Silence is Golden
Labels, like reputations, are easy to come by these days: Star, Superstar, Legend, Internet Whiz Kid. Not so long ago, there was only one badge of honour: Survivor. Survivor was a poker player who had all the tee shirts, a poker player who'd been through a thousand battles and was still in the war, and who knew what it was like to be knocked over but never run over. He was one who was still standing when the dust settled and the casualties had been removed from the battlefield.
Limerick Frank is a survivor. He has spent decades on the London poker scene, from the smoke-filled clubs to the modern casinos, has survived for years in what's been described as the toughest stud games in the world, and has successfully gotten his head around that newfangled Texas hold'em. You won't see his picture in magazines (thank God!), or his face on TV, but he's still with us. He's survived.
Recently, Frank had had a bad day in the Vic. No matter how many good days and bad days you've had, the bad days still hurt. Frank is never one to remember the good days when he's in the middle of a bad one, and anybody with a bit of common sense and tact would be making a good move by just leaving him alone, at least till the pain has begun to evaporate. Now, David Young gets on pretty well with Frank, but has never been accused of having any tact whatsoever. Legend has it that when tact was being distributed, David arrived too late because he'd been getting measured up for his blazers. A couple of years ago, I was having a drink in the Vic with some of David's friends, and they were hoping that David would be invited to take part in the reality TV show
Big Brother, so that they could bet the farm on him being voted out first. Anyway, true to form, David arrived in the club, completely ignored all the obvious clues, and asked Frank how things were. Unless you're in the medical profession, it's not a good idea to ask a guy who's bleeding how he got the cuts. Frank provided the gory details and threw in a few philosophical quotes on the unfairness of poker and life in general. Any normal man would have stopped poking the snake, but not David. His idea of consoling Frank was to shrug and say "It happens like that." This was not a good move, particularly as Frank was of the opinion that it didn't happen like that to everybody - just to guys like him who don't seem to catch their fair share of breaks. I'm inclined to agree with him. Frank would have been quite happy to discuss the unfairness of the world with David all day long, but Mr. Young was called for a seat in the hold'em game.
Not too long into the game, David flopped a set on a 4-3-2 (with two clubs) board and was delighted with himself. He manfully got all of his chips into the pot and sat there, hoping his opponent wouldn't hit a club flush. He didn't, but the bad news for David was that the last two cards were an ace and a 5, so he felt a little unlucky, in that he'd now have to split the pot. He felt even more unlucky when his opponent produced the J
6
to scoop the lot.
By this stage, Limerick Frank was in better form and decided to console a shellshocked David with the words, "It happens like that."
Eccentricity or Madness
When Terry Rogers founded his poker club in Dublin and introduced Texas hold'em to Europe, he named the club well - The Eccentric Club. He wasn't kidding. The Tuesday night tournament was the highlight of the week. Due to absolute carnage when the tournament was a multiple-rebuy event, it was changed to a limited-rebuy event, and eventually to a freezeout. Only the Irish could complicate a freezeout! Terry's rule was that if you were knocked out in the first hour, you could leave the building and come back as someone else. It seemed logical at the time. The club may be long closed, but its legacy lives on in the form of the
Irish Open, which celebrates its 26th anniversary at Easter. So does some of the eccentricity, it seems. Paddypowerpoker.com has very sportingly decided to guarantee a €2 million prize fund, which means they need 600 players or they are out-of-pocket. There is no plan B. If they don't get 600 runners, they are going to pay the €2 million anyway. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of Terry's rulebook, particularly the bit about coming back as someone else!
