Hugo's Blogspotting: 5 October

Would the real Martin Johnson please stand up

Ben Grundy, the Milky Bar Kid, has put up links on his blog to three articles at telegraph.co.uk by Martin Johnson who he gave a couple of poker lessons to before the WSOPE. Now I have it on good authority that Johnson was put in by Betfair, who were sponsoring the WSOPE. Fair enough, I hear you thinking, Betfair is primarily a betting exchange with a nice sideline in poker so why not get the guy who captained England to it’s historic win in the Rugby World Cup a few year’s ago to play in the tournament? A nice bit of promotion for both the WSOPE and Betfair.

So imagine the look on the PR/ marketing bods’ faces when some middle-aged sports journalist turns up asking for his ticket. It turns out that Martin Johnson the rugby player is not the only Martin Johnson who has a column in the sports pages at the Daily Telegraph. Naturally the geniuses in the Betfair promo dept. were unaware of this co-incidence (there’s a potential sitcom in the making here) and ended up with the Johnson nobody knows.

Luckily for them Johnson is not only a good writer, but he also cashed in what was arguably one of the toughest tournament fields since the poker boom. So obviously the Milky Bar Kid is a pretty good teacher? Well, he must have given Johnson good info on Kenny Tran:

“I was involved with Kenny again after everyone else folded on the pick-up, and he bet 5,000. I had King-Five unsuited, and thought I'd at least see the three flop cards. Nothing to help there, but something told me Kenny's urge to nail me might have outweighed him waiting for a decent hand, and I stayed with him until his final bet of 10,000.

I called. "You've got me man, if you can call me, you got me." I flipped in my K-5, and the entire table gasped. Kenny had indeed been bluffing, and, as he said, I'd got him. But the sight of the K-5 made his eyes pop. His mouth opened, but nothing, for once, came out.”

Oh well Kenny you know what they say, “You can’t bluff a duffer and you can’t fight City Hall.” Kenny Tran obviously wasn’t around at the beginning of the tournament to witness Phil Gordon tell Johnson off:

"Listen buddy, because I'm only going to say this once. I've seen all three of your hands. If you want to show me your cards every time, you won't be here very long."

Johnson hadn’t even played enough times to learn about looking at his own cards without showing others, yet still made it into the money! Not bad, not bad at all. Of course one could have guessed he would go far after this exchange with Jamie Gold:

"I wasn't sure whether you had a flush draw or a set." "What's a set?" I said. "You're having me on, right?" "No, really, I'm not.


Lucky Jim goes home

Back to reality with Lucky Jim who has moved back in with his parents. Lucky Jim’s situation reminds me of that old joke: What do you call a guitar player without a girlfriend? Homeless. We can easily substitute guitar player for poker player. Anyway, I digress, Jim’s domestic situation hasn’t put a damper on some of his regular activities: