Poker showman Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott thinks the UK is still a way behind the US
You’d expect someone who’s won more than $1.5 million on poker tables in two years, and until recently the only Brit with a WSOP bracelet, to have a number of faces. But the one we’ve got today is not the snarling, eyeballing, unsettling Devilfish of late-night TV fame, but the nice Mr Ulliott, of Kingston-upon-’ull.
This is perhaps surprising, given that Britain’s greatest poker player is a marked man, the guy everybody wants to beat these days – like the Ringo Kid, the old gunfighter who can’t escape his reputation.
‘Internet players who’ve watched the telly all the time, they want to come and get me. If they win they can say they knocked out the Devilfish. If they lose, they’ve still got a story for their grandkids.
‘They always seem to be aggressive young Swedes at the moment,’ he says ruefully. ‘I’ve never been to Sweden but perhaps there’s nothing to do there except play poker and shag girls.’
Banana skins
But before taking a bite of the Devilfish smorgasbord you’d be well advised to take note of his marine namesake. He was casually destroying some Chinese players at the Four Queens casino in Vegas in 1997 and they complained it was akin to eating a puffer fish known as Devilfish, which if not prepared with extreme care can be deadly.
Yet here he is fresh from a first day exit from the Victor Chandler Cup – ‘I bluffed my chips away’ – and an early bath at the inaugural London Open, both a none-too-modest $10,000 buy-in. ‘Little blind had A-A and I was big blind with J-J,’ says Ulliott of his latest defeat. ‘You don’t want to see a flop with J-J in the big blind. I had one foot out the door and the other on a banana skin.’
The 51-year-old father of seven’s abrasive style is well known to fans of the televised game. Of course, he’s unrepentant. ‘If I can make someone nervous then obviously it’s an advantage. It’s an aggressive game.’
In the Poker Million last year he played an Internet qualifier called Teddikins who tried talking tough before facing the fish. He failed. ‘He was a bit over the top but in the end he sat there shitting himself.’ Something Devilfish was all too ready to point out to the attendant cameras.
Modest? Moi?
It’s been a while since the Devilfish took a major tournament, but don’t for a second think he’s losing his deadly touch. Four in-the-money finishes, including two final tables in the 2005 World Series of Poker, all in no-limit Hold’em events, with winnings in excess of $300,000 prove that he’s playing at the highest level. Indeed, asking him who he thinks are the best all-round players in the world is a difficult one, because he wants to say ‘me’. We do too, but something unaccustomed is preventing him.
‘Most players are only good at one or two games. I’m good at no-limit, but I played Five- ard Stud for 20 years. I was the best in the north of England at that. I won the British Open at Seven-Card Stud. I’ve won bracelets at no-limit, pot-limit and Omaha. Who’s the best all-rounder? I don’t know.
‘Hellmuth’s a good Hold’em player. Johnny Chan’s pretty good. Erik Seidel, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke are all great. In the UK you’ve got Marcel Luske, Ram Vaswani and Derek Baxter,’ he adds.
Big personality
But the best games are in the US where he much prefers to play. ‘There’s bigger prize money. There’s more action and a lot less jealousy. The tournaments are run better. Europe will catch up – it’s gradually getting its way round to the TV.
‘But it won’t really catch up until you get rid of a lot of the ridiculous rules,’ exclaims Ulliott suddenly. ‘No talking for example. It might be a disadvantage to me that one, since I like to give it a bit of verbal, but it’s not much of a TV show if everyone’s just sitting there like Madame Tussauds.’
It’s the showman in him. He can’t help it. ‘If the situation takes telling jokes I’ll do it. If I had to jump up on the stage with The Stones at Wembley it wouldn’t bother me.
‘I’m a guitar player – I love to party, go drinking and have fun. I love the blues, a bit of all sorts. AC/DC, The Stones, Fine Young Cannibals. Roland Gift’s a mate, he came all the way down to London to sing at my birthday party last year – didn’t charge me a shilling. How nice was that?’
And worryingly, he says he’s still getting better at the game.
‘You have to. It’s all being driven by the Internet. It’s like when betting shops opened up. I used to go in there when I was a kid and lose my money. In those days bookies would send a taxi for me.
‘It was easy. You don’t have to get in your car and drive 100 miles for a game. If you’re bored, get online and have a game with me if you like. It’s better than playing the lottery. There’s millions being won by Internet players and that’s a hell of an allure.’
But Internet players have become something of a bete noire for the Devilfish: ‘They’ve seen me on TV and usually they’ve seen me in one of those TV shootouts where you have to rock and roll, and they think I play like that all the time. I play aggressive, sometimes too aggressive.’
Has he ever been out-psyched at the table? ‘I don’t know. I’ve been bluffed out of a few pots in my time.’
No smoking
But if there’s one thing guaranteed to annoy the Devilfish, it’s smoking. Just spark up a fag – he hates it. Despite our attempts to unsettle him, however, he just won’t come out. It’s more than a little disappointing, as we were hoping it was going to go off. At the very least we want a Devilfish deathstare. Is his success perhaps causing him to get a bit sanguine?
‘I used to try and win every bit of money on the table. I’m calmer now. The money’s coming in thick and fast so I don’t have to worry too much.’
One more go. Sigmund Freud once proposed that gambling is a substitute for masturbation. So is the Devilfish a bit of a wanker? ‘If sitting in a smoke-filled room for three days trying to eke out a living is masturbation, you’re a very kinky person.’
We bluffed. He called. Damn his eyes.
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