Room 114 and two fat ladies

By Mick McCloskey

Is poker success down to skill or luck or is it fate? Or is it a combination of all of these? I had a couple of experiences to suggest that fate may play a part. One of these relates to a trip I made to Barcelona in September 2003 for the Barcelona Open tournament. When I arrived at my hotel I was allocated room 13 on one of the floors (I can’t remember which). I really didn’t think anything of it and carried on with business. Over the next 2 or 3 days I played in various tournaments and satellite games and some cash games. Whatever I played in I couldn’t seem to do anything right. If I had AK against a pair I could never hit. If I had the pair against 2 overcards I could not win. Even if I had AK against an Ace with a smaller kicker the smaller kicker would always hit. After about 3 days of this torture, I decided that my room number might be the problem so I rang down to reception to ask if I could move to a different room. The guy at reception seemed very concerned and asked if there was something wrong with the room. I said no but explained to him that I was playing poker and that the number was unlucky. ”Ahhh”, says he,”I understand” A room change was arranged immediately. A triumph for international customer services in Spain. So, anyway, I entered the main event the next day and proceeded to get a very nice payday with an equal three way split in the tournament. My new room number? 114. Number of players in the main event? 114. Scary or what?


Another similar experience happened in Slovenia about 8 months later. The difference here was that I was running pretty good. I made a final table in one of the tournaments and I won my seat for the main event in a super satellite. The main event was a 2 day affair and I was chip leader when we got down to the final 9 players at the end of day 1. After the chips were counted, the seating draw for the final table took place. The way they do this in Slovenia is that the lowest chip stack draws the first seat and so on down the line. So when it got to me there was only 1 seat left. Table 8, seat 8. Now this sounded quite good to me, as under some Chinese birth sign or other, my lucky number is supposed to be 8. In the final the next day, I never lost the chip lead and when play eventually got heads up I had at least a 3-2 lead. After a bit of play, I picked up a pocket pair on the button. I made a standard raise, only for my opponent to reraise all in. I called and he turned over AQ or AJ. When the dust had settled, he did not improve and my pair held up to win me the tournament. My pocket pair? 88!
Coincidence? Fate? If any of you have had any similar experiences I would be very interested in hearing about them.