The one that started it all

Friday 13th April 2007

Welcome all to the gambling blog run by myself, Owen and my partner in betting, Jack.

I’ll start with a little bit about why this blog came into being. Picture it, London, a warm and sunny day, we’ve been drinking by the banks of the Thames all afternoon before meeting up with some friends in town.

Jack and I have known each other for about 5 years now and we recently started our fourth business together. We met at a casino in Scotland, where we both come from and I took Jack away from the tables and got him into poker. We’ve been regular players ever since, even going on holiday together to some major tournaments such as the recent Johnny Chan Invitational.

Anyway, enough background, we were heading into town. So we meet some friends in a bar one of them owns and it’s not long before the drink leads the conversation to gambling, namely proposition bets.

Hunger having got the better of us we ordered a small jar of pistachio nuts from the bar. Before they were opened however Jack said “How many nuts do you think are in that jar?”, “I don’t know I replied” keen to just get on with eating my salty nutty goodness.

“About 50?”
“Less probably”
“I bet I can guess closer than you.”
Never one to avoid a bet I said “How much?” to which Jack replied “Fifty”.
“Fifty pounds or fifty nuts?” I asked. “Pounds obviously” was the answer. We both agreed and then Jack made his guess. “Fifty” he said.
“I know” I said “but how many nuts?”
“Fifty!”
“Oh, that’s your guess. Okay, I’ll guess forty-five, closest wins.”

So we emptied the nuts into the unused ashtray and counted them. I unfortunately lost with fifty-two nuts being the winning number.

That was the flash point for the whole evening, bets were being made for the rest of the night, ranging from ‘name that tune’ (first person to guess the next song played by the DJ) to who can pour closest to 1oz of alcohol (knowing the owner helped in this one) as well as a few more outrageous ones.

The night finished up around 2am and after a quick tally up of the wagers we we’re both dead even!

We left our friends who’d had a good night and went home, but as we left one of them said “You know, you guys should write a book or something about all your crazy bets” and thus this blog was born. As both Jack and I lack the necessary talent and time required to write a proper book, we’ve taken it to the internet for all to read.

If you are reading this you probably know either Jack or I but if not then I hope you enjoy it.

…

Of course that wasn’t the end of the night.

Neither of us could believe that after 4 hours of making silly bets we’d somehow ended up evens, we knew there had to be some sort of resolution as to who was the winner and it had to be tonight. We both rushed home and logged into Poker Heaven (online poker room) to settle once and for all who was the better gambler!

We both put in $500 and gave ourselves an hour and a half to make as much as possible. The winner would get an extra £100 from the loser as well as whatever they made (or lost).

My initial tactics were to play with $200 on a $2/$4 pot limit Omaha table and just push as much money in whenever I had a good hand with a redraw. Whilst waiting for a good hand I was playing heads up at $50 a time. As Jack had a similar idea with the heads up we agreed not to play each other.

Play was fast and furious down to the last five minutes, I was down to about $350 and Jack was down to $250. We agreed we could finish whatever tournament we started and I sat down at $100+$10 heads up and Jack did the same at a $200+$15.

Whoever won was going to win the bet.

I played my usual heads up game (albeit slightly drunk) and wore down my opponent by chipping away with raises and re-raises. He was really passive for a $100 player and I soon built up a big chip lead. He did start making some moves back at me but the blinds were still quite low as I now had ¾ of the chips and I just waited for a big hand came over the top and took all his chips. I was finished my game with $430 in the bank, it all now depended on Jack.

I’ll let him tell the tale…

JACK - Only one person stood between me and a dramatic victory which would surely guarantee me bragging rights, for a good few days at least. I would love to tell you my opponent’s username however, since it consisted entirely of punctuation marks, I had a hard time pronouncing it.

We’d been duelling aggressively for 10 minutes or so with not many chips changing hands when I was dealt T8s, in possession of the button. I made my standard raise and he came over the top with a slightly larger than minimum raise. I called, and the miracle flop I found myself praying for came down – QJ9 rainbow. I’d flopped a straight. I’ll save you the long sob story and I’ll just tell you we got all in on the flop -he had a set of 9s and filled up with a jack on the turn.

Game over, and bet over, I hand over £100 to Owen. His gloating begins immediately, and the only straw I can find to clutch at is that I have more advanced skills in estimating pistachio nut quantities.

This was not a good start.