You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best

The WSOP Main Event drew 7,221 entrants this year, a big boost from a year ago and actually the third-largest field ever behind the pre-UIGEA 2006 Main (8,773) and the last pre-Black Friday one in 2010 (7,319).

They’re down to a final table now, with the two-day respite before that gets going very welcome to those of us who've been at this for 10 days running. You’re no doubt following the action in the usual places, as well as on both ESPN and PokerGO (a very welcome addition to the coverage, imo).

Just to report quickly here on a few off-the-beaten path items, the WSOP Media Event happened back on Tuesday. Close to 100 played, I think, and your humble scribbler made it to the last 20 or so before finally busting a short stack.

“Thanks to all my backers,” I tweeted, forgetting to add the obligatory “AQ<QJ” afterwards. (The Media Event is a freeroll).

A few days after that Howard Swains and I felt uptight on a Saturday night and so spent part of the dinner break walking over to the other side of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino to enjoy a round of KISS Mini Golf.

Was a fun 45 minutes or so knocking golf balls around the course replete with cool black lights and glow-in-the-dark decor full of all sorts of KISS imagery, with the tunes blasting the whole way (natch). Click that pic above for a bigger image. Imagine “Calling Dr. Love” pounding through your device’s speakers as you do.

I’m going to post a full report in a few days over on the PokerStars blog which I’ll link to here. (Here’s that report: “Rock in the Rio at KISS Mini Golf.”)

Finally, the day after that (Sunday the 16th) I was parked as usual on media row when Antonio Esfandiari came around to settle up his “shirt bet” with Lance Bradley (here with Pocket Fives). Was humorous watching them tie up that loose end, then seeing Esfandiari look up at everyone with a grin to say “Who’s next?”

Most everyone cowered behind their laptops in response, not having Lance’s courage. (If you aren’t familiar with the bet, Lance spells it out here.)

More to come.

Dealing with KISS

So I’m clicking around today, as we all tend to do, and see Chuck Klosterman has written something like 10,000 words about KISS today for Grantland. It’s kind of a funny divide we have going here online these days -- everything is either over in an instant or designed to take up your whole afternoon.

Klosterman’s “definitive guide” to KISS has been occasioned by the fact that the four-plus-decade-old group is slated to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week. After a lengthy preamble, the piece covers every single studio album, live album, compilation, solo work, and other ephemera. I skimmed through the first half, then mostly just scrolled through the remainder once the story hit the mid-1980s -- just a little past the time the makeup came off.

I was just having a conversation with my buddy Sergio Prado a couple of weeks ago down at Viña del Mar about KISS. We’re close to the same age, and were both preteens when we first became aware of the band -- in other words, right smack in the middle of what I’d guess to have been the band’s prime demographic at the time. As I told Sergio, the second album I ever bought was a KISS record, albeit one of their less notable offerings, Dynasty (with their “disco” hit “I Was Made for Loving You”).

Sergio and I both remembered adults warning us against KISS -- obviously an important part of their allure. I recalled an elementary school teacher actually insisting to me that old line about the band being “Knights In Satan’s Service” and thus to be avoided at all costs.

I still will spin Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over now and then, and I have an LP copy of the first Alive record which I haven’t pulled out in ages. I wrote here a few years back about delightfully stumbling upon a KISS cover band once and being more or less spellbound for the next hour-plus. But I never did develop any sort of lifelong fascination with KISS along the lines that Klosterman appears to have done.

At one point near the end of the piece, Klosterman makes kind of a curious assertion. It might be the most interesting point of the whole dissertation, although I can’t really claim that as I didn’t read the entire massive tome.

“I own Kiss,” he claims, then clarifies that he means “I have complete intellectual autonomy over my interaction with Kiss, as does every other person immersed in the Kiss Lifestyle.” The claim is primarily supported by his understanding of the band as an entirely commercial entity, one consequence of which is the necessary introduction of a kind of critical distance between producer and consumer. Fans adore KISS when they perform, says Klosterman, but “the moment they exit the arena, that same fan base views them skeptically and objectively.”

