Some of poker’s brightest stars begin to gather in the INEC as over 600 players get ready to do battle in the 2010 Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival and some of Europe’s most colourful players put the finishing touches to their preparations for the three day marathon.
Few players in Killarney could dream of being lucky enough to be coached by tournament favourite and WSOP 2007 fifth Jon ‘Skalie’ Kalmar in the build up to the Festival, but Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels superstar Nick Moran has been schooled by the professional ever since he became the face of Ladbrokes Poker. Moran is now just one hour away from putting his skills to the test and the superstar is just hoping that he can survive until the break on the first day of proceedings.
We get chance to speak to the Hollywood actor about the Ladbrokes Poker school, life at the tables, his beloved Arsenal and how he thinks he will get on in the Irish Poker Festival.
CP: It’s great to have you at the 2010 Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival, you must be relieved that the wait to put your skills to the test is finally over?
NM: My table was initially right next to the entrance and I thought that would be perfect and nobody would be able to see me, but now somebody has had a word and I’ve been put slap bang in the middle. I’m happy I’m not on the top table, that would just be absolutely terrible with everybody being able to see me.
Although saying that, it’s funny because I was talking to a journalist earlier and he asked me if I get recognized when I go to casinos. I said “No!” Jimmy Hendrix or Jim Morrison could walk into a casino and nobody would know, you wouldn’t find anybody saying “oh look, there is Jimmy Hendrix!” Actually, I think Bin Laden could walk into a casino and nobody would care, everybody is just doing their own thing.
I could have probably played on the top table and made an absolute berk of myself but nobody would have noticed and people would be too busy flicking through their own cards and playing their own chips.
A lot of the players here argue that it is the venue that makes this tournament so spectacular. Have you ever been to Killarney before?
No, I’ve been to Kerry before and I’ve been all over Ireland at various times but I’ve never actually been to Killarney. I’m really impressed with the venue, it seems to be a beautiful part of the world.
We all went out last night and there was a good band playing in the pub so I had a few pints of Guinness and started stamping my foot to the Wild Rover a little bit.
Is poker a game you’ve always been interested in or did your interest in the idea stretch as far as playing a poker player in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?
No to be honest, I’ve always been more of a blackjack player when I’ve been to the casino. I find it easier and you can get in and get out with no fuss whereas in poker you sit down at the table and you’re going to playing for the long haul. With blackjack you could sit there playing cards for two hours but equally, you could also have everything wrapped up within twenty minutes.
I also like blackjack because you’re playing against the house and the dealer and not against each other. Poker can get quite serious and you find yourself deep into a game with loads of other people but that isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed it!
Playing live is something pretty new to me and while I’ve played blackjack and poker online and been trained by Jon ‘Skalie’ Kalmar in the Ladbrokes Poker school I’m still always learning.
I loved being trained up by Ladbrokes because they made the whole thing idiot proof and if you don’t play regularly you can really start to get to know the game better. It’s easy to play online but it makes so much sense to sit down and go through the Ladbrokes schools and all their tutorials. Then it is obviously wise to play in smaller games and smaller tournaments so you don’t do anything stupid.
It looked like you and Jon ‘Skalie’ Kalmar were having a fantastic time in all the videos, did you enjoy being trained by one of Europe’s top poker players?
It was absolutely fantastic that Ladbrokes sent a professional to train me up and I loved the fact that I was the idiot and was trying to act like I knew a few things about the game when I don’t know anything. It was directed by Norman Pace so it was just stupid and the videos were heavily influenced by that hilarious ‘Hale and Pace’ humour. Basically I set myself up rotten and I loved having a joke with Skalie who took the banter really well and I think we all had a great time.
I loved all the messing around and loved the whole joke that he had no friends, the “shut it shandy drinker,” and all the magic tricks. It was all great fun, Norman just let us muck about when we were shooting and every time one of us said something that he thought was funny he’d say OK, “we’ll have that in there, but don’t say the other thing! That’s just rude and offensive!” Having half of ‘Hale and Pace’ directing us in the poker school was great!
What was it that you liked about Ladbrokes Poker and how do you feel the firm manage to attract some of poker’s leading stars on a consistent basis?
I think the videos really set out what it is Ladbrokes love to do and they are a family friendly high-street brand. You know who they are, they’re looking after your best interests and they know that everybody likes a flutter without losing your house or getting into serious debt.
Ladbrokes is a firm everybody has heard of, it isn’t like one of these .com poker sites that comes out of nowhere, we’re talking about a serious brand and you know you aren’t giving out your bank details to somebody in Eastern Europe or West Africa. Everybody knows it’s totally legitimate and if I was going to endorse a brand it was definitely the right one to do.
