style="font-size:15px;"> ‘But you don’t want everyone to know how you play,’ he tells me. ‘I, personally, choose to pose as an Albanian.’
♠
By Sunday, Cardiff is getting hot. The local Stakis casino has never seen such big action, Howard’s secret cash game is thriving, the £1,500 tournament buy-in is starting to look like loose change for the Coke machine. Players who have been knocked out are hanging around to soak up the fun of the TV cameras, funk for their friends and play extra poker on the side.
Stepping into the hotel lift, en route to the studio for the morning match, I see it is already occupied by an elderly couple and a tall, faintly sinister man in a long black leather coat and rose-tinted sunglasses. He winks at me.
I recognize that wink. It was played in slow motion over the closing credits of the first Late Night Poker series. It was the wink of the winner – a man who, I discovered from the white letters on the screen under his name, was a professional jeweller. From the gossip this week, I now know that he is not a jeweller, he just bought a pawnbroker’s shop after leaving prison. I have learned that this notorious character started from a rough background in Hull, spent a few years as a criminal, did his jail time, was ‘a star’ (i.e. a regular loser) in cash poker games around the UK but is now reborn as a tournament hero. He calls himself a jeweller on TV because it doesn’t sound very respectable to say he plays poker all the time.
But what’s to be ashamed of? He has not only won Late Night Poker, he has won a bracelet at the World Series of Poker.
‘You’re the Devilfish,’ I stammer.
‘Yes I am,’ says the Devilfish.
The elderly couple must think we’re both insane.
We share a cab to the studio and Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott lets me hold his WSOP bracelet. It is a heavy, chunky, golden circlet of triumph. In return, I spend the evening making him cups of tea. The Devilfish tells me about the terrible occasion when he once had to make his own tea.
‘I rang my wife to ask where I’d find the spoons. She said they’d be in the dishwasher. I said, “What fucking dishwasher?”’
But that’s fine with me. There is a time and a place for feminist statements, and midnight in the kitchen of a television studio with a poker champion is neither.
♠
I can’t bear the week to end. I have been so desperate to know these people better, and now I do. I’ve had seven days of total immersion: watching poker, discussing poker, even briefly playing poker, with the best in Britain. I love the way the games end in the studio and everybody moves to the Stakis casino until it closes, and then to Howard’s private cash game until the morning, and then back to the studio. I love eating room service hamburgers at 3 a.m. I love the salty talk and stupid nicknames.
The players don’t feel like strangers any more. I know who they remind me of. They remind me of the lost family, the cousins I used to see at weddings or funerals, and the ones I never met: Fat Sam and Ginger Phil, violent Great-Grandpa Dave, Dunkirk Uncle Sid.
When the waiter arrived at Howard’s door with room service and they all hurried to hide the money, it was just like Grandpa Sam when my parents got home.
♠
Back in London, I finally find the courage to start going to the Vic on my own, whether The Sweep and Mrs Sweep are there or not. I start greeting players by their actual names and they seem to know mine. Like spiders in the bath, maybe they were as nervous of me as I was of them? Not of my poker skills, obviously. But I must have looked unusual.
I get to know Mr Chu, the ancient Chinese man with one very long fingernail. There’s Terry, the meticulous Bulgarian who is always asking questions like ‘What means this . . . pie in the sky?’ There’s Michael Arnold, the grand duke of the card room, who snoozes through every hand like another dormouse at another Mad Hatter’s tea party.
Mr Arnold wakes up occasionally to grab his cards, shout ‘Pot!’ and go back to sleep again. If he is neither snoozing nor raising, he likes to beckon people over, imperiously, for a chat. When I line up to pay court, I am six years old again, going to visit Great-Grandpa Harry, Sam’s father, at his house in Lordship Lane in the wilds of North London. Harry expected to be visited by the family on weekends. He was a big fat fellow who didn’t get up out of his chair; we walked over to kiss his whiskery old cheek, then sat quietly while the elders talked about fish prices and old times.
I don’t kiss Mr Arnold’s whiskery old cheek. But I go to shake his hand, when he peeks sleepily over the lid of his teapot.
Then there’s Scottish Pedro, who always carries a selection of miniature fans and bottles of essential oils. He is a giggly, affectionate little fellow. He’s always trying to diagnose me with something – anaemia, a cold – and dispensing immediate herbal remedies. Sometimes, Pedro gets himself some fish and chips on the way to the Vic, wraps them tightly in paper and hides them in the bushes outside. That way, when the casino’s closing and all the takeaways are shut, he knows he can still collect a tasty supper to take home.
I might look at that bunch and think that they are all a little peculiar, but God alone knows what they must think of me.
I’m a woman. I’m an unmarried woman, who seems happy to go out and play cards on her own without a care for the important job of husband-seeking. I have no children. And I’ve got a posh voice. Professor Higgins might spot the tell-tale North London twang, but compared to most of the Vic regulars I speak like Princess Margaret.
Mr Chu might have one inexplicably long fingernail, Terry might mangle the language to a bizarre degree, Mr Arnold might snore and Pedro might wave Oil Of Midnight Snowdrop at anyone who comes near him, but – to them – I am probably the weirdest person in there.
ACE KING
If you are a newcomer to poker, let me give you some advice: AK is a very big hand. It’s even-money to beat almost any pair, and a good favourite against every other hand. You must play it strongly.
If you have been playing poker for a couple of years, contesting a lot of tournaments, watching the game on television, wondering whether to start calling yourself ‘a professional’, let me give you some advice: AK is not that big a hand. It’s no pair! Stop moving all-in as soon as you see it! Play it with some finesse, for heaven’s sake!
I’m down to about 500,000 in chips when I find A♦ K♠ on the button. Everyone passes round to Jules Kuusik, the shaven-haired Swedish pro in the cut-off. He makes it 45,000 to go from a stack of about 250,000. What to do? I could flat call, encouraging Kuusik to move in on the flop. But there are two problems with this move. One is that I would be allowing the blinds to enter the pot with random hands; I don’t want to give Emad Tahtouh (in the big blind) any excuse to get clever on me. The other is that I might miss the flop, and feel reluctant to put in 200,000 more with no pair.
I have no idea what Kuusik is holding, but he can’t knock me out because he has fewer chips. I’m happy to let my hand play against his over five cards, at a total cost of 250,000. But if I miss the flop and he bets again, when I only have two cards to come and my odds against a pair are drastically reduced, 200,000 might feel too expensive.
