That’s the Way We Do It!

Last night I dialed up ESPN on the crystal receiver to watch the ongoing coverage of the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. Got there an hour early (the show is starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time now rather than 8 p.m.) and therefore happened to catch that terrific one-hour documentary about Baltimore Colts football fans, “The Band That Wouldn’t Die.”

Directed by Baltimore-guy Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural), the focus was on the Colts marching band that persistently stayed together even after the team left for Indianapolis following the 1983 season. Great stuff -- even moving, at times -- that said a lot about how sports can genuinely bring people together and help build community (in my opinion). I highly recommend the special, if you happen to see it being repeated here anytime soon. (Here is the trailer, if yr curious.)

I suppose poker can have a similar effect on us, bringing us together via a common interest and thus enabling the further forging of relationships and meaningful interactions. Watching the coverage of the end of Day 6 of the WSOP Main Event last night was great fun, and reminded me, in fact, of what it was like to have been there as the field shrunk down to just 64 players. This was the day when the media and others there in the Amazon Room now most certainly were outnumbering the players, and the sense of being part of a small “community” of sorts became ever more evident.

We’d arrived at a point where we had enough reporters and bloggers to cover just about all of the big hands and bustouts, and so most of what was shown on ESPN last night I recalled fairly clearly, whether or not I happened to have been the one reporting a given hand.

Glancing back through the PokerNews live blog for Day 6, I’m seeing that I did happen to write up that hand in which Ludovic Lacay was all in with pocket kings versus Hamid Nourafchan’s pocket aces, and ended up spiking a king on the river to survive and win a whopping five million-chip pot. Don’t think they mentioned it on air, but I see in the post that Adam Bilzerian had said he’d folded a king, so that was the last one in the deck that saved Lacay. Had another post later on in which Lacay again saw a fortunate river card come, “Ludovic Lacay Lucky and Lovin’ It.”

My buddy FerricRamsium was reporting on the TV table that day, and he has a post in there describing that hand between Dennis Phillips and Darvin Moon in which Moon had A-K and Phillips pocket queens. An ace flopped for the Maryland logger, and Phillips managed to escape without too much harm. The ever-prescient FerricRamsium titled his post “A TV Hand.” Nice call, sir.

Tom Schneider was in that hand, too, although had fortunately dropped out preflop with his A-J. Got a big kick out of the segment late in the second hour focusing on Tom and his wife, Julie, who has been frequently shown on the rail cheering on Tom over the last couple of weeks. Julie’s own poker-playing was mentioned last night, and I believe last week the announcers did point out her third-place finish in an earlier bracelet event (Event No. 55, $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw). I’m remembering watching some of her fantastic finish play out in that event, and how Tom was on the rail then -- less vocal than Julie but no less supportive, utterly unable to stop smiling as he watched. Cool stuff.

Here’s my write up from July of that day of play in which I talk some about Schneider, Joe Sebok, and Dennis Phillips, and how cool it was to be going back to the Rio on Day 7 with those guys still in contention. Toward the very end of the ESPN coverage last night, a big hand for Phillips was shown, one that pushed him back up over 2.3 million. Seeing that hand caused me to remember how I had spoken to Phillips while walking out of the Rio that night. I’d last seen him with a shorter stack, so it was news to me when he told me about having hit a big hand near the end to get back into a healthier range heading into Day 7.

Was an exciting time, with lots of interesting possibilities still in play. And our little community of poker people would be back the next day to see what would happen.

Have to say, after several weeks of being less than enthused by this marathon coverage of the Main Event, I really dug the programming on ESPN last night. Some good poker, a few examples of genuinely clever storytelling, and fairly riveting throughout. As Julie sometimes says from the rail after Tom wins a hand, “that’s the way we do it!”

2008 WSOP, Day 41: Chuck Norris Doesn’t Dodge Bullets; Bullets Dodge Chuck Norris

I did end up volunteering to stay beyond the dinner break yesterday. Lots of reasons why I’m glad I did.

