We settled into a daily grind of eating fabulous food and pretending to be lost foreigners ‘having a go’ at poker

After finishing second in the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, I was invited by WSOPE organiser Harrah’s to play a WSOP Circuit event in New Orleans. (Nothing to do with the fact that the winner, Annette Obrestad, is still too young to play in the US, of course!)

As well as wanting to play in my first World Series Circuit event, I’d also heard that New Orleans was a party town, so accepting the invite was a no-brainer.

The centre of the city in the deep south of America is amazing and a great place to go out, despite the outskirts still showing the effects of Hurricane Katrina. It also serves up the most incredible Cajun food and the best Bloody Mary you’re ever likely to have – once you get over the fact that it contains pig fat (or so I’m told).

Big appetite

Myself and Badbeat.com co-founder John ‘punkfloyd’ Conroy were put up in the Harrah’s five-star hotel and quickly settled into a daily grind of eating fabulous food, taking a short walk through an underground link to the casino, eating more spectacular food, pretending to be lost foreigners ‘having a go at that poker game we’ve seen on telly’, tucking into more grub and then going to sleep. Ahhh, the American gorge-yourself lifestyle has something going for it after all.

But even putting the food to one side, the poker action was tasty enough. We played in two $1,000 side events before the $5,000 main event began, and they were enough to show how much value there is in these tourneys.

They had great structures and loads of players with a complete inability to grasp the basics of the game. There were so many muff stations it was simply unreal.

In the first tournament, we were down to the last 50 players from a starting field of 250 with the blinds at 300/600/a75 and the average stack at 11k, so there weren’t many players with more than 25k. I’d managed to build my stack back up from a measly 400 chips to 20k when I was shifted to a new table.

On the very first hand I witnessed a demented woman shove all-in under the gun for 24k – a mere 40 big blinds! The small blind called all-in for 20k with A-A, which was obviously smashed to pieces by the raiser’s monster K-J. After muffing the guy she told him he didn’t have to call, she just wanted the blinds! Yummy...

Unfortunately, I was unable to capitalise on these pineapple stations but punkfloyd kept the flag flying with a well-deserved third place in the second event for over $22k.

The main event went just as well as the side events, but thankfully the cash games were full of tasty morsels. Many loose plays, such as how someone can call a $40 raise pre-flop with 7-3 to win a $7,000 pot, seemed too much of a stretch for these players to understand.

Actually, I’m fairly sure one of the regulars must have been blind, as he rarely looked at his cards, spending 90 percent of his time licking the melted cheese off a never-ending supply of nachos. Funnily enough, he seemed to do better than the other players there who actually looked at their cards and tried to play!

Eat and be merry

If there’s one lesson to be learnt it’s this: when you go overseas make sure it’s somewhere that serves up great grub. If you get knocked out then at least you can take some solace in the fact that while your wallet may not be full, your belly is happily stuffed the rest of the time. It was a great trip and I hope to go back soon for the next WSOP Circuit event.

John Tabatabai was runner-up in the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event and is one of the top poker traders at www.badbeat.com