Then there is the fact that Lock, Stock was ten years ago now and I was setting myself up to look an absolute berk which is fair enough!
After all the training with Skalie do you now feel you’re ready to take your seat at the tables?
I don’t know, it’s funny isn’t it and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. The way Skalie plays encourages plenty of folding and I don’t really have the patience for that, I’d much rather just see a flop and that seems to be my biggest problem. I know what I’m supposed to do and I roughly know what the odds and my outs are but I get a bit tempestuous and I can end up all-in earlier than I should be.
I know that is wrong and Skalie told me that once I’ve put some money in I’m going to have to commit more, so really it makes sense to sit out until I’ve got something and then start paying to see a flop. When you do see some cards it’s time to work out what your odds are and then even if you check, you’re going to have to put more money in later on. I think I need to remain calm because if I’m left to my own devices I could end up with my chips all-in with nothing and though every now and then I’ll pull something unlikely out of the hat, more often than not you’ll probably lose.
What did Skalie encourage you to concentrate on when you were learning about the game and what were his top tips?
Well most importantly he told me to concentrate on control, position and cards which means that basically, if you take control of a pot and you’re betting and people are matching your stake, if you’re first to bet it means that you are probably on the button and it is you that bets first. That means that you have more time to work out what it is your opponent has and while people will try and bluff you, you’ll be able to see who is folding and who is left. The beauty of being on the button is that you don’t have to fold until you see what everybody else does and then you can have a considered bet without having to put more than you’d thought in the pot.
If you are in the right position Skalie explained it is the perfect time to put a sizeable bet in and if you’re on the button you are pretty much in control.
Jon also has a way of calculating your outs by using multiples of nine and if there is one card you need, you multiply that by nine because there are already three cards on the table. He explained that if you’re looking for outs you need to work out what your percentages are. When Skalie gets here I’ll get him to write it down, I think I’m probably confusing myself!
After weeks of training do you think Skalie has taught you too much? Can you see yourself taking him down on the final table?
[Laughs] That is never ever going to happen! We did an in-house game a few months ago and Skalie was playing. I did actually beat him that day in a couple of hands and made a lot of noise about it! He just looks at me sideways and then I was slowly losing money and hands and before I knew it I was out! He didn’t win funnily enough, another journalist did and the guy walked away with £500 after saying he’d never played before.
Let’s be honest though, you aren’t going to get that much luck in a tournament like this and I just don’t want to finish last and let the brand down.
As you say this is your first experience of playing in a major tournament, is it what you were expecting when you were on your way into Killarney?
Well I’ve seen these sorts of tournaments in Vegas and I used to go there quite a lot when I lived in Los Angeles because it was all fun and games. I’d watch the action on the screens and listen in on people’s comments so I had a fair idea of what would be in store. Everybody is just focused on the six inches in front of them and that is their world. I wasn’t expecting it to be a social gathering though, I’m not expecting to play past the first two hours and if I do I’m going to end up going straight to bed when I finally do crash out.
I went into Ladbrokes earlier today and was offered 400/1 on you winning the 2010 Ladbrokes.com Irish Festival. I couldn’t help but have a pound on, is my money well invested?
[Laughs] I don’t even know if there are 400 people playing in this tournament! That is hilarious, but I suppose it means that while I have odds I’m still in with a chance. I can’t see them taking much money on that and to be fair I don’t think I’d be betting on myself at those odds.
Later on this weekend if you’re rummaging through your pockets looking for a pound and you think, “argh I lost a quid on that idiot,” you’ll be gutted. If you are betting on me keep it to a Euro!
You said earlier that you don’t mind playing blackjack and having a bet, are there any sports that you particularly enjoy betting on?
Well everybody likes to think that they know everything about football but I spent a lot of time with my mate Simon Jordan (the former chairman of Crystal Palace) and was forced to go to the games kicking and screaming, so I got a real insight into what really goes on at a football club. I was quite proud of myself because before the 2010 World Cup started and I was on the radio saying that England would struggle to get out of their group in South Africa and that it would be a Spain v Holland final. So I went down to the bookies, put my money where my mouth was and bet on the final, said that Holland would win and that Robin Van Persie would be top scorer. In the end it was Wesley Sneijder that won the golden boot and my accumulator was let down by Spain winning obviously but I was on air tipping that up! So that is one sport I love to have a flutter on.
I did also win quite a lot of money on this year’s Grand National and I sort of knew Don’t Push It was going to win because I did a chat show with Tony McCoy before the race. I knew he was the most successful jockey never to win the National and when we I met him he told me the name of the horse he would be riding and my wife screamed, “you say that to me sometimes!” So I’d like to think that was a bit of an omen!
I think I ended up having £25 on it and won the money for a flat screen TV. I remember walking into the bookies and nobody expected to see me. The Mrs had the fourth as well so it was a fantastic day.
