It's only the first hand and Stephen Fry is giving me hell...

Sunday October 8, 2000

Victoria Coren joins the likes of Martin Amis, Patrick Marber and Anthony Holden and discovers that when it comes to celebrity poker there's a lot more than money at stake

I riffle £1,000 through my fingers. Martin Amis clears his throat. Click-clack-click go the shiny £50 discs. I select a few hundred and chuck them across the table. There is a pause. 'Call,' says Stephen Fry. And I must, surely, be asleep.

I'm sitting at an over-large poker table in the middle of Wales with the author of The Rachel Papers. It doesn't get more dreamlike than this. To my left: Jeeves and Wooster star Stephen Fry, for once silent and focused; award-winning playwright Patrick Marber, stacking his chips; 11 O'Clock Show comedian Ricky Gervais. To my right: jetlagged royal biographer Anthony Holden; pipe-chewing poet, critic and mountaineer Al Alvarez; child prodigy turned fully fledged Brit Lit star Martin Amis.

But you'll know this is neither a dream, nor indeed a Viz cartoon strip (though it has elements of both) if you watch the first episode of the new Late Night Poker series on Channel 4 which starts next Thursday.

If you have never seen Late Night Poker... well, I don't know what you've been doing in that crucial hour between midnight and 1 a.m. Poker had been filmed before, but never with the fiendish wheeze of putting a perspex strip round the table and a camera underneath, so viewers can actually see the players' cards. When a devious maestro trap-checks his Aces, so the poor innocent fool with the Jacks comes out betting, the home viewer can now watch the whole foul plot unfold. You'll learn more about poker from this show than you ever could from books or your own friendly home game.

The prize money is £40,000, making this the biggest poker tournament in Britain (although it will be overtaken by the record-breaking Poker Million tournament in November) so many a top-class player is prepared to risk revealing his secrets to the camera. The main tournament - starting the following Thursday - is made up of satellites, with each player putting in £1,500 and the winner going through to the big-money final.

But the curtain-raising celebrity game is a one-off, with Channel 4 putting up £1,000 per player and the winner pocketing an immediate £7,000. This is not the kind of invitation you reject.

Nevertheless, the opposition merited careful advance thought. Anthony Holden spent a year as a professional player, in order to write the poker classic Big Deal. Al Alvarez has also written plenty about poker and played seriously for many years. These two are old cronies - Big Deal is dedicated to Al - and I know they're serious danger at the table.

Patrick Marber, who wrote the poker play Dealer's Choice, was a stalwart of the game that took all my college money 10 years ago. This was back when I commuted to London on Friday nights and handed my weekly allowance to a gang of sharks who practically cracked open the Bollinger when I rang the bell.

But I reassure myself with the thought that over the past decade Patrick Marber has had huge international success, written TV series, directed his own work on Broadway, performed in the West End, and generally introduced a lot more things into his life than poker. I, on the other hand, have not. There are no trips to New York, auditions with Natasha Richardson and rave reviews to tempt me away from spending every night in a smoke-filled basement full of sick gamblers and stale egg sandwiches. Which is where I have the advantage over Patrick Marber. If you don't think about it too much.

Then there's Amis. With nothing to go on but his public image, I decide to put him down as a macho type who plays poker with other writers for the atmosphere and fellowship. I'd guess from newspaper stories about his book advances that he's probably used to high stakes.

I know that Fry used to play in a celebrity game at the Groucho Club in London: my instinct is that he takes the game less seriously than Amis, but his razor-sharp brain could be cause for concern.

Young West Country comedian Ricky Gervais is the wholly unknown quantity. I'd met him a few times before, but never heard that he played cards. I find this reassuring: truly devoted players can usually sense each other in a room and fall into poker chat. Like gay radar, but with less sex and more bad beat stories. I decide he is the least serious threat.

