Poker in the Gutter 2

I had played poker numerous times in Nottingham but this private cash game at Steve Tangs place was something new to me. It would be a far cry to the rundown snooker club that was Dale Regan’s place that was for sure. I always hated motorway driving at night and especially on my own with no one to converse with to take away the monotonous repetition of the motorway lights and the darkness.

I knew that Steve Tang was a restaurant owner who ran a posh place somewhere on the edge of the town centre. I also knew of his connections as well and also some of the guys who would be likely playing in this game. I’d hoped that they would be playing sensible poker and not some strange Chinese version of something or other that nobody but them understood.

It was just after ten in the evening and the game had been scheduled to start at that time but I had been delayed by a couple of things back home, one of which had been an extremely aggressive exchange of words between me and my girlfriend over where I should have been going on this particular evening.

But she knew full well that this game had been pencilled into my diary for quite some time so I really do not know what her argument was. It is not as if I am playing poker every night or something. Anyway, I was not really in the best of moods to begin with which is hardly conducive to playing sound poker.

The game at Tang’s place was a £250 sit down game with £5 blinds. I had told myself after the game at Dale’s that I would be taking no more than a grand with me but had impulsively taken double that for this trip. Sometimes that rash impulsive head of mine can really get me into trouble at times.

There were going to be a few people there who I would know, one of which was a local greyhound trainer and owner called Stuart Bellingham. An out an out crook if you ever met one and there wasn’t anything that he wasn’t into. The main road into Nottingham brought back a few memories. It was here that I had come for numerous blackjack sessions, I liked the casinos and the staff but the local casino poker scene was not to my liking.

The small re-buy tournaments are nothing more than crap shoots. But I just felt that there was tremendous value in travelling down here for this cash game although I was fully expecting some of the Nottingham mob to be present and this meant a couple of local pro’s. I don’t know what it is about city centres but they all seem to look the same at night.

Taxi cabs flying here there and everywhere, takeaways and restaurants on every street corner and the usual odd mix of drunks and various assorted lowlife ambling along without seemingly no place to go. I am about half a mile or so away from where Steve Tang’s place should be when a couple of guys try to get into my car while I am stationary trying to get my bearings. I don’t really know what’s happening and they could be confusing my car for a taxi but I don’t take any chances and speed off and even go through a red light only a hundred yards down the road.

I always have my car doors locked when travelling through city centres at night. My mate Gary who was a taxi driver once had his faced slashed by a couple of blokes who were after his nights takings. He was stationary at some traffic lights when they opened his door and threatened him. He refused to give them any money so they gave him a six inch scar down his right cheek to remember them by. Ever since then, I have always locked my car doors at night.

Gary wasn’t the luckiest of taxi drivers, he once took a customer nearly 200 miles only to then have them do a runner on him. He would normally get the money up front for a job like this but this guy had the nerve to go to the local police station dressed up to the nines with a suit and tie and public school accent and tell them that he had been robbed and needed to get home but he had no money.

They put him in touch with the local taxi company and because the call had come from the old bill, nobody suspected anything. Poor Gary just happened to be working that night and got the job. Still, less money in his pocket meant that he had less money on him to feed into the god damn fruit machines which I was certain that he was addicted to.

Luckily for me, Tang’s place had ample parking around the back and the smell of Chinese food hit me the moment that I got out of my car. This had the instant effect of making me feel hungry and I did not want anything to distract me from the game. There was a burger bar across the road and a quick quarter pounder would do the job nicely.

I devoured the burger like a man starved of food for a week. I was already late and didn’t want to lose my place in the game. I had been told that there was a plain door round the back where I had parked. The door had no handle on the outside but if I were to knock loud then someone would open it. Steve Tang did not want strange men walking through his restaurant and one could hardly blame him for that. I had to knock several times and was starting to think that I could have perhaps been knocking on the wrong door when a friendly face opened.
It was George Liu.

I knew George from way back and had an inkling that he would be here and this all went well for me because I knew that he could vouch for me to Steve Tang who I knew did not like outsiders in his game.

