Craig Grant – An Apology

By Keith ‘The Camel’ Hawkins / August 2005

It has been brought to my attention that Mr Grant is bit het up about something I wrote in this my April column:

"If I had told you ten years ago there would one day be a television channel showing just poker you would probably have given me the same look people give Craig Grant when he blithely informs them he once fought Sugar Ray Leonard for the WBC World Middleweight title at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas in front of 30,000 screaming fans. You would have patted me on the head, told me to run along and wondered if I had been keeping up to date with my intake of medication"

Now, everyone knows what a glittering boxing career Craig had. I was just gently poking fun, it was meant to be a joke, albeit not a very funny one. So I hereby publicly apologise to Craig. He never fought Sugar Ray Leonard at Caesar’s. I withdraw the comment completely and unreservedly.

On top of this apology I also promise to never make something up (even in jest) about a poker player. Everything you see in this column from now onwards will be the gospel truth.

With this in mind, here, for one month only, is the return of…..

The Camel Poker Quiz!

I am going back in the mists of time here. At least 5 years maybe as long ago as 7 or 8 years, I was in the final of a £250 No limit Hold’em tournament at Luton.

I was pretty short stacked with 5 players left. The 3 chip leaders, Hermes Michealides, Shaun Hayes and Andrew Georgiou all had about 50,000 in chips. I had 8,000 and Player X had 6,000.

The blinds were 1,000-2,000. Player X was in seat 1 and I was in seat 3. There was a £400 jump in prize money from 5th to 4th. I decided unless I got dealt a monster to pass my hands because Player X would be forced to make a move first. Hopefully he would lose and I would sneak up to 4th!

We both went through the blinds with the big stacks forcing us to fold. I went down to 5k and he should have been right on 3k. But what’s this? He now had a healthy stack of 18k!!!!

Immediately I sought the card room manager and demanded a chip count. When she came over to perform this the other players were understandably mystified "What’s all this about?" "Why are we doing this?" were just two of the questions asked. Player X meanwhile kept his counsel and went a deep shade of red. Although the chips were out by exactly 15k, the card room manager decided she couldn’t do anything because no one saw exactly what had happened. The fact that the chip box, which had recently been used to colour up the small denomination chips, lay open behind the dealer and about a foot away from Player X was not evidence enough.

Angry, but philosophical, I agreed to carry on with the tournament. Justice of sorts was done however, as Player X doubled me up twice with the stolen chips and he finished 5th after all. Ha!

So, for a grand prize of half a pint of lager shandy and a packet of cheese and onion crisps, your job is to identify Player X.

Good luck!