And indeed, Gervais's first words to me in the lobby of the Cardiff Hilton are: 'I've never played this HoldEm game before.' I smile conspiratorially at Patrick Marber and murmur: 'That's what we like to hear.' I'm only joking, of course, but Gervais's annoyance shows me that he's not hustling - he really hasn't played HoldEm before. We sit down in the bar for a quick whip through the rules.

Each player gets two 'hole cards' that nobody else sees; there's a round of betting. Three cards are then dealt face up as a communal shared 'flop'; you bet. A fourth communal card; you bet. A fifth and last; you bet. You then make the best five-card hand from the seven cards you can see.

Other players are rolling into town for the main tournament. There's Brian 'The Cowboy' McNally, who plays in a 10-gallon hat. Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliot in his trademark red shades, now possibly England's most famous poker pro, whose tea I served during the last series. That's what girls do, make tea. If Devilfish was in a room with Baroness Thatcher, he'd tell her to go and put the kettle on. There's Malcolm Harwood, who had a heart bypass and was warned by the doctor to 'avoid too much excitement'. We all hope he doesn't hit an unexpected fourth ace on the river. Malcolm's Thai wife Somkhuan, who phones the temple back home before big games, pledging money to Buddha if she wins and asking the local priests to curse her opponents. She rings down to the bar to check the spelling of Ram Vaswani's name.

Sounds like there's a plague of frogs on the way for Ram if he knocks her out. However tough the celebrity sideshow turns out to be, I'm glad I'm not taking on these guys. But having said that, it's the first deal of the new series and Stephen Fry is giving me hell.

I've picked up ace-ten. Not a bad hand. I make a decent-sized bet, and only Fry calls. I immediately realise my problem - having no idea what standard of player he is, I don't know what he'd call with. If any of the players in the main tournament called a reasonable pre-flop bet, I'd have to credit them with at least as good a hand as ace-ten. But if they didn't raise, I wouldn't put them on a very big pair. Fry, however... well, he could have absolutely anything at all. The flop comes 5-10-3. So now I have a pair of tens. I make a pretty big bet. Here is my logic: this is the first hand in a televised tournament. Nobody wants to be out on the first hand of the first game. Particularly if they're celebrities, rather than poker professionals, who might feel they have something to prove at the card table. Fry could well have me beaten with something like a pair of Jacks or Queens - but under the circumstances he might get nervous and put them down. And if he doesn't, my pair of tens gives me a little insurance. So I bet. This is what's called a 'semi-bluff'.

The stone-faced comic calls. What the hell does he have? I'm wary now, so when the next card is a three, giving me two pairs, I check. On the last card, Fry bets. But it's a relatively small bet. I think about it and call. He turns over a pair of fives. The man has a bloody full house! If he'd raised on the flop (when he already had three fives), I would have folded. In flat-calling and betting small on the end, he squeezed another couple of hundred quid out of me. So either he undervalued his hand or he's a much, much better poker player than I've given him credit for.

As the poker parlance would have it, Fry has played this absolutely perfect. I'm now worried about going on tilt. I'm deeply annoyed by the idea that, on television, nobody can see the thought behind my play. I had all sorts of - if not clever, at least considered - reasons for betting when and what I did. But on TV, all you will see is a girl with a pair of tens blundering into a famous comedian with trip fives. I'm too irritated to concentrate properly, so I start folding for a while.

Ricky Gervais, meanwhile, clearly loves action and calls with almost anything. For a time, his over-confidence pays off as the more experienced players fold against him. He calls with 6-2 offsuit, hits sixes and deuces on the flop and makes money. But, probably not knowing why he's winning, he doesn't know when to lock up. If you keep calling with 6-2 offsuit, you're going to start losing. Sure enough, his chip lead is gradually whittled away and he's the first out.

Stephen Fry, sadly, is out next. Damn. If he's going to halve my chip count on the first deal, you'd think he might at least have the decency to go on and win the thing. Fry and Gervais leave the studio and get involved in a cash game. According to someone who was there, Gervais was not in a great mood. He certainly wouldn't be the first or last man (in the TV tournament or any other) to get a little antsy after a defeat.