“Did you find it all right” asked George.

“Yeah no problem George, its very hard to miss actually” I replied.

This was very true as Steve had purchased the fish and chip shop next door and extended through into it and created one huge restaurant. He had even renamed it to “Tang’s Palace” and it looked very beautiful from the outside.

I was surprised to find that the rear of the building was actually very shabby and the stairs that we had to climb had loose fitting carpet which made walking on it quite hazardous. In fact I had almost lost my footing a couple of times and the handrail wasn’t exactly secure either.

As we got to the top of the stairs, I could hear the chatter of several people coming from the room at the end of the corridor. This place really was a dump once you got away from the front that the restaurant put up and all this was Steve’s property. I hoped for the sake of his customers that the hygiene levels in his kitchens were a damn site better than this.

“Will Steve be OK with me playing in this game George?” I asked.

“Sure, you have no worry…..I know you…..relax” and George flashed me one of his smiles that told me that I had nothing to worry about. As I entered the room, the bareness of it struck me. As I slowly glanced around it was apparent that it had nothing on the walls apart from a very tiny Chinese calendar. The wallpaper was coming away in the top corner near the window and it had a tiny kitchen work surface with an assortment of unwashed pots and pans in the sink.

The next thing that struck me was the size of the poker table. In fact let me rephrase that, the size of the table. It wasn’t a poker table at all but a kitchen table and not a very big one at that. There were five players seated and with me and George this would make seven in total providing that no one else turned up. Although if they did, I sure as hell did not know where they would be able to sit because there was no more room around the table and barely enough for the people who were on it already.

I had never played poker on a table as small as this in my entire life and certainly not for this much money. As I took my seat it was difficult to see where I could put my money as everybody’s piles of cash seemed to be almost spilling across into someone else’s pile.

I quickly acknowledged everyone and a couple of the faces were known to me. Stuart Bellingham was there and he was well known in the area for his connections in the greyhound industry. I also noticed Graham Pollard who was nicknamed “Poacher” because of his game keeping past although I think that it had other meanings as well.

I knew that Steve Tang and George Liu were connected to the mob and “Poacher Pollard” had his own mob or so I heard. Steve Tang was facing me and was nothing like I had expected. He was little more than about five foot five when he stood up and he reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think of who it was and things like that always bugged me. I just hope that me trying to figure out who Steve reminded me of wasn’t going to impact on my concentration.

I pulled one of the one thousand pound bundles out of my inside pocket and caution got the better of me and I halved it and counted out five hundred pound and placed the other five hundred back in my pocket. I noticed Steve watching me and then it suddenly hit me who he reminded me of. It was David Yip out of the television series The Chinese Detective.

I would just like to point out here that this was a television series back from the eighties or possibly early nineties so many readers may not know who this character was but if you don’t then you can always Google it and when you do then you are almost looking at Steve Tang.

The game was dealer’s choice with five pound blinds. As far as I could tell there was around ten grand on this table and heaven knows how much more the players had on them. I had fifteen hundred pound in my pocket and that was just me so the other players must also be carrying extra.

The first game played was Paduki and I quietly sighed to myself. The Chinese really loved this game because it was a real gambling game but it played havoc with your bankroll if you were not careful. I didn’t have a whole lot of experience playing the game except for the times when a few of my casino work mates used to ask for it in our little staff poker game some years ago.

Although that game would be a lot more passive than this one that was for sure and the stakes there were puny in comparison to this. At this stage I feel that it is of importance to explain to you what Paduki actually is as many readers will be unfamiliar with it. It is a form of draw poker where you are dealt four cards. Technically the game isn’t actually poker because of all the variations of poker that I have played, the one common denominator in them all is that you try to make your best five card poker hand based on the universally accepted ranking of poker hands that has been around for the better part of two hundred years.

This is why Paduki isn’t poker because you are dealt four cards to begin with and are only striving to make a four card hand and the normal table of poker rankings does not apply. But this was a very popular game back when I used to deal poker years ago in the casino’s.

