“PIT BULL PETE’S” POKER PARTY

I always used to have a soft spot for the two casinos in Derby, small down to earth places where everyone knew everyone else and no one walked around with a chip on their shoulder or had an ego problem. The blackjack games were very good or at least they were back in 2002 when this story is based. The Carlton casino had a good four deck shoe game with excellent penetration and fast dealers, what more could a blackjack player want.

If you throw into the mix a combination of friendly staff, empty games and management that were not too clued up on the finer nuances of blackjack then this was as close to heaven as any gambler could wish to experience. 2002 was a big pivotal year for me, it was a year when I finally left blackjack behind for good which was a tremendous wrench and also a year when I started to play online poker very seriously.

My how the times change so fast in the gambling industry and if you don’t adapt then you get left behind. I had been playing heads up with the dealer for about thirty minutes and was managing to ramp my bets up nicely as no one seemed to care what was happening in the pit area. Mind you, I was losing a few hundred and that always helps to avert any suspicion for a counter.

“Mind if I open another box”

I was so engrossed in my game which I always was at the best of times but doubly so whenever I was losing that I did not notice the rounded bespectacled figure to my right.

“No be my guest, can’t do any harm the way it has been running” I replied.

Turned out that his name was Maurice and he was a local by all accounts as both the dealer and inspector knew him very well and were both on first name terms with the man. Despite the fact that I was not overly keen on conversing, Maurice was the extremely chatty type who just would not take no for an answer. It was for this very reason that I used the simple High/Low count as this allowed me to interact with other players and staff far more easily which significantly added to my cover.

Maurice then began talking to no one in particular about a very bad beat that he had endured in a poker tournament the night before in another casino near by.

“I couldn’t believe it, I raise the pot before the flop and it is the first pot that I have raised in ages. I’ve got ace king and flop an ace. I bet all the way and he raises me on the river and do you know what he had?”

I didn’t know and I sure as hell didn’t care but a nudge in the ribs from Maurice reminded me that I was being spoken to.

“Go on….have a guess what he had” insisted Maurice.

“I dunno….what!” I replied, trying my very best to sound interested.

“The arsehole had trip eights, he went all that bloody way with a pathetic pair of eights and hits a set on the river. I mean….how can you possibly beat these people”

“Makes you sick don’t it” I said trying to appear sympathetic. But now was the time that I could actually engage him in conversation, the count had gone so negative that I had no hope in this shoe of hitting an advantageous situation that called for a bet increase. A quick look in the shoe told me that either this hand or the next one would be the last hand anyway before a dealer shuffle.

“Do you play much poker” inquired Maurice. A quick look down at his hand and the fancy chip tricks that he was performing told me that he was well accustomed to handling them although this is by no means an indication of expertise at either poker or anything else for that matter.

“Yeah, I play a fair bit but I don’t touch these small re-buy tournaments, the structures are crap. Most of them are just a ploy by the casinos to get numbers through the door. The blinds go up so fast that the entire thing is a crapshoot” I replied.

I have not changed my mind either down the years, I once showed someone how to play Texas Hold’em because he wanted to play in the tournament and the following week he came third in a seventy five runner field and he knew almost nothing about the game.

“No, they are not for me…..I play cash games mainly” I went on.

“Where are you from?” inquired Maurice.

“Sheffield” I said, trying to cut the conversation short again as the dealer was about to come to the end of their shuffle.

“Oh, my neck of the woods I come from Leeds. What are the cash games like in Sheffield?” said Maurice.

“Crap, three casinos and the only decent cash game used to be the one hundred pound minimum sit down at Bonapartes” I replied.

“What were the players like, did you win much?”

I just smiled and said “didn’t get the chance mate…..I had work commitments at the time” and just left it at that. With two casino gaming staff just a few feet away from me then I could hardly tell Maurice the real reason why I could not play in that game. The fact was that I had worked there and had been actually dealing the damn thing and after I left the industry, I was about as welcome back there as a fox in a chicken coop.

