Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 9 -- The Final Final Final Final Final

Writing this morning from a quiet, sparsely populated terminal in the Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau where I await my flight home after a week-and-a-half in the Caribbean. The 35-event PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has come to an end, and while the trip was great fun I’m now eagerly looking forward to cleaning stalls and freezing temps.

I’m thinking of my nephew who will be turning six relatively soon, the one who likes to invent different games for us to play. Noted yesterday how I wrote one post this week -- “Finding little edges” -- in which I mentioned him and one of his games, the very common one among youngsters of jumping around from one piece of furniture to another while referring to the carpet below as “hot lava” or quicksand or something else treacherous.

He has another game which we have “played” although in actuality the game is strictly him reiterating the rules to me over and over without our ever competing (or so I can tell). Just when the game appears to be over, he amends things to say how the next exchange will be the “Final Final.” Then comes the “Final Final Final,” the “Final Final Final Final,” the “Final Final Final Final Final,” and so on.

There were a couple of finals occupying our attention yesterday, the conclusions of the $10K Main Event and $25K High Roller. Over in the Main the action was fairly swift, taking around six hours, I believe, for the final six players to play down to the winner, Kevin Schulz (photographed above by Joe Giron).

Schulz roomed with Faraz Jaka on this trip, and the story of the pair’s first meeting around eight years ago at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -- at a talk given by Urbana-Champaign alum Barry Greenstein, no less -- was intriguing. You can read that story and profiles of the other five who made it to the last day here.

Schulz won a first prize of $1,491,580 (there was no deal). Meanwhile Jaka was at the final table of the High Roller where he had a shot at nearly $1.3 million. He’d bust in seventh, though, then the final two players struck a deal to even out the payouts between first- and second-place.

The eventual winner, Ilkin Garibli, had a big chip lead on Joe Kuether when the deal was struck for the remaining prize money, but the payouts upon which they agreed were nearly even (about $1.1 million for Garibli and $1.05 million for Kuether). Stephen wrote an introduction to Garibli early in the afternoon, noting among other things that this was the first live tournament for the Azerbaijan player -- perhaps an explanation for how the deal went.

From there they played only for the trophy and SLYDE watch, and it took long enough (a couple more hours or so) for us to recognize the irony of the prize of a watch extending the time of the tourney.

There were also a number of unlikely suckouts and other tourney-extending turns that I am sure made it seem like to most of those still sticking around that someone was revising their fate over and again. The final final final final final final....

Along the way yesterday I shared one anecdotal post about Dan Heimiller who was leading early in the day in the High Roller before busting in eighth. It includes details and an appreciation of his currently inaccessible website, and is titled “But where will we buy our X-ray glasses and sea monkeys?”

Even with the late finish (around 1:30 a.m.), a group of us got to hang out for a while longer before going our separate ways. Was a fun end to a fun week, and I’m very grateful for having had the chance to come work with the PokerStars bloggers (Brad, Howard, Stephen, and Adam), photographers (Joe, Neil, and Carlos), staff (too many to name), and alongside all the other poker media folks whom I missed seeing at last summer’s WSOP.

Now, though, I’m just wanting to see Vera, brush and feed some horses, and chase around some cats. So glad to be heading home final final final final finally.

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 8 -- Penultimate-Day Poker

We’re almost there. One day to go here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure with both the Main Event and High Roller tournaments scheduled to complete today.

Poker-wise there was much of interest yesterday. In the Main Event, Chance Kornuth stormed to a lead which he kept through the end of the day as they played down to six players.

I’m curious to see how the two remaining South Americans -- Diego Ventura (of Peru) and Juan Martin Pastor (of Argentina) -- do today, both of whom are more online than live players, although Pastor I’ve come to recognize from the LAPTs where he’s notched some cashes. (Meet Pastor in this great video from late last year when he clinched Supernova Elite before a crowd of partying friends.)

The High Roller, meanwhile, played down to 11 players with a kind of wild knockout of Daniel Negreanu in 14th by Dan Heimiller highlighting the late night action. Here’s the hand report of that one from PokerNews, with Negreanu’s post-bust series of tweets lamenting how the hand went also interesting to read.

Jean-Pascal Savard carries the chip lead into the final day in that one, with Heimiller third in chips. (On a side note, I'm lamenting the fact that apparently Heimiller's excellent website is no longer online. From where will I order my sea monkeys now?)

Had a fun High Roller post yesterday titled “Finding little edges” in which I managed to discuss the carpets, talk to Jake Cody, and mention my five-and-a-half-year-old nephew.

There was the famed PCA party last night (from which came the above pic), moved indoors because of inclement weather. Was quite a spectacle, with dancers, marching bands, people walking around on stilts, and a nonstop beat with food and drink a-plenty.

Heading in for one more day of fun-slash-work today, after which I’m eager to get back to the farm tomorrow. Follow the reports today on both the Main Event and High Roller on the PokerStars blog, and watch PokerNews for hands, counts, and everything else.

