“In boxing, you have to have a poker face.”
When IBO Middleweight Champion Chris Eubank Jr talks about boxing, he speaks with experience and authority. A self-described ‘action guy’, some might assume the game of poker would be too sedate for someone with his bristling energy.
If that’s the case, it’s probably because they’ve never played with him. Unpredictability, power and commitment aren’t the only things Eubank carries with him from the ring to the table — there’s also the matter of his poker face.
“I can't tell you how many times I've been hurt — devastatingly hurt — in a fight, but I cannot show that emotion,” Eubank explains. “If you show that you’re hurt, if you show that you're weak, people will punish you. In poker, they'll go all-in and they'll get you off your hand. In boxing, they will attack and they will shut you out. You have to show that nothing's phased you.”
Sitting here by the Mediterranean Sea at EPT Monte Carlo, it’s hard to believe anything could phase Eubank.
It was less than two weeks ago that he emerged victorious from an emotional, wildly aggressive fight versus Conor Benn in London, and while his face may still bear a few stitches as a reminder of the recency of that encounter, his smile is the bigger giveaway: he’s happy to be here, and why not — he’s got a poker game to play.
Eubank is in town to take on Ben ‘Spraggy’ Spragg, Adam McKola, Rory Jennings, Felix Schneiders and Spencer Carmichael-Brown in a cash game tonight, to be streamed live on Spraggy’s Twitch and YouTube channels.
‘I thought, how hard can it be? It turned out to be extremely hard’
Day 3 of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event may be in action just several hundred feet away from us, but Eubank isn’t here for the tournament action.
“You have to be willing to grind and graft, sit there and fold, fold, fold,” says Eubank of the tournament crowd. “I'm an action guy: I want to play with terrible cards and I want to suck out on somebody!”
He’ll get that chance soon enough, but we can’t help wondering how Eubank’s methodical approach to boxing sits alongside his more action-heavy attitude to poker. Few successful fighters enter the ring with a plan to get lucky. Fundamentals, strategy and tactics are key to success in the ring, though as fellow boxer Mike Tyson once famously said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Perhaps Eubank’s more cavalier approach to poker stems from his unique introduction to the game? Like so many others, his first taste of poker came at a low-stakes cash game in his home town of Brighton. Buying in short to a £1/2 game, he splashed about until his stack was gone.
“I didn't really know what I was doing,” recalls Eubank of that first session. “I thought, ‘how hard can it be?’ It turned out to be extremely hard. I was doing outrageous things, just because I thought that was what you were supposed to do. I was making terrible calls, going all-in with nothing.”
Too many poker stories end right there, without the player giving more consideration to the game, seeking to improve and trying again. For Eubank, the next major poker lesson he’d learn would not take place in his local £1/2 game, but with one of the greatest players in poker.
‘He just threw me $10,000’
Undeterred from his unsuccessful first foray into the poker world, Eubank kept playing, and kept improving, until one day he found himself at the ARIA in Las Vegas, playing the $1/3 and $2/5 cash games.
Up a couple of hundred dollars, he decided to call it a day and head over to a club, when he bumped into one of his poker heroes and couldn’t resist saying hello.
“Who do I see in front of me but Mr Phil Hellmuth? He was really friendly, he asks what I do and I tell him, ‘I’m Chris, I’m a boxer’. He says ‘Oh, wow, I love boxing!’ and he asks me if I want to join him in a private game in the Ivey Room.”
That game would feature the likes of Steve Aoki and Alan Keating, and was a considerable step up in stakes from the entry-level game Eubank had been playing that evening.
“I have, like, $400 on me and I know these games are not that size. I've never played that big before, but I thought I just can't say no. Even if I go and lose all my money here, at least I’ll have the story."
“One guy’s got $20K, one guy’s got $50K, one guy’s got $100K. How am I going to play in this game? They ask how much I want to buy-in for. I say I don’t have any cash on me right now but I can get some. One guy at the table, he says ‘Phil, he’s with you?’, and he just threw me $10,000... which was two chips.”
If this is starting to sound a little like Act 1 of a movie we’ve all seen before, don’t worry: Eubank may have been out of his depth, but he wasn’t exactly cannon fodder. “I’m thinking, ‘this is crazy’. I'm used to people going all in and showing aces and kings, but here I'm seeing 7-2, I'm seeing Q-4 offsuit, I'm seeing dust, over and over again. I always thought that the higher you went in terms of stakes in poker, the better and more knowledgeable the players were, but these guys were playing like morons!
“I made my first royal flush in this game, and I got paid — doubled up. I won, I think, $10,000 over about three or four hours, gave the guy his $10K back, and that was my introduction into high stakes. And from then on, I never looked back. I've been playing in these games now for the last four or five years.”
Steel sharpens steel
Now, ahead of his encounter with Spraggy and the boys in the upcoming streamed cash game, Eubank is looking to put his skills into action, and not just by playing terrible cards and sucking out.
He shares one other key lesson that boxing has taught him, which he carries with him at the poker table.
“Training with elite-level fighters boosts your game: you pick up and absorb things you can use to your advantage in your own fights. It’s the same with poker: if you play with better players, yes you can lose money, but you will pick up all kinds of things that you can take into other games. The better the people you have around you, the better you’ll be.”
And once tonight’s clash is in the books, what’s next for Chris Eubank Jr?
“I can't share anything official, but there are massive fights in the pipeline. When the time is right, I will sit down with my team and we will map out the route we are going to take. But one thing is for sure: the next fight I have — which will be this year — will be a massive one.”
Eubank may have mastered his poker face, but this time anyone can tell: He’s not bluffing.
The live cash game, with blinds of €10/25 and a minimum buy-in of €5,000, can be found from 9pm CET, May 7 at Spraggy's Twitch and YouTube channels.
Images courtesy of Danny Maxwell/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd.