First off, covering the first three levels of Day 2b of the World Series of Poker Main Event was about as frustrating an experience as I’ve had this summer. Nobody’s fault in particular. It’s just that the logistics of the thing meant our jobs were really more like air traffic controllers than journalists. And to be honest it felt like we were crashing more often than landing safely.

Day 2b started with 2,378 players, and before the dinner break came we were already under 1,000. That meant that something like 230 players were busting out of the tournament every hour, or close to four per minute.

Now we had the full contingent out in force to try and chronicle this chaos. We knew we couldn’t possibly write blog posts about all of the bustouts, so that wasn’t a high-level concern. Wanted definitely to get hands involving big stacks and/or familiar names, but we didn’t need fret over posting every instance of a small-stack pushing all in with ace-rag, getting called by pocket tens, and being bounced from the proceedings.

The real problem was keeping track of the survivors. Tables were breaking at a ridiculously fast clip. I was in the Brasilia room, where we began the day with 65 full tables. All were gone within five hours or so, meaning we had tables full of players exiting and relocating every 4-5 minutes. And we had to communicate to our colleagues in the Amazon Room where they were headed. Sometimes the little game of telephone we were playing worked out just fine; other times, less so.

In any event, we were all feeling pretty damned harried by the time dinner rolled around. But we knew coming back from the break that there’d be no more such shenanigans, as all of the remaining players were now seated in the Amazon Room proper. I grabbed a spot at the end of the table on the front row of the Media Press Box and helped F-Train and FerricRamsium cover the Orange section of the Amazon Room.

Compared to the craziness of the afternoon, those last two levels went especially well, with most of my energies focused on writing posts, updating chip counts, and enjoying the whole scene.

Got to meet Iggy (finally), and was sincerely thrilled to see him make it through to Day 3. And when I say “see” I mean it literally -- Ignatius was seated at the table just below our spot for most of those two levels. We kept wanting to write up a hand in which he was involved, but there weren’t too many opportunities. The best shot would’ve been a hand in which Iggy had aces and the woman to his left made a heroic laydown of her pocket kings, but we’d missed most of the action on that one.

Also got to write up a ton of hands and other color-type posts. Among those playing last night were a fellow named Chuck Norris (not the Chuck Norris), another named Steve Austin (not the Steve Austin), and the Ultimate Fighting Championship announcer Bruce Buffer (yes, the Bruce Buffer). When all three were seated in the same section, I had my chance:

Power Poker
Check out this lineup . . .

Over in the Red section, Chuck Norris is sitting at Table #1. Our understanding is that Chuck Norris doesn't dodge bullets. Bullets dodge Chuck Norris.

Nearby at Table #13 is Steve Austin. When he pushes all in, we expect he'll have the stone cold nuts.

And just in case anything breaks out, UFC announcer Bruce Buffer is close by at Table #25.

Later in the evening we were being encouraged to include a post about Kara Scott, a very photogenic female player who looked as though she was going to make it through to Day 3.

I went down and watched several hands, and it was clear she was sitting tight, not wanting to get too involved before day’s end. Finally picked up a bit of table talk and came up with a post, then discovered we had no picture in our gallery to accompany it.

FerricRamsium, who besides blogging is also a terrific photographer, came to the rescue. That’s the picture he took to the left there. And here is the post that went along with it.

Anyhow, by night’s end I had gotten over my frustrations from earlier in the day and was back to feeling that camaraderie I spoke a bit about last post. I’ve said it before in different ways, but these are some cool cats I’ve been privileged to be hooked up with here this summer. We’re all on for Day 3 tomorrow, and it looks like I’m on for Day 4 as well. Hard to believe it’s gonna end here soon.

But I’m sure those 1,300 or so players who’ll be coming back tomorrow feel the same way, too. Just want to keep it going. Keep living the dream.