The game is played where each player gets dealt four cards and the object of the game is to end up with four cards of different suits and ranks and this is called a Paduki. The winner of the pot is the player who holds the lowest Paduki and there are three betting rounds as a rule but I have sometimes seen it with only two.

So the absolute nuts in Paduki is to end up with A-2-3-4 all of different suits and straights do not count. As with most draw poker games, a player is not forced to draw cards and after each draw there is a betting round. This is where the game starts to liven up because if no player has a Paduki then the next lowest hand wins. Any hand that has two cards or more of the same suit is classed as a flush and is bad. So a Kd-10c-9s-2d beats a 9d-8d-6c-5h because the first hand is a Paduki while the second hand is not.

Having a pair in your hand is even worse as a pair is classed as a full house and ranks higher than a flush. The Chinese love this game because of its gambling nature. I seriously hoped that we were not going to spend most of the night playing this damn game because I did not come here to gamble wildly. I see my first four cards and am hoping to see something weak so I can simply muck it but instead I see a Kd-5d-4s-2c. Straight away I have a one card draw to a very powerful hand.

I do not have anything as yet but discarding the king will leave me drawing to a Paduki that would potentially be very low. Any ace, three, or six of hearts would give me a powerful hand. There was a raise before me and I decided to call as a re-raise would likely not get these wild players out. George had told me that Paduki was played a lot here but what he actually meant by a lot was anyone’s guess.

Any players who liked this game were gamblers pure and simple as no real poker player would like a game like this as it was too swingy. I simply called the raise as did everyone else which was hardly a surprise. What was a surprise was when three players all drew three cards. Can you believe that…..drawing three cards! I mean, they may as well ask for an entirely new hand. I drew one and obviously discarded the king and the first card that I see is the jack of hearts.

This gives me a Paduki but a very weak one and one that is too weak in my opinion to stay with as two of the other players have also only drawn one card and their hands would have been lower than mine were they to hit it. In my mind I need one of four possible cards to give me a potential winning hand. The seven, six, three and ace of hearts and there are a total of forty seven cards left unseen to me of which four will give me a likely winner. With pot odds of nearly eleven to one to make this hand then my chances are not good. I felt that I had good implied odds on the first betting round but if anyone comes out firing now then I will muck this hand.

In my mind, the hand that I have is a bit like big slick in holde’em. It has a lot of potential but it ends up all too frequently shot down in flames. I didn’t even know if discarding the jack was smart and if I didn’t know then what the hell was I doing playing this game.

A pot sized bet on the next round makes my mind up about folding as there is no way that I am going to get involved for my entire buy-in on the very first hand on a crazy game like this. Plus, I could even be drawing to a hand that is not even the best hand even if I make it. The best hand at the end revealed an eight Paduki so I would have been drawing to the best hand after all but I was still happy with my fold.

Paduki is a game where players get seduced into chasing hands that look good or at least the gamblers think that they look good. But even when you are drawing to a good hand like a six then your pot odds are never enough to warrant trying to overtake a made hand if they bet full pot in a game like pot limit.

Just then the door from the staircase opened and a Chinese guy who looked somewhat rather agitated went up to Steve and started jabbering away quite excitedly. We all got on with the game but Stuart quipped,

“Maybe someone doesn’t like the crispy duck”.

We all chuckled along but Steve left the game and went with the other guy swiftly down the staircase in the direction of the restaurant.

“I know your face from somewhere”

I looked up to see Graham Pollard staring at me. Graham Pollard was around fifty years of age and had one of those tough, tanned weather beaten faces. He wore a short sleeved shirt that revealed tattoo’s on both of his arms kind of like Popeye. But his skin was too dark and hairy to be able to make out what they were of.

I didn’t answer him straight away and this prompted him to speak again.

“I knew from the minute you walked in that I had seen you before. Do you play in the tournaments here?”

“Not very often but I used to” I replied.

I’d hoped that this would be enough to terminate this particular line of enquiry as I did not want to reveal my gaming past along with my blackjack history but “Poacher” persevered.

