No One Knows The River

It was my father who first introduced me to the idea that gambling and life go hand in hand. Put in simple punters terms, when you are running well in life, you should press your gambling, and when you are running bad, you should keep your distance. I am not superstitious by any stretch of the imagination; the idea of offending the nasal instruments of my table mates with the pungent waft of a shirt worn for a fifth day straight on the whimsical justification that it is “lucky” –  I consider delusional at the worst of times and pure laziness at the best. However, on account of my own experiences I do think life and poker are well married.

Much like any poker hand, this story will play out as optimally as I can possibly manage, and given what is at stake I would hope one would be forgiving of my cause should I be guilty of any time-banking or mis-clicks along the way. My mother has forever bugged me to put pen to paper as far as my poker exploits have gone, and I suppose now might be as good a time as any.

SOEST-MULLINGSEN, GERMANY – 2002

Michael Dray was the first director out of acting school that I worked with. It was a grueling year long tour of East Germany. I learned a lot from him, but most importantly, he educated me on the importance of specifics and making sure everything in a piece of theatre served a purpose. Anything that didn’t make sense to the story or serve the story was not needed. It’s funny how in hindsight, I was learning about poker long before I picked up a deck of cards.

Poker is indeed a lot like theatre; every tournament a stage for us players to tread the boards and try to sell a convincing story to our audience (opponents?)

Having worked with Michael Dray for a year in Germany, and with my contract coming to a close, he insisted I meet with an agent friend of his in London, an older but very firm, strong and resilient character by the name of Dee Hindin. We hit it off straight away and I signed with Dee Hindin Associates for as long as it took her to find me an acting gig in the North of England where after rehearsals one actor would encourage me and a few others to play “Texas Hold ‘Em” or simply “Poker” as I understood it at the time, for nickels and dimes.

I discovered online poker shortly after, dabbled and lost for a year.  By the time the following year was up my bankroll was at five figures and I was playing for a living, and acting became a hobby on the side. I stayed with my agent just long enough to be cast as one of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella at a pantomime in a town called Eye, aptly named in that I ended up in a relationship with an actress in the production that would ironically open my own eyes to the wonders of Thailand and Asia. She played the role of Prince Charming: most befitting that I fell for a woman dressed as a man long before I stepped foot in a bar in Thailand!

BANGKOK, THAILAND 2010

The simple salacious suggestiveness of the word Bangkok might immediately conjure up imagery of DiCaprio on Khao San Road in ‘The Beach’; midnight tuk-tuk rides to sex shows, all-nighters getting pissed with the locals and all other manner of debauchery on offer in the self proclaimed Land of Smiles. Sadly the only ping pong show I attended was that of the back and forth of the button in my usual heads up shenanigans online in the very plush business district of Sukhumvit where five star luxury came at less than $60 a night. The young me had promised never to set foot in Thailand simply because I had suffered all sorts of outlandish nightmares about having drugs planted on my person and spending the rest of my life in a Thai prison. The Sam of 2010 however started to see a night in prison as kind of kinky and a welcome spice from the monotony of posting virtual blinds and antes all day. I visited Thailand for the first time in circa 2006 when my girlfriend-cum-Prince convinced me it was a place not to be missed. In fairness, she was right, and long after we parted ways my friend and I would hole ourselves up in Thailand playing online poker for a living. The lifestyle was unbeatable, the food and beaches incredible and on good winning months we’d find ourselves living in exclusive complexes surrounded by our own personal security detail, adjacent to holidaying members of the Thai royal family.

Fate had found me stuck in Bangkok on my own and I was holed up in my room day and night, and it just so happened that a result of these exploits was a suggestion from a friend that I check out a promotion that Neil Channings’ Black Belt Poker site was running. It was a month long stint that ended in two people winning an all expenses paid trip to Australia for the Aussie Millions main event in 2011. Of course, I wouldn’t be mentioning it if I hadn’t been one of those winners. I would be playing my first $10,000 buy in event, and it would be an event that would see my poker career take a drastic U-turn from online cash game grinder to making a living playing tournaments all around the world.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – 2011

Just before I left for Australia, one of my brothers quipped, “Good luck – and remember if you get dealt King Ten suited, don’t fold!” It was only when I looked back on the broadcast that I realized the K-10 spades that I folded pre flop would have improved to a full house against the nut straight of a very sticky player that would have doubled me up

Making the final table of the Aussie Millions main event should have been the standout memory for me on my first trip to Australia. Playing a televised table against heroes such as Chris Moorman and Patrik Antonius should have been my number one talking point. I should have at least been bragging about the feeling of collecting a quarter of a million dollars from the cage at the Crown.

But it is always the unexpected that hits you the hardest, and as I walked out of the casino that afternoon having just settled my account, it hit me in slow motion. I felt the sun hug my cheeks as I stepped onto the sidewalk outside the Crown. Walking along the promenade, an electric guitar aggressively fills the air. Within a few seconds however, I recognize the tune, and I am bewildered. I have heard this piece of music played tens of dozens of times, but never on a guitar, much less an electric one.

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why anyone would even think that Chopin’s beautiful Waltz 64 No.2 in C sharp minor belonged on the strings of an electric guitar, but there it was, feet away from me, just moments after a career defining moment in my life. I had to pause to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, but I felt emotion get the better of me and I quickly moved on, losing myself among the crowd.

CEBU, PHILIPPINES – Feb 2012

Still living in Thailand, but now with another of my brothers who was also grinding online for a living, I chanced upon some promotional material for a poker tournament happening a few weeks away in Cebu, Philippines. After arriving in Manila on little sleep the night before, I learned my connecting flight to Cebu was delayed by three hours. Not being in the best of moods and certainly not inspired by the very outdated Manila airport, I made the decision to get on a flight back to Thailand. While strolling in search of ticket sales, I stumbled upon a massage service, and in what turned out to be a life changer of a decision for me, I opted instead to stay, get a two hour back massage and wait for my flight to Cebu.

