People always ask me, “Who do you think is the best poker player?” The sad truth is that for someone who watches poker like, all the time, I don’t often get to see situations where the best are playing the best alone. I could easily tell you who the best players are at getting chips out of weak players, this a talent that sadly is the one most copiously rewarded in today’s poker arena. It is so rare as to almost never that you get to see the best players playing the best poker, because in order to play the best poker they must be pitted against their peers, when the levels upon levels of thinking build up to a point where beautiful, truly beautiful poker is the result. It was said that Affirmed needed his Alydar. That Woods needs his Mickelson. And that a great hand of No Limit Hold’em cannot take place in a vacuum. Thank god for this year’s Premier League Poker, where beyond all the hoopla, the prop betting, the prima donnas and the drinking in the bar, the beautiful game of No Limit Hold’em was played in between the ears and among the felt of East London. And I think it’s about time some credit was given to one Roland De Wolfe. He might not be the best. It’s such a spooky term, the best, one that begs a locked room and closed doors and nights among end with millions of chips and hands to be dealt. But in and among the hallways of Premier League Poker this year, Roland played the game the way you want it to be played, full of beauty and creativity and hands that should be legendary in the annals of the game we all love. And isn’t that what we are all after?

De Wolfe set the tone in his first match, by raising all in on the river with deuce-six offsuit and making Ian Fraser lay down two pair. Ian never recovered from that hand, and who could blame him? Who in their right mind could go all in with deuce-six off suit after calling bets all the way with basically no draw no pair? De Wolfe slow played his pocket pairs to perfection during the Premier League. The first time he did it he caught Ian Fraser pushing all in on the turn with ace-nine on a nine high board, only to see an ace pop on the river. This would have deterred many a man, but De Wolfe continued to slow play his big pairs with a sick conviction, and it began to pay dividends, sealing a later heat against Eddy Scharf and then in the final against Tony G, both times again with the slow played kings. One of my favourite hands from the final table was when Roland pushed all in with a king high flush draw on the turn with the board reading ten jack and two rags, and all Tony G had to do was call him with the king queen to have a seventy five percent chance of knocking De Wolfe out. But Tony had already missed a bet on the flop, and it was this from the heart bravery from De Wolfe that ended Tony G’s chances of being Premier League champion. Roland just wanted it more.

The highlight of the whole tournament for me was the last match of the regular league season, when the Devilfish and Juha Helppi both had to win in order to make the playoffs, and Roland De Wolfe had to finish anything but last for automatic qualification to the final. Anything but last would do. Never has watching a man fold seventy-two hands in a row been such riveting TV. They were going crazy in the truck, crazy in the green room, and crazy at the table, as the cardboard box that was Roland De Wolfe watched eight all-ins with cards on their backs go to the short stack and his mood go from confident to worried to panicked to outright disbelief about the funny game that we spend our lives chasing by the tail. In the true spirit of poker Roland got his last few chips in with the best of it and got beat on the river, walking away from the table mumbling “Sick” over and over, and in the true spirit of a warrior he came back the next day and won his play-off match going away.

There are many images I’ll remember about the champion Andy Black. The first is him raising one hundred and forty seven thousand into a twenty-seven thousand pot with the queen ten of clubs on an ace-king-seven two club board. Defending champion Juha Helppi stood up and with a look of pain, announced, “I know I’m ahead but I know I won’t win.” And then after a five second pause, “I call.” With his king-seven two pair. Club came on the turn. Before the final table, just as they were about to go in, Black came out and at the top of his lungs, bellowed a rhetorical question that everybody had asked. “Can Black break the duck?!!” He knows better than anyone that his is a game brimmed with brilliance yet punctuated by blowups. One hand here and one hand there that if Andy could take them back he would have won tens of millions and dozens of majors rather than all those final tables with cash but no trophy. Then there was the blow-up itself. After playing two thirds of a flawless final table that included a patented Andy Black hero call on the river with jack-six on an ace-king-queen-jack-four board, and anybody who knows Andy Black knows the hero calls are part and parcel of his game, Black blew up out of nowhere and somehow managed to get an embarrassing amount in before the flop with king-queen offsuit against Alex Kravchenko, in one of those spots where it all happens so fast that you know thought has been taken out of the equation. But Andy Black survived that hiccup and played flawless forward to bring the endearing memory of it all, when emotion overtook him after he knew that he had finally done it and won that big title that had eluded him until now. Now the trophy chest will be as happy as the bankroll, and well deserved.

I am happy to say that the Premier League energizes a bitten old cynic like me like nothing else. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by twelve of the top minds in poker, each with their own take on the game, their own angle towards success which is equally valid. Like the Russian Alex Kravchenko, who builds everything off the solid image, but is one of the most capable players of the straight game that walks the planet. Or Phil Hellmuth, who bases everything on the mysterious science of soul reading at which he is the acknowledged master. His antithesis Annie Duke, who backs everything up with math ten ways, or Marcel Luske, who plays the turn and river with creative abandon. Then there’s the super aggressiveness of Tony G, who plays his poker backed up by two words, heart and commitment, and he’s got boatloads of both. And the Devilfish, who is the best hand reader I’ve ever seen, time and again he picks out an opponent’s exact two holdings with his laser mind.

The final counting? The final counting is that this is what poker needs. There seems to be a debate these days about whether televised poker should be about the one table shootouts or the multi table opens. To me both are the same. At least its poker, but it’s not really what I dream to see. What I really want to see is the top players and almost only the top players, playing against each other in a format that aims to produce the truest results. It is the way forward.