.

We play a few hands of 7 Card Stud and Omaha to limber up. Omaha is 4 pocket cards, and then table cards and betting just like Hold ‘Em. However, you must make your hand using 2 of your pocket cards and 3 from the board. To play Omaha is to enter a world of almost infinite possibility and it’s accompanying and inversely-proportional concentration span. If you have trouble remembering your Hold ‘Em pocket cards and subsequent combinations then you’ve got no hope playing Omaha. One glance away, one mis-read turn card and you’ll find yourself on a slowboat to China with only moonshine-crazed tin-mining inbreds for company. Given our less than long-running history of professional card-playing we decide to stick to what we know, or at least what we think we know, the fine game of Texas Hold ‘Em, of which, inevitably, we know less than we think we do.

In seat three, Ho Chi Jimh, the Irish-Asian God Of Lucky Charms, takes the first hand with a pocket queen to go with the two on the board. A first hand win is recognised in these parts as the cold finger of luck tapping you on the shoulder before making a hasty departure, but this time it’s different. There is no chill wind, no nervous silence, no ominous rattling of the shutters. This time it’s Jim. Lucky Jim. Ben straightens his stack, looks each of us straight in the eye and says “He’s reversed the curse.” And maybe he has. I take a 9 Q all the way to the river after flopping a 10 J, but have to call it a day when Jim fronts a large bet. I hate folding to Jim but I must admit the feeling of inadequacy lasts half as long as the feeling of an empty wallet in my back pocket, which I invariably end up with if I pursue Mr Lucky Charms all the way to the end.

Felts folds the next hand on the river, giving it to Jamie, in seat two. Jamie, our fine host, stayed up all night looking at other people’s girlfriends and wishing he was more manly, mainly on account of his owning boobs and appearing to be heavily pregnant. As we will discover during our mid-game meal, he is most likely pregnant with 36 hot-dogs ‘n’ buns and a side-order of MSG. As a result of his nocturnal activities his trademark pinsharp humour is AWOL and the world is a sadder place. In seat four Ben is on the wrong end of a losing streak longer than the checkout queue at Hersham Safeways. He’s taken to listening to Yazz’s “The Only Way Is Up” as an inspirational anthem, and today he arrived armed with a shovel to dig himself out of his hole. He takes the next hand on the button when the flop brings A A 5. Next hand Felts and Jim make big bets all the way with the board showing A Q 3 K K. Jim, admittedly, is usually chasing the bets but this time he’s leading the charge from the front. I say I think it’s an almighty bluff but when the showdown comes it’s Felts holding the 2 7 (!).

The AAPA contingent arrive in a cloud of dust and flies, pockets ringing with the sound of clinking minatures. Urgent phone calls had been received earlier in the day concerning the precise amount, position and placement of small blinds, big blinds and raises. A startled silence and a slowly evaporating exlamation mark hanging in the air greeted the news that we’ve upped the minimum bet to a quid. First Banat picks his eyeballs up off the floor and then contemplates, for the merest sliver of a second, a month in which his Pot Noodle budget could be halved. His mouth already dry, he manages to squeak a polite refusal. Then the child prodigy Howard Williams, aware his meagre pocket money can only stretch so far, and certainly not as far as a trans-county train ticket to Hersham, decides to stay at home. Faced with these two pitiful examples most poker schools would have closed the door and got on with business, but in an overwhelmingly inclusive and egalitarian move the swift decision is made to embrace our less fortunate brethren. The blinds are lowered. And there, trundling towards us, comes the trojan horse….

It’s mainly a drawing game, with fortunes changing hands on a regular basis, none of us yet smart enough to throw a good yet obviously losing hand. Poker is nothing if not patience and restraint, of which those amassed here tonight have neither. Me and Ben clash heads over 2 3 J 8 A with me taking the pot holding J 3 to his Q 3. Jim and Howard go to the river with K 10 6 J 2, Jim winning with pocket Q’s against Howard’s fold. Howard takes the very next hand, though, his single 9 matching up with A A 9 6 7 to make two pair. The hand after that between Jim and Banat required even more balls of steel, or a head full of cotton balls – A K 5 5 2 is on the board, full-house territory. A mexican wave of folds leaves these two playing, and the showdown is Banat the winner with A 7 beating Jim’s K 7! The following hand, unbelievably, gets even more tenuous. Felts, with one win to his name so far, piles ginger chips in on every round, only to be met by Howard facing him down across the table. There’s £15 and 5 6 10 3 J on the table when the finally show ‘em, Felts with a disgracefully insufficient A Q losing out to Howard’s outrageously speculative J 5. All the way with a pair of 5’s! There must have been desperation written on Felt’s face, and maybe nothing would have made Howard fold that hand. We could all learn a lesson from Mr Kenny Rogers when he sings “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em”.

