The Nemesis & Journo

Sounds quite a good name for a local pub yes... err, well maybe not!

Anyway, the reason for the title is I have decided that in the poker world I have a nemesis. I am not a naturally superstitious person and I believe that there should be no reason why one person should hold some sort of curse over another. I often hear the words, “oh, he’s my nemesis” and just think to myself… shut up you fish! What you mean is that he’s better than you at poker and he beats you out of your pension every week because your fundamentally crap at the game, but for the first time in my life I am with these fish and am starting to believe that maybe there could be such a thing as a nemesis. Here are some dictionary definitions that just about sum it up perfectly;

1. Something that a person cannot conquer.
2. An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.

Now, I am not saying I am being outplayed here, what I am saying is that there is one guy I play quite regularly with that I just can’t beat and it is purely down to bad luck on every occasion.

I played the £500 freeze out last night at Gala Notts and yet again, I was knocked out by this same foe. I have a good poker memory and as like most people it remembers the bad and unjust better than the good and legitimate. However, that aside, no matter how hard I strain my brain and summon the dark grey matter to provide an example, I cannot think of an instance where I have conquered this nemesis. I can count 6 examples of where I have been dispatched by this same enemy, five of which involve woeful bad play on their part (not mine) coupled with sickening outdraws administered by the poker gods, who are clearly acting some retribution on my ass for something I did once! The other involves me running a perfectly good AK push into a fortunately found AA in the BB. There is quite simply nothing I can do. Here's where I turn into Hellmuth momentarily... I played near perfect poker last night for 3 hours in the £500 freeze out at Notts and built my 15,000 starting stack up to 26,500 without really breaking a sweat. Average chips was around 20,000 and the blinds were 400-800 on a 45 minute clock, so I was looking for a metaphoric pitch for the night and was thinking about bedding down for a couple of hours unless I found a monster. Then the following hand occurs, which whipped the proverbial rug from under my feet;

The action folds around to the villain (a very loose, clueless player who couldn't fold a paper napkin) who raises to 3,700 one from the cut-off. He has about 40,000 and by some divine intervention is the table chip leader. I am on the button with AA. I give it a dwell, ask for a re-cap on the amount of the raise and I make it another 10,000 to play leaving me with 12,000 behind. I didn't want to give him a cheap option of calling and hitting something on the flop and I wanted to make it look like I had enough chips behind to fold to an all-in (he loves to re-raise me and anyone he thinks may be an 80/1 shot or better to fold). I also thought that even though he is simply not capable of a fold himself, he may actually get out if I move right in here, and I didn’t want to give him an excuse to pass. The villain thinks for a good couple of minutes and tells me he would like to put me all-in. - Much obliged tyvm sir and all that, "I call". Due to my tight image and the fact this is a slowish paced, well structured event, I would fully expect any other player here to have KK but he (not to my surprise really) turns over JJ, the rest is history and the Nemesis strikes again. I was pleased to see he showed some class though by smiling to his next door neighbour and later telling everyone who would listen how he bust me and how he takes me out of every comp etc etc.

Anyway, it’s a bad beat, they happen, that’s poker but I am starting to think I need to fight the curse, shoot down the nemesis and that whenever I play against this guy from now on I am going to take some ridiculous gambles, push my luck and generally look to act some revenge, surely I am owed some fortune – it all evens out in the end I’m told!

Oh, and the journo bit….?

I’ve started doing some writing for UK Poker News, so thought I would put a link to their site on the right hand side and a couple of links to my articles on here from time to time.

Good luck at the tables and try to avoid those losers that tell a story and it just ends up being a disguised bad beat! – Tossers!