Cliffs: benny the cunt gets all nostalgic about his beginnings in pub poker.
Venues that I can remember as being my “regular” at one point in time: Old Spot Hotel Gawler, Willaston Hotel, Kingsford Hotel, Sir John Franklin, Louisiana Tavern, Chenzo’s Italian Restaurant, Brahma Lodge Hotel.
The venue that I remember most fondly would have to be the Old Spot in Gawler, because that is where I first started playing pub poker. For those that don’t know, the old spot is in the main street of Gawler, and is probably on the “rougher” side of pubs, and it is most probably owned by bikies, but in the beginning they were really happy to have poker there.
This was back in 2007 I think it was, and my brother Matt and I had been playing online for a couple of years now, but had never played live save for some laughable home games (no chips, just 10c and 20c pieces
). So when we heard about NPL poker, we thought it would be a perfect chance to take our game to the next level and start playing live.
So we headed to the Old Spot for the first time, and the place was absolutely filled with smoke, so much so that your throat was sore by the end of the night. But we registered and went and got a meal. At the time it was really nerve racking because I had no idea how good I was compared to other people, and wasn’t that fluent in shuffling and dealing etc. It was just all foreign to me, the place, the atmosphere, and the other players. I remember finishing 14th from about 30 runners and I remember being proud of myself that I made points, but Matthew finished 11th I think so I was annoyed that he beat me
. I don’t remember much about how people played, but I remember that there were lots of beginners obviously, and there were some players that had played before. I remember that pretty quickly there was some great good natured rivalries that struck up between myself, my bro, the O'Reilly boys, Cathy Lambert and it was also the first time when I met a lot of the Gawler boys like Aaron and JD. Dakota was my first ever TD, (and is still my current one, and I remember thinking that he was an awesome bloke, now, not so much
) I can still remember my first ever win, which was about 4 weeks in I think, back in those days everyone stayed till the end to see who won, so there was like 20 people watching me and Daniel O'Reilly go heads up. I remember finishing first on the leaderboard at the end of the season, with 2 wins, which I was really happy with.
The Willaston was also a great venue, and that is where I first met Matty Norwood and a lot of the other Gawler crew.
The other venue that I loved was when the Kingsford had a game on a Friday night. It started later than normal, at 9pm, so it was good to go home, relax for a few hours, and then go down on a Friday night and have a few beers and play poker. We tried to sit at the same table every week, which usually consisted of a mix of me, Aaron, JD, Gareth, Toddy, Stevo, Zack, Renee and Heath, Haylee and Thommo, Kyle, and some others. The game would finish at about 1230, and so then we would all trek down to Aaron’s shed and play till about 5am
. This is when I started to become good mates with all of these boys as well.
Obviously during this time I started contributing on the forum regularly and that’s how I met and became mates with all the guys on the forum, and I think it is awesome that I can call most of the staff friends now as well
I am getting all nostalgic now thinking about all the friendships I have made via pub poker, that now transcend just being poker buddies, it really is pretty cool and something that I am really grateful to 888pl for.
, but they had a hot sauce. It is the sort of venue I would go to all the time "pity its a 10+ hour drive".