“But in answer to your question, they had a mix of players there ranging from the very good to others who were mediocre at best. Dave Ulliott used to play there although I don’t know if he still does, that was back in the days when no one knew him”

“Dave who” replied Maurice.

“Ulliott….you know…..Devilfish who won Late Night Poker on Channel 4” I said.

“Oh I’ve heard of him, comes from Hull doesn’t he?”

I nodded in reply without speaking as this new shoe had started very promisingly and I was trying to give it my full attention. Maurice was changing my luck all right, he was making it even worse. Hand after hand was getting beaten by the dealer or resulted in me busting while Maurice was getting a succession of strong hands and raking it in.

“Do you get to Huddersfield much?” asked Maurice.

“Not really, why do you ask?” I replied.

“There’s a private cash game there every Wednesday and sometimes on a Friday” stated Maurice

“What do they play and for how much?” I inquired.

“Seven stud is all they play and it is five pound blinds but the action is something else. Five hundred pound pots are common as muck and thousand pound pots happen frequently. The game is usually seven handed but you need an invite as they don’t trust outsiders” replied Maurice.

“Who runs it?” I enquired.

“Its run by a guy called Peter Turner, he runs a security business and he also works as a bouncer” said Maurice.

“What, you mean Pitbull Pete?” I replied with a look of amusement that took Maurice by surprise.

“You know him?” inquired Maurice.

“Yeah I know him quite well, I think that he would let me play if he knew that I was interested in playing”. Once again I did not inform Maurice where I knew Pete from because if the staff inside the Carlton had known that I was ex-gaming then I would have been under a lot more scrutiny and that was hardly what I wanted to happen.

“I have his number, would you like me to call him for you and try to get you in, the minimum sit down buy in is five hundred pound. I could possibly get you in the week after next if you are interested” replied Maurice.

“Yeah go on then, see what you can do, if you mention my name and where you met me, he will know who I am” I said.

I quickly exchanged mobile telephone numbers with Maurice and he left the table shortly after as he had to go and meet a colleague. The rest of the evening was a big improvement as I slowly but surely ground my way back and had my nose slightly in front going into the final shoe of the evening. Time to cash in I think as ending a session ahead is always good on your mental state although it makes no mathematical difference whatsoever whether you play that next shoe tonight, tomorrow or next week.

But show me a gambler that has not done this from time to time, the number of times that I have told myself that it makes no difference and yet I still do it in certain situations is mind boggling. But all in all it had been a very interesting and entertaining evening and bumping into Maurice might just turn out to be a blessing in disguise…..or my worst nightmare.

Pit Bulls’ Parlour

I had not met Peter Turner for four years since my final year in gaming when I chatted to him briefly in a casino in Manchester, a casino that I should not have been in by the way as it was strictly taboo for any casino employee to frequent another casino out of work. It is at this stage that I feel that I really ought to fill you in somewhat on the history of Peter Turner. A diminutive man of about five foot five inches but he also seemed to be just as wide as he was high.

His nickname came from numerous sources, firstly because he kept several Pit Bull Terriers at his home in Huddersfield. Secondly because he once famously used to have fights with them in crazy backstreet exhibitions where the dogs were whipped up into a crazy frenzy and then put in a cage with him. Although that was many years ago and Peter was getting on a bit these days. Rumour also has it that Peter used to be a money lender as well and would think nothing of taking his trusty Pit Bulls around to someone’s house who owed him money and letting the dogs loose. To me though, Pete actually looked like a human version of a Pit Bull and definitely someone who you would not want to tangle with.

As soon as I had agreed to play in this game I was having reservations. I had played in numerous private cash games before and you can never really relax for one minute when you have played poker with some of the colourful characters that were involved in those games. The game had a minimum buy in of five hundred pound and I was determined to buy in for the absolute minimum until I found my feet in the game. I already new that Peter was dodgy as anything but apart from Maurice, I didn’t know anybody else and I hardly knew anything about him either for matter.

