Feature

The diary of OldKing Cole. He swims with the sharks in the Caribbean sunshine you know. Part II.

Day 5 – Monday 17th November.

Feeling fully recovered after the long journey, I’m up and out early. Despite the early morning heat (high 70s by 9am), the hotel’s huge hour-glass shaped pool, complete with waterfall, bridge and bar, was almost empty except for a small group of young Scandinavians taking advantage of weather conditions they seldom see at home. Apparently most professional poker players are rarely seen in public before noon; maybe I should follow suit. Would a lie-in afford me more respect at the poker tables? Anyway, time to get out of the early morning heat and head for a breakfast that would set me up nicely for the day (you should see the size of them).

The poker format in the evening was Pot Limit Omaha ($200 +$20 buy-in). Even though I have read most everything written about Omaha in recent years, I have little card-room experience at this game and the opposition was tough, including several top European exponents. My strategy to play only premium hands, and to play them aggressively, a strategy that helped me reach the end of the re-buy period with no need for one. There was a double add-on, which is pretty well essential unless you have a mighty stack, so I had to take it, which does make it rather expensive for the likes of me. Anyway I had 5,000 chips going into phase two and I stayed at around this level until a table move with five tables left seated me with Marcel Luske on my right. A former European No.1 sitting next to me could spell trouble…

Soon afterwards I was dealt the best hand I had seen all night: KK with QJ suited. I made a sizeable raise from the small blind and had two callers, including Marcel on the button. The flop came K82 rainbow, giving me three kings and the nuts, so I bet the pot. Only Marcel called. The turn was a 3 – no danger yet, but easy to imagine many river cards that could give me trouble. Hoping to deter him, I bet the pot again which put me all-in. Despite being almost all-in himself, Marcel called and the river 5 gave him a straight with his 4 6. Goodnight OKC. But I console myself with the thought that if you are going to go out , go out to a champion. Marcel did express his condolences and bought me a Chivas and coke. Only later did it dawn on me that the drinks were all free.

Day 6 – Tuesday 18th November 2003

To play thirteen tournaments in a fortnight, six with buy-ins of $500 or more, you have to be well-heeled or have backers. Neither describes me so I had to be selective. Today was $500+$40 Pot Limit Holdem and I decided to give this a miss, despite it being a freezeout, and to miss the next day also (see Day 7 below).

So this gave three days in which to enjoy more of what St Maarten, and Maho Beach in particular, had to offer. I had a lazy morning, swimming again and spent a couple of hours wandering around the whole of the $600,000,000 development that is Maho Beach. There is an excellent choice of restaurants and bars and lots of shopping, both essentials and luxuries, and there are also lots of inexpensive eating and drinking alternatives. Not more than 100 yards from the plush restaurants of the hotel and its immediate vicinity, I found a small Chinese restaurant and bar, The Good Food, where all drinks were $1 and complete meals started at $6. So I had a cheap lunch there and spent more on drink than food! In the afternoon I walked along the beach, which is at the end of the Queen Juliana International Airport runway – quite an experience to stand on the shore and have a Boeing 747 pass over you, less than 50 feet above the ground.

A few hundred yards along this road is another holiday development, the Caravanserai, which has a night-club/restaurant and beach bar as well as the Dolphin Casino, one of a dozen on the island. I popped in and won $50 playing blackjack and treated myself to a cocktail at the Sunset Beach Bar and then another at the fun little bar built into a boat at the Maho end of the beach. This is run by an Irish girl who came to St Maarten a few years ago and sensibly decided not to go home.

I then retraced my steps to The Good Food. By now several other poker players had found it and one drink led to another. Just 50 yards further on is The Platinum Room, one of those places where girls dance on the bar and invite one to tuck banknotes into what little they are wearing. A few of us spent a couple of hours there and some found it more expensive than playing poker. At least I managed to escape and ended the evening on the terrace of the Paris Bistro, where one can enjoy a drink, with no obligation to eat, and enjoy its entertainment.

Day 7 – Wednesday 19th November 2003

Today is $300 +$30 Limit 7-Card Stud and this is certainly my weakest game, so it was not difficult to decide to miss this too.