When I strolled into my first foray on the Asian Poker Tour (APT), I had no idea this would effectively become my home for the foreseeable future; that I would win the APT Player of the Year for the next four years running, or that more importantly, my future wife was currently sitting in the room.

I noticed her before she noticed me; she was an absolute stunner that stood out among the crowd. We were both playing on different tables that day, and apparently both busted, because we were seated at the same starting table, right next to each other, the day after. As if the stars had aligned, for the rest of the week we were drawn at the same table and more often than not right next to each other, so we got talking a lot, and by the end of the week we were for all intents and purposes just friends, but when I flew to England a couple of weeks later, I informed my mother that I’d found the woman that I was going to marry. We were engaged within a year.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Sept 2012

I’d been playing poker for a good six years now but most of my exploits had been unashamedly bum hunting heads up cash games online. My wallet was the only thing coming out of those battles on top; we all know online poker as a hobby is exhilarating but as a profession it can turn one into a creature that is to society what Michael Myers is to Halloween. Anyhow, stories of run bad, run good and run better aside, I found myself heads up in the ANZPT Grand Final against a lovely Aussie guy who was treating the event as a warm up since he had qualified for the Aussie Millions Main via a satellite. All solid play went out the window on the second hand of heads up when I raised K-10 spades and was met by an effective 30bb shove by my opponent who I had pegged as very tight and straightforward. I expected to be crushed, but I would not let my brother down a second time, and I called before his chips were even in the middle and by the turn his Jacks were no good.

I was only at that tournament because I qualified online while playing an Asian Poker Tour event in Mauritius a week before. I only had the opportunity to try and qualify because that was the only APT event on the calendar where the tournaments started in the evening and not in the afternoon, giving me the afternoon free to play online. I was only in Mauritius because I was chasing a player of the year award that I didn’t even know existed until I played the APT in Cebu earlier that year; an event I only stayed to play because there was a masseuse in between me and the ticketing office. I was only in Cebu in the first place because I had been living in Thailand, a country introduced to me by someone I met in a show because I was introduced to a specific agent by a specific director a decade before that. I am married and have a beautiful son and gorgeous step daughter with my wife. It will never cease to amaze me that had the Asian Poker Tour in Cebu in 2012 been held two weeks either side of when it was, there is a 99.9% chance my beautiful son would not exist today.

This is where we can get philosophical, and even touch on religion. Does a man make his own luck (as the old adage goes)? Or are our lives already mapped out for us? If so, why do we punish ourselves with our decision making, when the outcome has already been made for us? Could it be true that a guardian angel looks over us?

We are all dealt our own cards, and just like the beautiful game itself, there are a million different ways to play a hand. The only thing that is for certain, and we can choose to either take comfort or insecurity from it, is that no matter the hand, no matter the flop, no matter the turn…no one knows the river.

BRIGHTON, ENGLAND – 1993

Could it be true that a guardian angel looks over us?

I spent the summer of 1993 in crutches, after my friend and I thought it would be a great idea to go jumping stepping stones on the pond at the park. It was only two days after school had broken, and I can still remember hearing that sickening “crack!” resonate across my brain. Either the tibia or fibula in my right leg was snapped almost clean in half.

One day, I was hopping along to the shop around the corner from our house, when an elderly gentleman struck up conversation with me, asked me about my leg and so on and so forth. He insisted that I take five pounds from him to get myself a treat because he felt bad for me. Being 13 I was well aware of the dangers of the cliché “taking sweets from strangers” – but you could tell Tony was a genuine man. A couple of days later, my brother and I saw him again, and he invited us in for a slice of cheesecake and to watch a movie, but first insisted that we tell our parents where we were going, who we were going with and where he lived. All sounded rather suspicious on the surface, but to cut a long story short, he was simply a lonely man in need of some company. He became the closest someone could come to being family, and he was almost like a grandfather to us. We would brighten up occasions that one could tell he had long forgotten celebrating. We would celebrate his birthday; he would join us for Christmas. He would spend Easters with my younger siblings painstakingly making Easter eggs and hand painting them. We brightened up the final years of his life in a way that none of us could comprehend, and vice versa. His presence changed our own lives in ways that would take many more pages to fill.

Before the new millennium, Tony succumbed to the ugliest disease of them all: cancer.

I still remember the first time I walked into his house with my brother. He had a little pep in his step, grabbed his Sara Lee cheesecake from the freezer and cut us a slice each.

In the corner of the living room, I spotted a fairly old, electric brown Yamaha piano. I’ve always loved the piano; my uncle is in the business of tuning and repairing pianos and would always have several lying around at his house so I’d be on the ivories at every possible opportunity.  As we sat and chatted and tucked into our cheesecake, I asked Tony if he wouldn’t mind playing us something. He had a big beaming smile across his face as he lifted the hood, sat down, adjusted his seat and started to play. If age did not define us you might have thought he had just shot back half a century to a time when his mother or father might have pushed him as young boy to take a seat and demonstrate his talents.

He was a magnificent piano player, and I fell in love with that piece of music from day one. I started taking piano lessons every Sunday with him, and would always ask him to play that same piece at the end of every lesson. And while I couldn’t read music anywhere near to that level, when my exams came around he taught me at my request, painstakingly, every Sunday for months, note by note, phrase by phrase the same beautiful piece of music I fell in love with the first time I heard him playing it.

I was awarded an A in music, and it was all down to Tony, and a waltz by Frederic Chopin. More specifically, his Opus 64 No.2, in C sharp minor.