Click Clack

To me the sound is unmistakable. 

The repeated click clack echoing around the room as hundreds of people sit around those green felted tables. Mostly in reverent silence but punctuated by the occasional groan or roar of celebration and shout from a dealer or floorperson. Thousands of clay poker chips hitting each other repeatedly as players riffle them with their hands as they play cards.

The Art of the Riffle

For the uninitiated – a chip riffle is when you have two stacks of poker chips, perhaps four or five in each stack if you are a skilled ‘riffler’. Then you line them up side by side beneath your hand on the poker table. Using your fingers and thumb you create a little bit of air in between each chip and in one seamless motion merge them into one stack. Then separate and repeat.

Is it for concentration? A habit? Something to do in the monotony of folding? Every riffler undoubtedly has their own reasons.

A good set of clay poker chips has some weight to them, so gravity assists with the riffle. It is harder to do with those cheap plastic chipsets that you buy for home games. And why do those chipsets always come with dice?

A Painful Memory

The last hand of live poker I played was at the end of February 2020. A particularly bad memory as it signified me losing a heads up match at the end of a tournament and finishing in second place.

It was a Progressive Knockout side event at the Unibet Dublin festival. A well-run and fun poker festival as always. In truth, I didn’t especially long to be on the outskirts of Dublin in winter, but I’d won a package to attend the year before and poker is always fun in Ireland. Of course, nowadays the thought of playing a big live poker tournament absolutely anywhere is a visceral and exciting prospect.

My memory of this particular tournament is that I completely bulldozed the field and won a lot of bounties before blowing a heads up match that I should have won. What probably actually happened is that I had been incredibly lucky throughout the tournament and then a bit unlucky at the end. C’est la vie. There would be another tournament somewhere soon. There always was.

Luck: A Primer

In my early poker career, I did relatively well online and struggled with live poker. Then there was a period where I struggled with both live and online poker. Let’s call these 'the wilderness years'. Then in 2018 I finally felt I’d cracked live poker - enjoying my most successful year as a poker player on the live tournament circuit in 2019.

What probably actually happened is that I was very lucky at online poker early in my career and unlucky at live poker. And that switched around in 2018/2019 where I went on a crazy streak of luck at the live tables. In the middle period, I was both unlucky and bad at poker. Pro tip - avoid this combination.

The key to poker tournaments is getting all your luck and putting it together to use in a short period of time. Ideally in one specific tournament (and preferably a big one). But maybe over a period of several months. Then people will say you are ‘in form’ and playing well and you’ll believe it and get an inflated sense of confidence. You'll also be able to sell shares in yourself at inflated markup rates. 

The luck may also help you play better but can also cause you to take more unnecessary risks and become arrogant. It is worth remembering that the gods of luck don’t like arrogance.

This is in contrast to when you are unlucky and losing lots of coin flips and all ins. In that case, you are not playing badly but are simply ‘running bad’. Remember, only other people play badly in poker. And their luck is irrelevant to you.

Accidental Retirement

I haven’t played a hand of online poker for two and a half months. For live poker it is approaching a year and a half. As someone who had played poker every week for over 15 years, this is quite a surprising development.

I miss the click clack of those poker chips more than I ever thought I would. 

I miss travelling around Europe playing cards. 

I miss the oversized man in the next seat to me with body odour. 

I miss the stone-cold run of cards that sees you sit there and fold for two hours. 

I miss the big bluff which makes your heartbeat fast and your stomach do somersaults as you try to remain statue still. 

I miss those stoic and monosyllabic Eastern European kids with oversized headphones who glower at you, but you can sometimes entice a smirk from. 

I miss feeling like a genius when you get lucky and like an absolute idiot when you get unlucky. 

I miss the guy who keeps accidentally showing me his cards during a hand. And him getting angry when I tell him in an attempt to try and help. 

I miss the beat between squeezing out the first hole card– seeing an ace – and looking at the second hole card. 

I miss chatting to the same guy at breaks for years and not even knowing his name. 

I miss playing ten-handed. 

I miss trying not to get ripped off when exchanging currency at some hole in the wall at 2am. 

I miss dealers shouting “seat open”.

I miss the 7am Ryanair flights. 

OK perhaps not the 7am Ryanair flights…