“No I have seen you recently, a couple of weeks back in Birmingham”

Shit…..this meant only one thing, that he had seen me card counting on the night when one of the team was involved in a dispute with a pit boss. This guys memory was good, it must have been to remember someone as apparently insignificant as me playing nothing but table minimums. Unless of course he had been onto us and knew what we were doing. If he was then it was in the lap of the gods whether he would say anything but chances were that if the casino had failed to spot us then he probably would not have either and this was probably me being a little paranoid.

“Yeah I get around a bit” I said without wanting to encourage him to continue the conversation.

“You come from Sheffield don’t you?” insisted Poacher

“Yeah unfortunately” I said whilst trying to be witty and acting cool at the same time.

“Long way to go to play two pound a box” replied Poacher with a knowing smile that seemed to either tell me that he knew something or that he wanted me to think that he knew and was trying to draw me out. Jesus, I had only been here two bloody minutes and already it felt like I was being interrogated by the god damned Gestapo.

“I have friends and business contacts down there”

I managed to keep a dead pan face whilst replying trying my best to make Poacher see that his line of questioning had not flustered me.

“Can we play some poker” remarked George Liu.

What a great idea I thought and quickly announced “Hold’em” as the button was on me and it was my choice. There was no doubt about it, Poacher Pollard had got to me and my mind was still going down the track of trying to decipher what he knew from what he didn’t when I looked at my hand to see a suited big slick staring back at me. George Liu had changed seats for some unknown reason that had puzzled me but George was a canny player and he must have been trying to better his position on someone I thought.

George had open limped for £5 under the gun and it was folded to me on the button and I made it £25 to go. Some guy in the big blind who had barely spoke a word since I arrived called and so did George. With £80 in the pot, the flop came Ad-Ks-7h giving me a fantastic looking top two pair. Both players checked to me and I bet £70 into the pot and the Chatterbox in the big blind re-raised and George Liu re-raised again.

George’s second raise put me all in and I quickly called with what I had left which was around £350. As I sat there and watched the two of them continue, I just had the sickening feeling that I had prematurely stuck my money in without thinking it through and that I was behind.

They must be figuring me to have hit this flop being that I was the pre-flop raiser and the board shows an ace and a king. Neither of them raised pre-flop but George’s hand concerned me the most. He could not have AA or KK as he would certainly have raised again after I raised pre-flop if he had gone for a limp re-raise type of play. Him having A-K was negated by the fact that I had A-K also.

He would not play A-7 or K-7 from under the gun because he was a solid player who I had played with and dealt to in the past. He possibly could have played a suited A-7 this way but his flop play ruled out this hand. His flop check raise indicated massive strength and suddenly the prospect of him holding 7-7 loomed ever so large in my mind. Firstly he must at least be aware that I could be holding top pair and so in my mind, he must be able to beat top pair.

When the big blind folded on the turn to another powerful bet by George then I knew my fate, there was only one possible hand that he could have and that was a set of sevens. I was praying for a miracle and that George had lost leave of his senses or that he was acting on some kind of read but this was all to no avail as a couple of seconds later George said,

“I am ahead unless you have top or middle set”

As George fumbled to turn his cards over on the shiny table surface then I knew my fate and that I was now drawing to a four outer to win this pot. George revealed the 7d-7s confirming my thoughts and the river card was no help and my money was gone in a flash. I started to think how Poacher had cost me this pot with his banter just prior to the hand and how it had distracted me but of course this is rubbish.

If you cannot handle banter of this sort around a poker table then you have no place being on it. I only had myself to blame for the loss and that made it hurt even more. I should have slowed down and thought the entire hand through and if I had done this prior to sticking my money in then I would be £350 better off at this moment in time and congratulating myself on a great lay down.

Instead I am £500 down already and in danger of going on tilt this early in the game. I mentally reprimand myself but the entire night had not gone well starting with my argument earlier in the evening with my beloved and now this.

Just then Steve Tang came back into the room,

“Any trouble Steve” said Stuart

“oh…..nothing we can’t handle. Just had to calm a few drunks down that’s all” replied Steve.