All in all, though, the night’s big winner is Howard. I haven’t actually got him winning much in my notes from the first 2 games so either he won it all in the third, he did it when I wasn’t looking, or he was surreptitiously smuggling chips from my stack into his all night, which would explain a multitude of discrepancies including why I didn’t win. To be truthful, he plays tight, tight as a gnat’s chuff. And if you’ve ever had a romantic liason with a gnat, and his/her chuff, you’ll know how tight we’re talking. The wonder kid’s got lollies and footie stickers to buy with his money, so he takes care of it. He makes good decisions and sticks with them, and he’ll keep winning as long as the decisions remain good.

Ben went all-in halfway through the night, board showing 8 K 2 A 7. After some deliberation I met him there. I had K 2 to Ben’s K 9. He didn’t take it well, but made a wonderful, surging comeback in the second half, clattering through all that dare step in the lumbering giant’s path. Breathing lungfull’s of pure ozone, he repeatedly pokes his head down from beneath the treetops to flip yet another perfectly calculated winning hand. He reckons by the end of the night he was perfectly even – Jimmy White awaits!

We spot Banat’s tell the very first time it happens. After sitting on his stack all-night, playing as tight as a gnat’s bumhole (and if you’ve ever had a romantic liason……), he’s on the big blind of 50p when he reaches over and hesitantly places another 25p chip on top. “Make it 75p” he says. The bet heard round the world. The board brings J A 6 6 4. Only Howard makes it to the river, and sure enough when they flip ‘em Banat’s showing A J to Howard’s K J. You have been warned! I can’t remember what he went home with, but it can’t have swung much either way, and anyway most of went on his feeble search for an edible Hersam-based pizza parlour and the rest on a taxi(?!) home.

Felts faced an uphill struggle all night, ginger power evidently failing to materialize. He repeatedly got taken down close to the cloth, and went all-in a couple of times, only to emerge the victor and double up his weak stack. Best hand: a three-wayer with me, him and Ben. I’m holding Q Q, Felts has got Q 10 and Ben’s got Q A. The flop brings 7 J A, at which point Ben’s winning. Turn brings J, Ben’s still winning, and river is a K. Felt’s has won with a straight to the A, I wisely, if belatedly, folded, and Ben is sick as Ben usually is.

Jamie fed us mechanically-recovered dogmeat snacks, then went to bed at approximately 8pm. Jimbo’s pact with Beelzebub has been rescinded, so Super Lucky Jim has been demoted to “The Man From Molesey”. He was down a bit when we packed it in, very early due to desertion by the “tired” hordes, to watch episodes of The Office, after which we all felt like winners anyway.

Playing: Paul “The Cowboy” Carvill, Bend It Like Benny, Howlin’ Mad Howard, Ken “The Elegance” Middleton, Magic Mark Malloy, Stu “Nuts” McLellan, Sean “OJ” Gorman – don’t squeeze the juice, Banat “The Rock” Banat

Venue: Ashford Amateur Poker Association (AAPA) Bar ‘n’ Grill, Ashford, Tennessee.

The price of poker just went up

A piece of advice – “Never rub another man’s rhubarb.” That’s what Jack tells Michael before he shoots him in the 1989 film Batman. Another piece of advice – never bet large in poker against someone who’s never played before because you think they might not recognise a winning hand and in fact earlier in the evening they had demonstrated an inability to distinguish such a winning hand, the nuts even, from a lesser, big-money losing joke of a hand. They will invariably have the winning hand, and they will know it. They will look at you through clear eyes, their heart unfettered by carefully calculated odds and psychological jedi mind-tricks. Plainly and simply they will have become aware of their card-based superiority and your subsequent and insurmountable inferiority. Zen-like they will match you chip for chip as you push stack after teetering stack into the middle of the table, your palms clammy and your face drained. Their palms will not be clammy, they will be soft and babylike. They will not appear nervous. This is not a sign of their naivety, or their lack of poker chops, or even their astonishing chutzpah. This is the sign of a winner. Learn it, recognise it, avoid it.

