Uncle Pickles performs in Walsall
October 26, 2007
No sign of Coco in Walsall yesterday, but I had the pleasure of sitting next to his Uncle, Pickles the Clown for the final couple of levels last night.
In between spinning plates on a stick and juggling a few balls, he spent a couple of hours moaning about his lack of good hole cards and the luck of other players at the table, you know just the usual nonsense you get used to hearing when circus employees sit down at a poker table.
We played I think nine levels of the Grosvenor Grand Prix yesterday. It had been a very mundane day’s play for me, my 10k starting stack levitating between 5k and 18k, not very exciting at all.
Anyway, Pickles made my day (and everyone elses at the table) in the final few minutes of play. Blinds were 500/1,000, average stack about 28k. Pickles had 8k, in the cut-off, I had an even more paltry 7k on the button next to him. Folded to Pickles, he raises the pot to 3.5k (it is a pot-limit event, so this is max raise allowed obviously). I have pocket eights and make what I consider a super standard all-in, not even a decision really. Now Pickles has a bit of a dwell up (the mind boggles), and calls reluctantly with KJo. As far as I’m concerned here both hands played themselves, once it’s folded round to him all our chips are going to end up in the middle. So I turn over my eights and Pickles eyes nearly pop out of his head (and I don’t think this is part of his act). “Pocket eights, you go all in with pocket eights” he says, absolutely exasperated. “Hang on”, I say, “you’ve got a race here and a chance to come back with a half playable stack on Saturday, what’s wrong with that?” “I’ve only seen one play as bad as that ever” he says (I guess ‘ever’ is quite a long-time). He then goes on to recall a hand where he put the sixth raise or something in on the turn of a AQxx board with AQ, all the chips go in and his opponent turns over 33 before spiking a 3 on the river.
Obviously during this rant I win the race (I run well), spiking an eight on the turn for good measure. The whole table were in stitches, and Pickles livened up a pretty dull day’s poker.
Being serious for a minute, I go back to Walsall tomorrow with a somewhat pathetic 15,700 chips, 20 minutes left at 500/1,000. Seventy players will be remaining, average chips about 30k and first prize is a juicy £90k. Imagine how many custard pies Pickles could’ve bought with that had I not massively overplayed those eights……
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