I get the cynicism and even kind of identify with the position he’s describing. That is to say, I “like” KISS all right, but I tend to keep ’em at arm’s length. But I’m not sure I buy the “intellectual autonomy” line or the idea that as a critic Klosterman has some sort of mastery over the complicated “text” of KISS. Something tells me devoting this much time and effort to working out ideas about KISS more likely betrays a lack of control over one’s relationship with the subject of one’s criticism than it does “autonomy.”

There’s one other bit of trivia Klosterman includes (since he’s including everything) -- the old story of Ace Frehley having skipped out during part of the recording of Destroyer to play in a poker game. Thus was Dick Wagner (of Alice Cooper’s band) brought in to play the solo on one track (“Sweet Pain”).

When including that reference, Klosterman links to Frehley’s solo track “Five Card Stud” from his 1989 solo album Trouble Walkin’, easily one of the most banal poker songs ever penned, although I guess it rocks well enough when compared to other less-than-inspired pop-metal of the era.

Anyhow, if you’re a KISS fan -- and whatever you believe to be your level of “intellectual autonomy” in your relationship with the group -- you might give Klosterman’s piece a skim.

The Hottest Band in the World (Sort of)

Had a fun weekend as Vera Valmore and I took off for a quick beach trip. Kind of spur of the moment, without much pre-trip planning. Got down there on Friday and after a nice dinner went for a stroll along the water where we were stunned to encounter a KISS tribute band rocking out on an outdoor stage.

We knew there’d be some sort of music going on there when we passed by the stage earlier on our way to dinner. In fact, Vera had read something somewhere back at the hotel about “KISS Army” playing at some point, though it hadn’t really registered with us that was where they’d be playing.

As we left the restaurant and walked a couple of blocks, we heard the driving beat of “Detroit Rock City,” and soon we were part of a crowd of what eventually became more than 500 enjoying the free show.

Like most kids of the ’70s, Vera and I both have a fondness for KISS, remembering the songs and albums as well as the nightmare they once represented to adults. I recall a teacher -- it was around fourth grade or thereabouts -- once warning me that KISS stood for “Knights In Satan’s Service” (no shinola). I also have a memory of seeing the band featured on the prime time news program “20/20” one time, the gist of the piece being an attempt to explain the phenomenon to older folks. (Here’s that report, from 1979, if you’re curious.)

Anyhow, the tribute band did not disappoint, uncannily recreating the KISS live show replete with the make-up, the fire, the blood, extended guitar and drum solos, and note-for-note reproductions of all the hits. The fellow doing Paul Stanley even introduced the songs following that same goofy script you hear on the live records: “Who here has a case of... rock ‘n’ roll pneumonia? Well... there’s only one cure! You know what I’m talking about...! I’m talking about DOCTOR LOVE!!!!”

The group probably played around 20 songs altogether, finally signing off with “Rock and Roll All Nite,” natch. Nobody seemed to mind the god-awful heat (90-plus degrees) and humidity (near 100%). In fact, the all-ages crowd totally ate it up. (Here’s the group’s website.)

The show actually made me think more than once about Las Vegas, with its many examples of “tribute” acts like the Elvis Cirque du Soleil show (“Viva Elvis”), Jersey Boys (the Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons show), and that Cheap Trick performance of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Vera and I saw this summer. Also made think about the lives of the performers, and what it must be like to pretend you are someone else like that night after night.

Also thought a little bit afterwards about how in poker we sometimes kind of adopt various roles -- in some cases perhaps even imitating or borrowing the plays, actions, gestures, and so forth of other players we’ve seen (or whose books we’ve read).

On one hand, one could argue that every individual player’s style is in fact wholly composed of such borrowings, picked up here and there and ultimately shaped into the player he or she finally becomes. I remember reading someone once describe “personality” as simply a collection of repetitions, gathered via one’s experience and made one’s own.

Then again, one might say that there is no such thing (really) as “imitating” another player -- that is, in poker you can’t pull off an act like KISS Army does and perfectly reproduce, say, something you saw Phil Ivey do on “High Stakes Poker” or some move you read about in Harrington on Hold’em.

In other words, anytime one does “covers” (so to speak) at the poker table, the “original” becomes almost unrecognizable after being transformed into one’s own particular style.

Might be easier, I guess, if makeup were involved.