I first met Paul “The Marbella Kid” Zimbler a couple of years ago at a poker festival in Torre Real, not far from Marbella itself. He was handing out baseball caps for a revolutionary new card room called ‘Dusk Till Dawn’.
And now, a few years later, he is launching his own business - a poker school aimed at new professionals and amateurs looking for that extra edge.
With all the interest spreading virally around the net about TIPS, I was lucky enough to get a place on the launch event at a glossy new hotel in Elstree, north of London. Arriving the night before, I sank a few beers with an old friend from deepest somerset who spotted me whilst walking through the bar. It’s a small world.
The day started a little behind schedule, as one of the guest speakers was having problems in traffic, as were a couple of the people attending the course. Paul had laid on egg, bacon and sausage rolls for breakfast along with copious quantities of coffee and there are worse ways to kill the 20 minutes before we kick-off.
With everyone present, Paul started proceedings with a short introduction and a couple of Youtube videos showing some key concepts - he paused each of these at various points, asked what we would do and why, told us what he would do and why, and in one of them showed himself making a mistake. It was a refreshing and fairly counter-egotistical way of illustrating that everyone makes mistakes, even the pros, and if you can spot these mistakes then even the amateurs and less experienced players can take advantage.
We were then treated to a talk by Nik Persaud - an experienced cash and tournament player who stressed the importance of remembering some of the simple rules - such as Sklanksy’s fundamental theorem, and illustrated with examples. Nik is a very energetic and enthusiastic teacher.
A short break and we played a STT (the winner of each receiving a prize) with a chance to think about what we’d learned already in a real poker game. It’s a nice touch. Too much theory all at once can be boring and can be forgotten. By playing a short (and at 8 minute blinds it was very short) game it helped it all sink in.
And thus the day continued. James Browning from Sky Poker was there and gave some very focused and pertinent advice, we played another small STT after some seminars and the final was on tells and body language.
And then we got to put everything we learned on the day into practice in the main competition - with a chance to win a couple of seats at the WSOPE £1k event.
I failed miserably. I was first out when in the first hand I ran AK into AA and lost a chunk, then made an expert read to decide that nobody had hit top pair on a 4-way flop and my second pair was good, especially when a blank fell on the turn. Unfortunately Nik had hit a set of blanks and I was gone in hand # 5. Belatedly, I remembered a piece of James’ advice: “If you play a tournament and don’t really committ to it, or have somewhere to be, you may as well just burn your entry fee”.
I got in the car and drove the 4 hours back to York ready to meet the new girlfriend’s parents the next day. How very true his advice was.
Paul’s instincts are spot on. He knows what the market needs, and is providing it. TIPS is going to be a huge success, and I’m looking forward to going on one of the longer 2-day courses once he get’s them up and running.
Check The International Poker School’s website here.
