No Runners Allowed

I started writing reports on the WSOP in 2004. That year I managed to write one nearly every day. In the ensuing years my reports became less frequent, primarily due to the increasingly demanding playing schedule. (For anyone interested, my reports on the WSOP and many other tournaments are archived at:

http://www.killphilpoker.com/articleindex.cfm?by=Blair

This year I took a lot of notes but never put them together, so I’ll go through them and post some of them here. First, an incident that cracked me up.

In 2004 I went to a tournament in Dublin, Ireland with my wife Roxxie. Ireland is an awesome country and I’d definitely like to spend some more time there. (Can you say “golf trip?”) Anyway, on the way home we stopped in London for a few days, also a very cool place. I’d heard about the Vic, the main London poker club, for years from the British players and I wanted to check it out. My wife, a female friend who lives in London and I went by the Vic after a long day of sightseeing. I was dressed neatly, but since we had done a lot of walking I was wearing tennis shoes (“runners” in British-speak). In Britain you can’t just walk into a poker club, but rather have to register and go through a bunch of rigmarole. I was approached by this stuffy twit of a security guard and was snottily informed that people wearing runners weren’t allowed to enter the club and sully its’ atmosphere. No amount of begging, pleading or bribing was going to do any good. The girls decided to go up and check the place out, with my wife promising me that she’d get me some shoes. She’s very resourceful, but I was skeptical. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later she came down, motioned me outside and presented me with a pair of brown loafers. I asked her where she got them, but she told me to not worry about it and come inside. I put them on and she put my runners in her purse. As I was registering the security guard came over and demanded to know where I got the shoes. I told him I got them from my car. He didn’t believe me, but to his dismay he couldn’t keep me out of the club. As we were walking up the stairs he said  “I’m going up there and if I find any player without shoes I’m going to throw you all out.” I was worried that my wife had talked some poor guy who was playing a tournament out of his shoes and he was going to get 86’ed in the middle of it. We had a drink and hung out for a while and I talked to a bunch of players I knew, but I didn’t get in a game. The security guard was still prowling around and I wanted to get the guy his shoes back before it was too late. My wife returned the shoes, I put my runners back on and we walked downstairs. As we were walking out the guard saw my runners and threw a fit, but we just laughed at him and left. I never did know whose shoes I’d worn and figured I never would.

The final table of my bracelet event this year was played in the sequester tent. There were a lot of commercial breaks. On one of the early ones we were all talking and Roland de Wolfe, who is very funny but has a British sense of humor that I don’t always get, said something that lead me to ask him if he knew who I was. “Of course I know who you are,” he said, “you’ve worn my shoes.”  Mystery solved.