Fancying a trip to my local casino I went online and looked at the tournament schedule on their poker forum. I noticed that there was a tournament in the afternoon starting at 3pm on a Wednesday. Intrigued at that starting time I thought that as it was a big university city there might be a good turn-out of students in the event. I called up the casino after I had finished playing my daily grind of online poker games and the attendant confirmed that the field was made up almost entirely of students each week with around one hundred runners. I decided to give it a go.
Driving towards the casino I felt like a ringer on the way to win all of the money. I was aware that this might not be quite how it worked out but the last time I went to a tournament just to see how things worked I ended up winning it so I was confident I would be able to do well if I was dealt some good cards especially as I expected the student population in the tournament to be wildly aggressive leaving me plenty of chips to win with a good hand.
Upon arrival I felt really old. Everyone milling around the lobby awaiting the start of the poker tournament was no more than 21 years old with Justin Beiber haircuts. When did short back and sides go out of fashion? I thought to myself that I had spent too long on the bwin.com cash game tables and the world was changing around me.
I saw a guy about 40 that I recognised from the poker forums and the other local tournaments I had played in some time ago. He had an attractive young girl with him and I jokingly said “Is it a good idea to introduce your daughter to poker?” The indignant look on both of their faces revealed my first really bad read of the afternoon, it was not his daughter…it was his girlfriend. I grimaced and scampered to my seat.
After a few attempts at shuffling my chips that ended with the chips imitating a packet of crisps when you rip open the packet, I settled into waiting for the tournament to start. This particular tournament banned sunglasses much to the dismay of one young poker player whose sunglasses must have cost him most of his student loan. I also had the misfortune of sitting next to a player who must have had OCD and kept counting his chips and re-arranging them constantly.
Once play got going I was pleasantly surprised to see that whilst the players were aggressive most of them were very able poker players. Young poker players do not necessarily mean bad poker players. The funny thing I noticed was that there would be one very good player who seemed to know exactly what they were doing and then the five or six of their friends who were pretty average but encouraged to play by the “I’m winning millions” stories from the good player. There were at least four groups like this in the poker tournament.
After a few hours I busted out in around 12th place out of 68, obviously there was a happy hour somewhere that pinched half of the expected field away to the more attractive option of endless cheap pints of lager. The top seven places in the tournament cashed so I did not make the money. One thing about student poker is that the bubble play is tighter than David Cameron’s spending plans. Students probably should not risk money on poker but you can see that even in a weekly tournament money means something to these kids. That said, I was there to win and was pretty angry at busting in twelfth place as I hate losing.
It was a fun day out and if I am in the area I will have another go and keep my fingers crossed I’ll do better next time. Poker is a great way to meet people and live poker is a nice change from online poker.
By Malcolm Clarke
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Sounds like you had some fun, shame you did’nt cash but next time you will.