I suppose gambling is one of those things that can get too much but if you do it now and then there is nothing better than getting your hands on a big bag of free money. I feel sorry for these guys who end up just sat there in the bookies all day and it becomes their second home. I remember saying on a trip to Vegas that I should spend as much time at the tables gambling as I would sitting around the pool and then if I’m playing blackjack for half an hour I can easily walk away. The Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival is different because you obviously hope to be playing for ages but if you’re a novice gambler don’t get carried away and then you’ll be alright!
Have you always been a Crystal Palace fan or was that something that just came about through Simon Jordan?
Well no actually, I’m an Arsenal fan and it was Simon that introduced me to the Mecca that is Selhurst Park (Crystal Palace’s stadium), so there were three or four years when he owned the club that saw me going to every game. I had to sneak off to the Emirates in between Palace games and I went back to see the Arsenal the other day and we got hammered by West Brom (3-2). It wasn’t the greatest welcome back and I’m thinking now that I should probably stay away.
West Brom were great though, I had a season ticket at Highbury (Arsenal’s old stadium) and one of the things that struck me was how magnanimous the Arsenal fans always were and we’d stand there and boo your own team and clap the winning team off. I saw everybody patting the West Brom team on the back and congratulating them and they thoroughly deserved it. They came to the Emirates and refused to play the Sam Allardyce type of football that can sometimes appear very brutal and spiteful. That is the type of football that has left two of our key players close to need amputations and West Brom played the fantastic sort of football that saw them win the Championship. They passed it well, never parked the bus and it was a joy to watch.
It’s nice to be able to support a team that can appreciate their opponents and it would have been unfair if Arsenal had have scored an equaliser in the final minute. There was a West Brom fan screaming “why so many added minutes ref?!” and I was thinking, “well, it’s because you’ve scored so many goals mate!”
A lot of people thought that Arsenal were a good bet to win the title before the season started and it looked like it could finally be their year in the 2010/11. They were even as low as 5/2 at one point, do you think that will have changed now?
Well I don’t know, I don’t like it when people blame the goalkeeper, there is still ten other players on the pitch. But now the back four and the goalkeeper don’t seem to know what is going on and they seemed to be five strangers playing in defence together. The keeper is so important and he should be commanding his back four like the Arsenal of old. The days when we had Lauren, Kolo Toure and then the days when we had the likes of Keown, Adams and Winterburn were all fantastic because they all knew their job and eachother. It’s easy to blame the keeper but they should all be communicating better and everybody should know their job.
If Ladbrokes gave you a £100 free bet on this season’s Premier League which team would you be looking to invest your money in?
Tough one… I’m not too sure it looks so difficult this season. I tell you what, I’d use the bet on QPR in the Championship because I think they are certain to win their league this year. I can’t see anybody coming near them and I know Neil Warnock (QPR manager) through Simon Jordan (Warnock used to manage Palace) and there is no doubt he is the best manager in that division. He’s taken the best players from Palace which is a shame but he’s a very good manager and he spends well. I can’t see the likes of Cardiff and Swansea getting anywhere near them and the teams that have gone done down don’t look like they will do a Newcastle and go straight back up. Put it this way, I’d rather have £50 on QPR winning the championship than £100 Chelsea winning the Premier League.
(QPR are 5/4 to win this year's Championship, agree with Nick Moran and bet with Ladbrokes now)
How did you enjoy filming Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows? One leading bookmaker is offering just 2/9 that it will go down in history as the most successful Harry Potter movie ever.
Well I loved it and Harry is great, he’s in fine form. I’m looking forward to that and as far as red carpet events go that is going to be mad and it will be the biggest premiere in the world. I’ve seen all my bits although as you are probably aware some of them were watered down a little but because they were too gory. Some of the scenes became very real and when you leave my character in the woods with a load of kids what am I going to do? I’m going to do whatever I want! It was all a bit of a shock and they pruned down my torture scenes where I beat up Rupert, call him ginger and stamp on him. It’s going to be great, there is loads going on and then there is the second film which is going to be absolutely spectacular!
You’ve already accomplished so much in your career, where would winning the 2010 Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival rank in your list of achievements?
It would rank number one achievement of my life so far if I could win this tournament because it is the most unlikely thing to happen! I’m more likely to win an Oscar and I’m not very likely to win one of those. It would be fantastic but it would be a huge miscarriage of justice and I think I’m more likely to be finding you and giving you your pound back when I crash out.
Nick Moran eventually crashed out deep into day one and after some fantastic scenes at his table, the actor did far better than he believed he would.
Sign up with Ladbrokes Poker through CrunchPoker and play with the likes of Skalie and Nick Moran online now.