The game was held at Peter’s house which was a luxurious five bedroomed detached house just outside Huddersfield towards the north of the city. I was the last to arrive as it took me a while to find the place in the dark as I did not know the area well. I was glad to see Maurice’s face as we had got on quite well back at the Carlton but the possibility of me being set up by Maurice as some sort of lamb to the slaughter in what may have been a crooked game was certainly not overlooked by me.

There was also another face who I recognised but I could not place him at first until I heard someone call him “Danny” and then it hit me, the guy was Dan “Three Hands” Zokolowski. He was a very good amateur boxer in his youth who failed to make it at the professional ranks because it was rumoured that he had a glass jaw. They called him “Three hands” because when you were in the ring with him, it felt like you were fighting someone with three hands.

But after the demise of his brief professional boxing career, he was now working with Pit Bull in the security business. How the mighty sometimes fall, apparently he was tipped as a potential future world champion early on in his career and now he was working as a nightclub bouncer amongst other stuff.

The game that we would be playing tonight would be seven card stud which was far from being by best game but I reckoned that I could cope with these players…..I was a lot more arrogant in my younger days. I decided to sit back and watch for a while and get the feel of the game, all the time watching everyone like a hawk and especially the people who approached the table as I was more than aware of the techniques for switching cold decks into a game.

But that was not always easy as Pit Bull insisted on having two of his dogs wandering around the room. They were constantly walking under the table and brushing up against everyone’s legs. When someone asked Pete if he would mind locking the dogs away, they were swiftly rebuffed with a

“Why should they be locked away, this is their house and you are just a ******* visitor”.
Nobody dared bring the subject up again. To be quite frank, I really had no idea what the hell I was doing in this game at all. Home games always have the potential to be crooked but on top of that was the fact that I knew for a fact that Pit Bull hated my guts for an incident that had happened one evening when I was dealing roulette over ten years previously….and the guy had a very long memory.

Many punters mistakenly believe that roulette is crooked anyway because of what they have sometimes seen in Hollywood movies. He had placed three consecutive bets on first and second dozens to the table maximum and I tripled zero at just that precise time costing him a small fortune. The fact was that he lost that money, I didn’t take it off him but many punters do not see it that way and view it as something personal.

I knew that at that precise moment in time, “Pitbull” wished me dead and he undoubtedly had the contacts to see it through as well which left me worrying about my welfare for several weeks afterwards. Although it had been a few years since I had last spoken to him, I knew that he knew me and I also knew that he remembered that little incident clearly. I also knew that Pit Bull was not the type of man to miss out on an opportunity to extract revenge either.

I had heard countless tales form my gaming career of the people who had wronged him and lived to regret it even years later. Despite the fact that I had vowed to start the session slowly, I could not help being dealt good hands and was forced to get involved. I had hit a set, a straight and two full houses in the first fifteen minutes of play and was up over a grand already and most of that had come from Pit Bull in two big pots.

A Change Of Behaviour

It is very difficult to put clearly into words but I could sense the hostility towards me coming from Pit Bull even more. The way that he started making derogatory comments about croupiers and anyone that had been in the gaming industry was intended to provoke a reaction from me. What could I have done anyway, with his army of Pit Bulls swarming around and “Three Hands” at the table then I was hardly in a position to defend myself adequately.

Peter’s girlfriend was a skinny ginger haired girl called Donna who had been a pole dancer at several clubs but had got the sack from most of them for dabbling with drugs while on the premises. Apparently it was rumoured that she was now working as an escort girl with the full consent of Pit Bull which would have hardly surprised me given the history of the man. She was a hell of a lot younger than him and obviously saw Pit Bull as some sort of a meal ticket for her bad habits.

Donna had been drifting in and out of the room frequently without ever approaching the table but after taking a fair degree of money from Pit Bull, I was actually expecting a move from him to get his money back. I was lot greener back then but I sure as hell was not green enough to fall for a cheating move like switching in a cold deck which to be quite frank, was what I expected Pit Bull to try and do because many of the other cheating moves would take too long to take effect and would have been too sophisticated for somebody like him anyway.