Yesterday had been pretty expensive, so I decided to do a little grocery shopping to ease the load. Food is pretty pricey, typically a third more than the UK due to the shipping costs of getting everything to the island. On the other hand, St Maarten is a wholly tax-free paradise where cigarettes and alcohol are incredibly cheap.A one-litre bottle of Canadian Club was $5.50, possibly indicating why drinks in bars are so cheap and never measured (hic!). And although I don’t smoke these days, I did notice that a carton of 200 Marlborough cigarettes was only $9.

I had a lazy afternoon by the pool and in the evening went back to the Paris Grill, this time to eat. I had a couple of drinks, a dozen escargots, a personal weakness, followed by a delicious dish of mixed local fish washed down with a French Chardonnay – total cost was over $60. The entertainment was a soprano saxophone player and singer and this was very enjoyable. Now that I was set up with snacks back in the room, I didn’t feel too guilty about this excess because I knew I could keep my spending in check for the rest of my stay(?).

Day 8 – Thursday 20th November 2003

Didn’t get out of bed until 10.30 as I was anticipating (hopefully) a late night at the poker tables. I took a quick dip in the pool and came back to the room to shower, shave and take a snack breakfast out of the fridge.

Around noon I took a bus into Phillipsburg, the capital of the Dutch part of the island. The ‘buses’ are licensed people carriers that don’t seem to run to any particular timetable, nor are there any bus stops. If you see one, you wave at it and usually it stops right in front of you. The fare is $2, which is much cheaper than a taxi at $10 or so. I enjoyed a couple of hours wandering around this typically Dutch town with many interesting shops, eating places and bars.

In the late afternoon I went to the Maho Beach Casino to kill a couple of hours before the poker action. I played my usual basic strategy blackjack game, won exactly $100 and enjoyed two or three free drinks served by the very attentive waitresses. The poker game starting at 6pm was No Limit Holdem, buy-in $150+$20 with unlimited rebuys for 90 minutes and a double add-on. My usual tight/aggressive game got me through without a re-buy, but I took the add-on to keep me on around average chips. What happened next boils down to three hands. Twice I was ‘mauled’ by Jeff Bloor, a young British player who had a nearly £30,000 tournament payday at the London Victoria card-room last year. On both occasions he had small pocket pairs and made trips on the flop to beat my big pairs. My death was with AK on the button, re-raised by the big blind, now married to the pot and had to go all-in. His QQ held up and I was on my way to the hotel bar for a goodnight drink.

Day 9 – Friday 21st November 2003

I was starving hungry in the morning having given dinner a miss during last night’s poker. Right next door to the Maho Hotel is a luxurious timeshare facility, The Royal Islander Club. I had noticed that it had its own eating place, The Tortuga Beach Restaurant, and decided to give it a try. No buffet style breakfast here, but a substantial two egg, bacon, sausage, hash brown etc meal served at the table was only $7.95 and quite enough to satisfy me.

I spent the rest of the morning sunbathing and swimming. I knew there was another casino on the island with a card-room, and in the early afternoon I hopped on another bus and went to visit the Atlantis. This turned out to be a rather big establishment but with a very small card-room. Anyway there are two games spread, only on Wednesdays and Fridays, and they are seven-card stud and dealer’s choice, effectively Holdem and Omaha Hi. I played blackjack for a while, won $50 and took the bus back to Maho Beach for the afternoon tournament.

Starting at 3pm was the second freeroll providing five prizes of seats in the $1,000 NL Holdem Freezeout to begin at 6pm. My table was plagued by a robo-raiser who had a ‘big hand’ twice every round, presenting the difficulty of guessing when he did and when he didn’t. You guessed it, I chose wrong and my JJ was not enough to beat his KK. Conversely, a little later when in the big blind and everyone folded up to and including the button, I correctly guessed that the small blind’s all-in was his last desperate fling. I called and his J5o beat my A6o by finding a J on the river. I was left almost down to the green and ‘died’ soon afterwards.

Day 10 – Saturday 22nd November 2003

Today’s action included the final of the $1,000 NL Holdem in the afternoon (in which I was not involved of course). I decided to give a miss to the $500+40 Pot Limit Omaha tournament in the evening for two reasons: over budget and Marcel Luske was still there!

I got up early in the morning had a snack breakfast and went on an organised snorkelling expedition. This was very exciting, quite inexpensive and very alcoholic on the return journey to harbour, like most activities on St Maarten.

In the evening I went once more to Cheri’s Restaurant, just opposite the hotel, where I ordered a mixture of deep-fried prawns, lobster and squid that was so massive that it took more than 90 minutes to eat it. Lovely stuff.