It was the year 2000 and Chelsea was playing Aston Villa in the last
F.A. Cup final at Wembley for seven years. But the most important thing in my eyes that year was not the
Grand National, the
Derby, or who won the
Premiership, but that Ladbrokes was hosting the first-ever televised £1 million poker tournament. Nobody in the history of mankind had ever won £1 million live on television, and the stage was set. I first heard about the
Poker Million in my local casino in Wolverhampton. You could win a seat for as little as £10 through a three-tiered satellite; £10 won you £100, which could win you £1,000, and then six people sat at a table and one of them would win a £6,000
Poker Million ticket.
The event was to be held on the Isle of Man. I drove over in my Ford Escort van, which had been given to me by Tommy the local butcher when he bought himself a new butcher's van. This one had been around the globe three times and probably had seen 300,000 miles. It had yet to see a gallon of regular "white diesel," living strictly off the "not strictly legal" agricultural "red diesel." It was used to go to and from the airport on the Isle of Man, picking up celebrity players such as Kevin O'Connell and Liam Flood and carrying their luggage back to the hotel.
Leading up to the event, I had been having a good run at the local casino. If you paid £1,000 in advance, you got a hotel room for the week for free, so I sent off my money. I got my tank up to £3,000, and with the days drawing in, I had to move, and move quickly. I decided that I would go out every night at 5 o'clock with my full tank of money and set my stall out to win £100 every night playing a roulette system, which I was later to find out was not very successful, but I had the biggest fluke of all time to win £2,000 to take my tank up to the £6,000 required to play the first-ever Poker Million. And what an event it was.
On the front page of
The Sun newspaper that morning was a picture of Amarillo Slim advertising the biggest card game ever to be staged outside of Las Vegas. People came from every corner of the globe, and even players such as Howard Jenkins and John Minchem, who'd never been heard of outside the Isle of Man, turned up. One of the first things I did upon arriving was, with my good friend Barny Boatman, visit the local kipper factory, where you could see how kippers were smoked. That was the only thing of interest on the island that week, aside from the Ladbrokes
Poker Million.
I made it to the second day, when I knocked out the late Ken "Skyhawk" Flaton, who was remembered primarily for dying his hair jet-black. I had only second pair, but I had a read on him and thought he had a flush draw, which turned out to be true when he showed the A
Q
. I then slow-played aces against Cristof Haller's jacks and knocked him out, too. I finally got knocked out when holding jacks by some fruitcake French reporter who had a freeroll in the tournament and had K-Q on a board that threw up K-Q.
Having been knocked out of the event, I borrowed £2,000 from Howard Plant and £2,000 from David Cleary, and I set up a book on the final six players. For some unknown reason, I kept John Duthie to myself.
I laid Barny Boatman at 10-1, and he was out without even a card being seen. Rumor has it that he had an ace, but the cameras never even picked it up. The favorites to win were a bald-headed guy from America named Gary Lent and a French fellow called Teddy Tuil. I took good money on the pair after Pascal Perrault promised the French punters that he would guarantee any money that was struck on the head of the Frenchman.
I had never seen so many sealed bundles of £1,000 in my life. The flood of money was too much for me to carry, so I off-loaded some of it to my good friend Dave Cleary. When I saw the final hand of the day and Teddy Tuil get it all in with A-Q against A-8 after the board hit two eights with an ace on the turn, you've never seen me more relieved. As I stacked £14,000 in my father's briefcase and headed for my red Escort van, I'd had the turnaround of a lifetime. £14,000 in 2000 was a small fortune, and I can honestly say that I have not been skint since.
There are only two cliff railways in all of the British Isles. One is in Bridgnorth, where I live today, and the other is on the Isle of Man. But the one on the Isle of Man is broken. And thinking back now, I realise how lucky I was not only to be a part of that first
Poker Million, but to come out with a little something for myself; better off even than that old cliff railway on the Isle of Man.
"Mad" Marty Wilson is a professional gambler and poker consultant for Matchroom Sport.
