European Poker Tour Part V - Online Poker And Drum 'N' Bass

Following on from part IV… Rob had to open his restaurant at 9 a.m. so we were all up pretty early. I had a pretty decent hangover but nothing too serious. It was a feeling I would get used to over the rest of the trip. I headed back to the compound and had breakfast with Liv and Gavz. I instantly liked her. She’s a Drum and Bass DJ under the stage name LittleMissDJ. She recently played a set at Glastonbury and got interviewed for TV with Wayne Rooney backstage. I asked her loads of questions about the music world and she invited me out to Fabric later that night for a DnB night. I was really excited as electronic music isn’t very big in Canada and the stuff that is at home usually isn’t very good, not including DeadMau5.

I got on the grind and dumped another 8 BI or so. Things were getting more and more frustrating. I started doubting my decisions but couldn’t come up with a better line than get it in with pair + NFD + gut shot in 3 or 4 bet pots. There’s literally nothing you can do if people decide to peel random nonsense and flop random bottom two pairs on boards that smash your range. I had a 500BB pot that got 5b by my AKQTss to flop Ax J 2 and he tabled J 8 7 2 and held. No need to get into the finer points of why this is absurd.

I was now approaching the nasty -20 BI mark but refused to let it bother me. Shortly after the session Gavz, Tony, and Mike’s friend Stu arrived to play the £5,000 EPT main event the next day. Despite the fact that Stu is a well respected live grinder in England he had never played a tournament over £500 before so this was a huge deal for him. With Stu’s arrival the plan was for me to sleep at Rob’s Friday and Saturday night to let him sleep up for the main. Stu is from north England and talks much differently than the others. The word “ya” gets thrown into every sentence. As in “Ya, we’re gonna play the main and win it ya.” We didn’t talk much that day as he headed off with Tony to some private game. With the flat empty and my failed sessions behind me I took a nap before what would be a big big night out.

I was woken up by Liv and saw she was done up and ready for the club. It was time for me to get ready for a proper night out. I have no idea where Gavz and Liv took me but we met up with four of his Uni friends at some pub. I had met James back in May but hadn’t met the other three. I recognised one of them; Ben, from a Drum and Bass Facebook group Gavz had invited me to. We finished a few pints then headed down a street that can only be described as a war zone. Every other second we heard smashing bottles and drugged up fiends falling into each other. The street was packed full of trouble. I was hoping our destination wasn’t going to be in this mess and luckily it wasn’t. We made our way to, what I called, Little Bombay. Both sides of the street were filled with curry places or off-licence booze shops. We were meant to eat at “The Best Curry in London” spot but had to settle for the less busy place next door.

We ordered our meals, then Ben and James disappeared for five minutes to come back with a dozen half litre beers. This is quite the culture shock as you just can’t do that in Canada. You can bring your own wine to restaurants and pay a corking fee but stocking up on booze for your meal was unheard of to me. The meal ended and our group grew larger when James’ girlfriend and friend joined us at another bar. A few rounds later it was finally time for Fabric. Our group was cut down to Gavz, Ben, Liv and I with Nial and his buddy meeting us at the club. Liv knows a lot of the Fabric staff so we skipped the cue and it was on. I walked in the door and down the dark purply lit stairs. The bass hit me like a ton of bricks. When we walked into room 1 and I saw the sea of people raving I was so happy. I really love that kind of party. Gavz planned not to drink much as he had the EPT main event the next morning so Ben and I hit the bar hard.

Once we satisfied the drink quota it was finally time to get in the madness and let loose. If you’ve never been to a night like this or don’t like Drum and Bass don’t worry. I was like that before May but once you’ve been there in the crowd feeling the energy and the bass you’ll have a blast. It’s impossible not to have fun. I knew we were coming back to Fabric the next Friday for the mega party so I told Gavz we could leave anytime he wanted. We piled into a cab and headed back to the Compound. Ben and I were pretty drunk and Gavz said under no circumstances could we wake up Stu. Ben couldn’t go home as his sister and her child live there and he was too drunk. My internal clock was all messed up and my brain was just jacked from the club so sleep was out of the question. Ben and I decided to grab more booze and explore London at 3 a.m..

When we got to Gavz’ place Stu was awake lying in bed. This gave me time to drunk dial Sophia and tell her about the night I was having. It’s quite convenient that Canada is five hours behind London time and she was still awake. She asked me how poker was going and I summed it up by saying “it’s slightly less painful than a shovel to the face”. Everyone wanted to sleep so Ben and I grabbed a 26oz of Jose Cuervo and left the Compound at 4 a.m.. The plan was to come back at 9 a.m. when Mike would be awake. This clearly didn’t happen.

Keep in mind that Ben and I had literally just met within the last six hours and we were now setting off on a great adventure. Both of us were strangers to London so we didn’t have any destinations in mind, we just started walking. Every now and then we would stop and hang out at various places. We met many people along the way. It’s quite amazing how many people are out that early in the morning. At 8 a.m. we found some park that had hammocks and chilled out there for awhile. We were near Kings Cross waiting for Rob to open his restaurant so we could stop in for a drink. We strolled into Rob’s for some morning mimosas around 9.30. After our “breakfast” we decided to really see the city. We headed towards London bridge before jumping on a bus. It’s not really much of a surprise that we took the wrong bus and ended up near the Hilton where the EPT was playing.

Our liquor infused minds thought it would be a good idea to rail some of our friends. We ran into Luke Fields in the lobby and I gave him a big hug. He laughed at us for a while and then headed into the poker room to take his seat. With all the poker players filling into the main room I tried a second time to find Serena the PokerStars Social manager. She had texted me that she was running the Twitter board but at that precise moment she was on some errand.

With no intentions of playing poker we left to head back to Gavz to sleep. I called Mike and he told us he’d be working out for two hours and Liv was out running errands. This wasn’t the news we wanted to hear and then it got much worse when the Northern line stopped at Kings Cross and we had to walk. My feet were really sore by the point and the prospect of more walking was daunting. We finally made it to the flat but as expected no one was home. We bought some McDonalds and sat on the side walk across from the flat in the shade. Just two puddles of human beings desperately searching for a place to lie down. Thankfully Liv got back 15 minutes later and we both crashed pretty quickly.

A few hours later Mike woke me up. I knew that I couldn’t stay at the flat that night so I headed over to Frank’s flat ten minutes away. He’s on a 9pm-6am super healthy living sleep schedule and that couldn’t have worked out better. I really needed to rest up for the next day when I was going to Tottenham vs Arsenal with Andreas Torbergsen and eight Norwegians then back to Brighton in a limo. That story involves me taking years off the back end of my life but making so many memories in the process. Until next time.