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Hi all
So I guess I’d better tell you all about the nightlife in Perth. Well a lot of it revolved around poker. No Limit Texas Hold Em to be precise. On one of our first nights there, the guy from our dorm room (whose name is Ali in case you’d forgotten) organised a game and asked me if I w anted to join. Now I have a dream. To save me all that effort of getting a job in Australia gonna play poker. At the casino. And win a fortune. Possibly even get entrance into the Australian Poker Million. Nice idea huh? And this would give me the chance of a little warm up. Sweet. $20 each, winner takes it all. 6 players. That makes a nice tidy profit of $100. I got half cut on JD and coke and took my place at the table. Let me introduce you to the other five players. On my left was a really pretty English guy named James. To his left was one of the guys who worked there, an English guy called Steve. Then there was Ali, then opposite me an Aussie called Dave and finally a German guy called Hans. Now to be fair the outcome of the first game was kind of predictable. I won. $100 up. Sweet. The second game I came second to Dave but to be fair I was pretty pissed by then and I’d lost interest in the game. The reason was this. This was the first time I’d sat and got drunk with a bunch of blokes in what felt like forever. In fact, the first time since the Irish boys left us back in Laos. It was funny as fook. The conversation ranged far and wide and the piss taking was relentless. With the English boys taking the piss out of the Aussies about not being able to speak proper English (like what we do) and the Aussies taking the piss out of the English about being, well, English. Dave became obsessed with having tea with the Queen. Apparently all English people do this on their birthdays. Every year. And he didn’t see why he couldn’t just cos he was Australian. In fact he took right offence. I also got my first story about Ali. Now Ali is about four foot six, is quietly spoken and has a turn of phrase that gets me giggling every five minutes. My personal favourite is whenever he sees someone getting angry or pissed off. He just looks at them and in all seriousness asks in a kind of sing song voice ‘What’s up mate, you want a cuddle?’. Ok, it’s funnier than it sounds. He’s just got a certain charisma and a sparkle in his eyes that makes him a pleasure to be around. Ok I’ll stop there cos I’m starting to sound a little gay. The other thing about Ali is he gets a serious case of small man syndrome. Nothing peculiar about that except when the small guy in question has a black belt in tae kwondo. One of the stories that came out during poker night was when he was walking through Perth with his girlfriend and Dave. There was a busker, ahem, busking and for some reason he said something about Ali’s bird. Without missing a beat, Ali turned took the guy’s guitar off him and smashed it all over the ground and gave it back to him. Not to be outdone, the busker smashed Ali over the head with what was left. Well, he tried to at least. Ali threw his arm and blocked it and walked away as if nothing had ever happened. Although his arm still has the scars on it. True story? I believe it. Especially after going out clubbing with him a few days later.
But before that, there are another couple of poker stories to go. The first is short but sweet. We played again at the hostel a few days later (about seven of us) and the only important thing to happen was that I won again. Although this time we’d been joined by another Aussie (who was also called Dave and would be the one to take us clubbing a couple of days later), and the first Dave got into the habit of betting blind. Strange but true.
The other poker story is a bit sadder. After my success of the first night, I decided it was time to hit the casino for real. Now I’ve never played in a casino before and when I finally took my place at the table I was a little overawed. To make matters worse I ended up sat next to a guy from London who was a proper regular. He knew everyone. Dealers, waitresses and just about everybody that walked past. And he wouldn’t shut up. He chatted to me relentlessly for the first ten minutes. Which is just about how long it took me to lose my first $200. w***er. Now I can’t blame him entirely for this...ah f*** it yes I can :o) Essentially, I got dealt pocket tens and wasn’t really watching the betting or the cards. When it came to it, one of the guys had a straight and the other a flush. Oops. The other three had been watching this with rapt attention and when they saw me reach for my second $200 Mand squeaked in alarm that they’d be in the nightclub if I wanted them, and off they went. What followed was me sitting in almost silence (Chelsea guy realised I needed time to reflect and thankfully stopped talking to me) for about four hours as I got dealt s*** hand after s*** hand. I’ve never seen so many 3, 7, an 4, 9s in my entire life. Eventually though I hit a pair of pocket aces. I suckered the guy in an absolute treat and doubled through putting me back to $370. The guy gave me a respectful nod to say well played and for the first time I started to feel genuinely comfortable at the table. I was now torn between getting up and leaving the table a mere $30 down and coming back some other time, or pushing on and trying to win a few more hands. I chose the latter. You didn’t really think I’d leave did you? Ok, so a few hands later and I get dealt pocket tens. Raising it pre-flop to get rid of the free loaders left me and the guy I’d beaten few hands earlier. After the flop which produced a pair of threes, he checked, I raised, he raised I called. The turn came over and it was a queen. He raised. Now my first instinct (the one I usually go with) said ‘He’s bluffing. Re-raise all in.’ I don’t know where this voice comes from but I think it’s some kind of subconscious thing where I pick up something about the way someone’s playing without realising it. There was about $400 in the pot at this point and I made a mistake. I stopped to think. I looked at the queen. I looked at the pair. I wrote off the idea of him having a third three. It just didn’t sit right. But there was the possibility that he had a queen. Maybe come in on ace queen for instance. I folded. He looked at me and flipped his cards over. 6, 8. Or to put it another way, f*** all. I was f***ing mortified as I nodded at him to say well played. Some old goat opposite me thought this was the funniest thing ever. Twat. By now, I was fuming, but trying to stay calm. I folded a few times but then got dealt pocket queens. In I went and even though the flop was ace, king, three all spades, putting me at a serious disadvantage. I kept betting. I had a serious case of the bluff hangover and was convinced the guy was trying it on. I went all in and got promptly smashed out of my seat as the turn and river came over 7 and 9. Matey boy had an Ace flush. Feeling slightly sick, I got up and left the table. Not the best night I’ve ever had. But I did feel like I could seriously compete with these guys, which was a bonus.
Something else happened while I was playing which still amazes me now. The dealers work in forty minute stints. They count the cards at the beginning of their session, and the end. Now about half way through our fifth dealer, the guy sitting to his left suddenly looks at him in alarm and says ‘There’s only fifty one cards there’. The cards are counted again and it turns out he’s right. Cue pandemonium. Pit Bosses, Assistant Managers swarming all over the table, checking cameras and f*** knows what else. They check the box the cards came out of and there it is. The ace of hearts. Apologies and free drinks all round and the promise of a full and complete investigation. Seriously. How the f*** can a casino make the mistake of only having fifty one cards. They’d been counted twice. Anyway, the eventual outcome (three days later) was that they checked the cameras and offered me back everything I’d lost in that forty minutes. $10. Woo f***in hoo. I’m sure if I’d pushed it I could have got back everything I’d lost all night, but for some reason I just took it on the chin. I didn’t even bother going back for it in the end. But watch out Melbourne, I’m a-coming.
They also play one of the easiest games to lose money on I’ve ever seen. It’s called two up. You throw two coins into the air and you bet on whether it’ll be two heads or two tails. If it’s one of each then you throw until you hit two of a kind. And that’s it. But it is a bit of a spectacle and by God is it popular, especially with the Aborigines. I spent a few minutes watching after I’d gone out of the poker, and found myself laughing out loud as a few Aborigines abused each other. ‘You’d better get back to the village mate’ after a guy had failed five or six times to hit either two heads or two tails, and ‘Don’t sweat it mate, just come back and have another beer’ as one of them stumbled through the door into the cage to have a go at throwing the coins, were the two that stuck out. But these were the first Aborigines I’d heard talking (imagine that) and I was pleased to find they weren’t all incoherent wild men. Sweet.
Laters all
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