No-Limit Hold'Em At The World Series of Poker Europe

Continued from here…

I don’t like to criticize other people’s play, and the guy that I was up against was wearing a BlackBeltPoker logo, so I assume that he’s actually a decent player. For the life of me though, I can’t see much of an upside in min-raising offsuit from the small blind after the rest of the table has passed.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with raising any hand from the small blind when you only have the big blind to get past, but I think if you’re gonna try to steal the BB, it makes more sense to make a 3x big blind raise or something, rather than an amount which gives the big blind 3:1 pot odds to call.

It means you’re practically guaranteed to get called and are going to have to play the pot out of position with a completely rubbish hand.
From my point of view, I wasn’t sure what to make of his raise. It could have been a big hand looking for a raise, but I thought more likely a marginal hand just hoping to see a cheap flop. Either way I was happy to play along with the cheap flop and take the 3:1 pot odds with my 6-5.

There aren’t many boards that can be good for his hand here but he managed to find one. The flop came 9-5-4 and I called his continuation bet, thinking I was probably ahead but happy to keep it small in case he had a genuine hand.

He followed through with another bet when the 7 hit the turn and I called again, not being sure if I was winning now, but happy to call another bet in position with my pair plus an open ended straight draw. The river was an Ace and it went check-check.

I have to admit, when I saw his cards I felt pretty sick that he’d been rewarded for this play with 1/4 of my stack. I busted the very next hand in what I thought was a great spot for me to double up.

This time it was folded around to me on the small blind, and I looked down to find A-J. I had 2,200 in chips left after the last hand and with the blinds at 50-100, and I decided to limp with a view to moving all in if the big blind raised preflop, thinking that he could call me pretty lightly given that it might have looked like I was a bit tilted after the previous pot.

If he didn’t raise then at least I would have a well disguised hand if I could catch an ace or jack on the flop. He checked preflop, so we were onto plan B, and I thought it was working perfectly as the flop came A-5-4. I bet out with my well disguised A-J knowing that he wouldn’t put me on an ace and would definitely bite if he’d caught a piece of the flop.

I was delighted when he called, and thought the 10 on the turn was as safe a card as I could have hoped for. It was a safe card… for him. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could have had A-Q and also been slow-playing.



All in all the last few weeks have probably been my worst ever in terms of poker, but things could have been worse still if I hadn’t made one good last minute decision. We had been out drinking in Leicester Square after the Poker in the Park promotion, and saw Evander Holyfield in the bar posing for photos with a few guys on the edge of the dance floor.

I’ve met a lot of famous sports people through poker, but I have to say I was pretty awestruck seeing this guy.

His title fights 10 or 15 years ago were absolutely huge occasions and I’ll never forget the night when Tyson bit half of his ear off. I was probably on my 8th pint by this stage and thought that it would be absolutely hilarious if I asked him for a photo and then turned in and pretended to bite his ear just as it was being taken.



Maybe he’d have seen the funny side too, but I guess it could have been very bad for me if he hadn’t, and the next day when I sobered up I was pretty relieved that I’d chickened out of it. I still got a photo with him though and it’s been good fun showing it to people and telling them that Evander Holyfield asked me for a photo because he’d seen me playing poker on TV.


I’m off to play the EPT in London this week. This was the scene of the last big tournament that I’ve had any sort of run in, after I finished 10th in it last year. It should get a big field and have a 1st prize in excess of £500,000 so it would be a nice time for my luck to change.