Kate Szeremeta, a glamorous young lady player and correspondent for Poker Europa magazine, found Gervais a little aggressive and Fry evidently agreed. Pointed words were exchanged between the elder statesman of comedy and the young pretender. Wounded by a couple of sharp lines from the pro, Gervais muttered that 'At least I'm not gay, or a woman', and an unimpressed Fry soon left the game. When I heard the report, I wished I'd been there. Ladylike Kate and diplomatic Fry chose to ignore the comment. But if a tough chick like me had been present... well, I would at least have pinched him, or put a plastic spider in his drink. Still, we have to assume that jokey tones were misinterpreted on both sides. This is the kind of remark that you often hear at a poker table - not to mention The 11 O'Clock Show. But it didn't make the situation any less Viz-like: two comics in a cash game, going on tilt.

Meanwhile, back at the tournament, Amis is getting lucky. He seems to hit ace after ace. With the cards he's hitting, he ought to win this thing. But he's drinking a fair bit, which I wouldn't do in his position. He has also mastered the handy art of rolling cigarettes in one hand while holding his cards with the other. Young Martin certainly wins the prize for looking most like a Hollywood movie gambler. He doesn't hold onto his lead, though. Marber, a very solid player, gets unlucky and is knocked out; I, annoyingly, follow. With the efficiency of a couple of old masters, Alvarez and Holden soon have all the novelist's chips off him and play on head-to-head until Holden emerges triumphant; his trip over from New York is well worthwhile, and he's back at the Hilton buying the drinks.

This proves that, even in a short knockout tournament between people who don't know each other's game, experience will win out. This whole match is perfect evidence to put before those who fail to acknowledge the skill of poker. Amis accrued his chips with the luck of the devil, but the best two players undid him in minutes. Luck is a factor, of course. I refer you to my last, fatal hand of the night.

I pick up A-Q of spades. Anthony Holden, on my right, bets £300. I only have £250 left. But I have a great hand for going all-in. Sure enough I'm miles ahead: Holden has Q-10. I'm already winning and his queen is dead against my kicker. He has straight draws, but I have the potential winning flush draw. The only card that could really screw me is a ten. He hits a ten. Well, of course he does. Your skill-sceptics can call this a classic piece of bad luck. But the fact is: if I hadn't messed up that first hand and been struggling uphill from the off, I would have had more chips when he made his pre-flop bet. I could have raised him out, or lost the hand without losing my whole stack.

But I'm not sure that this was my worst loss of the night. Money aside - and remember, we didn't put up our own stakes - this was all about image. At the risk of horrifying my mother, I was far less bothered about losing £500 on the first hand than about looking stupid on TV. So much of poker, after all, is about putting up a front. Men have their machismo to prove; women their ability to compete; Stephen Fry that he really is clever; Amis that he's not just a pretty face; Holden that his year as a pro was worth something. Gervais was the only one who really tried to be chatty and funny for the camera - probably because he sensed pretty quickly that he wasn't going to prove a lot with his card play.

If you don't walk away with money, at least you want some credibility control. Hence my concern that Stephen Fry had failed to spot that Kate Szeremeta and I were two different people. He played in the tournament with me, then a cash game with her, and evidently didn't notice the personnel change in between. In many respects, it's a highly flattering error: Kate's a beautiful, very nice, international player. The game needs more ambassadors like Kate. But her personal style is different from mine, and... how can I put this? We idolise different people, fancy different men, and express our admiration in different ways. At the poker games in Cardiff, Kate was showing people the fruits of one of her quirkier style decisions.

Which is possibly why my greatest regret of the tournament is that Stephen Fry went back to London and told everybody that I have a picture of Ben Elton's face tattooed across my stomach. Well, I say that's my greatest regret. I suppose if I had £7,000 in my pocket, I might have been able to live with it.