My head was still spinning from the previous hand and it took me a while to shake off losing the money and also I couldn’t get Poacher’s line of questioning out of my mind. Another couple of hours went by and I had lost another £500 buy in and was now losing a grand. We agreed to have a thirty minute break in play and Steve had a selection of food sent up for us although I wasn’t particularly hungry but the others were so I had to go along with it.

Steve and George Liu drifted off downstairs whilst we were eating and this just left five of us upstairs. Me, Stuart, Poacher and a couple of guys who I didn’t know. As I stood there something peculiar hit me. I got the distinct impression that these two guys knew each other even though they never spoke to each other the entire night and also during the thirty minute break in play.

Maybe it was just my imagination playing tricks but I have learned a long time ago to trust my instincts. It was just a feeling and very hard to put into words but I could easily have been wrong so I decided to keep a close on these two and what made my suspicions even worse was that they were both winning.

But there came a pot about an hour later where Poacher lost a thousand pound pot in a hand of hold’em to one of the guys. To me it appeared that one of the players had drove the betting for the other guy before dropping out and surprise surprise the other guy held the nuts. He had top straight to Poacher’s lower straight. The betting sequence of the guy who dropped out didn’t make sense and this made my mind up to leave the game.

If these two were playing together then whatever value that was on this table was thin. I was not playing well anyway and was down around twelve hundred and George was a tight player who didn’t give much away. I couldn’t prove anything but then again you rarely can with incidents like these and I didn’t know who these guys were and who they were connected to so causing a stink was not on the agenda. I made my excuses and left with my remaining eight hundred pound intact despite numerous appeals for me to stay.

But my mind was made up and as I was walking down the staircase I felt pretty fed up as the entire night had just gone from bad to worse.

Just before I reached the door, someone shouted me from the top of the stairs, it was Poacher. He came down the stairs and stood in front of me for a couple of seconds before speaking.

“I know that you are ex-gaming, I remember now where I have seen you. Listen….I may have need for your expertise” said Poacher lowering his voice as he spoke.

If there was one guy who I didn’t want to get involved with it was this guy. When you get involved with people like this then it can only be something crooked. I was quickly trying to figure out an acceptable way out of this without incurring his wrath when I said,

“I will be here for the tournament on Wednesday, will you?”

“Yeah, I play in the one hundred pound game so I’ll be there replied Poacher

“Fine, we will talk about it then in private” and with that, it seemed to satisfy him.

As he turned to walk back up the staircase I said,

“oh by the way, keep an eye on those two guys”

Poacher spun round like a shot and glared at me…. “which two?”

“The two who never speak, they know each other, I am convinced of it” I replied whilst all the time trying not to let our conversation carry back up the staircase. Poacher moved back to within inches of me and said,

“So what are you telling me? That these two are bent…..because if you are then tell me now. I have lost a lot to these two bastards tonight…..I want to know!

Poacher’s ominous manner left me feeling uncomfortable and I got the distinct impression that I had stirred up a real hornets nest and could be bringing serious trouble onto these two guys. But hey, what the hell because they had taken money off me too during the night and I was certain that they were colluding. I had lost a total of around £500 in pots that had looked dodgy so these guys deserved whatever they got. If they thought that they could come into a game like this with the types of people who were sat around that table and do what they had been doing then they deserved what was coming to them.

“I can’t prove it” I replied

“It doesn’t matter what you can prove, tell me what they are doing” insisted Poacher only this time with serious menace in his voice.

“I am convinced that they are signalling hand strength to each other in some way and then one of them drives the betting when the other has a strong hand. One drops out and leaves the other one to take the pot who nearly always has the nuts or close to it” I said.

Poacher just stood there in silence for a few seconds and I could see him contemplating what I had told him. He turned around as he walked back up the stairs and said,

“See you Wednesday”

“Yeah” I muttered and walked out of the fire door and back into the car park. I had no intention of being there on Wednesday for the tournament simply because I didn’t want to have to say no to Poacher. But it would have been interesting to know what happened in the game after I had left, I still think about that even now after several years, must try and find that out one day.