Racing to Monaco (and Back)

Sorry for the lack of updates of late. The last two weeks have been taken up with travel and tournament reporting, another trip to Monaco for the PokerStars Championship Monte-Carlo having carried me away from the farm.

This was my third trip to Monte-Carlo, site of the annual Monaco Grand Prix happening later this month. Not at all a bad place to spend time either working or vacationing. The temps were a little cooler than usual and there was some rain off and on, though for the most part the weather was nice and I had one of those fantastic fifth-floor views looking out on the Mediterranean and the cruise ships passing to and fro.

The poker was fun, kicked off by a €100,000 Super High Roller that drew a decent-sized field of 61 entries (counting re-entries). Comedian and actor Kevin Hart was there, as he was in the Bahamas back in January, and he added some entertainment during the first day especially, and into Day 2 until he busted well shy of the cash.

On several occasions Hart got the attentions of those of us reporting on the event, delivering us quotes with explicit instructions that the lines be shared as though representing our own thoughts and commentary, not his.

“Reporter, reporter!” he’d say (for example). “I have a quote for you, but it has to come from you. Say... ‘Kevin Hart is making poker cool for the first time ever. He is taking poker in a sexy direction.’”

And so on. Late on Day 1 he managed to pick up aces and knock out two short-stacked players in a three-way preflop all-in, after which his quote -- or rather our comment about him (as dictated by Hart) -- was “Kevin Hart says that poker... is a science. And in this science experiment, he’s f**king the pros!”

I happened to catch Hart’s knockout on Day 2. All in with pocket sevens versus Byron Kaverman’s ace-four, two aces flopped, a seven came on the turn, then a four on the river. Hart took it well, though, then the next day came a press conference in which a new partnership was announced between Hart and PokerStars. Not sure what all it will entail, other than his being involved with promoting the game and site going forward.

There was no media event per se this time, although we did get to play in a charity event which added up to a couple of hours of entertainment for your humble scribbler.

Didn’t get over to it until well after it had begun, which meant mostly nursing a short stack and never quite being able to get anything going chip-wise. (That's me with position on fellow media event expert Frank Op de Woerd of PokerNews.) But there were a lot of laughs at my table where Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst, Fatima Moreira de Melo, and Felipe Ramos were seated to start, thanks largely to Felipe’s jokes and the subsequent (even funnier) analysis of his joke-telling style.

Both the Main Event and High Roller were interesting as well, with one highlight coming near the end when I had a chance to talk with Daniel Dvoress who had a red-hot series, making three high roller final tables (including the Super High Roller), cashing in a fourth high roller, and cashing in the Main as well. Friendly, smart guy who incredibly has accumulated about $5 million in cashes over the last few years without (1) playing at the WSOP or (2) winning a tournament. (Here’s the PokerStars blog post with our conversation.)

The trip home had one out-of-the-ordinary incident to report. Took a morning flight from Nice to London, landing at Heathrow Airport about two-and-a-half hours before my scheduled flight back to the U.S. Was going on less than two hours’ sleep, actually, after having had to take care of a lot of extra work stuff before crashing in the hotel one last time.

Disembarked and wound my way through the terminal to a bus ready to take us over to Terminal 3 and my gate. After a short wait we filled the bus and sat for a while, then were told to get back off the bus and reenter the terminal. Eventually there came an announcement -- a “slight incident” at Terminal 3 had occurred, and no one was allowed to go there at all.

I wasn’t too concerned until I checked Twitter, where a couple of different stories were being breathlessly passed around to explain the delay. One was a terror suspect had been arrested at Terminal 3 after arriving. Another had to do with a suspicious package. Lots of references to all of Heathrow being on “lock down” and no flights coming or going.

I was convinced I wasn’t going anywhere soon.

Much to my surprise, though, about 40 minutes later we were back on the bus, and while I ended up having to hurry a bit I made it onto my on-time flight without much problem. Later learned the arrest had happened the day before. Meanwhile there wasn’t any suspicious package that caused the delay, but rather a dude running through security with his bag without waiting for it to go through an extra check. In other words, it really was a “slight incident.”

Got me thinking of how misleading Twitter can be with these things, quickly spreading inaccurate or outright false information that can be nonetheless convincing.

Glad to be back on the farm, where I’ll be staying put for the next couple of months -- and posting a bit more.

Photos: courtesy Neil Stoddart, Manuel Kovsca / PokerStars blog.

Travel Report: EPT12 Grand Final, Day 7 -- Runner-Up

The year is only about a third over, but I feel like I’ve endured enough runner-ups for the rest of 2016 already. My Carolina Panthers lost the Super Bowl in February, then my UNC Tar Heels lost the championship game last month. Heck, even the Charlotte Hornets teased me into thinking we might win that first round series versus the Miami Heat before coming up short in the end.