Rapidly establishing itself on the amateur poker circuit, Ashfordian poker is known as much for it’s weak grasp on the thin end of the mental wedge as for it’s extreme lack of gaming etiquette. If your home game is a civilised drawing room-based clique of cigar-smoking, card-playing aristocratic dogs, the AAPA is a gin-soaked barrel of unashamedly profligate and diseased monkeys rotting in their own filth.

House manager Mr Warwick Gorman is on hand to quell any disputes that may arise. He looks like Jesus, had Jesus lived to middle-age, sired three fine children and moved out of Jerusalem into the suburbs. He also has many Jesus-like qualities – ask him to perform his miracle with a pair of underpants and a crystal chandelier! One blot on his ecclesiastical copybook is a distinctly unholy ability to ROCK! When he and his wife were courting they went to a peak-period Led Zep gig at Earl’s Court. His wife fell asleep (At a Led Zep gig? Was she deaf?) but the WG continued to rock alone, stopping only to grab a bag of chips and a carton of Quash and feed the 25,000. There’s a cool photo of them both in period costume on their wedding day on top of the stereo in the back room, if you’re an avid Warwick fan wanting to purloin a quality souvenir.

Ben’s come in the hopes of breaking his duck and pocketing some cash. These kids need coolin’, baby I’m not foolin’. We’re gonna send them back to schoolin’. That’s the plan anyway, but like all the best ones it’s goes down the crapper faster than 143 bottles of beer, at the last count.

I’m explaining the rules for the new folks, this being only the second ever AAPA poker game. Some of the new folks aren’t listening. No matter, they’ll learn – you snooze, you lose. In fact, as it later turns out, they didn’t need to listen and they didn’t need to learn. They will win big and it will change us all.

I split my crate of beer with Ben, who’s come straight from work in Soho and undoubtably spent the day removing the stretchmarks from photos of Linda Evangelista that are going out in Saturday’s Times. He’s itching to play. He is the exception to the behavioural science rule. If you let a rat choose between eating some cheese and not eating some cheese, and electrocute the rat every time it opts for the cheese, eventually the rat will avoid the cheese. Tuition through fear. Poker is Ben’s cheese. He loves it, and he loves the electricity. He is not afraid. Howard’s got three bottles of beer in front of him. He has work tomorrow and doesn’t trust himself not to drink 3 gallons of lager. He smokes 2 decks of fags over the course of a couple of hours, but complains he can’t breathe when someone sparks up a cigar. Oh, his poor tar-stained lungs. Ken’s still not sure he gets it, but hell he’s a financial adviser so he’s not even playing with his own money, just one of his high-risk accounts. If he loses he can sell his body on the streets of Ashford, where it’s exotic lustre and interesting texture fetch a king’s ransom. Opposite me is Mark, who’s been banned from bringing vodka after we had to peel him off the ceiling at the last game. I take a long look at him and wonder if he smuggled the booze in. In his belly. Next to him is Nuts McLellan, currently humming to himself and inspecting the artex ceiling while I point out the finer points of flop-betting theory. In the example flop is a K 6 2. I say that if you hold 2 kings you’re currently winning the hand. Someone pokes Stu. He looks startled, like he’s not sure where he is or how he got there. He folds. What did you fold, I say. It’s 2 kings. At the end of the table, our kind host Sean. He’s drinking lady-sized Buds. They fit between your thumb and forefinger and contain a single gulpful of refreshing cat’s-piss. Last, it’s Banat. There’s differing professional opinions on this gamer, depending on how drunk you are and whether you squint your eyes. On one hand he’s The Rock. On the other hand he’s The Origami Kid. You decide.

In the early games I stir up a shitstorm, laying wicked bets and representing wondercards amidst a flurry of chipstacking and wisecracking. It’s a spectacular display of smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand. It’s the way I would do things forever if only I didn’t underestimate the rookies and get in over my head. It’s one thing to bet too big, but another thing entirely not to back down when you know you should. The board shows a 7, a K and a 2, unsuited. I’m holding a K and pile in a fiver. 4 seats fold round to Stu, who deliberates like he doesn’t know an ante from his elbow, the lying, hustling scumbag. Someone tells him I’m holding 2 kings and to fold. He calls. Shit. If I had been holding 2 kings he’d have been an idiot. But I’m not. Next card is a 10. And now I’m feeling like an idiot as I watch myself put another fiver in. It’s just me and him now. He calls. I’m fucked. I check. He checks. Next card is a 4. I check. He checks. Could I have won? I’ve got one scrap of hope left that says he’s been overly keen, until he flips over his pocket pair of 7’s to make trips. He rakes in over £20 and I go weak.

