Bishop to Toronto in One Move:
A Family Reunites Through Red Hot Poker

David Bishop builds things. By trade, he builds houses from the ground up.

"I'm just now working on building a house for my wife and me," he beams. "It's our first, and we're excited!"

He also builds chip stacks at the poker table. Using a tight-aggressive style, and enough patience to wait out a bad run of cards, his creativity wins tournaments. Recently he used these skills at a qualifying tournament in Kelowna, BC, to beat out 90 other players and win a prize package that included airfare to Toronto, hotel accommodations, and a seat in the Red Hot Poker Tour's latest Tournament of Champions.

"I was looking forward to meeting Negreanu," he notes, excitedly, "but it didn't pan out." While a meeting with Kid Poker was not in the cards, a reunion with his family was. It had been about a year since all the Bishops were together in the same city. So Mom, Dad, and Brother Jon came to meet David in the morning, before sticking around for the beginning of the tournament. Jon, a Red Hot regular in the Kitchener area, almost made the tournament himself.

"It would have been SO cool to play with him in the same Tournament of Champions," David says.

Jon Bishop has a rare kind of brain cancer, and no doctor can say how he will do, or what he can expect. A win late in the season would have given him enough points to qualify, and a chance to play with David. But a session of chemo and other treatments had him knocked out that week. Still, a shared love of poker gives the Bishop Brothers a bond that stretches even across the country.

"He has some vision problems associated with the tumors," David says, "so when he plays, he needs the dealers to call out the table cards. But they're all good at doing that. It's so neat that he can have something like this to do while he isn't 100%, and being able to share that with him is even better."

During his trip to Toronto, David even unknowingly ran into some of his brother's poker-playing friends.

"They were like 'Hey, you look like Jon Bishop! Are you related?'"

The Bishop family watched David's TOC run until about 4:00pm or so. But Jon was getting pretty tired so they left, promising to come back later on should David go deep. "I don't think they anticipated it going to 2:00am nearly," David jokes.

David was one of four BC residents to make the trip east to compete against 150 or so other Red Hot players. The beginning of the tournament was thus quite daunting. "I knew NO ONE," he says, "in a strange place, in a pub that was PACKED PACKED PACKED full."

But pretty soon the Toronto crowd made him feel right at home. "Once they announced the BC people when the tourney had started, all the players at my table were like, 'You? Wow! Cool! What's the story!' So after that I really felt welcomed into the mix."

David's recollections of the tournament are still fresh in his mind, as vivid and clear as the day they happened. He doubled his stack during the first 2 hours of play, but then hit a vicious cold deck. Still, with some judicious maneuvering he managed to squeak into the dinner break. This is when things picked up again.

As the number of tables shrunk from 4 to 3, and from 3 to 2, David played a couple of hands that will stick in his memory for a while. The first one had him all-in with just an ace-high club flush draw, against the tournament's big stack.

"I raised all in thinking I could win it there, but when he called I thought I was doomed with a made pair or something," David remembers, "but the turn was the best-looking 7 of clubs I had ever seen."

And then, moments later, he pushed all-in after an early position raise from a tight player. The resulting aftermath turned out to be one of those adrenalin-filled dramatic moments that keep us all coming back to poker.

"Waiting for him to decide what to do was the longest 2 minutes of my life. When he got to his 3rd minute of thinking, I was sure I had the best hand. He ended up folding, and showed AJ offsuit, and I showed [pocket] queens. I still think that that was my best read and reaction in poker yet."

These two hands propelled David to second in chips, and as good a chance as anyone at winning the tournament, as the final table started. Even with the pressure of the moment, and the dramatic scene set, David maintained an easy confidence.

"I felt right at home to be honest. I love public speaking; I love crowds, so all of that was ok."

His mettle would be tested on the very first hand of the final table, when, after an all-in push ahead of him, he looked down to find pocket cowboys. "I reraise all in and see an Ace on the flop for the guy's AJ. But then the miracle King on the turn! It was so intense. The sweet table, the crowd of people, the monogrammed chairs. It was a bit of a dream come true.

He kept in touch with his family throughout, calling them during the break before the final table, and then again when it was down to 7, and then 5, and then 4 players. He managed a couple of well-timed double- and triple-ups, but could not survive yet another cold run of cards. When his K10 was not good enough to beat an opponent's A2, David's tournament run was over. As he got up from his seat, the crowd, recognizing his achievement and the distance he had traveled to get to the tournament, gave him a warm round of applause.

"It was SO good," David says, recalling the moment. "And after that exit, SOOO good. I like to think that I'm a people person, so I enjoy laughing it up with the crowd, but the send-off I got left me with such a good feeling, to be honest, it made the 4th place finish pale. Knowing that a group of total strangers accepted me into their world, and made me feel so welcome and extended the hand of kindness made for a great experience. I wish everyone could leave in 4th place in a big tournament and get such a warm ovation. It was really neat."

"Made me almost forget the 4th," he adds. And then, with a sly smile, "Wait... no not quite."

After the tournament, the man who now jokingly calls himself, "the 4th ranked amateur poker player in Canada", had time enough only to grab a slice of pizza and get back to his hotel before an early morning flight. He returned home to a wife that he describes as his "greatest supporter".

"It was SO cool for her to see my win at the one tourney [the qualifier in Kelowna]... she puts up with it, but for her to actually SEE me play and do well made her way more appreciative of the game and what I do in the game."

And though he left some people behind in Ontario, he does so with peace of mind

"[Jon] is doing ok, now," he says, "He's been such a trooper through all of this, and even though it's not a terminal disease, we still want him to have the best time he can have, and poker is a big part of that."

It seems that the things David Bishop builds -- whether it's a home, a chipstack, or a relationship with his family -- are strong enough to outlast just about anything.