The road to Barcelona

Contrary to what many believe, I still play a lot online these days, even if not quite the same volume I used to. The online landscape has changed a lot in the last ten years: it is no longer as profitable for grinders like me as it used to be. Back when my nightly expectation was four figures, I found it difficult to take nights off, because I like four figures. I don’t like three figures quite as much, which is my nightly expectation these days, and at this point in my life I don’t have the same financial imperatives to grind every day of the year. I have held onto most of the money I made in the four figure years, have other incomes streams these days, and with my kids all grown, lower expenses. But even if I could retire from playing online in the morning, I won’t, because I still love it more than anything else I do that makes money.

the company kidded itself into thinking it didn’t need the liquidity that winning grinders provided

Another thing that has changed is that to get in decent volume, you have to operate across a number of different sites. Gone are the days when you could just fire up Pokerstars any time of any day of any  month and be able to instantly register enough games to fill your screen (or in my case three screens). Stars isn’t even the market leader these days, but the firm is on the up and up again after a few years under Amaya, whose first major act when it took over was to burn the most loyal customers, the Supernova grinders. This was the era when the company kidded itself into thinking it didn’t need the liquidity that winning grinders provided, the era when poker’s ultimate shill Daniel Negreanu justified the orders of his paymaster with “more rake is better” and “winning players are bad for the ecosystem.” Worryingly, the new market leader and Negreanu’s latest paymaster is making similar noises to Amaya era Stars suggesting it doesn’t want long term winners on its site, but that’s a different story.

Under new owner Flutter, Stars has scrambled to recover ground lost under the misguided and short term thinking Amaya. The firm restored a decent rakeback scheme to reward volume, and introduced an innovative way to qualify for flagship live events with the Power Path. The key to the Power Path is not just that you can join it for cents, but more so that the highest level you can buy in directly at is $11. This prevents well rolled pros like me jumping straight into every $109 that runs and gobbling up the majority of the gold and silver passes generated. Instead, to play a $109, I have to keep firing in the $11 ones until I win a $109 seat. This in turn ensures liquidity in the 11s, as me and my ilk will play as many as we can to win as many 109 tickets as we want. To encourage us to play even lower and kickstart the $1.50 level feeders, Stars rewarded volume grinders partly in the form of $1.50 tickets.

So it was I ended up with a pile of these on my account, which I turned into a smaller pile of $11 tickets, which then became a decent number of $109s, one of which turned into a gold pass with a value of $10k a few months ago. This could be cashed in for any European Poker Tour (EPT), and I selected Barcelona, one of my favourite stops.

Let the games begin

I was asked to go along to a Stars qualifier outing to do an interview on my spin up from free $1.50 ticket to $10k package. While most of the attendees took part in a frankly dangerous looking activity contest (it’s worth looking on Twitter for footage of my Chip Race cohost David Lappin pratfalling his way through a bouncey obstacle course looking like a teletubby who unexpectedly found himself having to compete in the gymnastics at the Olympics), I was selected for the considerably safer and more dignified (or so I thought) “human chess.” This involved costumes that were far from clear: initially everyone thought the rather regal looking robes I was given meant I was a king, but it turned out I was actually a bishop, and the bin bag with a cross on the head Team Pro Felix was forced into represented the king.

while the ladies decided where we moved, we were allowed to choose what piece should be moved

The game itself had just seven human pieces: in addition to me and Felix, another young guy was a bishop, KerryJane Craigie a queen, Nick Walsh a pawn, and GJReggie and another gentleman about my age were knights. The white pieces were being moved by Jennifer Shahade, and the black pieces by another female chess crusher called Alex. There was, however, a twist: while the ladies decided where we moved, we were allowed to choose what piece should be moved. Alex figured out pretty quickly that I was the only one on the black side with even a clue about optimal chess strategy, so she deferred to me to nominate the piece to move, at least in the beginning (more on that later).

Jen started with the classic pawn move e4, and when I nominated “pawn” Alex responded with the standard enough e5. Jen countered with the very common Nf3 (knight to f3). I nominated knight, which Alex used to move human knight GJReggie to c6, setting up either a Ruy Lopez, or (less likely) a quieter opening called the Guico Piano (also known as the Italian game). Jen went with the former, moving the human bishop to b5 (by now she’d apparently taken over her side completely rather than asking them what to move). I nominated pawn allowing Alex to make theoretically standard a6 move. The normal most theoretically sound response to this is to retreat the now attacked bishop, but Jen surprised me by capturing the knight (GJReggie) with her human bishop. Although sound, this variation (referred to as the Exchange variation) is rarely played nowadays (though ironically when I was competitive I used it quite a lot against opponents I believed to be better prepared and just plain better in general than me, as I figured it was one variation they wouldn’t have me out prepared, and it’s inherently more drawy than more dynamic variations).

he drew a card that corresponded to “water gun,” and quite rightly so

It was now that I learned of another characteristic of human chess I hadn’t been warned about in advance: when a human piece is captured, bad shit happens. In this case, the capturing bishop got to use a water gun on poor captured knight GJReggie, something he took far too much relish in, at least in my opinion, and in light of the fact he was guaranteed to be captured next move (hence the name, Exchange variation), at least as long as I nominated pawn to be moved, which I did, which allowed Alex to make the standard capture. He whimpered for mercy but none was shown after he drew a card that corresponded to “water gun,” and quite rightly so.

It all comes to an end

By now it had dawned on me that the captains had been told to exchange off the human pieces as quickly as they could for the amusement of onlookers. In an effort to prevent such a fate for myself, my own strategy shifted from telling Alex what I thought was objectively the best move to a more base self preservation instinct. After Jen moved, I looked at the board and realised the best piece to nominate was knight, as the only good knight move was to e7, effectively shielding me on f8. Alex dutifully did the move, but broke ranks next move, with a rueful “I have to get you into the game, sorry,” and stripped me of my shield. When Jen moved her human knight to a position where it could be attacked by me, I knew what was coming. Alex moved me into position to capture the knight, and did so next move. Things got even hairier and scarier when my captured opponent drew a card that correlated to “you must jump in the pool now.” He didn’t seem to mind, but the prospect of drawing the same card I very much minded, dressed as I was in normal trousers (the only pair I had with me). Also, I can’t swim!

You captured him! You have to do it!”

After I was dutifully captured by a pawn next move, I was pretty relieved not to draw the same card. The one I did draw correlated to “cream pie in the face.” I’ve been friends with Shahade for a decade and could immediately tell she wasn’t relishing the task. She pleaded with Alex to do it instead only to be snap rebuffed (“You captured him! You have to do it!”). They needn’t have worried though: to my mind this was much better than getting water gunned or, heaven forbid, having to jump in the pool.

Jen’s plan B involved trying to think who the nastiest person in attendance who might relish shoving cream into my face, and the cry went up:

“Lappin….Lappin…where are you?”

My VegasSlotsOnline News, Chip Race and Unibet colleague was nowhere to be found though, and Jen had to do her own dirty work.

I’ll end with an announcement: at this time I would like to announce my retirement from my brief but memorable human chess career.