Jesse May: Four queens versus four nines was a right laugh

Poker has really arrived. I knew it during most of the week spent logging back and forth to the Palm Beach Casino. I knew it when guys like Jake Cody and Kristoffer Thorsson out bluffed each other in a mad dash for the WPT London title. I knew it when John Duthie pulled a move on John Eames that had him out thunk from seven hands before it was dealt.

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But I really knew that poker had arrived when I was sitting in the box with Mike Sexton and Phil Laak during the World Open Final table. There we were, watching every hand and all the cards. And we still couldn’t see it coming.

I would say, “He’s not going to do it.”

Sexton would say, “He can’t. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

Phil Laak would chime in, “Sexton, I concur.”

Shout like crazy and fall off our chairs

And then as one, all three of us would shout like crazy and fall off our chairs. It was the game being reached up to a pedestal and taken beyond. This was poker if you had six of the brightest young minds in a room, playing out the possibilities. And Sam Trickett executing those moves under the highest pressure imaginable. For a major televised title.

Four queens versus four nines was a right laugh. I’ve never seen it in all my years. I recorded the entire seventeen minutes of the hand in the box for posterity. And I still can’t get over that Toby Lewis raised with quads on the flop. For me that seals his place in poker lore.

The party afterwards was worthy of the night. Poker players and fans took over a central London nightclub. Spirits were high. Trickett and co. had a two and a half foot tall bottle of vodka that was being drunk to the dregs. It’s nice to know that the game of poker can still be so captivating, still be so new. I can’t wait for the rest of this month in London poker. And I am willing to bet that plenty of the guys I watched this week will be in the thick of making it happen.

Show 13 (September 13) is online now! Click the play button to listen:

 
Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.