That’s the pattern for the evening. Nuts McLellan gets dealt pocket pairs, Aces, Kings, all face cards, he bets, he wins. It’s the second coming of Cornelia, as the scriptures prophecied. Once every 2000 years a child shall be blessed with the poker nuts.

I don’t know how it happened but the next time I check out Ben’s stack it isn’t there. He’s blown the lot. Thinking back, he was in nearly every hand. No discretion. That’s no way to play, not if you wanna mess with Jimmy White, Ben’s ambition. Howard’s playing like he’s on Late Night Poker, i.e 5 hands a night. He wins all 5, mind, and I’d say one or two of them were big brassy bluffs. Ken ventures some old sod’s pension on trips, and makes it. From then on he’s not even playing with someone else’s money – he’s playing with someone else’s money’s ill-gotten gains, a fact I will exploit at around 4am when he’s drunk, probably on someone else’s booze. Mark loses everything, but not before swearing at someone in Ireland down the phone – an expensive habit.

Nuts McLellan breaks the bank at Monte Carlo, pocketing £70, soured only by his lordly, effete handshakes proffered to everybody who beats him in a hand, and also by his Timmy Mallett-esque co-opting of the dealer chip for use as a monacle whilst yodelling his way through Doolittle and performing chip-spitting like a Tourette’s sufferer with Attention Deficit Disorder. He starts work at a mental home next week and I fear that the proverbial inmates have indeed taken over the asylum. But he schooled us. He sent us back to the juniors. He caned our arrogant asses by taking the game back to it’s nuts and bolts. 7 cards, 8 players, 1712304 possible hands. Best hand wins. The BEST hand WINS.

Sean’s all spent, wondering whether he can persuade Warwick to ante-up the deeds to the house. That’s 2 out of 2 for Sean, who’s gotta be feeling the pinch now. I’d forgotten Banat was even sitting next to me, until I hear a mouselike voice pipe up. Can I cash out now? He’s trying to bank about 40p’s worth of chips. Can you heck! The Origami Kid has worked out 29 ways to fold a hand, and none of them is a waterballoon. He ends up, I think, evens.

It’s 4am, everyone’s cashed out except me, Ben and Ken. Ben’s inexhaustable and hungry for action. Ken’s up to the eyeballs in borrowed Blue Nun. Wanna play some more? I say. Yeeeeeeppp, comes the reply. Sweet. I’m £20 down and down to about a fiver from my next buy-in, about £35 down altogether. I play slow and steady and manage to seperate Ken from someone’s ISA downpayment, bringing myself back to evens. Ben also scrapes a few quid back. Ken hits the sack, safe in the knowledge that his bank balance has remained untouched. Howard’s away in a cab, Stu and Mark are asleep, the house is quiet. Quiet, that is, except for a mouse scratching about in the kitchen. A mouse that turns out to be big and Banat-sized and sniffing around for gin.

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.

Playing: “Cool Hand” Carvill, “Bad, Bad Leroy” Banat, Ken “The Elegance” Middleton, “Moody” Mark Malloy, Amarillo “Slim” Gorman, “Watchful” Willy Ring

Venue: The Banat International Indoor Hold ‘Em Arena

“They call me the moonlight gambler…”

We’re in Banat’s House of Cards and it’s looking to be a clean-up. I’m 45 minutes late but the rest of them look like 90 minutes of aperitifs. Good news. Sean’s played before but I’m thinking maybe I heard him wrong and he really said he’d been played before. Played like a cheap violin, by a man with a limp. This should be easy.

We play a couple of just for fun hands of Hold ‘Em and immediately Banat’s more questions than answers. Willy asks what the cards in the middle are for, and my head’s ringing so much from the cash registers going off in my ears that I’m sure my eyes are lighting up like laser beams. I wish I’d bought some shades. I don’t want these people to see my primal lust for their cash. Even a balaclava would do. There’s 600 quality David Westnedge* plastic poker chips on the table tonight so we cash in and away we go.

