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Should you play when drinking?

Hedonist

By Hedonist
in Poker

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Valiant23

Valiant23

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Re: Should you play when drinking?

Welcome To roytheboy.net The Longest Night Picture the scene, it is January 2002 and on-line poker is in its infancy. I’ve discovered the beautiful game through the likes of Late Night Poker and the brilliant Rounders movie and my passion for poker playing is akin to that of a teenager granted an all-areas day pass at the Playboy Mansion. It’s a Saturday afternoon, not particularly nice as I am at home in Ireland, which means it is, somewhat predictably, raining. The weather fits my mood as I am desperately trying to recover from the bad-beat that I received in Dublin’s Jackpot Card Club the night before. It doesn’t normally bother me but when a muppet gets a 50/1 shot home in the form of two running cards and with the rent and phone bill both due (and in the pot), well it makes you emotional in a way only a once homeless and phoneless person would understand. I choose to crank up the computer and collect the e-mails. After all, as a freelance journalist, one could be a job offer and that could mean rent money earned the hard way. No work, no jokes, no special offers from AOL, no mails from anyone I even recognise but there is a host of messages from the numerous poker sites and information pages I have subscribed to during this honeymoon period with poker. “Don’t forget our $10,000 freerole tonight at 9pm,” says one above a picture that makes its players look like an undertaker’s convention. Another claims “Time is running out for qualification into our $25,000 giveaway” alongside a picture of a Porsche Carrera GT; a connection I could not fathom as this set of wheels is a £300,000 Job. Still, I must confess, I’ve always seen myself in a Porsche although, being practical, a 924 version, that is the ‘Volkswagen in drag’, or a 944 would be the most likely scenario. Somewhere in between the 3.25pm at Newbury and 4.15pm at Doncaster, with the first leg of my 50p Yankee already down, I do the decent thing by downloading both lots of software and depositing the princely sum of £25 into each. Come 5pm I find myself in a 90-runner tournament which offers the first three finishers a place in the semi-finals of some event, which is worth some part of $25,000 less all applicable skim offs, taxes and VAT. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it thinks I, sitting back with a tin of Fosters and a lasagne straight from the microwave. Well, bugger me, by 6.30pm I have 125,000 of the 180,000 chips in play and there are still 12 players all sitting on futile stack’s that barely cover the next round of blinds. Four tins of Fosters go as quickly as ten other players but I manage to get beaten heads-up meaning I get something like $20 instead of the $30 that I would have ‘won’. Hey, shit happens but I’m in the semi-final of some super-dooper competition that might give me a trophy and I love trophies. I take the opportunity to start on the box of six Millers that are left over from Christmas before taking my chances in the 9pm ‘Undertakers’ freebie comp which offers a weekend in Dublin along with a meal in the Merrion Casino – simply irresistible. There’s also $10,000 in prize-money although it is spread thinner than bird-seed in Trafalgar Square and won’t last any longer! Around 370 of us all sit tight and play well until the antes go stratospheric with any two cards once again looking attractive. I’m at Miller bottle number five and cannot find the bottle opener for number six when I realise that this isn’t really happening for me, so I carefully pick my moment before going ‘all-in’. That moment comes when a player moves his lot in and is promptly called, re-raised, called ‘all-in’ and gets another caller ‘all-in’. With four huge stacks all pushed in I figure my 2-9 off-suite is a monster and will be getting paid off at around 9/2. I’m a genius, the cards get turned over and they are only playing a pair of Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens. Flop comes 2-7-9 and I am the clear leader. Next card is a 3, but the final bastard thing is a Ten and I shit the bed big time. Gutted and out of beer I make a coffee, although it is laced with vodka and Baileys. Lovely, I’ll have another, another and another while waiting for a cash game on this site. Nearly 400 people chasing a bit of free money on the Undertakers site but they cannot get more than four players on to a 10-seated cash/tournament table. Ah, check ‘cashier’ and see that I have in excess of $100 in my account – don’t know how it happened but it was there. I know, let’s play in one of these $109 ‘heads-up’ thingies. Thirteen undefeated heads-up games call’s for some more refreshments and so my friend John Jameson joins me along with his associate diet coke and sit snugly alongside the screen. Despite John’s help I cannot handle the next customer and I lose $109 much to my disgust. That’s quite enough of all that, the cashier says I have $1,177, which I cannot really figure out, but I don’t hesitate to press the ‘cash-out’ button for the entire amount as the site gives me the creeps and I will not be coming back in a hurry. Hey, starting with around £80, this has not been a bad night. The rent is all but sorted, plus I can replace those beer, Baileys and Vodka bottles and order in a celebrationary curry with some of the proceeds prior to the restaurants 2am closing time. But I’m buzzing and decide to play with that bit of change I won on that earlier site, the site with that Porsche. Munching through a Pershwari Nann, the essential compliment to any Chicken Korma, whilst busily searching for a game I stumble across a $1-$2 cash game that was worthy of a $50 investment. I should be able