/ Editor / 21 August 2007 / Leave a comment

Variance is a fickle mistress but as Dave Woods finds out you have to take the rough with the smooth - even if that does involve doing the washing-up.

They say you've got to be careful what you wish for and now I know why. A few months back I embarked on a big campaign to get my partner into poker. It seemed like an obvious move at the time. I spend lots of time playing poker, even more time watching big tournaments that I'd like to be playing in and a bit of time writing about it. The rest of my life seems to be split between working (on a poker mag) and sleeping. The plan was to ingratiate her into my world so she'd never complain about not spending any time with her. That was the plan.

Fast forward to today and she's got the bug like almost everyone else who starts playing. The trouble is she's started winning more than me. We recently got back off a holiday to the Maldives and - with the travel chipset that goes everywhere with me - we started a huge week-long heads-up marathon. We weren't playing for money, the stakes were far higher - dinner in the evening, the night's cocktails and stuff like that, with the overall winner getting the star prize: no household chores for a month. I raced into a 6-0 lead and got a bit cocky, and she went on a stupid run and won the next seven straight, something which might have caused an argument had I not been completely blissed out and playing while enjoying an ice cold beer overlooking the Indian Ocean.

So now I've got slightly less time to play poker, and she's been unleashed onto the tournament scene. Almost every night in the past week she's been cashing for fairly substantial sums, and one night she won two MTTs she was playing simultaneously. This weekend I planned to get my own back by playing Betfair's $50k Guaranteed but I found out she'd already qualified via a satellite, which meant Sunday evening I was exiled in my bedroom writing this blog.

Before that though, and by way of consolation, I decided to play a $15 Turbo. I'm not normally a fan of turbos but I only had two hours to kill and Liverpool Vs Chelsea was on TV so it seemed perfect. What it turned out to be was a perfect example of variance.

Twice I managed to get my money in when I was seriously behind. Once with A-Q against A-K (I spiked a Queen on the turn), and once with A-J against J-J (again the turn was very kind to me). Before the second half of the footy had started I was a massive chip leader, and I don't think I'd got my cards in ahead once. The best thing about it was that because it was a turbo no-one had time to type abusive things into the chatbox.

Then I played a few hands that held up and with about 15 people left from a starting field of 91 I had almost double the chips of my nearest opponents. Then it all started unraveling. Raising in the small blind (after everyone else had folded) with K-10, I got a call from the big blind (who happened to be in second place). The flop came K-10-6 and after I bet out, the BB decided to move all-in and I called. He showed Ac-Ks and I was thinking about the huge stack of chips I was about to be sitting on when an Ace dropped on the river (the fact it was the Ace of spades to complete his runner-runner nut flush didn't help my mood). Then, fairly short-stacked on the final table, I made a move on the button with 4-4 to get a seriously dodgy call from someone with J-4 who went on to hit not one but two Jacks. And that was me done. I cashed, but I should have won it. Or so I thought at the time. After a few minutes to calm down I realized that, by rights, I should have been knocked out way before I'd suffered any bad beats. And I wouldn't have had any cause to complain.

And that's poker. I'm as bad at losing as the next man (as long as the next man is also short-tempered and short of memory), but the fact that all of these hands came in the same game proved a point - I'm not unlucky, or particularly lucky. Over time I get the same hands as everyone else, I get outdrawn as much as anyone else, and enjoy my fair share of suck-outs. You win some and you lose some - it just never feels that way at the time. And now? Well, it's 7.10pm, my partner's on the laptop in the lounge and sitting in 11th in the 50k. If she final tables I'll be woken up at about 12.10am and made to listen to every hand and chip swing that she suffers in the next few hours. And that's a real bad beat, although I can't complain because it's all of my own doing.

Tags: Dave Woods, Poker Player