Now I have my own second-place finish to add to the list, after playing deep into the night in the media tournament here in Monaco at the European Poker Tour Grand Final.

Prior to my own poker-playing fun came Day 2 of the Main Event, a relatively shorter day that went from noon to around 8:30 p.m. without a dinner break. Got a sandwich and a cup of tea after that, then headed over to the media tourney that started around 10 p.m.

I’m not playing a heck of a lot these days, so these media tournaments are kind of a treat. Like others on the EPT, this one was €20 to play. Unlike others, they made this one a “knockout” event with a €5 bounty on each player, too, making the entry €25.

We got going on time, and were seated in the main tournament room along with the other side events still going on all around us. About 40 or so participated, I think, or perhaps a few more.

Footballer legend Ronaldo (i.e., Ronaldo Nazário) played -- you can see him pictured at left -- as did Friend of Team PokerStars and Global Poker League player Felipe “Mojave” Ramos (against whom I played an interesting hand in the media tournament at EPT Dublin). I didn’t end up playing against either of them, but had a ton of fun nonetheless competing versus my media friends and colleagues.

Enjoyed greatly hands during the first hour-plus when the blinds weren’t yet too big to prevent postflop shenanigans, giving me a chance to play position a lot and also occasionally pressure shorter stacks. Soon, though, that became harder to pull off as the levels were only 10 minutes long, forcing the all-ins all around fairly frequently.

Got in on a five-euro last longer organized by Frank Op de Woerd that ended up being worth more than third-place prize money as so many participated. That became interesting once we got to the nine-handed final table when I had an above average stack and the only other two still in the last longer -- Victor (who writes for the PokerStarsLive French site) and Stephen (of the PS blog) -- came in short.

While I started the final table well by adding chips in the first hand, those two went all in a couple of times against each other after with Stephen coming out the worse of it, then shortly after getting eliminated. Soon after that Victor and I decided to chop the last longer, guaranteeing each of us a profit on the night.

Made it through the cash bubble (the top six finishers got paid), then with five left got short myself. A hand then arose in which Victor had raised all in and after posting the big blind I had only a couple of BBs left. Looked down at 5-2-offsuit, decided my range included any two cards, and called. Despite being up against two bigger cards I ended up making two pair by the turn, which beat the pair of jacks Victor made on the river, and a little after that chipped up enough to take the lead (winning a big one with pocket kings once along the way).

Actually had something like half the chips with four left, though things got even again when we were down to three. Victor then finally went out in third, and one of the TV guys Farhan and myself were heads-up. I joked that if we were still playing at 5:30 a.m. they’d make us stop as had happened with Ole Schemion and Fabian Quoss the night before in the €50K Single-Day High Roller, although we knew it wasn’t going to last much longer given the relative depth of the stacks.

I had a small advantage when we had our first all-in situation, with me calling his shove with K-10 and feeling pretty good about things when he tabled K-2. But a deuce appeared in the window, and suddenly I was down to four BBs and outchipped something like 6-to-1.

I’d double once with 5-3 versus his J-6 after he flopped a six, then I hit runner-runner two pair (I was around 6% to win on that flop). But then Farhan got me with 5-4 versus my A-3 (see left), meaning every heads-up all-in was won by the player with the worst hand when the chips went in the middle.

It was around 2 a.m. by then. Like in Barcelona earlier this EPT season (where I finished third in the media tournament), my only real disappointment was missing out on getting a winner’s photo, although the €275 I ended up taking away was a decent consolation prize. That total came from second-place prize money, chopping the last-longer, and the half-dozen or so bounties I collected. Just missed out again on being the first to win two of these media tournaments on the EPT (I think), after winning that one way back at EPT Kyiv many years ago.

Grabbing some sleep now. The tournament most people want to read about is still going on today, of course, with just under 200 making it to today’s Main Event Day 3. Check in again at the PokerStars blog to see who wins the all-ins over there and continues to have a chance to make their final table on Friday.

Photo (nine-handed final table): courtesy Jules Pochy/PokerStars blog.

GPL Moves Into Third Week

Was busy for much of yesterday although by late afternoon I was able to switch on the Global Poker League and watch the 6-max matches go by.

They’ve now introduced webcams for those (a couple of players at a time) as well as some “postgame” interviews with players, all of which adds considerably to what would otherwise be a fairly dry watch of an online sit-n-go. I also feel like there’s something genuinely interesting -- and perhaps even unique -- when it comes to the players’ attempts at analyzing hands on the fly.

I’ve never much gotten into watching the single-player streams on Twitch in which a player tries to do what he or she can to engage an audience, and perhaps offer some strategy advice along the way. Many of those often seem to be “about” cheering for a player to go deeper in a tournament or build a stack on a cash table, which can be interesting if you care about the player but otherwise is not terribly compelling.

