Malcolm "The Rock" Harwood

I first started playing cards when I was 16 and still at school the game then was 3 card brag and my bankroll was my paper round money. I used to climb out of the bathroom window after my parents had gone to bed and play in a pub called The Britannia Inn in a back room after hours. I had to make sure I got back home before my father went to work at 6am. Right from the start I was lucky and I can remember having £300+ hidden all over my bedroom. Later I was called up for national service and I found a regular game in the barracks every night. I cleaned up nearly every night so much so that when I went on leave I went to the Canary Islands for two weeks and was making so much money that I signed on for one more year. Problem was I was immediately posted to Kenya, what a waste of a year.

After national service I went to work for a bookmaker who treated me like a son and put me in big games at the dog track. I finally got the sack for spending too much time playing brag instead of turning up for work. At this time being unemployed was a social stigma and I had big problems with my father. I left home and stayed in digs and started to go to a casino that had opened in Oxford. I was still playing brag and winning consistently but some Americans from a nearby air force base were playing seven card stud in this casino and it fascinated me. One of them took me under his wing and taught me the basics. I was a winner from the start and thought I was the greatest player around. On reflection I was just so lucky and had not got a clue. Then came my first low point in my poker career I got £200 in debt, a lot of money in 1965 and was forced to get up every morning at 6am to do a milk round to clear the debt. In those days it was pay up or else.

Having got myself on an even keel the casino owner took me to the Victoria club in London this was the real step up into the big time. It was open 24 hours a day and five card stud, strip deck, no limit was the game of the day. I had an amazing run winning night after night and ended up working in one of the London spielers as a house player, getting a cut of the rake. The money was rolling in up to a thousand pound a week which I promptly did on the dice tables. Looking back despite being stabbed, mugged and cheated these were the great days of my life, so exciting for a young man from the sticks. When the gaming board then took over house players were out and I found myself having to play with no edge. It was then I realised my game was not that good and I had to improve to survive.

I went broke in a crooked game when I was 28 and had to sell my prize pringle sweaters to pay the rent and started my own private game in Oxford. The money started to roll in again so much so I did not know what to do with it. By now I had become a winning player. A police raid put a stop to my game and it was back to making a living with no edge. This I did for 26 straight years before going broke again in 1993.

I have had lots of bad patches but we all have them and most of them were of my own making. The toughest time for me was in 1993 when at 55 years of age I went broke and having had a big bankroll it was really hard for several years to get going again and I have not managed so far to reach the glory days of the eighties.

I first went to Vegas in 1974 and fell in love with it immediately. Holdem was the game and was completely new to me. I did four thousand dollars the first two days I was there and was so desperate to return I realised I had to break even to justify it. I bought a book in Binnions sat in my hotel room and read it four weeks later I flew back to England level, what a result. That was the start of over 30 trips to Vegas sometimes up to 3 months at a time. During this period I played in 5 world series of poker and met with all of the great old timers, it was wonderful and the most amazing time of my life. I have been playing Hold'em 30 years.

Late night poker was another big moment in my poker life and I am proud that I was in at the beginning of it. I was invited by Nick of Poker Europa. Playing on the show was a fantastic experience and I took to it like a duck to water and loved every minute of it.

Best memory of Late Night Poker was beating Ram Vaswani heads up, who I rated highly but who thought little of me.

Greatest moment of my poker career winning the European championship at the Vic in 1992 beating a field that included one world champion and eventually two more world champions. I won £36000 which at that time was the biggest prize paid for a poker tournament outside of the USA. How times have changed.

Dave "El Blonde" Colclough set me up on the internet in January 1994 and for that I will be eternally grateful as I promptly went on a twenty seven month winning run.

I found it easy to take my live game top the internet which basically is extreme patience.

I think it is now much easier to make a living playing poker than it was 20 years ago simply because of the much larger choice of games and because of all the educational material that is now available.

During my 40 years of playing poker I have met and played with some of the great players. The ones I have come to admire are T J Cloutier, Johnny Chan and recently Phil Ivey. All because in my opinion they rank at the very top and all behave like gentlemen. In England I admire Mickey Wernick for the way he has overcome adversity to now reach the top of the pile and show what a great player he really is.

Advice to players playing at low stakes. This is where you start to learn your trade. For some moving up to higher levels can come quickly for others like myself it is a long grind. Eventually it is all about bankroll, you must have enough money to stand the bad run which will most certainly come and you must always feel comfortable at the level you are playing. Never play with scared money and do not TILT.

Author: Malcolm Harwood

Copyright Malcolm Harwood, www.rockpokeronline.com

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