BAPT Diary #1

Saturday, November 11

I never sleep on long-haul flights. So you can’t even begin to imagine my delight when, after being fed and watered, and firing up Pirates of the Caribbean, I blinked and seemingly missed the entire 12-hour trip. Bleary-eyed and distrusting of the flight map, I turned to fellow PokerPlayer writer, Shelley Rubenstein, and asked, “Where are we?”, to which she replied, “I’ve done five films and I’m halfway through the sixth. You’ve been asleep the whole way. We’re just about to land.”

You think she’d have been happy for me, but this was said with such badly-disguised bitterness that I completely forgot to ask why she was looking furtive and wrapped from head-to-foot in two blankets. (I found out later she’d nicked the blanket from the bloke next to her because she was cold and, rather than give it back, pretended to be asleep every time he looked at her accusingly.)

Sunday, November 12

Met up with PokerPlayer Grand Prix winner, Colchester Kev, waiting for my luggage and told him I didn’t have any Singaporean dollars for a taxi to the hotel (true) and that I’d pay him back later (no comment).

After a quick shower, the first major question of the trip was posed by Shelley: “Should I play in the $400 Super Satellite tonight? I’m really jetlagged.” I pointed out that she’d only got two chances to qualify and that if she didn’t play she’d put pressure on herself later in the week. Five minutes later she’d lost half her stack. An hour later she was out, and to save the obvious recriminations I decided to retire for the night and watch Arsenal v Liverpool in my room in preparation for my first stab at glory, the $150 freezeout.

Monday, November 13

A useless bit of trivia: three Singaporean dollars = one pound. (I’m only telling you this because it makes my breakfast seem a lot cheaper, and I’m going to need to get the phrase off pat to get my expenses approved.)

Shuffle-up-and-deal was set for 1pm, and I was feeling good. Deciding that a tight-aggressive strategy was a good one, I re-raised a player on a Ah-7d-3d board, with two low diamonds and watched him pass A-10. The rest of my hands played themselves – first when someone decided to move all-in when I had Aces, and then raises with Kings and Queens that never saw a flop.

Three hours in and I was on around 8000 chips from a starting stack of 2500. I made a move with J-9 and got called on a rag-rag-rag flop, held my nerve to fire a second bullet on the turn and take down a nice pot, before congratulating myself, feeling a bit smug, and promptly going card-dead for the rest of the tournament. The best I picked up from then on in was King-Queen (re-raised and mucked), Ace-King (which I raised and the player folded to), and then nothing.

I finally dribbled out in 44th (out of 278 starters) and went to rail Shelley, who had been shorter-stacked than me the whole tournament. Somehow, from around 5000 chips, she built herself up to around 15,000 and held out to make the money. She finished 18th, which netted her $320, minus my 10% (which we’d swapped at the start), which meant she’d made $138 for nine hours work. I said she’d have been better off plying her trade at the tastefully-titled ‘Four Floors of Whores’, (just down the road from the hotel apparently). She told me to buy her a drink (100% of my 10% gone in one glass). First impressions of Singapore? Clean, friendly, beautiful food, beautiful people and very expensive alcohol.

To be continued…

Thanks to: Betfair for putting on what looks set to be a stunning festival of poker and PokerPlayer readers Colch Kev and ColU_FC.
No thanks to: The player who limped with Ace-King out of position, prompting me to push with A-10 and busting out of the money in the $150 freezeout. Fish.