Meanwhile on the GPL streams players are perhaps in a bit more vulnerable position when it comes to offering on-the-fly analysis. For one thing, viewers can see everyone’s hole cards (whereas the player obviously cannot), a big distinction from the Twitch streams in which those watching can only see the channel host’s cards. Thus we hear the player talking through decisions knowing whether or not his or her reads of others’ ranges are accurate, which in turn gives us a better idea how such decision-making works (or doesn’t).

I think also there’s much less of an “us-versus-them” feel to the GPL streams as opposed to other poker streams on Twitch. Sure, we might well have a rooting interest, and curiosity about outcomes and who wins and who loses also obviously motivates a person to watch. But I’m finding my attention shifting a lot as I follow the different players’ thoughts about the hands their playing, occasionally expressed by multiple players within the same hand.

The last couple of matches today (involving the “Americas Conference”) were fun, too, thanks in part to Tyler Kenney (Bryn’s brother) and Felipe “Mojave” Ramos both getting to heads-up and splitting the victories.

Both players were “wild cards” added to their respective teams (the New York Rounders for Kenney and the São Paulo Metropolitans for Ramos), and both were clearly very excited to do well in their GPL debuts. They both tended toward the “fit-or-fold” style of play (as noted by commentator Sam Grafton along the way), which I think many of us who consider ourselves recreational players also often employ, adding perhaps another layer of interest to following their progress.

The excitement level varies quite a bit, of course, with these GPL shows, and I’ll admit during certain stretches finding myself wandering away when it fails to engage. But I do think there’s something genuinely different about the shows compared to other poker TV, and so for now -- while the novelty remains fresh, anyway -- I’m continuing to dial them up.

Image: Global Poker League.

Travel Report: 2016 PCA, Day 3: Learning about Brazil in the Bahamas

I was on for most of Day 2 of the Latin American Poker Tour Bahamas Main Event yesterday, getting a chance to leave a little early again and so wasn’t there for the last few hours of play.

A ton of big names went deep in the sucker, and some are still in it with 10 left. Just looking at the last half-dozen tables or so, Aaron Massey (11th), Ole Schemion (16th), Jeff Rossiter (17th), Mike Leah (20th), Daniel Weinman (21st), last year’s LAPT Bahamas winner Josh Kay (26th), Carter Gill (31st) Marvin Rettenmaier (32nd), Michael Telker (35th), Chris Moorman (39th), Juan Martin Pastor (43rd), Yann Dion (45th), and Michael Mizrachi (48th) all lasted until the latter levels last night.

Among those left in the top 10 are the leader Georgios Sotiropoulous, Joe Kuether, Will Molson, Darren Elias, Ismael Bojang, and the last of the Team PokerStars Pros (and representatives of Latin America), Andre Akkari. A solid line-up, although as I was talking about yesterday, the PCA tends to attract pretty tough fields all around, especially in the marquee events, so it isn’t surprising to see a lot of players with plenty of past results getting back to final tables.

Speaking of Akkari, I didn’t mention yesterday how before the start of Day 1 he and Felipe “Mojave” Ramos -- a “Friend of Team PokerStars” -- hosted the first of the “Breakfast with the Pros” sessions they have scheduled prior to just about every day of play here (pictured above via Neil Stoddart of the PokerStars blog).

The topic of their talk and Q&A was the “boom” presently happening for poker in Brazil, and I have to say despite having just been to Brazil for an LAPT event and having a lot of experience covering tourneys at other LAPT stops, I learned a few things I hadn’t known before about poker in Brazil.

There were a couple of big takeaways for me besides just learning a few more details about how poker has become especially popular in Brazil over recent years, something I could readily see to be the case from my visit to the Brazilian Series of Poker Millions and LAPT Grand Final in São Paulo in late November.

One was how poker’s proponents really have managed to associate the game more readily with sports than with other gambling games in Brazil. The lack of casinos there helps in that regard, as poker is generally played in poker-only rooms or in tournament series like the BSOP.

In America that way of “marketing” poker -- or even just defending the game from its detractors -- can’t only be marginally effective thanks to a legacy lasting more than two centuries placing poker firmly alongside not just other gambling games, but other “immoralities” put under the category of “outlaw” activities. (This is why attempts to “sportify” fail to resonate that much in the U.S., and in other places, too.)

The other interesting item I learned from the talk was how the recent downturn in Brazil’s economy has encouraged legislators now to start allowing casinos and other gambling games in order to find a new revenue source. Which means poker is interestingly going to be caught in the middle somewhat between groups with interest in the new casinos and gambling and the Ministério do Esporte and other who’ll want to continue to keep poker in the “sport” category.

You can read more about the talk here “Reporting on the Brazilian ‘boom.’”

Heading back over now for the LAPT Bahamas finale. It won’t be live streamed, unfortunately, but you can follow the updates from start to finish on the PokerStars blog.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.