Gentleman John

Let’s make it very clear, poker is experiencing a surge in popularity normally reserved for crazes such as the Rubik’s cube, CB radio, Salt ‘n Shake Crisps, and Burberry caps.

However, poker has been around for 150 years whilst the aforementioned crazes will surely never raise their ugly heads again. Therefore it is foolish to pigeonhole poker as such.

The game has been victim of its own success however with the “poker boom” meaning events have popped up like mobile phone masts. Resultingly, and regrettably, poker is missing three key elements: a recognised governing body, licensed officials, and a clear and defined unified ranking points system.

There are scores of poker rankings incorporating various events all over the globe. Some consider field sizes and entry fee, all factor in finishing position, but none have successfully considered the number of events played by individuals relative to their “results”.

Countless dot-com millionaires and founding fathers of online poker sites have the luxury of playing every major tournament on the planet and, in that fortunate position, they assure themselves of a degree of success and noteworthy results.

So therein lies the recurrent question, who really are the best players and how can this be fairly judged? Who knows – a club player from Blackpool who never enters a tournament costing more than £100 could be the world’s finest. Then again it may well be the likes of Barry Greenstein or Phil Gordon – established so called “big name players”.

Sadly, such is the nature of the beast, we will never be sure whose accomplishments are correlated to the number of events they have played and who really are the exceptional tournament players.

High on any list has to come a player who possesses both a World Series of Poker and a World Poker Tour winner’s bracelet and that brings John “Gentleman” Gale into the reckoning – an Englishman who has gone under the radar in terms of notoriety and acceptance.

Already some will be reaching for this year’s World Series results but before you do I urge you not to condemn John Gale’s failure to cash in any event at this year’s Series. He did not attend the event, giving himself 57 less chances of adding to his incredibly impressive CV.

His “no show” in Vegas this year was typical of the 55-year-old Bushy, Hertfordshire, resident who describes himself as “a mad enthusiastic albeit part-time player”.

The tag “part-time” is all the more reason to be spellbound by John Gale’s list of accomplishments and achievements which has seen him net in excess of $3 million.

Amazingly it all started off in January 2005 when he converted an $81 online satellite entry into a Caribbean holiday with a ticket into a World Poker Tour event, which became a $890,000 winners cheque and coveted winners bracelet.

Since then he has finished second in the Five Diamond World Poker Classic ($252,325 in winnings), second in the $5,000 entry pot-limit hold’em WSOP event in 2005 (for $204,440), third in the World Pro-Am Challenge ($200,000), third in the Borgata WPT ($443,096), won the $5,000 entry Bellagio Cup ($205,500), and claimed another four notable tournament wins stateside all worth sizeable five figure sums.

Yet, for him, the piece de resistance was winning a WSOP bracelet (and $374,849) in the 2006 $5,000 pot-limit hold’em tournament, an event he finished second in twelve months earlier.

“This is the one which sticks in my mind, the special one,” says Gale. “I went so close the year before and took a lot of bad beats when heads up. I never got over it for a year … until lifting the bracelet exactly twelve months later!”

Unsurprisingly Gale “loves poker”; surprisingly he “doesn’t get to play as much as he would like!” He explains, “I retired a few years ago but I soon realised there was only so much gardening and online poker you can do and so I got back into business which played havoc with my live poker playing.

“I missed the Series this year because my company, Countrywide, who make bespoker glass structures, was filming a television commercial with Nigel Havers which will go out nationally in the autumn.

“I am still torn between the devil and the deep blue see as I love playing live poker, I love seeing the whites of my opponent’s eyes, I love picking up on their body language but with my business it has to remain a part-time love affair for me.

“You have to strike a balance and you have to do what makes you happy. I’m happy playing poker when and where it suits me. I’m not sponsored by an online poker company, there is not pressure on me to perform, only the pressure I put on myself which is related to my desire to win every poker tournament I play, purely for the satisfaction it gives me.”

The moniker “gentleman” awarded to John Gale is not misplaced as, allied to refusal to sing his achievements from the rooftops, no player comes across as so genuinely upset about the elimination of his rivals at a final table.

Likewise on the poker circuit – a hotbed of political backstabbing where egos are large enough to go hiking on – mentioning the name John Gale does not evoke the usual mishmash of opinionated condemnation of an individual’s character.

All-in-all, both on and off the table, John “Gentleman” Gale is a likeable character with his feet firmly on the ground, yet he is a formidable opponent with an enviable, verging on unbelievable, record from the limited number of events he plays.

One of the players we should all aspire to be.