The Independent Chip Model, Chat Box Commentaries, and Sea Monkeys

Over the last few weeks I have spent a few late nights helping cover some of the big online tournaments. In my recaps I generally try to include some information about the story leading up to the final table, but my primary duty is usually to report how the final table goes. That includes chronicling all of the final table bustouts, as well as giving some indication of the general ebb and flow at tourney’s end (changes to chip stacks, lead changes, etc.).

As you might imagine, some of these final tables are more interesting than others, both in terms of the play and the “personalities” involved, the latter primarily indicated by contributions to the chat box.

What I most often encounter -- the “default” final table, you could say -- is a tournament ending with relatively short-stacked players taking turns open-shoving all in before the flop, getting called, then getting busted, with zero chit-chat other than perhaps a conversation to discuss a deal once the sucker gets down to two- or three-handed.

Sometimes, though, I’ll see a genuinely interesting hand play out and/or some dialogue that makes everything a bit more attention-grabbing, perhaps even helping to make the tourney write-up a little more fun to compose.

Last week came one such instance. It was the “Super Tuesday” on PokerStars, a $1,050 buy-in event that attracted 349 players. Dan “Lenny” Heimiller actually ended up winning the thing, with Greg “DuckU” Hobson -- who had won the same tournament just a week before -- coming in third. Here’s the full recap, if you’re at all curious. And here’s Heimiller’s excellent website, if you’ve never seen it before (and are looking for a few grins).

Was actually a fairly riveting final table from start to finish, with some creative play and a lot of chatter from several players. One in particular, after losing a coin flip to DuckU, got very hot in the chatbox, directing a few insults toward his opponent. Hobson was quite cool about it all, though. “Cmon man,” he typed, “it’s frustrating to lose a huge key flip, but no reason to talk trash...... step up the class.” To which his opponent typed “ok,” and let it go.

Another interesting moment arose when they were seven-handed. Actually, it was a fairly routine situation as far as these MTTs go. I found it intriguing, though, perhaps mostly because of the chat that came afterwards.

The blinds were 3,200/6,400, with an ante of 800, meaning with seven left there was 15,200 in the middle at the start of each hand. The table folded around to the players in the blinds who, as it happened, were sixth and seventh in chips, respectively. The SB, down to 92,572 (a little less than 15 big blinds), open-shoved all in. That left the BB, who had but 58,439 left (just over 9 big blinds), with a decision. He took a few seconds, then made the call.

Not at all an unusual turn of events. “Standard,” as they say.

The SB showed while the BB turned over . I remember thinking the small blind’s hand was perhaps a little better than I’d necessarily expected to see, while the big blind’s hand might’ve been a tad worse. But really they each could’ve turned up just about anything there, given the stack sizes and situation.

As it happened, the flop brought a queen, and the shorter-stacked of the two ended up doubling up. The other, crippled to about four big blinds after that one, would soon go out in seventh place. Before he did, though, he took to the chat box.

“icm noooooooooooooooooo,” he typed, referring to those “independent chip model” calculations some players make when facing decisions such as the “push-or-fold” ones he and his opponent in the blinds had just made.

The suggestion, it seemed, was that he didn’t think his opponent’s call with Q-4-offsuit was justified mathematically -- a complaint one imagines he probably would be less likely to make had he won the hand.

I don’t pretend to understand ICM, though I do get how it involves accounting for a number of variables (some known, some assumed) to help one make a calculation that helps dictate what sort of action to take -- e.g., whether to call the SB’s shove or fold and wait for a better spot.

Looking beyond the actual situation, what I found most interesting here was the losing player explicitly citing ICM as a kind of supporting witness testifying on his behalf. It was a bad call, he appeared to be insisting, because ICM says so!

Also interesting was the winning player’s response. Incidentally, having watched the last few tables play down, my impression had been this player was a solid, smart player. Such is usually the case for almost everyone who makes it deep in these big MTTs, although sometimes it will happen that a less tutored player will win some big hands and sneak through to fill one of the final seats.

“It’s called i’m shortest,” explained the BB. “And getting over 2-1,” he added. “icm bad shove for you actually... because I know math!”

Kind of salt in the wound, there, but the player -- perhaps self-conscious about the having slipped into lecture-mode as he had -- quickly added one last postscript to his commentary:

“and know what....MATH IS STUPID,” he typed, giving his opponent one last thing to think about as he hit the rail in seventh.

Like I say, I’m not going to begin to judge either player’s play or pretend to talk as though I know what ICM truly dictates in this situation. (If anyone wants to spell it out in layman’s terms in the comments, please do.) But I did find it a fascinating little exchange, highlighting how tourneys can instantly create situations fraught with highly complicated dynamics made all the more so by players’ differing strategic approaches.

Then again, I also find Dan Heimiller’s website fascinating, too. And awesome.

Sea monkeys! X-Ray glasses! Strategies for fighting the man!

Check it out.