The table looks like a peanut farmer’s convention. We’re knee-deep in them, and my cards have probably been preserved for the next hundred years in a layer of salt.

I’m up a couple of hands and an early lead but make some foolish calls instead of concentrating and suddenly Sean’s chip leader by about a fiver. Sean will bet anything, all the way to the river. He’s asked me three times if I’ll go and see Damien Dempsey with him next week. I’ve said yes three times but secretly I’m going to get a pea-shooter and take one of the Irish crooner’s eyes out. Willy will fold anything, up to and including pocket rockets, I think. He’s tighter than the crotch area of a pair of overalls three sizes too small. Frankie Laine tells us that if we haven’t gambled on love then we haven’t gambled at all. I don’t know much about him, but he sounds like he recorded the album standing at a urinal.

Will nearly breaks the bank on a big hand that cripples him for the rest of the game. I had the nut flush but there was so much money on the table he had me checking my hole cards again just to make sure. My cold sweat evaporated when he lined up his big 4-card straight, unaware that he needed a fifth to make it worth anything. In biro on the piece of paper next to him is written the order of hands, and next to Three-of-a-Kind he’s written “three cards”.

Mark’s halfway through his bottle of vodka and two-thirds of the way through his chips. He piles it in for hands like 3-card straight draws and two-pairs, a crazy maniac card-counter, but he’s counting the cards in Italian. In binary. Backwards. He’s got one chip left and goes all-in, seconds later raking back about 15 quid with his flush on the river.

There’s a lockdown in place on Banat’s drinks cabinet. He’s shelled out 300 quid for a barrel of assorted brandy and he doesn’t want to wake up and have to fish someone out of it. After the first game he makes a cocktail with a lot of lime. I take a taste and he tells me it’s also got lemon in it. Then he tells me that his lemons are off.

Ken turns up with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a lungful of Belgian air and a bellyfull of Duvel, but he’s mediterranean by nature and probably bathes in olive-oil and he hasn’t got a clue. Thank God. I’ve turned semi-pro and the last thing I need is a wise-guy with a tan and a suitcase full of dirty Belgian euros.

“Mad” Mark Malloy’s crazy ways soon wipe him out of the first game, and we cash in. Sean, Willy and me are all up, me about 20 quid. Next game comes, and we’re playing pretty smoothly. Sean wins with a full house, although he was playing under the impression it was two pair, because that’s what he shouts triumphantly as he smacks his cards down on the creased Subbuteo felt. Then a litre of vokda kicks in along with, I’m guessing here, half a kilo of crack. Within minutes Mark’s fallen off his chair, pissed up the bathroom wall, phoned a girl to call her a “c*nting b*tch whore” and fallen off his chair again. This is while we’re waiting for him to pay the big blind. There followed “The Tut Heard ‘Round The Table” and the start of a giant karmic exchange. “Mad” Mark wins the next three hands with straights, including a Broadway. He must be holding about 45 quid!

The Elegance has the body of a boy, drinks like a man and plays cards like a girl. He’s at the wrong end of the table, up to his eyes in discarded peanut bags, and it takes us a few rounds to remember he’s playing. Ken’s going South, and the scribbled order of hands makes regular journeys in that direction as he tries to work out the cheapest way to drown.

Amid some of the most uncourteous behaviour this side of a prison barge, players are going missing on a regular basis, the attention deficit about as deficient as it gets. It’s a child’s party in full swing and there’s 5 special children right here waiting for the raspberry ripple. But there’s only 5 raspbs, and they know who they are.

Mark’s intravenous injection of ethanol and cat’s piss eventually takes it’s toll, and halfway through the game he’s gone AWOL and is never seen again. He gets blinded out, plain and simple, a pathetic endgame to an enjoyable and sometimes surprising battle of the wits. He had the money and the muscle to edge anyone out, but he blew it on blinds and bad plays and if anyone’s looking for a mark then he’s got it in name and nature. In the words of Sophie Ellis-Bextor, “if you’re feeling kind of mixed-up, just remember it’s a mixed-up world”…..

