Brits abroad

Brits abroad

Monday, 29 June 2009

One of the nicest things about being in Vegas for the Series is the sense of camaraderie between the Brits that you meet when you’re playing out here. No matter what tournament you’re in, there are bound to be some familiar faces. In the Venetian PLO $550 was Paul Jackson, Karl Mahrenholz and Paul Parker amongst many others. In fact, you can barely play a PLO tournament out here without there being a Brit at your table.

It also helps that for the second week I’m out here I have a couple of mates join me from London. So rather than playing poker 24/7 I get to have dinner with other people, planning what bars and clubs we’ll go to and then end up playing poker 24/7 anyway.


Of course, the live circuit has a great deal of community spirit even in the UK, but once you get over to Vegas it’s that much better to see a familiar face in the sea of poker players. Each year I marvel at just how many players there are out there who are (as far as I’m concerned) faceless, nameless unknowns and yet contrive to be absolutely top class poker players.


One such example was during a trip to the automated room at the Excalibur. Every Thursday night, Jeff Hwang – author of the thus-far best PLO book out there – is hosting a $0.50/$1 PLO game on the PokerTek tables and promoting his new advanced PLO book.


It was there that I ended up at a table with no fewer than six other Brits. Among them were three young lads who evidently were not big time Omaha players, but liked the gamble and certainly would have made formidable Hold Em opponents. Every time I meet one of these types, I end up being insanely jealous that I didn’t have online poker as a career path when I first left university. Here were these three lads, doubtless raking it in online, and they were out in Vegas and buying bottles at $550 a pop in XS – Wynn’s top line night club at Encore and generally lording it up. If only I could have been on $50-100k tax free when I was a graduate.


So one of them is my tip for one to watch in the future. He’s called Danny Rudd. I’d never heard of him before, but after doing the now mandatory Sharkscope/Hendon Mob search for him, I realise that he could have the pedigree to be the next big thing. As a loose aggressive player, he’s going to have to get a bit of luck to hit the big time. But then again, don’t we all?



Tags: Pickleman, Alex Rousso, Strategy