to do this in within 20-minutes and then go to bed. But, hold up, I’m on the big blind with 2-6 and the flop has come 6-6-2! My check is followed by bet, call, call and call. I better call this because I think I am winning. Next card is a King. I Could have conceivably gone behind now, but I doubt it. Look, there is a bet and three callers again. Let’s call, why not. Final card is a 6. Um, I have four-of-a-kind! Small bet is followed by call and raise! OK, let’s be brave and put in my last $15. It’s called, called and called! Excellent I’m up to $250+ this calls for another drink. My run of form continues and I get to $2,200 as quickly as my bottle of JJ goes down. I’m probably playing looser than its cap but, pissed or not, I’m going to take this and run because I have just paid for a flight to Vegas and a month in a hotel. OK, it’s not that easy to leave on a winning streak and it may be 4am but I simply cannot miss and so I’m going to press-up the odd $200 in a shit-or-bust campaign that would make Nick Leeson proud. Hey, here is a lively table and they are real nutters too. Once again I cannot stop winning. Within minutes that $200 has been turned into $2,000, $4,000 and doubled through again to $8,000 and on to $12,000 Jesus, I can now see a Porsche in my driveway. Not a 924, not a 944 but a 911! For the first, and what was going to be the only time, in my life I came to the conclusion that Internet poker cannot and will not be a success or last. I mean people are throwing thousands of dollars into pots they cannot possibly win. The world is going to go skint and I’m going to be the beneficiary. What a fantastic thought. That’s it, I’m out of here with a cool $14,000 profit… But no, no, I pick up pocket Kings and I really didn’t want to see them. Shit, the guy has just raised $3,000 into me and the blinds are only $2.50/$5. Where is this bloke from? How big is his palace? He must go through bank-notes like I go through toilet paper and probably uses them for the job! I cannot call. I have won a fortune in one night, drunk and happy I don’t want to call. I consult John [Jameson] but, alas, he soon talks me into a… all-in move. A silence which seems to last an eternity ensues before the dreaded call is made. Another long pause before a flop is created from the wonderful random number generating machine. It displays an Ace, Queen and Jack all in hearts; another Queen follows and then another Jack. I’m dead, if this rich Arabian prince, which he must surely be, has any hearts, an Ace, a Queen or Jack. The lot has surely gone. I’m sick and it is not even alcohol induced, well not just yet. Suddenly $24,000 slides its way across the screen to me! In ecstasy I run a lap of honour around the front room and through to the bombsite of a kitchen wearing nothing more than a pair of Y-fronts. I phone up the girlfriend back in England who is not disgruntled about being woken so early with the news that a year’s take-home pay will be in our bank account next week. We are going on holiday to the most exotic place in existence and that 911, albeit a second-hand one, is going to have a turbo-charger attached to it. I’ve done it, I have managed to quit when ahead and ahead by some considerable way. All is left for me to do is navigate my way around the cashier section and send that money home. Unsurprisingly, considering my delirious drunken state and the size of my withdrawal, the cashier section of the site seems to be a little disagreeable with my request. It probably has limits on daily withdrawals and I’m simply too slaughtered to see straight. The phone rings to interrupt me, it’s my beloved – Christ it didn’t take her long find a holiday, a ring too probably! “Umm, why are you crying?” “I have just had a man on the phone from Gibraltar,” she explains. “He says he is very sorry but you cannot send $20,000 odd to your bank account because there is some kind of problem. He is adamant you will not be paid.” Angrily I jot down the number of this imbecile who is going to claim that collusion has taken place, I was playing against a stolen credit card or have someway hacked into their system and manipulated the cards. I dare not tell you the details of our conversation as it was more of a verbal barrage using the maxim ‘attack is the best form of attack’. Eventually, when I had ran out of expletives, I gave the young customer services representative a brief respite in order for him to explain how would get my winnings to me in double-quick time. His response? “Sir, you have been playing on a play money table for the past five hours and the $22,000 in your play bank is not withdrawable. What I would say is no one has ever had such a win on the practise tables and here we are all most impressed!” Stunned disbelief followed my slamming down of the receiver. If I didn’t feel well now how was I going to feel when waking up with a hangover and the sober reality of my dashed hopes, dreams and aspirations? Indeed, sleep failed to disentangle my emotions it was to be the most painful of hangovers, the type that sends people tea-total or suicidal. Super muppet and his runner-runner seemed like a distant memory, Arabian Prince and his $12,000 all-in on nothing a total nightmare turned fairytale. The hard truth is… my clapped out motor still sat in the driveway and the girlfriend’s bank balance still overdrawn. A week later, with Internet poker avoided like the plague, I went on a 36-hour session playing poker with Tarot cards; when I eventually flopped a full house and four people died! But that’s another story already claimed by someone else. Roy Brindley Eds note. In mitigation Roy did both own up to this embarasing tale and win over $3,000 in real money from his £50 start on this fateful night. A year later he did buy himself a Porshe. He now owns a second car, a red Ferrari.
:D
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Guest gazza271