Around 4am Banat gives up waiting for 4 aces in the pocket and goes to bed. William’s hanging on by his fingernails and the whole tournament has descended into the sort of disarray you see in the old army experiment footage when they pumped soldiers full of amphetamines and acid, threw them in a field in Montana and told them it was Vietnam so KILL! KILL! KILL! The soldiers ran around for a while shouting and being agressive but pretty soon they were inspecting their own arses or laying face down in the mud and wondering what it would be like to have a thorax. Sean’s broke but happy, Ken’s been smothered in oil and wrapped in muslin for the night, and I’m 50 quid richer which I blow extravagantly on petrol and charcoal briquettes on the way home.

*David Westnedge, manufacturer of gaming supplies, is, I’m convinced, a Wizard of Oz-esque midget hiding behind a glittery curtain and conducting his business with a set of levers and a maniacal grin. He knows as much about poker as I know about plastics manufacturing, and his Set of 100 Poker Chips is one of my most uninspiring but sadly necessary purchases of recent years. Their “fully-interlocking” feature has been proven to be a wild overstatement of the facts, and where the box claims “+tray” you will instead find a flimsy membrane somewhat akin to clingfilm, although without that oil by-product’s incredible self-proclaimed ability to cling, preferring instead a friction free and expandable frame which precludes the easy measuring of it’s contents. I left a message on Mr Westnedge’s office answerphone enquiring as to which unexpected retail premises his affordable but almost useless products are liable to turn up in. Mr Westnedge has so far managed to elude me, although the evidence suggests that his entire supply chain consists of Mr Westnedge in his garden shed with his patented “Crappy Plastic” machine churning out his brittle gambling discs which are then loaded onto the back of a bread van and delivered to the Farnham Art Shop, a tiny shop with amazingly intricate displays of everything but art materials. Run by a trio of late middle-age Jewish women and a stunned-looking gentile, it’s a fun-packed kaleidoscope of board games and bawdy gossip. Westnedge’s crap fills the shelves and alarms went off the first time I bought anything in there. It’s probably not a shop at all, but their knick-knack packed front-room.

Playing: “Cards” Carvill, “Moody” Ben Summersby, Mr Feltham, Milbourn, Mr Carney

Venue: The Streatham Casino, High Stakes Poker Room

It’s a dark night in South London as I pull up to the Streatham Casino, run by the flamboyant, flame-haired Mr Feltham and his mentally handicapped associate Mr Carney.

We get down to business early. The game is No Limit Hold ‘Em, £20 buy-in. Under the infamously hardline management, minimal snacks are provided, although I came prepared with a pre-packed sandwich from the petrol station mini-mart that would make an appearance after midnight. The management are tight in everything but their game, which is looser than an old tart’s knickers.

Paul greased Mr Carney’s wheelchair wheels and we were away, playing slow and steady to let him follow the action. He’d obviously saved up his pocket-money for over a year to buy-in to this, and he wasn’t going to lose it in a game he didn’t even know the rules to. No. He would learn the rules, then lose it. And lose it quickly. Before he had even had the chance to dribble on his cards we’d taken him for all he had. Twenty big ones got shared out equally, Jamie more equally than others.

Game 2, Mr Carney’s raided the piggy bank and Mr Feltham helpfully explains that making a pair is just like playing snap. Fully prepared, he loses his second £20.

The Pringles are going down well. Paul got 3 different flavours. It’s a taste sensation when accompanied by a fine Cuban, or in Mr Carney’s case a Cafe Creme, mindfully sellotaped to his bottom lip by Mr Feltham. We’re in full flow now, a big slick gambling machine artfully demonstrating the theory of wealth redistribution along evolutionary lines. It’s a one way river of cash from the stupid to the smart, and we’re a floating ocean liner casino with Captain Feltham at the helm, complete with his new £6 Dealer Button.

An almighty hand of Jamie’s Full House versus Feltham’s Flush has one of their stacks shortened by about a half, and it wasn’t Paul. Looking at Jamie I would worry about the guy if he was living any richer. He conjures up Henry VIII in my mind as I watch his ruddy cheeks break into a cackling laugh.

My downfall comes when I can’t stop myself trying to keep MrFeltham honest, bringing him out into the open like the lying, cheating, bluffing weasel he really is. Of course, he’s hooked me on a line and is behaving like a saint, and soon has over half my stack. Maybe I should bring a little more respect and humility to the table, but I’m not sure you can cash that in at the end of a game…

Mr Carney’s losses are galactic in proportion and thus unprintable. There just aren’t enough zero’s in the world. Mr Feltham fits the head restraint on him in case he has a turn.

