2012 WSOP, Day 32: In Which My Shoes Give Away Where I Have Been

Was another packed day yesterday at the WSOP. Spent most of it helping cover Event No. 47, the $1,500 PLO8 event.

I covered this same event as well last year, and while jotting down all of those cards and keeping track of the highs and lows can be a bit headachy, it’s actually a very fun event to watch. Lots of action, of course, plus the players who have made it deep this year seem more inclined than most to engage in table talk -- often humorous -- which makes watching the action and reporting on it all the more entertaining.

Before the day began I met up with Tommy Angelo. It’s become kind of an annual date for us to have breakfast at least once during the Series.

Tommy impressed me with a Sherlock Holmes-like bit of deduction when we first met yesterday. As I was walking to our meeting, I’d noticed my black shoes looking especially dusty, almost like I had spilled a cup of flour on them. Feeling a little conspicuous, I pointed them out to him as soon as we met, planning to explain why they looked the way they did. But Tommy did so before I could.

“Did you go hiking?” he asked. Yes, I nodded. Then, before I could explain, he continued. “Red Rock Canyon?”

He’d nailed it, of course. Like a real shamus.

Was great fun catching up with him and hearing about his work on his next book project, Painless Poker.

Angelo has a couple of other excellent titles out already, both of which combine his talents for storytelling and poker instruction. His Elements of Poker (2007) remains a highly worthwhile book that I continue to recommend to those who haven’t read it before. (See a full review here.)

And his 2011 title A Rubber Band Story and Other Poker Tales also includes much that is both entertaining and edifying. I reviewed that one as well for the Betfair Poker blog, if you’re curious. (By the way, don’t ask me who that picture is next to my byline on those older Betfair pieces -- some glitch has caused a person other than myself appear there, not that the “Shamus” pic is me, either.)

It sounds like the new book will include even more excursions into fiction, with Angelo creating characters and plots that allow him to tell some fun and interesting poker stories while also delivering advice about how to deal with tilt and other poker-related challenges.

I told Tommy a bit about the novel I have now finished and am currently having people read in order to get feedback about revising. We also discussed and compared our writing processes as well as ideas about marketing and promoting our work.

After an hour we parted, as Tommy had plans to engage in some more detective work at the cash tables in the Pavilion room.

Meanwhile I trudged back through the halls of the Rio to the Amazon room where I’d spend the rest of the day and night doing a lot more walking back and forth between my laptop and the tables, still carrying the dust of Red Rock Canyon to and fro.