But with a cold deck switch, all you need is a diversion and you are in. Besides, even if I spotted him what in heavens name could I do about it anyway. It was at this time that Donna approached the table with a drink for Pit Bull, she failed to put it on the table properly and it fell on the floor probably because she was so spaced out.
Just at that precise moment Maurice reached across and tried to touch my money. I made a defensive reaction and immediately stopped him.

“Oh sorry Carl, could you change a twenty for me”

“Yeah sure” I replied.

Then it hit me like a thunderbolt, Maurice had done this at the exact moment that Donna had dropped the drink and Pit Bull had picked it up while seeming to go over the top in cursing her. I had taken my eyes off the table for the first and only time. But if something was going to happen then it would happen on this hand. Pit Bull had already shuffled the cards before this incident so he did not have to shuffle them again.

A skilled card mechanic could implement a false shuffle but I doubted if Pit Bull or anyone else had that kind of skill as it is rarely come by these days. But the timing was perfect with the drink and Maurice reaching for my money. Pit Bull started to deal the hand and I was looking at him intently as he dealt and although this is very difficult to put into words, he wasn’t acting the same.

I get dealt (A,A) 2,  I felt that the hand would not be too dramatic as that would be too blatant to me and when I looked at my two down cards then serious alarm bells started ringing or was this just chronic paranoia on my part. I was determined to keep this pot under control. The problem with doing this move in seven stud is that you can never be sure how the other players are going to play their hands which would disturb any potential card sequence that had been stacked.

But this problem was promptly overcome when the high card which was Pit Bull brought it in for a pot sized raise. It was folded around to Maurice who re-raised which would make everyone else on the table fold but me. Now everything was becoming clearer, I could no longer control the size of the pot because Pit Bull and Maurice had escalated it themselves. Pot sized bets and raises soon escalate in Pot Limit play and players are soon all in almost like in No Limit play.

A Tricky Problem

What I did not want to happen was either Pit Bull or Maurice to become aware of the fact that I suspected them as there was no way that I wanted to continue on in this hand. But if I simply folded then they would suspect that I knew as no one in their right mind would fold aces in this situation. I had to find a way to get out of this hand and the only thing that I could think of at the time was to deliberately expose my hand.

I went to look at my two down cards again and acted as if I had just made a complete hash of picking them up and “accidentally” flipped them over to reveal my two aces to the entire table. Now it was time for the act.

“Oh I don’t believe” I cried out. I just sat there and acted as if I were gutted but the looks on both Pit Bull’s and Maurice’s faces told me all I wanted to know….they were an absolute picture.

I went on “Well how can I play my ******* hand properly now when the entire table has seen it, I have no option…..but to fold!”

“NO” shouted Pit Bull, I looked at him fully in the face, “er…I mean its only fair that we play on, what if we limit the action in the betting” pleaded Pit Bull.

“But it’s not fair on you or Maurice to limit your action in this way as you both have decent hands or you wouldn’t have played the way you did. I don’t want any favours” I said and quickly sent my cards into the muck. The thought of Pit Bull trying to be fair to someone was a joke, the man had never been fair in his entire life.

Over the next couple of hands, both Pit Bull and Maurice just sat there without hardly speaking which was totally out of character for them. Both of them looked like they had just been punched in the stomach by “Three Hands”. I stayed in the game for another respectable couple of hours and was determined to leave without either any physical or financial harm. I was making arrangements with Pit Bull with regards to further poker sessions at his gaff knowing full well that I was never going back. I was saying anything just to get out of the bloody door unscathed.

Maurice had set me up and I was determined to get my own back on this annoying arse but that would have to wait for another day. As I was driving home several hours later, I started thinking about that cold deck and everything that I had read was true. The reason why it is called a “cold deck” is because the cards that have been switched in are un-used and therefore cold and they did feel different to the touch although it is very easy to overlook that in an actual game with lots of other events going off.

I had encountered my first ever crooked game and my first ever deck switch and I had survived it unharmed. I gave myself a great big pat on the back and there was only one thing left to think about….how to get my own back on Maurice.

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