“Moody” Ben Summersby has been playing tighter than a pair of hotpants all night. I think he’s got a new system. “I’ve got a new system” he says. I could tell by the “How To Play Poker – And Win!” book poking out of his back pocket. If only I’d thought of that. He ends the night with enough cash to get a cab home, so he’s evens overall, although he’s got an evening of warmth and friendship to deposit in the bank of life. No friendchips though, the snackage ran out hours ago. By way of consolation Mr Carney wheels himself to the kitchen and returns with two baby bottles of Piper Heidseck champagne in his lap. In what is one of the funniest things I saw all year, he proceeds to remove the moulded plastic cork from the top, and reveal a screw top beneath. Using his motorised claw to grip the bottle, he slowly unscrews the cap, unleasing a violent wet fart of spectacular non-gasiness. Declining the soup bowl Mr Carney has brought in to contain the champagne. Mr Feltham drinks from the bottle and toasts a night that came good for him.

Playing: “Cards” Carvill, “Moody” Ben Summersby, Mr Feltham, Milbourn, Mr Carney

Venue: The Streatham Casino, High Stakes Poker Room

It’s a dark night in South London as I pull up to the Streatham Casino, run by the flamboyant, flame-haired Mr Feltham and his mentally handicapped associate Mr Carney.

We get down to business early. The game is No Limit Hold ‘Em, £20 buy-in. Under the infamously hardline management, minimal snacks are provided, although I came prepared with a pre-packed sandwich from the petrol station mini-mart that would make an appearance after midnight. The management are tight in everything but their game, which is looser than an old tart’s knickers.

Paul greased Mr Carney’s wheelchair wheels and we were away, playing slow and steady to let him follow the action. He’d obviously saved up his pocket-money for over a year to buy-in to this, and he wasn’t going to lose it in a game he didn’t even know the rules to. No. He would learn the rules, then lose it. And lose it quickly. Before he had even had the chance to dribble on his cards we’d taken him for all he had. Twenty big ones got shared out equally, Jamie more equally than others.

Game 2, Mr Carney’s raided the piggy bank and Mr Feltham helpfully explains that making a pair is just like playing snap. Fully prepared, he loses his second £20.

The Pringles are going down well. Paul got 3 different flavours. It’s a taste sensation when accompanied by a fine Cuban, or in Mr Carney’s case a Cafe Creme, mindfully sellotaped to his bottom lip by Mr Feltham. We’re in full flow now, a big slick gambling machine artfully demonstrating the theory of wealth redistribution along evolutionary lines. It’s a one way river of cash from the stupid to the smart, and we’re a floating ocean liner casino with Captain Feltham at the helm, complete with his new £6 Dealer Button.

An almighty hand of Jamie’s Full House versus Feltham’s Flush has one of their stacks shortened by about a half, and it wasn’t Paul. Looking at Jamie I would worry about the guy if he was living any richer. He conjures up Henry VIII in my mind as I watch his ruddy cheeks break into a cackling laugh.

My downfall comes when I can’t stop myself trying to keep MrFeltham honest, bringing him out into the open like the lying, cheating, bluffing weasel he really is. Of course, he’s hooked me on a line and is behaving like a saint, and soon has over half my stack. Maybe I should bring a little more respect and humility to the table, but I’m not sure you can cash that in at the end of a game…

Mr Carney’s losses are galactic in proportion and thus unprintable. There just aren’t enough zero’s in the world. Mr Feltham fits the head restraint on him in case he has a turn.

“Moody” Ben Summersby has been playing tighter than a pair of hotpants all night. I think he’s got a new system. “I’ve got a new system” he says. I could tell by the “How To Play Poker – And Win!” book poking out of his back pocket. If only I’d thought of that. He ends the night with enough cash to get a cab home, so he’s evens overall, although he’s got an evening of warmth and friendship to deposit in the bank of life. No friendchips though, the snackage ran out hours ago. By way of consolation Mr Carney wheels himself to the kitchen and returns with two baby bottles of Piper Heidseck champagne in his lap. In what is one of the funniest things I saw all year, he proceeds to remove the moulded plastic cork from the top, and reveal a screw top beneath. Using his motorised claw to grip the bottle, he slowly unscrews the cap, unleasing a violent wet fart of spectacular non-gasiness. Declining the soup bowl Mr Carney has brought in to contain the champagne. Mr Feltham drinks from the bottle and toasts a night that came good for him.