Guest gazza271

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Re: Should you play when drinking?

Does now. :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin Hey Gazza, is that why your head hurts?
Yes mate, birthday boy overdid it yesterday :\
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ColU_FC

ColU_FC

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Re: Should you play when drinking? That article sums him up. I talked to him for about 15 minutes in Dublin. He's a smashing bloke, certainly not one full of his own self importance. A pleasure to have met him. As an aside, I'd add that most of the poker pros there were an egalatarian lot, I saw little in the way of inflated egos. If you ever get the chance to talk with Mad Marty Wilson, do so. The guy is priceless. Some of the stories he told; I laughed so hard I nearly wet meself.

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Valiant23

Valiant23

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Re: Should you play when drinking?

But the last card brought me the fifth heart I needed. I turned my pocket cards over and declared a King-high flush, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it, not too triumphant. There was silence around the table for a short time and then somebody pointed out that there were three hearts on the board but the two cards in my hand were diamonds.
:rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin
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Big Andy

Big Andy

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Re: Should you play when drinking?

If you ever get the chance to talk with Mad Marty Wilson, do so. The guy is priceless. Some of the stories he told; I laughed so hard I nearly wet meself.
yeah Col, mad as a march hare that one, a right comic by all accounts. he got his "Mad Marty" tag after he, an avid Wolves fan, was chased by a load of West Brom fans in and around Dudley Zoo, he ended up running into the bear enclosure to escape from them. The story was covered in the local rag where he was referred to as "Mad Marty" :lol I`m sure you`re aware of that but others might not be. great story :ok
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Guest gazza271

Guest gazza271

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Re: Should you play when drinking? fcuk yes you should !!!! After the PNL farce i had a few beers and thought sod it, one quick $5 STT on SO. Well i saw the game i wanted and just as i hit register the screen scrolled down and i found myself as the 10th person registering in a $20 STT. Normally $10 is my limit but hey ho stella and aggresive play bought me this; <a href=%7Boption%7Dhttp://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4646/100win1jt.jpg' alt='100win1jt.jpg'> :tongue2 :tongue2

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